There is good ground for the feminist contention that women should be
liberally educated, that they should not be regarded by men as inferior
creatures, that they should have the opportunity of self-expression in a
richer, freer life than they have had in the past. All these gains can
be made without sacrificing any racial interests; and they must be so
made. The unrest of intelligent women is not to be lessened or removed
by educating them in the belief that they are not different from men and
setting them to work as men in the work of the world. Except where the
work is peculiarly adapted to women or there is a special individual
aptitude, such work will, for the reasons we have set forth, operate
dysgenically and therefore bring about the decadence of the race which
practices it.
The true solution is rather to be sought in recognizing the natural
differentiation of the two sexes and in emphasizing this differentiation
by education. Boys will be taught the nobility of being productive and
of establishing families; girls will have similar ideals held up to them
but will be taught to reach them in a different way, through cultivation
of the intellectual and emotional characters most useful to that
division of labor for which they are supremely adapted, as well as those
that are common to both sexes. The home must not be made a subordinate
interest, as some feminists desire, but it must be made a much richer,
deeper, more satisfying interest than it is too frequently at present.
OLD AGE PENSIONS
Pensions for aged people form an important part of the modern program of
social legislation. What their merits may be in relieving poverty will
not be discussed here. But beyond the direct effect, it is important to
inquire what indirect eugenic effect they would have, as compared with
the present system where the aged are most frequently supported by their
own children when they have failed through lack of thrift or for other
reasons to make provision for their old age.
The ordinary man, dependent on his daily work for a livelihood, can not
easily support his parents and his offspring at the same time. Aid given
to the one must be in some degree at the expense of the other. The
eugenic consequences will depend on what class of man is required to
contribute thus to parental support.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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