Searchlights on Health/Too Many Children
TOO MANY CHILDREN.
1. LESSENING PAUPERISM.—Many of the agencies for lessening pauperism are afraid of tracing back its growth to the frequency of births under wretched conditions. One begins to question whether after all sweet charity or dignified philanthropy has not acted with an unwise reticence. Among the problems which defy practical handling this is the most complicated. The pauperism which arises from marriage is the result of the worst elements of character legalized. In America, where the boundaries of wedlock are practically boundless, it is not desirable, even were it possible, that the state should regulate marriage much further than it now does; therefore must the sociologist turn for aid to society in his struggle with pauperism.
2. RIGHT PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITIONS OF BIRTH.—Society should insist upon the right spiritual and physical conditions for birth. It should be considered more than "a pity" when another child is born into a home too poor to receive it. The underlying selfishness of such an event should be recognized, for it brings motherhood under wrong conditions of health and money. Instead of each birth being the result of mature consideration and hallowed loves children are too often born as animals are born. To be sure the child has a father whom he can call by name. Better that there had never been a child.
3. WRONG RESULTS.—No one hesitates to declare that if is want of self-respect and morality which brings wrong results outside of marriage, but it is also the want of them which begets evil inside the marriage relation. Though there is nothing more difficult than to find the equilibrium between self-respect and self-sacrifice, yet on success in finding it depends individual and national preservation. The fact of being wife and mother or husband and father should imply dignity and joyousness, no matter how humble the home.
4. DIFFERENCE OF OPINION AMONGST PHYSICIANS.—In regard to teaching, the difficulties are great. As soon as one advances beyond the simplest subjects of hygiene, one is met with the difference of opinions among physicians. When each one has a different way of making a mustard plaster, no wonder that each has his own notions about everything else. One doctor recommends frequent births, another advises against them.
5. DIFFERENT NATURES.—If physiological facts are taught to a large class, there are sure to be some in it whose impressionable natures are excited by too much plain speaking, while there are others who need the most open teaching in order to gain any benefit. Talks to a few persons generally are wiser than popular lectures. Especially are talks needed by mothers and unmothered girls who come from everywhere to the city.
6. BOYS AND YOUNG MEN.—It is not women alone who require the shelter of organizations and instruction, but boys and young men. There is no double standard of morality, though the methods of advocating it depend upon the sex which is to be instructed. Men are more concerned with the practical basis of morality than with its sentiment, and with the pecuniary aspects of domestic life than with its physical and mental suffering. We all may need medicine for moral ills, yet the very intangibleness of purity makes us slow to formulate rules for its growth. Under the guidance of the wise in spirit and knowledge, much can be done to create a higher standard of marriage and to proportion the number of births according to the health and income of parents.
7. FOR THE SAKE OF THE STATE.—If the home exists primarily for the sake of the individual, it exists secondarily for the sake of the state. Therefore, any home into which are continually born the inefficient children of inefficient parents, not only is a discomfort in itself, but it also furnishes members for the armies of the unemployed, which are tinkering and hindering legislation and demanding by the brute force of numbers that the state shall support them.
8. OPINIONS FROM HIGH AUTHORITIES.—In the statements and arguments made in the above we have not relied upon our own opinions and convictions, but have consulted the best authorities, and we hereby quote some of the highest authorities upon this subject.
9. REV. LEONARD DAWSON.—"How rapidly conjugal prudence might lift a nation out of pauperism was seen in France.—Let them therefore hold the maxim that the production of offspring with forethought and providence is rational nature. It was immoral to bring children into the world whom they could not reasonably hope to feed, clothe and educate."
10. MRS. FAWCETT.—"Nothing will permanently offset pauperism while the present reckless increase of population continues."
11. DR. GEORGE NAPHEYS.—"Having too many children unquestionably has its disastrous effects on both mother and children as known to every intelligent physician. Two-thirds of all cases of womb disease, says Dr. Tilt, are traceable to child-bearing in feeble women. There are also women to whom pregnancy is a nine months' torture, and others to whom it is nearly certain to prove fatal. Such a condition cannot be discovered before marriage—The detestable crime of abortion is appallingly rife in our day. It is abroad in our land to an extent which would have shocked the dissolute women of pagan RomeS—This wholesale, fashionable murder, how are we to stop it? Hundreds of vile men and women in our large cities subsist by this slaughter of the innocent."
12. REV. H.R. HAWEIS.—"Until it is thought a disgrace in every rank of society, from top to bottom of social scale, to bring into the world more children than you are able to provide for, the poor man's home, at least, must often be a purgatory—his children dinnerless, his wife a beggar—himself too often drunk—here, then, are the real remedies: first, control the family growth according to the family means of support."
13. MONTAGUE COOKSON.—"The limitation of the number of the family—is as much the duty of married persons as the observance of chastity is the duty of those that are unmarried."
14. JOHN STUART MILL.—"Every one has aright to live. We will suppose this granted. But no one has a right to bring children into life to be supported by other people. Whoever means to stand upon the first of these rights must renounce all pretension to the last. Little improvement can be expected in morality until the production of a large family is regarded in the same light as drunkenness or any other physical excess."
15. DR. T.D. NICHOLLS.—"In the present social state, men and women should refrain from having children unless they see a reasonable prospect of giving them suitable nurture and education."
16. REV. M.J. SAVAGE.—"Some means ought to be provided for checking the birth of sickly children."
17. DR. STOCKHAM.—"Thoughtful minds must acknowledge the great wrong done when children are begotten under adverse conditions. Women must learn the laws of life so as to protect themselves, and not be the means of bringing sin-cursed, diseased children into the world. The remedy is in the prevention of pregnancy, not in producing abortion."