Sociology and Modern Social ProblemsEllwood, Charles A. (Charles Abram)
General
Sociology and Modern Social Problems
Ellwood, Charles A. (Charles Abram)
Social problems; Sociology
(4) Education has been alleged as a cause of decreasing birth rate in
the native white American stock. This, however, is true only in a very
qualified sense. While it is a fact, as collected statistics have shown,
that if Harvard and other universities depended on children of their
alumni for students their attendance would actually decrease in numbers,
it is not true that college graduates have had a lower birth rate than
the economic and social classes to which they belong. So far as
statistics have been collected, indeed, they seem to indicate that the
wealthy uneducated are producing fewer children than the educated
classes who associate with them. The influence decreasing the birth rate
among the educated is, therefore, not education itself, but the high
standards of living and the luxury of the classes with whom they
associate.
On the other hand, the higher education of women seems to be, down to
the present time, operating as a distinct influence to lessen the birth
rate among the educated classes for the reason that apparently a
majority of educated women do not marry. The higher education has not
yet gone far enough, however, to give us any definite facts with which
to judge what the ultimate effect of woman's higher education will be.
If the higher education of woman is going to lead to a large per cent of
the best and most intellectual women in society leading lives of
celibacy, then, of course, ultimately the higher education of woman will
be disastrous to the race. But probably the relative infrequency of
marriage among women who are college graduates is a transitory
phenomenon due to the fact that neither women nor men are as yet
adjusted to the higher education of women.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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