Wise Parenthood (15th edition)/Chapter 3

BEFORE entering into the exact structural and medical details of the material methods advisable for those who wish to control the birth of their children, I should like to say a few words on the general subject in its relation to the normal life of the married pair.

I sincerely hope that those who propose to read this little book will first read my "Married Love," because the whole complex experience of married life is so interwoven with the sex act, and consequent children, that it is almost impossible to isolate the one thing, namely, the controlling of conception, and discuss that by itself without distorting its relation to the whole of life and appearing to lay stress on the minor details rather than on the greater themes. My object in the following pages is, in the interests both of the pair and of society, to spread what little light science has already thrown upon the subject, so that each pair may not only themselves be healthy and happy, but may bring forth children for the race, who have the ​best chance which that pair can give them of health and beauty and happiness. From a variety of causes our race is weakened by an appallingly high percentage of unfit weaklings and diseased individuals. It is perhaps only to be expected that the more conscientious, the more thrifty, and the more lovingly desirous to do the best for their children people are, the more do they restrict their families, in the interests both of the children they have and of the community which would otherwise be burdened by their offspring did they not themselves adequately provide for them. Those who are less conscientious, less full of forethought, and less able to provide for the children they bear, and more willing to accept public aid directly and indirectly, are more reckless in the production of large families. Of course there are many individual exceptions, but they do not affect the general tendency. These facts are most significantly borne out by the statistics of the birth-rates of different types of people. For instance, in the Census Report for 1911 (as published and analysed in 1912), we find that the total birth-rate per thousand married men under 55 years old is 162; but that the birth-rate for the upper and educated classes on this basis is only 119, while that of comparatively unskilled workmen is 213 and over. The detailed analysis of trades and occupations is most interesting, and should be read in con​junction with a memory of the wages and social environment of the various homes. Reckoning per thousand married men below 55 years old, the average number of children is as follows:—

The above figures apply only to children born of average married people; when the vicious and feeble-minded people reproduce, they do so more recklessly.

It is found, in short, that the numbers of our population increasingly tend to be made up from the less thrifty and the less conscientious. Were this only a superficial matter, it would concern the race but little, but it is penetratingly profound and far-reaching. The thriftless who breed so rapidly tend by that very fact to bring forth children who are weakened and handicapped by physical as well as mental warping and weakness, and at the same time to demand their support from the sound and ​thrifty. It is indeed most serious for any race when (as was pointed out in 1918 in The Times, of the British then) less than half the population is "physically fit," even when fitness is judged by the comparatively low standard of present-day needs. Moreover we must remember that this half is not free and untrammelled, but is burdened by the partial support and upkeep of the unfit portion of the population, and hence is less able to support children of its own good type than it would be were the incapables nonexistent. Hence only children with the chance of attaining strong, beautiful and intelligent maturity should be conceived. This can only be when the whole relation of each married pair is rightly adjusted, and therefore it is my earnest request that those who have not yet read "Married Love" will lay this book aside until they have done so.

Certain details concerning the structure of our bodies must be particularly considered in connection with the control of conception. It is possible to imagine very highly-specialised human beings who would only unite when they definitely desired a child. There are human beings to-day who advocate that course and who either practise it or endeavour to practise it, but as a race we have not evolved on lines to allow such procedure; and whether these people ​realise it or not, with few exceptions, they wrong their partner, they wrong themselves, and they wrong the community in which they live, by ignoring other facts and laying too heavy a burden on their own shoulders. One of the least serious, but most annoying, results to the community is a harshness of judgment, an irritableness and a tendency to quarrel and bicker, which such people frequently develop. A wise moderation should be exercised.

Our bodies bear the impress of many past material phases of our evolution; and because in the past myriads of young were needed by any race that should evolve, we still produce a far larger number of germs awaiting fertilisation than can ever be fructified and imbued with individual life. Yet each of those germs, unaware of its own futility if it reaches fertilisation at an unpropitious moment, is just as insistent in its development as the rarer favoured one which follows out the natural course of its career and gives rise to an individual. In each sex act myriads of sperm cells (each of which, had it had the female egg cell to fuse with, might have produced a living child) are daily destroyed, because in general the female has but one egg cell at a time ready for fertilisation. Control of conception consists in shutting away all the millions of sperm from the one egg, instead of allowing one of those millions to develop while all the rest of the myriads perish.

​When should such steps be taken?

(a) After the birth of a child it is essential that there should be no hurried beginning of a second. At least a year should be given to the mother to regain her strength and to devote herself to the baby before a second child is conceived, preferably more than one year, and some distinguished gynæcologists even advocate as much as three or more years between births of successive children.

(b) In all cases of serious inherited disease, such as insanity and epilepsy, also where one or both of the partners are drunkards.

(c) In all cases where either of the pair is suffering from venereal disease. (It should be recognised that all sex unions at such a time are to be most strongly deprecated.)

(d) In all cases where for a variety of reasons all the older children are puny and utterly unsatisfactory.

(e) In all cases where another child coming will rob those already born of the necessary food, or will force the mother to half-starve herself to bear or rear it.

(f) In all cases where the mother has already had six children, unless she has exceptional vitality and the ardent wish to bear more. If she has the capacity and the wish to bear more children and those she already has are healthy and intelligent, then she will be doing useful work by bearing and rearing a large family.

​(g) It is, in my opinion, advisable not to conceive a child in the very early days of marriage, because in the first few months at any rate the woman's system should be adjusting itself to new conditions, benefiting from the change in her life, and gaining poise and strength for the burden which she will have to bear. Nevertheless, some people feel that a child conceived in the first glow of rapturous union may be more precious than one born later. There is a certain cynicism about this last view, however, which I deplore, because a rightly mated and wisely temperate pair do not lose the rapture of their early love, but retain it with an added depth.

The community needs a variety of characteristics, and it is good that there should be men and women in social life who have been reared in large families, where they early gained characteristics of great service to those who fill a variety of offices. On the other hand, the children of small families, who have perhaps had more intimate affection showered upon them, also have their valuable characteristics. The human race has not yet sufficiently studied itself to have discovered more than a few mistaken ideas concerning the varying characteristics of children from small and from large families. The subject is one of very great interest, and requires intelligent handling by someone not blindly hypnotised by superficial statistics, but ​capable of analysing the essential factors in each life-history.

In the rough and haphazard way in which we are at present accustomed to speak about such subjects, all we can say is that where two married people have health and this world's goods sufficient to endow half a dozen or more children with health, happiness, and a good start in life, their large family is one that should be of great service to the State. Nevertheless, this should not be put before the country unthinkingly as a universal ideal. The strain of bearing more than a few children is detrimental to a large number of the best women, and this finds its expression also in weakness, a tendency to ill-health, if not actually death, on the part of their infants.

Dr. Ploetz found that nearly 60 per cent. of babies born to women who had as many as twelve children always died. When the chances of death of an infant are 60 per cent. there must surely be some very special personal reason for a woman to bear such a problematical life. Country women of robust frame, and with plenty of wholesome food and fresh air, may bear a dozen or more splendid children, but poor mothers in the crowded cities can seldom, without disaster, bring forth more than half that number.

Now it must not be imagined that by controlling births the pair are necessarily reducing the ​number of children they bring to maturity. As a matter of fact, by taking care to produce children only when they are fit to do so, parents immensely increase the chances of those children reaching maturity and living healthy and happy lives. It is important to notice that Holland, the country in Europe (until the war scare) the most advanced in relation to birth control, where almost everyone takes care that the children shall be well and voluntarily conceived, has greatly increased its survival-rate. It has the lowest infant mortality in Europe, and it has saved itself the cost and wastage of innumerable babies' coffins, while actually accelerating its rate of increase of population. America, on the other hand, where the outrageous "Comstock" laws confuse wise scientific control with illegal abortion of lives already begun and labels them both as obscene, has, by thus preventing people from obtaining decent hygienic knowledge, fostered criminal and illicit operations. Women, driven to despair, to madness, by the incessant horror of pregnancies they dread, will by hook or by crook, from the street corner or the gutter, find out how to strangle the life which should never have begun.

In my book "Married Love," in the chapter on "Children," I said, concerning the control of conception:—

This may be done either by shutting the sperms away from the opening of the womb or by securing the death of all (instead of the death of all but one) of the two to six hundred million sperms which enter the womb. Even when a child is allowed to grow in its mother, all these hundreds of millions of sperms are inevitably and naturally destroyed every time the man has an emission, and to add one more to these millions sacrificed by Nature is surely no crime. To kill quickly the ejaculated sperms which would otherwise die and decompose naturally is a simple matter. Their minute and uncovered bodies are plasmolised in weak acid, such as vinegar and water, or by a solution of quinine, or by many other substances.

To those who protest that we have no right to interfere with the course of Nature, one must point out that the whole of civilisation, everything which separates men from animals, is an interference with what such people commonly call Nature.

Nothing in the cosmos could be against Nature, for it all forms part of the great processes of the universe.

Actions differ, however, in their relative positions in the scale of things. Only those actions are worthy which lead the race always to a higher and fuller completion and the perfecting of its powers, which steer the race into the main current of that stream of life and vitality which courses through us and impels us forward.

It is a sacred duty of all who dare to hand on the awe-inspiring gift of life, to hand it on in a vessel as fit and perfect as they can fashion, so that the body may be the strongest and most beautiful instrument possible in the service of the soul they summon to play its part in the mystery of material being.

The exact methods I recommend are described in the next chapter.