These facts are now so well known that they would need little
discussion here, even if space permitted. Miscarriages, which are
particularly frequent in cases of syphilis and pelvic deformities, are
a great source of danger to the health and even to the life of the
mother. Where either parent suffers from gonorrhea, the child is in
danger of being born blind. Tuberculosis in the parent leaves the
child's system in such condition that it is likely to suffer from the
disease. Childbearing is also a grave danger to the tubercular mother.
A tendency to insanity, if not insanity itself, may be transmitted to
the child, or it may be feebleminded if one of the parents is insane
or suffers from any mental disorder. Drunkenness in the parent or
parents has been found to be the cause of feeblemindedness in the
offspring and to leave the child with a constitution too weak to
resist disease as it should.
No more children should be born when the parents, though healthy
themselves, find that their children are physically or mentally
defective. No matter how much they desire children, no man and woman
have a right to bring into the world those who are to suffer from
mental or physical affliction. It condemns the child to a life of
misery and places upon the community the burden of caring for it,
probably for its defective descendants for many generations.
Generally speaking, no woman should bear a child before she is twenty-two
years old. It is better still that she wait until she is twenty-five.
High infant mortality rates for mothers under twenty-two attest
this fact. It is highly desirable from the mother's standpoint to
postpone childbearing until she has attained a ripe physical and
mental development, as the bearing and nursing of infants interferes
with such development. It is also all important to the child; the
offspring of a woman who is twenty-five or somewhat older has the best
chance of good physical and mental equipment.
In brief, a woman should avoid having children unless both she and the
father are in such physical and mental condition as to assure the
child a healthy physical and mental being. This is the answer that
must be made to women whose children are fairly sure of good care,
sufficient food, adequate clothing, a fit place to live and at least a
fair education.
A distinctly different and exceedingly important side of the problem
must be considered when the women workers, the wives and the mothers
of workers, wish to know when to avoid having children. Such a woman
must answer her own question. What anyone else may tell her is far
less important than what she herself shall reply to a society that
demands more and more children and which gives them less and less when
they arrive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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