‘In Britain, at the present day … an average of about six children per marriage (not per head of female inhabitants) is necessary in order to keep the population just stationary’, claimed Grant Allen in his 1889 article ‘Plain Words on the Woman Question’. Concerned primarily with the health of the nation, Allen argued that ‘a woman ought to be ashamed to say she has no desire to become a wife and mother’. Allen was one of many who weighed in on debates surrounding women and motherhood at the fin de siècle. Pressures on women to prioritize motherhood were often heightened by growing feminist activism, fears of degeneration, and concerns about the future of the nation. Some women like Sarah Grand and Jane Hume Clapperton responded by becoming advocates of eugenic motherhood. Others like ‘A Woman of the Day’, the anonymous author of an 1895 article ‘Motherhood and Citizenship and the New Woman’, felt differently: