"You mean they would defend their children from attack.

Of course.

Any mothers would.

But we are not savages, my dear lady; we are not going to hurt any mother's child." They looked at one another and shook their heads a little, but Zava turned to Jeff and urged him to make us see--said he seemed to understand more fully than we did.

And he tried.
I can see it now, or at least much more of it, but it has taken me a long time, and a good deal of honest intellectual effort.
What they call Motherhood was like this: They began with a really high degree of social development, something like that of Ancient Egypt or Greece.