Private Sex Advice to Women: For Young Wives and those who Expect to be Married

by Robert B. Armitage

So, when we get to the root of the matter, the whole question of "Does Birth Control tend toward Race Suicide?" becomes clear, and we are able to answer, positively, "It certainly does not; on the contrary it tends toward Race Progress and Race Betterment." We see that there is really no standing ground in any country for the panic-monger who bemoans the fall of the birth-rate, and storms against small families. The falling birth-rate is a world-wide phenomenon in all countries that are striving toward a higher civilization along lines which Nature laid down from the beginning. We cannot stop it if we would, and if we could we should be merely impeding civilization. It is a movement which rights itself and tends to reach a just balance.

Instead of trying to raise the birth-rate by offering a bonus on babies as has been proposed in some quarters, it would be saner and better calculated for the betterment of the race to offer a bonus upon young men and women who attained maturity with a definite high standard of physical and mental development. As a writer on the subject has well said: "But we need not therefore fold our hands and do nothing. There is much still to be effected for the protection of motherhood and the better care of children. We cannot, and should not, attempt to increase the number of children born; there is still far more misery in having too many babies than in having too few; a bonus on babies would be a misfortune, alike for the parents and the State. But we may well work for the better quality of babies. There we should be on very safe ground. More knowledge is necessary so that all would-be parents may know how they may best become parents, and how they may, if necessary, best avoid it. Procreation by the unfit should be, if not prohibited by law, at all events so discouraged by public opinion that to attempt it would be considered disgraceful. Much greater public provision is necessary for the care of mothers during the months before, as well as in the period after, the child's birth. Along such lines as these we may hope to increase the happiness of the people and the strength of the State. We need not worry about the falling birth-rate."

The more that one intelligently examines the argument against Birth Control based upon fear of Race Suicide, the more one becomes convinced that not only is there "nothing to it," but that every fact brought to light in the inquiry reveals itself in the nature of proof of the desirability of Birth Control as a factor of Race Evolution, rather than evidence to the contrary. Therefore, the more inquiry and investigation that such argument brings forth, the stronger is the case disclosed for Birth Control, and the greater the amount of public opinion created in its favor.

In all considerations of the general question of Race Suicide, one must take note of the general question of Eugenics or Human Breeding. This because the sound breeding of the race operates in a direction diametrically opposed to Race Suicide, while unsound breeding operates directly in favor thereof.

When we consider the general subject of Eugenics we touch upon the highest ground, and are concerned with our best hopes for the future of the world. There can be no doubt that Birth Control, considered as a phase of Eugenics, is not only a precious but also an indispensable instrument in moulding the coming man to the measure of our developing ideals. Without Birth Control we are powerless in the face of the awful evils which flow from random and reckless reproduction. With it we possess a power so great that some persons have professed to see in it a menace to the propagation of the race, amusing themselves with the idea that if people possess the means to prevent the conception of children they will never have children at all. It is not necessary to discuss such a grotesque notion seriously.

The desire for children is far too deeply implanted in mankind and womankind alike ever to be rooted out. If there are today many parents whose lives are rendered wretched by large families and the miseries of excessive child-bearing, there are an equal number whose lives are wretched because they have no children at all, and who snatch eagerly at any straw which offers the smallest promise of relief to the craving. Certainly there are people who desire marriage, but—some for very sound and estimable reasons and other for reasons which may less well bear examination—do not desire children at all.

For the class of married people who do not desire children at all, contraceptive methods, far from being a social evil, are a social blessing. For nothing is as certain as that it is an unmixed evil for a community to possess unwilling, undesirable parents. Birth Control would be an unmixed blessing if it merely enabled us to exclude such persons from the ranks of parenthood. We desire no parents who are not competent and willing parents. Only such parents are fit to father and to mother a future race worthy to rule the world.

It is sometimes said that the control of conception, since it is frequently carried out immediately upon marriage, will tend to delay parenthood until an unduly late age. Birth Control has, however, no necessary result of this kind, and might even act in the reverse direction. A chief cause of delay in marriage is the prospect of the burden and expense of an unrestricted flow of children into the family; and it is said that in Great Britain, since 1911, with the extension of the use of contraceptives, there has been a slight but regular increase not only in the general marriage rate but also in the proposition of early marriage. The ability to control the number of children not only enables marriage to take place at an early age, but also makes it possible for the couple to have at least one child soon after marriage. The total number of children are thus spaced out, instead of following in rapid succession.

It is only of late years that the eugenic importance of a considerable interval between births has been fully recognized, as regards not only the mother—this has long been recognized—but also the children. The very high mortality of large families has long been known, and their association with degenerate conditions and with criminality. However, of recent years, evidence has been obtained that families in which the children are separated from each other by intervals of more than two years are both mentally and physically superior to those in which the interval is shorter. Investigators have found that children born at only a short interval after the birth of a previous child are notably defective, even at the age of six, in a large percentage of cases; and when compared with children born at a longer interval, or with first children, they are, on the average, three inches shorter and three pounds lighter. These are facts of the most vital significance.

Thus when we calmly survey, in however summary a manner, the great field of life affected by the establishment of voluntary human control over the production of the race, we can not see a cause for anything but hope. It is satisfactory that it should be so, for there can be no doubt that we are here facing a great and permanent fact in civilized life. With every rise in civilization, indeed with all evolutionary progress whatever, there is what seems to be an automatic fall in the birth-rate. That fall is always normally accompanied by a fall in the death-rate, so that a low birth-rate frequently means a high rate of natural increase, since most of the children born survive.