The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-MindednessGoddard, Henry Herbert
Science
The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness
Goddard, Henry Herbert
Heredity, Human; Mental retardation; People with mental disabilities
In the good branch of the Kallikak family there were no criminals. There
were not many in the other side, but there were some, and, had their
environment been different, no one who is familiar with feeble-minded
persons, their characteristics and tendencies, would doubt that a large
percentage of them might have become criminal. Lombroso’s famous criminal
types, in so far as they were types, may have been types of
feeble-mindedness on which criminality was grafted by the circumstances of
their environment.
Such facts as those revealed by the Kallikak family drive us almost
irresistibly to the conclusion that before we can settle our problems of
criminality and pauperism and all the rest of the social problems that are
taxing our time and money, the first and fundamental step should be to
decide upon the mental capacity of the persons who make up these groups.
We must separate, as sharply as possible, those persons who are
weak-minded, and therefore irresponsible, from intelligent criminals. Both
our method of treatment and our attitude towards crime will be changed
when we discover what part of this delinquency is due to irresponsibility.
If the Jukes family were of normal intelligence, a change of environment
would have worked wonders and would have saved society from the horrible
blot. But if they were feeble-minded, then no amount of good environment
could have made them anything else than feeble-minded. Schools and
colleges were not for them, rather a segregation which would have
prevented them from falling into evil and from procreating their kind, so
avoiding the transmitting of their defects and delinquencies to succeeding
generations.
Thus where the Jukes-Edwards comparison is weak and the argument
inconclusive, the twofold Kallikak family is strong and the argument
convincing.
Environment does indeed receive some support from three cases in our
chart. On Chart II, two children of Martin Jr. and Rhoda were normal,
while all the rest were feeble-minded. It is true that here one parent was
normal, and we have the right to expect some normal children. At the same
time, these were the two children that were adopted into good families and
brought up under good surroundings. They proved to be normal and their
descendants normal. Again, on Chart IX-a, we have one child of two
feeble-minded parents who proves to be normal--the only one among the
children. This child was also taken into a good family and brought up
carefully. Another sister (Chart IX-b) was also taken into a good family
and, while not determined, yet “showed none of the traits that are usually
indicative of feeble-mindedness.” It may be claimed that environment is
responsible for this good result. It is certainly significant that the
only children in these families that were normal, or at least better than
the rest, were brought up in good families.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account