Jessopp: The Coming of the Friars, pages 87-104.
Gillette: Constructive Rural Sociology, pages 170-178.
Carney: Country Life and the Country School, pages 18-38.
Richards: "The Farm Home," art. in Cyclopedia of Agriculture, IV, pages 280-284.
CHAPTER VI[ToC]
CHILDREN IN THE HOME
47. Children Complete the Home.—If the legend of the Pied Piper of Hameln should come true and all the children should run away from home, or if by some strange stroke of fortune no children should be born in a village or town for ten years or more, the tragedy of the childless home would be realized. There are localities and even nations where the birth-rate is so small that population is little more than stationary. In the United States the native birth-rate tends to decline, while the rate of immigrant foreigners greatly exceeds it. The higher the degree of comfort and luxury in the home the smaller the birth-rate seems to be a principle of social experience. There are selfish people who shirk the responsibilities and troubles of parenthood, and there are social diseases that tend to sterility, but the childless home is always an incomplete home. Children are the crown of marriage, the enrichment of the home, the hope of society in the future. The needs of the children stimulate parents to unselfish endeavor. Children are the comfort of the poor and distressed. The wedded life of a human pair may be ideal in every other respect, but one of the main functions of marriage is unaccomplished when the family remains incomplete.