JBT 101988
Doctors Discuss Sex- Starved Spinsters
EX-starved spinsters were dis-
medi-
cal authorities at the National Conference on Maternity and Child Welfare which was recently held in Bristol.
the unmated. The problem of
Dr. spinster was dealt with by
who Eleanor Joyce Partridge,
began by asking why civilisation produced a disinclinaton to bear children.
One answer, she said, was an economic one, but there was also a psychological reason in the case of the woman who did not have to children when the only bar her doing so was her own mental
processes.
"As a psychotherapist," said. Dr. Partridge, "one meets them in all walks of life, more typically unmarried than married, and per- haps most typically described as the 'sex-starved spinster.".
"Why are they spinsters and why sex-starved? If you were to ask them they might say they disliked all men, but they would more likely say that the right man had never come along. But the average man and woman of the world and every psychologist- knows that for such women.
the right man never would come along because their mental atti- tude is such that no advances of
any kind would ever be accepted from any man, however desirable he might really be...
"Their innate and probably un- consious fear of sex and every- thing to do with sex is mixed with all their thoughts and actions. In all such women the and of their parents attitude guardians, but primarily of their mothers, to sex was such that generally in their quite early in- fancy, they decided that the only thing to do was to repress all matters of sex entirely."
same
This type of woman had many sisters' suffering from the complaint in less exaggerated forms. Some women, `- although afraid of all things pertaining to sex, were yet more afraid of being left alone in the world. Such women might marry for fear of loneliness but they would very likely remain childless or have only one child at the most.
"In severe cases the only way to combat the shockingly bad ef- fects of mistaken. parental be- haviour is through psychological treatment, but in less severe cases it is possible for education to do a great deal.”. ·"
Professor H. J. Drew-Smythe, Professor of Obstetrics at the University of Bristol,, said a fac- tor which affected the mind of
"Sand Castles", perhaps? With sand in abundance, these two youngsters are enjoying their day's outing along a Colony beach. (“Mall” photo).
the future mother was the undue prominence given in Parliament, in the daily papers and on public platforms to the dangers and hardships of child-birth.
"Women" he said "are becom- ing afraid to bear children, fear- ing for their lives, yet in the Bri
lowest tish Isles we have the
maternal mortality of any country. in the world except Holland.
"A patient who just booked a doctor for her confinement and did not see him again until child- birth was better off mentally than her daughter or grand-daughter who regularly attends a doctor or an ante-natal clinic.'
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