Other things being equal, the children of youthful, immature parents will be inferior to those of the fully developed.
A marriage may, in itself, be perfect in every respect, yet owing to violation of natural or spiritual law by the parents, the offspring may be inferior to either or both.
A marriage may be very imperfect, and the parties to it very imperfect characters, yet, through the influence of happily elevating conditions surrounding and, as it were, pressing in on the mother, the children will be superior to both parents.
Education may modify, but never overrule inherited defects.
[CONCEPTION.]
Very much depends on the moment of union which precedes conception. Never run the risk of conception when you are sick or over-tired or unhappy; or when your husband is sick, or recovering from sickness, exhausted, or depressed, or when you are not in full sympathy with him, or when the children already yours claim for their welfare your entire strength and time. For the bodily condition of the child, its vigor and magnetic qualities, are much affected by the conditions ruling this great moment. Independent of the mutual, spiritual estate, the material supplied by the father for the vitalizing of the ovum, represents his THEN state of being, and will continue to represent it in the life it has helped to organize. If, therefore, this communicated principle be wanting in vitality or diseased, physical perfection in the child is not to be expected. This finest secretion of the man’s whole being—this subtle essence of his nature, which is both spiritual and physical—should express his best possible condition. After this he can only affect the child indirectly through his influence on the mother’s mind.
The more highly-organized the mother, the more child-bearing exhausts her, because she is drained of her intellectual and spiritual forces. She, therefore, requires longer periods of rest and recuperation than the healthy, animal woman who can bear a child every two years for many succeeding years, and retain health and vigor.
Many of the most lovely, most charming, and altogether admirable women, become the inmates of insane asylums from having maternity thrust on them at too near periods of time.