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Its program was thus indicated by one of the foremost professors of medicine in the United States: Provision must be made for the birth of children whose brains shall, so far as possible, be innately of good quality; this means the denial of the privilege of parenthood to those likely to transmit bad nervous systems to their offsprings.
Celibacy became exalted; virginity was a positive virtue; chastity, instead of a healthful antecedent to parenthood, became an end in itself; and monasteries and convents multiplied throughout Christendom. Something of shame and guilt gathered around conception and birth, as representing a lower standard of life, even when sanctified by the ceremonies of the Church.
Some will argue, of course, that the State is to look after children directly, but I, for one, as a biologist, have no choice but to believe that the way to save children is to safeguard parenthood, and I cannot question that our duty is to provide the mother with the necessary means for performing her supreme function, whether she has a living husband or is a widow or is unmarried.
He made a slight incision in the woman's abdomen, inserted the gland and stitched it in. In a week the patient was about her household duties again. Six months ago she gave birth to a healthy baby. It was a boy. The mother was the happiest woman in Kansas. The surgeon had treated six other cases similarly, but all were men men who loved children and yearned for parenthood.
We complain of the birth-rate in our Colonies, or at least those few persons do who know that parenthood is the key to national destiny. But we should complain of our own folly in so interfering with the natural balance of the sexes as to create pressing problems, wholly insoluble, alike at home and in our Colonies.
To beget or not to beget that is the question nowadays, and a very vexed question it is. There is hardly a subject on which opinions are more diversified. Some people regard parenthood as the most horrible disaster; others think that to die without creating is to have lived uselessly. I
Parenthood and childhood will shortly come to be recognized as the first concern of the State that is to continue, and whilst the birth-rate continues to fall, the honour paid to fathers and mothers will continue to rise. We shall become as wise in time as the Jews have been ever since we have record of them.
A third very important reason why a numerical preponderance of women is more injurious to a country than a numerical preponderance of men is that, though the duty and responsibility of selection for parenthood devolves upon both sexes, it is normally discharged with greater efficiency by women than by men; and a numerical preponderance of women gravely interferes with their performance of this great function.
Not a sign nor an accent of emotion, nothing, while she was describing the suicide of her first husband she did not even seem to imagine that she had a crime on her conscience. She remained pitiless, and yet, a moment ago, when she was commiserating him because of his fictitious parenthood, he had thought she was trembling. "After all, perhaps she is acting a part like myself."
However, the desirable kinds of toys will not be manufactured in larger quantities until an enlightened parenthood both demands them and refuses to buy the glittering heart-breakers that look so charming in the shop, but go to pieces in the child's hands. It is far better to have fewer and better toys than more of an inferior quality.
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