Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/143

 Question, which I think few Women would do, as, whether she expected to have any Children? She would say, Yes, to be sure; what do you think I marry for else?

take a married Life, with all its Addenda of Family Cares, the trouble of looking after a Houshold, the hazard of being subject to the Humours and Passions of a churlish Man, and particularly of being disappointed, and matching with a Tyrant, and a Family-Brute; with still the more apparent hazard of being ruined in Fortune by his Disasters if a Tradesman, by his Immoralities if a Gentleman, and by his Vices if a Rake: I say, what Woman in her Senses would tie her self up in the Fetters of Matrimony, if it were not that she desires to be a Mother of Children, to multiply her Kind, and, in short, have a Family?

she did not, she would be next to Lunatick to marry, to give up her Liberty, take a Man to call Master, and promise when she takes him to Honour and Obey him. "What! give her self away for nothing! Mortgage the Mirth, the Freedom, the Liberty, and all the Pleasures of her Virgin-state, the Honour and Authority of being her own, and at her own dispose, and all this to be a Barren Doe, a Wife without Children; a Dishonour to her Husband, and a Reproach to her self! Can any Woman in her Wits do thus? It is not indeed consistent with common Sense.

it then on the Man's Side, 'tis the same Thing. I have known indeed a Man pretend to profess such an Aversion to Children in the House, and to the Noise and Impertinences of them, as he called it, that he could not bear the Thoughts of them. But then this