Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation — John Shaqi
Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the NationBarrett, Florence Elizabeth
Philosophy
Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation
Barrett, Florence Elizabeth
Contraception
I believe if facilities were provided whereby the woman could do her
laundry with modern appliances outside her own home, if family meals
were arranged in service rooms equivalent to the arrangements in
service flats, and if there were crêche rooms where children might be
left for an hour or two in safety while necessary work was done--we
should find a greatly increased standard of comfort even in existing
homes, and a great improvement in dietary for the whole family. Such
relief, added to teaching both to husband and wife as to the times of
conception, would revolutionise the life of women more than any
teaching of artificial birth control, and would lift it up to a higher
level instead of degrading it to the grossly physical.
We come to very different considerations in group 4, p. 18, where
choice rather than necessity impels the parents to limitation of the
family. The teaching now being advocated by certain books and
pamphlets advises deliberate delay in child-bearing for a period after
marriage, and the spacing of certain periods between the births of
such children as are allowed to come into the world, with limitation
of the number in each family.
Teaching on these lines, if followed, would involve an artificial mode
of sex life always--natural spontaneous union would find no place.
Already young wives are seeking advice for some relief from methods of
preparation which they say have destroyed in them all spontaneous
desire. The tragedy of it all is that even to attain the end in
view--moderation in the size of families--such methods are to a large
extent unnecessary. Not to every young married couple does a child
arrive at the end of a year. Some, using no artificial checks, wait
two or three years before the first baby comes. Even if it does come,
however, at the end of a year, there are many advantages to
counterbalance the small means and perhaps hard living of the young
pair. For when people are young they can put up with small means,
because they are strong enough to work hard and help each other;
indeed, the demand for little work and many luxuries in youth is not a
healthy one, it is a sign of decadence in the race.
Moreover, even though an early family involve real hardship for
awhile, it has the great advantage that parents and children later on
are still young together, and that means far more to the child in
understanding friendship and helpfulness during the most critical
period of life than extra comforts or pleasures would have meant to
the parents, and if young parents realised this, would they not put
the child first?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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