_The Insurance of Motherhood._--Recently, the insurance of motherhood has been recommended, especially by the advocates of the emancipation of women, on the following grounds. Neglect of women during pregnancy, childbirth, and the lying-in period, and neglect of new-born infants, are responsible for numerous and serious disadvantages. Childbirth is very painful and extremely arduous, and the woman who gives birth to a child performs a supremely valuable social service. The suggestion is, that the insurance of motherhood should provide for every aspect of women’s task of reproduction. It should support women during pregnancy; during parturition, and during the lying-in period; a full allowance should be provided for eight weeks before and eight weeks after delivery; free attendance of a midwife, with free medical help if requisite, and such other care as may be needed, should be provided for the delivery. In connection with the insurance of motherhood, suitable homes should be erected for pregnant women, lying-in women, and new-born infants, and the women and children admitted to these institutions should be gratuitously supported. The insurance of motherhood, it is suggested, should be compulsory, on the one hand, for all wage-earning women, and, on the other, for all married women whose husbands earn less than a certain minimum wage. All these women should pay contributions. In other respects, the cost of the insurance of motherhood should be met on the same lines as the cost of the _Krankenkassen_ (see note on page 120). Thus it is not proposed that the insurance of motherhood should take the form of an entirely independent branch of national insurance. Many contend that child-bearing is just as necessary a branch of national economy as the wage-paid labour of men, and that for this reason women should be directly remunerated for this social service; they wish that the insurance of motherhood on these lines should provide for the child’s upbringing until it becomes old enough to earn its own living. But even the most radical advocates of the insurance of motherhood regard this idea of the endowment of motherhood as extreme, and as impracticable at present. The following objections have been raised against the insurance of motherhood. (_a_) No sound actuarial foundation can be provided for such insurance. The birth-rate cannot be predicted with certainty, so that the amount of contributions and the benefits cannot be calculated with the requisite precision. (_b_) Motherhood depends upon physiological processes, and has nothing whatever to do with illness.