Note 9 — Chapter VII · THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON MOTHERHOOD

This amaternal idea is advanced with great ability in some works of Charlotte Perkins Stetson and Rosa Mayreder. The word amaternal coined by me is used to characterise the theory subsequently advanced, because the word unmaternal (unmotherly) signifies a spiritual condition, the antithesis to “motherliness.” The maternal as opposed to the amaternal theory is this: that a woman’s life is lived most intensively and most extensively, most individually and most socially; she is for her own part most free, and for others most fruitful, most egoistic and most altruistic, most receptive and most generous, in and with the physical and psychic exercise of the function of maternity, because of the conscious desire, by means of this function, to uplift the life of the race as well as her own life.