Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eugenics

by C. W. Saleeby

The young people of the next and all succeeding generations must be taught the supreme sanctity of parenthood. The little boy who asks what he is to become when he grows up, must be taught that the highest profession and privilege he can aspire to is responsible fatherhood; the little girl may less frequently ask these questions, the answer to which has been imparted to her by her own Mother-Nature—as the doll instinct, so little appreciated or utilised, sufficiently demonstrates; but she likewise must be taught reverence for Motherhood. As childhood gives place to youth, what may be called the eugenic sense must be cultivated as a cardinal aspect of the moral sense itself; so that even personal inclination—at the controllable and self-controllable stage which precedes “head over ears” affection—will wither when it is directed to some one who, on any ground, offends the educated eugenic sense. There is here a field for moral education of the highest and most valuable kind, both for the individual and for the race. Is there any other aspect of duty which can claim a higher warrant? Is there any hitherto so wholly ignored?

The preceding paragraph is re-printed from a brief account of its objects written for the Eugenics Education Society, as a Society which amongst other purposes exists “to further eugenic teaching at home and in the schools and elsewhere.” The difficulties of teaching this subject to children are more apparent than real. I may freely confess that though I have been speaking, writing, and thinking about eugenics for six years, I did not realise the importance of eugenic education until I heard the views of some of the women who belong to this Society, and even then I was at first sceptical as to its practicability. The subject has been entirely ignored by the pioneers of this matter. But if we turn to such a work as Forel's masterpiece we begin to realise that the eugenic education of children is the real beginning at the beginning, that it is in fact indispensable, and must be antecedent to all legislation in the direction of positive eugenics, though not to certain forms of legislation in the direction of negative eugenics.[39] In the earlier chapters of his great work Professor Forel offers the parent and the guardian abundant, detailed and accurate guidance as to the lines and methods of this teaching. It is urgently necessary for both sexes, but more especially for girls, who may suffer incredibly from the cruel prudery ordained by Mrs. Grundy, the only old woman to whom the word “hag” should be applied. We must remove the reproach of Herbert Spencer, made nearly fifty years ago in words which may well be quoted:—

“The greatest defect in our programmes of education is entirely overlooked. While much is being done in the detailed improvement of our systems in respect both of matter and manner, the most pressing desideratum, to prepare the young for the duties of life, is tacitly admitted to be the end which parents and schoolmasters should have in view; and happily, the value of the things taught, and the goodness of the methods followed in teaching them, are now ostensibly judged by their fitness to this end. The propriety of substituting for an exclusively classical training, a training in which the modern languages shall have a share, is argued on this ground. The necessity of increasing the amount of science is urged for like reasons. But though some care is taken to fit youth of both sexes for society and citizenship, no care whatever is taken to fit them for the position of parents. While it is seen that for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate preparation is needed, it appears to be thought that for the bringing up of children, no preparation whatever is needed. While many years are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge of which the chief value is that it constitutes ‘the education of a gentleman’; and while many years are spent by a girl in those decorative acquirements which fit her for evening parties; not an hour is spent by either in preparation for that gravest of all responsibilities—the management of a family. Is it that this responsibility is but a remote contingency? On the contrary, it is sure to devolve on nine out of ten. Is it that the discharge of it is easy? Certainly not; of all functions which the adult has to fulfil, this is the most difficult. Is it that each may be trusted by self-instruction to fit himself, or herself, for the office of parent? No; not only is the need for such self-instruction unrecognised, but the complexity of the subject renders it the one of all others in which self-instruction is least likely to succeed.”

The lines of eugenic education.—The teaching of the main facts of heredity must come first in order to the end of eugenic education. The vegetable world is at our service in this regard, the products of horticulture with their beauty and grace and novelty are illustrations one and all of what heredity means and what the due choice of parents will effect. There need be no personal allusions at this stage; the thing can be presented in an impersonal biological setting. And as heredity produces these wonderful results in plants, so also does it in the animal world. Numberless domestic forms are at our service. You take your children and your dog to the Zoological gardens, and show the resemblance between wolf and dog. What easier, then, than to point out that by consistent choosing for many generations of the least ferocious wolves, you may make a domesticated race?[40]

The mind of any child that has fortunately escaped “education” will make the transition for itself from sub-human races to mankind, and instances will occur, say, where extreme short-sightedness or deafness appears in children whose parents were similarly afflicted, and were perhaps closely related. At yet a later age a boy or girl may learn the doom which often falls upon the children of drunkards.

And then may it not be possible, when a little boy asks what he is to be when he grows up, to suggest that the highest profession to which he can be called, for which he may strive to make himself worthy, is fatherhood? And when the racial instinct awakes, would it be wrong, improper, indecent, to teach that it has a purpose, that no attribute of mind or body has a higher purpose, that this is holy ground? Or is it better that by silence, both as to the fact and as to its meaning, we should make it unmentionable, indecent, dishonourable? The Bible is used now-a-days as an instrument of political immorality, but if and when it should be employed for the function of other great literature, there is a passage sufficiently relevant to our present argument.[41]

Perhaps we are wrong in regarding and treating the racial instinct as if it were animal and low, a thing as far as possible to be ignored, repressed, treated with silent contempt in education and elsewhere. We may be wrong in practice because the method is not successful, because the development of this instinct is inevitable and little short of imperious in every normal child if that child is ever to become a man or a woman, and because our silence does not involve the silence of less responsible persons who are less likely even than we ourselves to teach the young enquirer that this thing exists for parenthood, and is therefore holy and to be treated as such.

Perhaps we are wrong in principle also, since that which exists for parenthood, and without which the continuance and future terrestrial hope of mankind is impossible, cannot be animal and low, unless human life, even at its best attained or attainable, be animal and low. Our business rather is to treat this great fact in a spirit worthy of the purpose for which it exists; and therefore, as part of that process of education by which we desire to make the young into reasonable, moral and fully human beings, to teach explicitly, without unworthy shame, that this thing exists for the highest of purposes that nothing which the future holds for boy or girl can conceivably be higher or happier than worthy parenthood, however commonplace that may appear to common eyes, and that accordingly this instinct is to be guarded, treated, used, honoured as for parenthood, a fact which immediately raises it from the egoistic to the altruistic plane. We have to learn and to teach that worthy parenthood is the highest end which education can achieve—highest alike on the ground of its services to the individual and its services to the future, and the relation of the racial instinct to parenthood being what it is, we have to look upon it in that light, at once austere and splendid.

In the teaching of girls, only a false and disastrous prudery offers any great obstacle. The idea of motherhood is essentially natural to the normal girl. It is the eugenic education of boys that is more difficult, and the possibility of which will be questioned in some quarters, especially by those who regard the type of boy evolved in semi-monastic institutions, devoid of feminine influence, as a normal and unchangeable being. Co-educationists, however, are teaching us to revise that opinion, and will yet demonstrate, perhaps, that the inculcation of the idea of fatherhood is not so impossible nor so alien to the boy nature as some would suppose. If such a duty devolved upon the present writer, he would feel inclined, perhaps, to present his teaching in terms of patriotism. He would urge that “there is no wealth but life”; that nations are made not of provinces nor property but of people; that modern biology is teaching historians to explain such phenomena as the fall of Rome in terms of the quality of the national life; that therefore, individuals being mortal, parenthood necessarily takes its place as the supreme factor of national destiny; that the true patriotism must therefore concern itself with the conditions and the quality of parenthood—much less with its quantity; that the patriotism which ignores these truths is ignorant and must be disastrous; that we must turn our attention therefore from flag waving to questions of individual conduct; that if alcohol and syphilis, for instance, can be demonstrated to be what I would call racial poisons, the young patriot must make himself aware of their relation to parenthood, and must act upon his knowledge of that relation. It can thus be demonstrated that righteousness exalteth a nation not only in the spiritual but also in the most concrete sense.