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
Although the foregoing facts, figures, and charts show conclusively the
difference between good heredity and bad and the result of introducing
mental deficiency into the family blood, yet because it is so difficult
actually to appreciate the situation, because facts and figures do not
have flesh and blood reality in them, we give in this chapter a few cases,
graphically written up by our field worker, to show the differences in the
types of people on the two sides of the family. These are only a few of
the many, but are fairly typical of the condition of things that was found
throughout the investigation. On the bad side we have the type of family
which the social worker meets continually and which makes most of our
social problems. A study of it will help to account for the conviction we
have that no amount of work in the slums or removing the slums from our
cities will ever be successful until we take care of those who make the
slums what they are. Unless the two lines of work go on together, either
one is bound to be futile in itself. If all of the slum districts of our
cities were removed to-morrow and model tenements built in their places,
we would still have slums in a week’s time, because we have these mentally
defective people who can never be taught to live otherwise than as they
have been living. Not until we take care of this class and see to it that
their lives are guided by intelligent people, shall we remove these sores
from our social life.
There are Kallikak families all about us. They are multiplying at twice
the rate of the general population, and not until we recognize this fact,
and work on this basis, will we begin to solve these social problems.
The following pictures from life have been prepared by our field worker,
Miss Elizabeth S. Kite, and besides giving an idea of the family, they
will also show something of her method, and enable the reader to judge of
the reliability of the data.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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