Their existence, however, has had an effect on a better type and has given rise to reaction on the part of men infinitely their superiors. Women who have seen their sister women thus outraged have had the support of men of sensitive conscience and consideration when they have claimed that the mother who is carrying and nursing her child is sacred, and must not be approached by her husband at all during the whole of the child’s coming and nursing period. It has, therefore, come about that a large number of our best and most high-minded women (supported by correspondingly high-minded men, anxious to do the best that is within their power for their wives and children) hold the view that no sex union after the third month, or perhaps that no sex union at all is allowable during pregnancy. Now this is one more matter which has not begun to receive the consideration which it deserves. When I wrote _Married Love_ I felt that I was not entitled to decide on this subject, and I tried to hold the balance between the various opinions, and drew attention to the fact that the prospective mother of the lower creatures is always set apart. This was apparently misinterpreted by some of my readers as being a personal expression of opinion, and women wrote or spoke to me about the subject saying they were sure I was right _because their husbands held the same opinion as I did_, BUT _the women themselves were ashamed, almost humiliated, to confess that during the carrying of their child they most ardently desired unions_. To these, as individuals, I pointed out that I was very far from expressing a definite opinion in my book on this point, and that my actual opinion indeed inclined towards thinking that restricted unions should be advantageous. In a later edition (the 7th) of my book, I enlarged on what I had to say on this subject, concluding: “There is little doubt that in this particular, even more than in so many others, the health, needs, and mental condition of women who are bearing children vary profoundly.” Through evidences from very various types of women in the last year or two, I have now accumulated facts in sufficient numbers to begin to see something approaching a possible generalization on this subject. One of the most striking things I noticed concerning the evidences I received was that the women who confessed to a desire for sex union while they were carrying a child were, almost without exception, the _best_ type. A hasty generalization would have predicted that those very women with their pure attitude, their high degree of culture, their intellectual attainments, and their gracious self-restraint in outer life were just exactly those women who would maintain a fierce chastity during the nine months. These quite remarkable corresponding experiences of similarly superior women forced the matter vividly upon my attention, and I am now prepared to make a tentative generalization, coupled with the generalization to be found in Chapter XV.