Modern marriage and how to bear itBraby, Maud Churton
Science
Modern marriage and how to bear it
Braby, Maud Churton
Marriage
On the other hand, though I think it the greatest possible mistake for
legally married people to intentionally remain childless, for any reason
other than mental or physical degeneration, I am strongly against the
Lutheran doctrine of unlimited families. Times have changed since
Luther’s day, and the necessity for small families is fairly obvious in
the twentieth century for all but very wealthy people. Where money is no
object, and the parents are thoroughly robust, the great luxury of a
large family may be indulged in. And it _is_ a luxury, let cynics sneer
as they choose. We modern parents with our two and three children, or
our one ewe lamb who can scarcely be trusted out of our sight because he
is our unique creative effort--we miss much of the real domestic joy
that our mothers and fathers must have known, with their baker’s dozen
or so of lusty boys and girls. Our children can’t even get up a set of
tennis among themselves without borrowing one or more from another
household. Much of the anxiety and worry we suffer over our rare
offspring was unknown in the days when blessings were numerous, and
families ran into two figures as a matter of course.
Nowadays these joys are the luxuries of the wealthy, who, however,
rarely avail themselves of this special privilege of riches. With the
necessities of life getting dearer every year, a continual panic in the
money market, and the pressure of competition assuming nightmare
proportions--a small family of two or three children is all the man of
moderate income can allow himself. Four is an outside number, but it is
worth making some sacrifices to attain it. Professor E. A. Ross has
recently stated in _The American Journal of Sociology_ that although
restriction ‘results in diffusion of economic well-being; lessens infant
mortality; ceases population pressure, which is the principal cause of
war, mass poverty, wolfish competition and class conflict,’ yet there
are ‘disquieting effects, and in one-child or two-child families both
parents and children miss many of the best lessons of life; the type to
be standardised is not the family of one to three but the family of four
to six.’ The German scientist, Möbius, has also stated his opinion that
the general adoption of the two-children system would lead to
deterioration of the race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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