The truth is that it is not desired or expected that mothers should be rational. Maternal instinct is so wonderful, maternal devotion so sublime, cry our sentimental brutes. Whatever we may have known of life and the outside world, it is still expected in modern times that, once married, we shall descend into a morass of instinct and ignorance from which we shall never, if the male and the vindictively-minded spinster can prevent it, emerge again. We are privileged, so we are told, in that we may bear each year a child for the State, rock the cradle, wash, mend, and make, pass on the lore of housekeeping and infant-care to our daughters just as we received it from our mothers. It is such a beautiful picture: a pity it is entirely false. The old-fashioned mother had no lore, and her instinct was inadequate. She succeeded by luck rather than by knowledge. She adored, or disciplined; she killed by kindness or by severity and neglect. She would coddle when she should have hardened, harden when she should have coddled; she would over-feed and under-feed, or give the wrong kind of food. Since it has been the fashion for women to have minds, the books for mothers have become more scientific and our intelligent inquiries have been met by research and more adequate replies. Every mother with any intelligence who has reared one or more children through the first year of life and up to five years of age would admit nowadays that scientific knowledge was of more service to her than all the instinct and adoration at her command. Indeed, I believe the so-called maternal instinct in handling and understanding babies consists of habit almost imperceptibly learnt in tending the first, blossoming into a smooth instinctive unity with the coming of the second. The fashionable mother, said to be devoid of maternal instinct because she neglects her child, has simply not learnt it, because necessity does not compel her to practical duties. This is even true, though less so, of well-to-do mothers who feed their babies at the breast.