Let us forget for a moment the sophisticated traditional attitude toward this question of marriage and parenthood, and go back, as it were, to the beginning--to a fact recognized in the animal world and not entirely overlooked by primitive man, namely: that every offspring has two parents who are equally responsible for its care and protection. In the animal kingdom one finds a widely varied division of the labour connected with the care of the young. For example, the male of certain species is found to perform functions which our own usage has led us to regard as maternal. Among the viviparous animals the heavier share of responsibility rests with the female during the gestation, birth and extreme youth of the offspring; and among primitive human beings the actual physical dependence of the offspring on the mother is likely to be prolonged over a period of several years. It was, perhaps, this necessity of a close physical association between mother and child that led to a sexual division of labour under which the mother undertook the physical care of children while the father undertook the task of providing food. It must be remarked, however, that this division of labour by no means excludes productive labour on the part of the woman. Among most tribes she augments the food-supply through agriculture, grubbing, or sometimes through fishing or hunting; and there are tribes, notably in Africa, where she is the sole provider for the family. The Vaertings have remarked that the drudgery connected with the care of children is invariably imposed by the dominant upon the subject sex; a view which is in perfect consonance with what we know of the general human willingness to transfer to other shoulders the burden of uninteresting though necessary labour. Since women have most often been subject, they have most often been forced to undertake this drudgery, either in lieu of or in addition to the labour of providing food and shelter for their families. This is to say that their subject position has added considerably to what newspaper editors and other commentators are fond of calling the burden of Eve. Since woman is the childbearing sex, it has seemed natural to a great many peoples to increase the disadvantage at which her share in reproduction naturally places her, by making her confinement at home permanent instead of occasional, and by permitting her few, if any, interests save those connected with reproduction; in short, by prolonging and enhancing her subjection to the demands of the race. This is why the term married woman is still taken to imply the term housekeeper; an implication which, as the _Freeman_ remarked editorially some years ago, modern civilization must renounce “if it wants such of its women as are editors and bank-presidents to be mothers as well.”