Eugenics; Sexual ethics; Women -- Social and moral questions
This large early mortality of the offspring of the feeble-minded is,
however, very far from settling the question of the disposal of the
mentally defective, or we should not find families of them propagated
from generation to generation. The large number who die early merely
serves, roughly speaking, to reduce the size of the abnormal family to
the size of a normal family, and some authorities consider that it
scarcely suffices to do this, for we must remember that there is a
considerable mortality even in the so-called normal family during early
life. Even when there is no abnormal fertility in the defective family
we may still have to recognize that, as Davenport and Weeks argue, their
defectiveness is intensified by heredity. Moreover, we have to consider
the social disorder and the heavy expense which accompany the large
infantile mortality. Illegitimacy is frequently the result of
feeble-mindedness, since feeble-minded women are peculiarly unable to
resist temptation. A great number of such women are continually coming
into the workhouses and giving birth to illegitimate children whom they
are unable to support, and who often never become capable of supporting
themselves, but in their turn tend to produce a new feeble-minded
generation, more especially since the men who are attracted to these
feeble-minded women are themselves--according to the generally
recognized tendency of the abnormal to be attracted to the
abnormal--feeble-minded or otherwise mentally defective. There is thus
generated not only a heavy financial burden, but also a perpetual danger
to society, and, it may well be, a serious depreciation in the quality
of the community.[33]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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