Man has developed under this social pressure a sense of chivalry and a tendency to "save women and children first" which give noble examples of courage and self-sacrifice to fire the imagination of each new generation.

Has the father-office developed such many-sided and adequate protective service to childhood that mothers have been able to "lay down their arms" and rest content in the knowledge that their children are shielded from every danger?
It seems not.

In the days when women were ignorant of all outside their homes they may have felt so secure because not understanding the cause of many family tragedies.

In the days when they had no power to change conditions affecting the home from without they may have felt excused from the protective function of early motherhood, since men had taken over physical defense and economic support and the relationship of the family group to the social whole.

No open-eyed woman in a country giving women social, economic, and political power can so think to-day.
It is a far cry from the savage mother, beating back some beast of the jungle or the plain, to the modern mother whose physical protection and that of her children is amply provided not alone by the husband and father concerned but by organized society with its police power, its courts and laws.