| In | Prussia | 4.11 |
| England | 4.10 | |
| Belgium | 4.12 | |
| France | 2.09 | |
| In | various States of the American Union | 2.5 to 3.0 |
From the Almanach de Gotha Vacher obtained figures showing that each family of the higher aristocracy has on the average the following number of children.
| In | France | 2.0 |
| Italy | 3.0 | |
| Germany | 4.8 | |
| England | 4.9 | |
| Russia | 5.1 |
According to the figures we have published, the fertility of women suffices for the production during the sexual life of a small number only of children, averaging, in fact, 4 to 5 children per marriage. Many mothers, however, give birth to a very large number of children. Among 73,000 families inhabiting Buda-Pesth, Körösi found 300 mothers who had had 15 children or more; 7 mothers who had each had 21 children; and 3 mothers who had given birth respectively to 22, 23 and 24 children.
A newspaper report states that the wife of a citizen of Buda-Pesth, during the 43 years of her married life, gave birth to 32 children. In the year 1902, a Bohemian woman gave birth to her twenty-fourth child. Stieda reports the cases of two mothers, one of whom had 21, and the other 23 children. The wife of the German Emperor, Albrecht I, and the wife of Prince Jost of Lippe-Biesterfeld, each bore 21 children.
The so-called two-children-system obtains most commonly in France.
It is true that even in France there are on an average nearly three children born per marriage; but if we take into account surviving children only we find an average per family of 2.1 children only. Similar conditions obtain in New England, and in Transylvania; and the same practice is spreading throughout the United States. Another way in which the attempt is made to keep down the population is that customary in Alsace, where, if there are several children in a family one only marries, in order to avoid a division of the family property. It cannot be denied that in France, doubtless in consequence of the two-children system, a somewhat widely diffused prosperity exists, a prosperity which is lacking in the rare districts in France, such as Brittany, in which limitation of the family is not practised. What a disastrous influence the general use of measures for the prevention of pregnancy exercises on the military power and political status of a nation has, however, in recent years been made especially manifest in the case of France. In that country, of ten million families, two million are absolutely childless, and two million have only one child each, so that two-fifths of the French families are as good as inactive in maintaining the population of the country. The injury thus done to France is shown still more clearly by a tabular comparison of the excess of births over deaths in the German and French nations, respectively, during the two decades 1874 to 1894 (from G. von Mayr’s Population Statistics).
| Year. | Germany. | France. |
|---|---|---|
| 1874 | +13.4 | +4.8 |
| 1875 | 13.0 | 2.9 |
| 1876 | 14.6 | 3.6 |
| 1877 | 13.6 | 3.9 |
| 1878 | 12.7 | 2.6 |
| 1879 | 13.3 | 2.5 |
| 1880 | 11.6 | 1.7 |
| 1881 | 11.5 | 2.9 |
| 1882 | 11.5 | 2.6 |
| 1883 | 11.7 | 2.6 |
| 1884 | 11.2 | 2.3 |
| 1885 | 11.3 | 1.4 |
| 1886 | 10.8 | 1.5 |
| 1887 | 12.7 | 1.3 |
| 1888 | 12.9 | 2.5 |
| 1889 | 12.7 | 1.2 |
| 1890 | 11.3 | –0.3 |
| 1891 | 13.6 | –0.5 |
| 1892 | 11.7 | +0.1 |
| 1893 | 12.2 | –1.2 |
| 1894 | 13.6 | –0.4 |
To what an extent in all times, and among all peoples, the fertility of women was esteemed, is shown by religious writings and traditional customs which aimed at enabling a wife who had had no children by her own husband, to seek other conjugal embraces. Among the Jews, it was the duty of a man to marry his widowed and childless sister-in-law; if he were unwilling or unable to perform this duty he was compelled to take a part in a ritual termed “chaliza,” in which his foot was bared and the bereaved woman spat upon him, because he was unwilling to maintain his brother’s house. In the law book of the Hindoos of Manus, we read, “If husband and wife have no children, it is proper for them to obtain the desired offspring by a union between the wife and the husband’s brother, or some other relative;” the child obtained in this way was legally regarded as the child of the husband. Confucius wrote: “If your wife is barren, take a second wife; she must be subordinate to the first wife, for her only duty is the bearing of children.” An analogy to this ordinance is to be found in the Bible; Abraham’s barren wife Sarai says to Abraham: “Behold now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abraham hearkened unto the voice of Sarai.” In the same way the barren Rachel speaks to her husband Jacob, “Behold my maid Billah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.”
Luther, in his treatise on marital love published in the year 1522, bases, doubtless on the above biblical precedents, the following statement regarding fertility: “If a sexually potent woman is married to an impotent man, if she is unable to take any other man openly, yet is unwilling to do anything dishonourable, she should say to her husband, “Dear husband, you cannot fulfil your duty to me, and you have deceived my young body, you have endangered my honour and my happiness, and in the eye of God our marriage is null, forgive me therefore if I form a secret union with your brother or with your nearest friend; the fruit of this union will be yours in name, thus your possessions will not fall to strangers, and you will willingly allow me to deceive you, because involuntarily you have deceived me.””