© 1922 William S. Sadler
MOTHERCRAFT should be taught in season and out of season in our educational system. Motherhood should be elevated and extolled in the eyes of our young women from the later years of high school throughout their college careers. The young woman should be taught that she does not have to choose between marriage and a career, but that in a large number of cases a woman may have both. Many a professional woman to-day is successful in a career, and at the same time is a reasonable-sized family and enjoyins all the normal blessings of married life with home and children. This is one of the great reasons why the eugenist favors coeducation, and the biologist sanctions every opportunity for superior young people to meet, fall in love, marry and raise families.
The first difficulty we confront is the failure of many women belonging to the supposedly superior classes to marry. Let us analyze the situation in this way: Of every two hundred babies born to first-class American stock, 103 will be boys and 97 girls. By the time these girls grow up to be twenty years of age, on an average, about 20 will have died, leaving only 77 women of marriageable age to whom we must look for the reproduction of the various racial elements of the nation.
BUT not all of these seventy-seven women will marry. The investigations made by Spraque and others in the consideration of this problem are very illuminating. For instance, in certain sections of New England studied the marriageable women between twenty and thirty-five were found to show one-fifth spin-sters. On the other hand, in investigations in connection with agricultural colleges it was found that only about one-tenth of the marriageable women were spinsters, suggesting that the daughters of farmers marry more generally than those of some other classes.
From all investigations available it wouuld seem that about fifteen per cent of native American women of the better class do not marry, at least during the child-bearing period. Now if we deduct this number from our supposed 77 posible wives out of approximately a hundred, it leaves us only 65. Now it has been further shown, for instance among the native married women of Massachusetts, that twenty per cent do not bear children. So, if we deduct these 13 childless women from our 65 possible wives, it leaves us 52 potential child-bearing women out of 97, among the superior clases of society, who are the sole hope of the future of the race.
If we further allow that four or five per cent of child-bearing women meet with such accidents as tendency toward premature birth, or become afflicted with some disease durring the child-bearing of life, or through surgical operations, after having borne one or more children, are rendered unable to bear more, it would necesitate a further deduction of two, thus leaving fifty women out of every one hundred who would probably be able to yield offspring throughout the child-bearing period of life. Thus having started out with two hundred children born to American parents, it tums out that only fifty of them can be depended upon for bearing our future citizens. In other words, of all the babies born in the country, only twenty-five per cent of them can and do become actual mothers in reproducing the next generation.
It is thus evident, in studying infant mortality rates, that every woman who does bear children must bear at least four to enable the race to hold its own. Race suicide confronts us if every child-bearing mother does not, on the average, produce four offspring, for the production of three children apiece would not enable the race to quite hold its own.
Now we are aware of the more recent propaganda that quality is what is desired in offspring, not quantity, and while it is true in a general way, at the same time, after we have done our best to improve the quality of the next generation, we must see to it that a sufficient quantity is also afforded to provide for proper replacement of the preceding generation. Quantity is not so important, as compared with quality, until it reaches a certain minimum which presages race suicide if the decline is not arrested. The writer fears the result upon the race consciousness of the nation of this doctrine of quality versus quantity if the shortsighted and dangerous elements in it are not recognized and avoided. There is much plausible truth in the teaching, but it is obvious that it is highly dangerous if carried too far.
STRENGTH of inherited character and superior racial qualities are, of course, the most desirable elements to wish for in any state or nation; but if this element of supposed eugenic teaching is carried too far—for instance, if the superior families of this country average only one child apiece and we do nothing to restrict reproduction on the part of the inferior classes—where will this country be in a hundred years? Who will dominate and determine the character of our civilization two or three generations hence? No matter what the plea for this undue limiting of the size of the family, whether it be economic, social or ethical, the character of the pretense is of little consequence; the practical result will be the extinction of the stock of those who preach or practice this extreme doctrine of undue limitation of offspring in acordance with the modern slogan of quality of offspring versus quantity.
This does not mean that we are contending for a high birth rate as a virtue in and of itsetf. Eugenists are not advocating enormous families just for the sake of speedy quantitative increase in the population. Eugenics is satisfied with a moderate increase, a steady, gradual, healthy growth.
We would welcome a decline in the birth rate of some classes of the population, but the difficulty is that the tendency toward decline in reproduction is among the very clases that are necessary to national development and solidarity, whereas the inferior clases continue to reproduce in a vigorous fashion, showing no evidence at all of any decline in the birth rate.
The decline in birth rate at the present time is taking place in those strata of society from which we secure our leaders, the type of men and women who become pioneers and organizers in commerce, industry, politics, literature, art, religion, science, and so on. In other words, race suicid is starting not among the lower social orders, but among the so-called native-American stock from which in the past we have secured our eminent men and women.
IF WE have only three children per family, it has been calculated that at the end of a hundred years each thousand persons to-day would then be represented by only 687 individuals. This is on the supposition that the death rate is 15 per 1000 of population.
Now let us look for a minute at the inferior strata of society. Even though they have a higher rate—say, 20 per 1000 population—suppose they reproduce at only the moderate rate of 33 per thousand, which would be only thirteen more than are needed to balance their higher death rate; at the end of a hundred years thousand persons now would be represented by 3600. If, then, the superior and inferior elements of society started out exactly equal, at the end of a century the tatio would be 1:6, while in two hundred years it would be 1:30. It is evident that it would require only a very few generations for the superior, and at present dominating, American stocks to commit race suicide, to be utterly and forever swamped in this biologic flood of predominant but inferior fertility.
The importance question for us to ask to-day is, From what levels of society are we recruiting the race; who are the parents of the offspring who are to become the controlling factors the next generation ?
Until about fifty years ago it was the proper thing in all English-speaking countries for the better classes of society to have large families, but a gradual change has been taking place regarding this matter. Now large families are rare in the upper clases of the community, and even in the ranks ot the skilled artisans, but the same old-fasnñned large families still come to the homes of the thriftless, the unskilled laborer and the feeble-minded and lower classes of the social order. At least it has become true of the better classes of English-speaking peoples — and
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