FAMILY OR FREEDOM ?
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I was particularly glad to see your outspoken article under the heading Family or Freedom?" for, as an obstetrician, I am constantly seeing the evil effects of Victorian prudery. For example, we often encounter difficulty in the feeding of the new-born as a result of a malformation of the breasts produced by tight binding during their development.
Surely the problem over which Mr. Bertrand Russell and Mr. Newsom disagree can only be dealt with in a more radical way—by proper education of young people in the meaning and purpose of sexual intercourse ? Whether sexual activity is actually extended outside the marriage bond seems to me to be unimportant, except in consideration of other people's opinion. What may endanger the stability of the home is the fact that one of the parents wants to so extend it. If a boy or girl is fortunate enough to have parents who have achieved spiritual union and know physical union as a manifestation of it, who find in it happiness and power and who are articulate on the subject (a rare combination), then he will be likely to choose a wife with whom he can achieve as his parents have done before him and not likely to endanger his home by seeking promiscuous intercourse outside it. If, on the other hand, he (or she) gets his first knowledge from the ribald jokes of those a little older than himself, he will most likely find the husks later with the help of a prostitute —a prostitution indeed. He is likely to choose his wife for her physical attraction and again to find no more than husks in his life with her. Realizing dimly that he has been cheated of something, he is likely to seek it elsewhere in promiscuous intercourse. He can never find it because his education in this essential department of life has been neglected.—I am, Sir, &c., A LONDON OBSTETRICIAN. P.S.—The need for this education is further demonstrated by the fact that the writing of this letter over my own name would damage my practice !
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