The whole subject has been investigated in a Paris Thesis by H. Brenot (De L’Influence de la Copulation pendant la Grossesse, 1903); he concludes that sexual relations are dangerous throughout pregnancy, frequently provoking premature confinement or abortion, and that they are more dangerous in primiparae than in multiparae.

Nearly everything that has been said of the hygiene of pregnancy, and the need for rest, applies also to the period immediately following the birth of the child.  Rest and hygiene on the mother’s part continue to be necessary alike in her own interests and in the child’s.  This need has indeed been more generally and more practically recognized than the need for rest during pregnancy.  The laws of several countries make compulsory a period of rest from employment after confinement, and in some countries they seek to provide for the remuneration of the mother during this enforced rest.  In no country, indeed, is the principle carried out so thoroughly and for so long a period as is desirable.  But it is the right principle, and embodies the germ which, in the future, will be developed.  There can be little doubt that whatever are the matters, and they are certainly many, which may be safely left to the discretion of the individual, the care of the mother and her child is not among them.  That is a matter which, more than any other, concerns the community as a whole, and the community cannot afford to be slack in asserting its authority over it.  The State needs healthy men and women, and by any negligence in attending to this need it inflicts serious charges of all sorts upon itself, and at the same time dangerously impairs its efficiency in the world.  Nations have begun to recognize the desirability of education, but they have scarcely yet begun to realize that the nationalization of health is even more important than the nationalization of education.  If it were necessary to choose between the task of getting children educated and the task of getting them well-born and healthy it would be better to abandon education.  There have been many great peoples who never dreamed of national systems of education; there has been no great people without the art of producing healthy and vigorous children.

This matter becomes of peculiar importance in great industrial states like England, the United States, and Germany, because in such states a tacit conspiracy tends to grow up to subordinate national ends to individual ends, and practically to work for the deterioration of the race.  In England, for instance, this tendency has become peculiarly well marked with disastrous results.  The interest of the employed woman tends to become one with that of her employer; between them they combine to crush the interests of the child who represents the race, and to defeat the laws made in the interests of the race which are those of the community as a whole.  The employed woman wishes to earn as much wages as she can and with as little interruption as she can; in gratifying that wish she is, at the same time, acting in the interests of the employer, who carefully avoids thwarting her.