Part II) that the older a woman at marriage, the greater the average interval before the first delivery, a tendency which seems to indicate that it is the very young woman who is in the condition most apt for procreation; Kisch is not, indeed, inclined to think that this applies to women below twenty, but the fact, observed by other obstetricians, that mothers under eighteen tend to become pregnant again at an unusually short interval, goes far to neutralize the exception made by Kisch.  It may also be pointed out that, among children of very young mothers, the sexes are more nearly equal in number than is the case with older mothers.  This would seem to indicate that we are here in presence of a normal equilibrium which will decrease as the age of the mother is progressively disturbed in an abnormal direction.

The facility of parturition at an early age, it may be noted, corresponds to an equal facility in physical sexual intercourse, a fact that is often overlooked.  In Russia, where marriage still takes place early, it was formerly common when the woman was only twelve or thirteen, and Guttceit (Dreissig Jahre Praxis, vol. i, p. 324) says that he was assured by women who married at this age that the first coitus presented no especial difficulties.

There is undoubtedly, at the present time, a considerable amount of prejudice against early motherhood.  In part, this is due to a failure to realize that women are sexually much more precocious than men, physically as well as psychically (see ante p. 35).  The difference is about five years.  This difference has been virtually recognized for thousands of years, in the ancient belief that the age of election for procreation is about twenty, or less, for women, but about twenty-five for men; and it has more lately been affirmed by the discovery that, while the male is never capable of generation before thirteen, the female may, in occasional instances, become pregnant at eight. (Some of the recorded examples are quoted by Kisch.) In part, also, there is an objection to the assumption of responsibilities so serious as those of motherhood by a young girl, and there is the very reasonable feeling that the obligations of a permanent marriage tie ought not to be undertaken at an early age.  On the other hand, apart from the physical advantages, as regards both mother and infant, on the side of early pregnancies, it is an advantage for the child to have a young mother, who can devote herself sympathetically and unreservedly to its interests, instead of presenting the pathetic spectacle we so often witness in the middle-aged woman who turns to motherhood when her youth and mental flexibility are gone, and her habits and tastes have settled into other grooves; it has sometimes been a great blessing even to the very greatest men, like Goethe, to have had a youthful mother.  It would also, in many cases, be a great advantage for the woman herself if she could bring her procreative life