194 TABOO AND GENETICS 



many generations to regard marriage as giving 

 respectability to an otherwise wicked inclina- 

 tion. The task of devising a sane approach is 

 only just begun. But the menace of prostitu- 

 tion and of the social diseases has become so 

 great that society is compelled from an instinct 

 of sheer self-preservation to drag into the open 

 some of the iniquities which have hitherto 

 existed under cover. 



In the first place, the education of girls, 

 which has been almost entirely determined by 

 the standardized concepts of the ideal woman, 

 has left them totally unprepared for wifehood 

 and motherhood, the very calhng which those 

 ideals demand that they shall follow. The 

 whole education of the girl aims at the con- 

 cealment of the physiological nature of men 

 and women. She enters marriage unprepared 

 for the realities of conjugal life, and hence in- 

 capable of understanding either herself or her 

 husband. When pregnancy comes to such a 

 wife, the old seclusion taboos fall upon her like 

 a categorical imperative. She is overwhelmed 

 with embarrassment at a normal and natural 

 biological process which can hardly be classi- 

 fied as " romantic." Such an attitude is neither 

 conducive to the eugenic choice of a male nor 

 to the proper care of the child either before or 

 after its birth. 



A second dysgenic influence which results 



