K. ‘It’s the families that make it so difficult. Fatherhood is quite a cult nowadays. All my husbands have been of a philoprogenitive turn, and I have eight children.’
M. ‘Eight children! No wonder you look worried.’
K. ‘Exactly! my mother would have been horrified. Two or three was the correct number in her days, four at the utmost, and five a fatality and very rare.’
M. ‘Well, my dear, you needn’t have had so many; you should have curbed that cult of Fatherhood. No woman is compelled to bear children nowadays, as our unfortunate grandmothers were. Have you got all eight with you?’
K. ‘No, that’s just the trouble. I didn’t want to have so many, but of course now I’ve got them I want them with me, and of course their fathers want them too.’
M. ‘Oh dear! how tiresome; that’s the worst of having children in these times. I’m sometimes glad I have none.’
K. ‘Then perhaps you don’t know the law about the children of our present marriage system? A sum of money has to be invested annually for each child, in the great State Infant Trust; when the marriage is dissolved the mother has the sole custody of them, unless the father wishes to share it; in the latter case they spend half the year with each parent.’
M. ‘It’s fair.’
K. ‘I suppose so, but oh! so terribly hard on a mother! My two elder girls are almost grown up, they’ve been at a boarding school for some time, and it was easy and natural enough for George and I to share them in the holidays, but now, I can’t keep them at the school any longer, and they will have to spend half the year with him. Thank heaven, he hasn’t been married for some time, and isn’t likely to again, so I haven’t the horror of a strange woman influencing them, but how can I guide them? how have any real control or influence over them in such circumstances?’
M. ‘Yes, that must be very sad for you.’