"Again reciprocity of conjugal rights and duties is desirable for parenthood. If marriage have a proprietary character, neither the owner nor the owned is entirely fit to develop free personalities in his or her children. Moreover the idea of marital ownership more or less involves that of parental ownership, and the latter, as we have seen, is incompatible with a high type of parenthood. The custom of proprietary marriage inevitably leads, for example, to restrictions upon female education. Now just in so far as a woman's education is limited is she handicapped as an educator of her children. It is unfortunate that in the emancipation of woman agitation of the past half-century the reformers failed to emphasize the social as adequately as the individualistic need of change. If women are to be fit wives and mothers they must have all, perhaps more, of the opportunities for personal development that men have. All the activities hitherto reserved to men must at least be open to them, and many of these activities, certain functions of citizenship[1] for ex-
- ↑ (Mrs. Parsons'.) The enlightened public opinion of to-day finds the chief if not the only warrant for universal male suffrage in its being an educational means. In this view women need the suffrage at present even more than men.
