Let us suppose that natural selection has continually averaged the duty of the sexes to offspring, by modification and adjustment of each organism to its appropriate functions. At maturity, then, males and females would be true equivalents, each equally well fortified to meet its own responsibilities. Woman's share of duties must involve direct nutrition, man's indirect nutrition. She should be able to bear and nourish their young children, at a cost of energy equal to the amount expended by him as household provider. Beyond this, if human justice is to supplement Nature's provisions, all family duties must be shared equitably, in person or by proxy. Work, alternated with needful rest, is the salvation of man or woman. Far be it from me to encourage one human being as an idler! But in the scientific distribution of work, the males, not the females, must be held primarily responsible for the proper cooking of food, as for the production of it. Since we cannot thrive on the raw materials, like the lower animals, culinary processes must be allied to indirect nutrition.
In the progress of functions, the human mother must contribute much more towards the direct sustenance of offspring than any class of inferior beings. For many months before and for many months after its birth, her system must elaborate the entire food of her child. Its growth and activity are supplemental to her own, and are as absolutely at her expense as is the growth of her own right arm. But Nature has provided for that by giving her a smaller frame of her own, and less disposition to great activity personally, with less need of it in the interest of perfect health. Nature is just enough; but men and women must comprehend and accept her suggestions. For the best fulfilment of maternal duties, the mother must have comfortable surroundings provided for her without a large personal tax on her own energies. Therefore it seems to me to be scientifically demonstrable that fathers are equitably bound to contribute indirect sustenance to offspring in the shape of good edible food for the mother. To this we might add ready-made clothing and fires lighted on cold winter mornings!
Undoubtedly, in the division of the many complex duties of life, it may be equitable and decidedly best in many households that the wives should be responsible for the family cooking and sewing; yet it should be understood that they both belong more properly to the category of masculine function, and pertain to the indirect nurture of the youthful scions of the household. Every nursing mother, in the midst of her little dependent brood, has far more right to whine, sulk, or scold, as temperament dictates, because beefsteak and coffee are not prepared for her and exactly to her taste, than any man ever had or ever can have during the present stage of human evolution. Other things equal—during the whole child-bearing age, at least—if family necessity compels to extra hours of toil or care, these must belong to the husband, never to the wife. The interests of their children must not be sacrificed by her over-exhaustion, even though she were willing and eager for the sacrifice of herself.
-Antoinette Brown Blackwell, “Sex and Evolution”, in Alice S. Rossi, The Feminist Papers: From Adams to de Beauvoir
