The Elements of Child-protection

by Sigmund Engel

The relief of destitution provides support for the weaker members of the community. Whereas, in default of public assistance, such persons would hesitate to marry, a generous public provision for the destitute facilitates the light-hearted increase of the lower classes of the population, since these latter feel justified in believing that, should the worst come to the worst, their children will be provided for by the community. In the relief of the destitute, the commodities devoted to the maintenance of the weak are taken away from the strong. In consequence of this deprivation, the strong find it necessary to limit their families—an example which the weak will not follow. Thus the relief of destitution favours a reversed selection. The relief of destitution also impairs the efficiency of the processes whereby the diseased and useless constituents are eliminated from the social organism, and this interference with eliminative processes is no less dangerous to the social than it is to the individual organism.

Darwinism versus Child-Protection.—The Darwinians maintain that all these considerations apply with equal force to child-protection. We must, they tell us, protect strong children only, and do nothing for the weakly. Child-protection to-day, they insist, effects the reverse of this. It counteracts excessive child mortality, which is an effective factor in selection, through its destruction of weakly children. For example, the existence of foundling hospitals induces many parents to abandon the care of their own children, and to commit these to the foundling hospitals. Many parents, being aware that the State undertakes the coercive reformatory education of neglected children, deliberately neglect the education of their own children, in order to force the community to undertake it.

During the first years of life, continue these ultra-Darwinians, more children die than in the later years of childhood, because, owing to natural selection in the first years of life, a larger proportion of the weak succumb, so that the level of health of those in the later years of childhood is considerably higher. High infant mortality is at once a symptom and a means of natural-selection. Years characterised by high infant mortality necessarily follow years in which the infantile death-rate has been low. In countries with high infant mortality the population is stronger, because the badly-equipped new-born infants die in greater proportion than the well-equipped; in subsequent years the mortality is consequently lower, the fitness for military service is greater, and tuberculosis is less common. To diminish infant mortality would lead to a more rapid increase of population; it would, in fact, give rise to over-population to such an extent that the struggle for existence would become even more cruel and abhorrent than it is to-day. Certain departments of child-protection lead to the preservation of children whose survival is altogether undesirable—children which would otherwise have perished during the first years of life.

(If it is true that illegitimate children are of very little use to the community, and if it is impossible to prevent the birth of such children, it is at any rate desirable, continue the writers of this school, that those which actually do come into the world should die as soon as possible. Consider also born criminals. These inflict grave injury on the community. If it is impossible to prevent their birth, should not society at least take steps to secure that their life should be as short as possible?)

The Right View.—These views are only partially correct. It may be true that a great proportion of illegitimate children are weakly, and perhaps for this reason their mortality-rate and criminality-rate are excessive; it is also probable that in the absence of child-protection their death-rate would be considerably higher than it is. Elsewhere in this work we shall consider whether, and to what extent, it is possible to prevent the birth of illegitimate children. It may also be true that the born criminal is physically, intellectually, and morally degenerate, and that for these reasons in the absence of child-protection he would probably succumb in early life.

The race is not always damaged by the survival of those who have suffered from disease. The disease may be of such a kind that the patient who survives may recover completely, and may procreate perfectly healthy children. It is a very thorny question whether it can ever be right to refrain from the cure of certain patients, because to cure them would be injurious to the race. Here humanity and race-interest seem to conflict. If, in the future, by the proper application of preventive methods, we are able to ensure that very few such sick persons shall exist, it will no longer be necessary to attempt to cure such as do exist, for in that day the application of the euthanasia in such cases will no longer be regarded as inhuman, but rather as perfectly natural and right.

To the assertion that only the healthy and strong should be protected, we may answer that the sickly and the weakly are far more in need of such protection. It is perfectly true that those who are not adapted to the conditions of their environment perish. But one of the chief aims of child protection is to enable children to become capable of adaptation to their environment; and in the majority of children we are able to effect this. Even those in whom this is unattainable ought not to be neglected, because, while they are slowly succumbing, society suffers much injury from them. One who is ill or weak from one point of view only may nevertheless be a useful member of society, since perhaps in some other relationship he may be strong or healthy. In the present state of our knowledge, we are unable during a child’s early years, and still less immediately after birth, to determine positively whether the child is intellectually or morally defective, whether it is a born criminal, or whether it is one capable of developing into a useful member of society. We must certainly dispute the assertion that a child which is bodily weak is of necessity also intellectually and morally defective, since thousands of instances establish the fact that a child which is bodily weak often proves to be a useful member of society. If there were no child-protection, children would perish whose survival is unquestionably desirable.

We consider, therefore, that child-protection is necessary, although, notwithstanding great pains and great sacrifices, it often results in the survival of individuals who are useless to society. The view that only the children of the inferior and poorer classes of the population are suitable for the application of the methods of child-protection, is erroneous, if only for the reason that the well-to-do to-day bring forth offspring utterly regardless whether these are strong or weak; and also because capitalism interferes in other ways with the effective operation of natural selection. These various evils can be obviated to-day only by means of child-protection.

In the case of infants, there is no question of the struggle for existence. For their death-rate depends upon two factors—first, upon their inborn capacity; secondly, upon the conditions in which they are reared. The former factor is of far less importance in relation to infant mortality than it is in relation to child mortality. Only in an extremely limited sense is it possible, with regard to infants, to speak of a struggle for existence, in virtue of which the fittest survive. The infant is exposed to numerous dangers, in coping with which its inborn capacity hardly counts at all. When certain external influences come into play, the infant is quite incapable of making an advantageous use of its inborn physiological capacities. Such external influences destroy quite indifferently infants well-equipped and ill-equipped at birth. There is no doubt of the fact that a strong infant could better resist most of the diseases of infancy than a weakly infant; but the differences in power of resistance in infants are far less extensive than is generally believed. It is certainly wrong to maintain that a strong infant is able successfully to resist all diseases.