When we note in the statistics of divorce the comparatively high figures shown for marriages in which there have been one or two children only, therefore, we may take it that unhappiness began to enter the home in the third, fourth, or fifth year after the birth of the last child—that is to say, at a period when the idleness of her reproductive organs was beginning to prove a source of intolerable exasperation to the young female. And in these cases, as in the classical instance detailed above, the same phases occur. There is the same sudden interest in matters outside the home—either golf, tennis, acting, bridge, dancing, a new religion, a new philosophy, or a Cause. This brings the young wife into touch with a number of strange men, and as her interest in these increases, she begins to be aware of a vague feeling of irritation concerning certain aspects of her husband’s person or behaviour, of which theretofore she had not been conscious. Finally, she becomes infatuated with one of the strange men, and her feelings for her husband suffer a corresponding change for the worse. Then only cowardice, caution, or extreme devotion to her small family, can possibly prevent her from compromising herself. This is now the time and the place to consider whether there are not perhaps other physiological and psychical conditions resulting from deliberate childlessness, or from the deliberate limitation of the family, besides those discussed above, which hasten the rupture between the positive couple. There are certainly many such physiological and psychical conditions, and the foremost of these is the deleterious effect which the constant use of contraceptives has upon the happy sexual relations of the young couple. That there should be no known contraceptive which does not in some way mar the complete happiness of marital intercourse, will perhaps be regarded by some as a very wise dispensation of Providence;—for certainly the best brains of all nations for many thousands of years have concerned themselves with the problem, and it seems astonishing that, so far, nothing really perfect should have been discovered;—but at all events this fact goes a considerable way towards making the marriage-bed of people who deliberately limit the family at least a breeding-place of very serious trouble. Secondly, the very fact that childlessness as an end is incessantly present to the minds of the young couple—whether they have had no children at all, or only one, two, or three—during the cohabitation, constitutes in itself an influence which in time is certain to destroy the savour of their relations at a pace commensurate with their positiveness.