Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/212

self, the cessation of the sheath and the use of the internal occlusive cap (see p. 138) by the woman should be advised.

Unless the young woman has seen in her own home her mother brutally treated and martyred to child-bearing, fear of childbirth and pregnancy is not characteristic of the woman who has not borne a child. Indeed, I think, I may safely say that the great majority of healthy happy young women take on gaily their first motherhood. Thereafter their individual circumstances determine whether or not fear will develop.

In all the medical and scientific works I have read I think nowhere is justice done to the health-destroying, home-wrecking work of fear of pregnancy in our modern civilization. This fear in a woman is often less on her own behalf than on behalf of her husband, her children, or the family resources, and a number of other unselfish considerations; but the fact remains that fear of pregnancy is so intense as to hang like a great fog-cloud murkily ever-present and dimming the health of large numbers of our people. A woman in whom this