Childless Marriage as a Basis for Adoption

Childless marriage has exercised the medical profession for centuries, but has hardly begun to interest the social scientist. For novelists and playwrights it has proved intrinsically fascinating. Nigel Balchin, for example, has written more than one compelling account of what can happen when the stresses inseparable from any marriage have to be contained within the two-person relationship. In Mine Own Executioner a couple remain uneasily together, whereas in A Way Through the Wood they separate. In each case the absence of children is keenly felt and in the former novel we are told that no medical cause had been discovered. Here, the central figure is a lay psychoanalyst who, after twelve years of marriage, has become irritated with his clumsy wife 'Rhino' and no longer wants to make love to her. She still loves him, but at one point remarks?'I think we ought to adopt