Page:Marriage as a Trade.djvu/113

 motherhood of women in whom the maternal instinct is slight—of whom there are many.) I do not mean that men should necessarily be excluded altogether from the tending of children; in many men the sense of fatherhood is very strong, in spite of the discouragement it receives under present conditions. If that discouragement were removed the paternal instinct might manifest itself in a more personal care of children; but on the whole one imagines that such personal care of children will always come more easily to woman. On the other hand, as most men are stronger muscularly than women, those departments of labour which require the exertion of considerable muscular strength must, under ordinary circumstances, naturally be monopolized by man. But between these two extremes there lies what may be called a neutral or debatable ground of labour requiring the exercise of qualities which are the exclusive property of neither sex. It is in this neutral field that the law to which I have alluded above comes into operation—the law under which the activities of women are confined to those departments of the labour market into which men do