This is part of a general impatience with pain common to us all.

Chloroform, and morphia, and cocaine, and ethyl chloride have taught us that pain is an evil.
When there was no chance of relieving it, we anaesthetised ourselves and each other with the thought that it was necessary, it was the will of Providence, the cry of our nerves for succour.
Now it is an evil, and if we must submit we do so under protest.

Women now engage doctors on condition that chloroform will be administered as soon as they scream, and they scream earlier in their labour at each succeeding occasion.
Women are less than ever impressed with the sacredness and nobility of maternity, and look upon it more and more as a period of martyrdom.
This attitude is in consonance with the crave for ease and luxury that is beginning to possess us.
It is, however, no new phase in human experience.

It characterised all the civilisations of ancient times, at the height of their prosperity, and was really the beginning of their decay.
Women with us are more eager to limit families than are their husbands.
They feel the burdens of a large family more.

They are often heard to declare that, with a large family around her, and limited funds at her disposal with which to provide assistance, a woman is a slave.