SIR,—One of the reasons for the decline in the birth-rate
among the so- called "well-to-do" classes is psycholog;cal as well as physical. At present the well-to-do woman, though she may be freed from financial worries, lends the life of a working woman. Deprived of all domestic help, she has greater responsibilities, often a large house, garden, &c., to care for; where there are already one or more children her working hours approach something like 96 a week. It is still not appreciated that mothers are the only class of the community (other than the medical profession —vide the peripatetic corres2ondent in the current Lancet) who are never off duty, not even at night. But then motherhood has still to be recognised as a profession. The well-to-do, by reason of their education, are loth to give up all torms of recreation for the mind, for fear of becoming in- tolerable " domestic " bores to their htsbands, society at large and to themselves At present they are lucky if they can snatch time to read a daily paper and a weekly journal such as yours. Perhaps it is also not realised that a constantly over-fatigued woman, if not still in her early twenties, is unlikely to conceive, however ,much she may desire it.—
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