Our success or failure with the unending stream of babies (one every eight seconds) is the measure of our civilization: every institution stands or falls by its contribution to that result, by the improvement of the children born or by the improvement of the quality of births attained under its influence.
H. G. Wells, Mankind in the Making.
Children are the most hopeful element of our population, and we should concentrate our efforts on them.
Dr. W. F. Porter, Harvard Medical School Lectures.
We want the mothers to be the health officers of the home.
Charles W. Hewitt.
When human beings and families rationally subordinate their own interests as perfectly to the welfare of future generations as do animals under the control of instinct, the world will have a more enduring type of family life than exists at present. This can only be accomplished by the development of controlling ideals which are supported not only by reason and intelligence but by ethical impulse and religious motive.
The home should be considered the place where are to be developed and conveyed the precious qualities which are so vital to the continuity of the race and the progress of human society and civilization.
Those factors which are of a more material or physical nature, such as shelter, food, dress, and personal health, are to be estimated in their relation to mind, character, and effective conduct.
In the confusion of relative values human health as one of the essential means to many worthy ends is usually neglected. Man is the most highly developed of all species of animals. He is, to some degree at least, civilized, and yet human beings are of all animals the sickliest, and this in spite of the fact that human health is more important to man and to the world than the health of any other creature. And by health I do not mean simply existence, freedom from pain, or absence of disease, but rather organic power and efficiency, the maximum vital ability possible to the individual for the doing of all that seems most worth while in life.