The same point holds in regard to the objection that admission to the franchise will distract woman from her domestic duties. It has even been gravely suggested that it might affect maternity. It is very difficult to treat such statements seriously. Vast numbers of women do not marry, vast numbers have no children, or only one or two, and a large number relegate the work to servants. But what makes it really difficult to meet the point seriously is: (1) The ridiculously slender amount of work the exercise of the vote will put on women; (2) the light-heartedness with which women were employed by political parties before they asked for the vote; and (3) the enormous amount of interest, distraction, and employment outside the home that we already willingly grant our women. The higher education of women is undoubtedly affecting maternity.[15] Does anyone propose to abolish it? The rush of life among the wealthy is even more exacting. The middle class, and even the working women, have corresponding distractions. Beside these the exercise of the suffrage is a sheer trifle, in relation to strain on the system. Of the apprehended discord in families, which influenced even Professor Sidgwick, one can only say that the proposal to perpetuate a monstrous and offensive injustice on the ground of an imaginary evil of that character is astounding. I do not happen to know any such families, in a fairly extensive acquaintance, but I should fancy that they will not wait for politics to spread discord in them. The apprehension seems to be based on a very cynical estimate of the relations of married folk, or in the notion that they have always agreed on religion, on dress, on local affairs, or in their estimates of people. But as one half of the opponents of the enfranchisement of wives plead that the wife would be sure to vote as her husband does, and therefore needs no separate representation, while the other half of our opponents declare the opposite and apprehend widespread discord, one may leave them to reconcile their contradictory experiences.