Increasing sex-impoverishment is bringing into vogue—almost as a matter of routine—the performance on male infants of an unnatural (and a degenerative) Jewish rite.
IV
Of the many theories advanced to explain the determination of Sex in offspring, the true one is, undoubtedly, the relative parental power of the respective parents.
Normally, this being well-balanced, the ratio of the sexes is about equal; the preponderance being on the male side, however, owing to the maternal parental potential being normally greater, because conserved by reason of her less onerous rôle in life. When parental potential is relatively greater in the father, female offspring is born. When greater in the mother, male offspring results. In the families of men notably virile, daughters preponderate. In those of women notably womanly, sons are in the majority. (Presuming in such case the parent of the other sex to be of average potence.)
The preponderance of male-births during War-conditions is due to the fact that by far the greater stress of these conditions, with consequent depletion of vital reserves, falls upon the males. Hence the women—who although depleted likewise by the increased demands upon them, are less vitally exhausted than the men are—become relatively prepotent in parental potential. The more virile men being absent on military duty, moreover, the less virile members of the sex it is who preponderate in the paternal rôle.
Other parental factors, as of age, health and circumstance, which affect the sex of offspring, do so indirectly by their effects upon the relative vital and parental potential of mother and father.
In corroboration of the view that power conserved in the mother engenders Maleness and masculine vigour in offspring, I have received the following letter from the Head-mistress of the village-school of Corley:
"I was much interested in your article re Boy-babies. I think my school here is unique, there being 86 children on the roll, of whom 57 are boys and 29, girls. And of the children in the village who will be of age for admission this year, 7 are boys and 3, girls.
"In the village there are several families composed of boys only.
One family has 7 boys and 2 girls.
One family has 6 boys and 0 girls.
Two families have 5 boys and 1 girl each.
Two families have 4 boys and 1 girl each.
"Of one family reckoning 6 boys (1 dead; making 7 in all) the mother has but one leg—the other having been amputated when she was fourteen.[2] None of the mothers here (so for as I can learn) do work outside their homes; except in odd cases, an odd day's washing or cleaning.
"None do regular work on farms, or otherwise.
"All the children are well-fed, clean and well clothed. Our Medical Nurse says she finds the finest babies here—of the whole of her district. For 57 years the yearly returns in School have shown a great preponderance of boys over girls."
The writer contrasts this Utopian order of things with her experience of the rickety and otherwise diseased and defective states of school-children whose mothers were employed in factories.
V