The withdrawal of parental authority must on no account be regarded as a punishment. There may be cases in which the parents are quite blameless, and yet in the interests of the child it may be absolutely necessary to abrogate the parental authority; or, in similar cases, it may be necessary, for educational purposes, to remove the child from its home. Again, it often happens, for example, that only the father is to blame, and yet the mother cannot be permitted to exercise her parental authority, but the child must be removed from its home, because in no other way can the harmful influence of the father be overcome. There are worthy parents who, simply from an excessive blind affection for their children, fail to bring them up properly; there are worthy working-class parents who have positively no time to attend satisfactorily to the upbringing of their children.
[CHAPTER II]
MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY
Heredity in General.—Heredity is a general phenomenon of natural life. The offspring resembles the parent to a greater or less degree. In the human species, also, children on the average resemble their own parents more closely than they resemble other persons, but the degree to which this resemblance is manifested is a variable one, and it remains an open question whether the concrete qualities and capabilities whereby the parents are distinguished from other persons are transmitted to their offspring by inheritance. It is possible that the qualities of the parents may not appear at all in the children; that they may appear somewhat modified, or in a very different form; that they may remain latent in one or more generations, to reappear in the grandchildren or great-grandchildren; or that the qualities of the parents may not appear to be present in the children at birth, but that as the latter grow up, these qualities may make their appearance at the same age at which they appeared in the parents. It is still in dispute whether qualities acquired by the parents are inherited by the offspring; nor is there general agreement as to what are the precise limits between inherited and acquired characters, respectively. This question as to the inheritance of acquired characters is one of profound importance; for if acquired characters are not inherited, racial improvement can be effected solely by means of the struggle for existence, and the continued elimination of the weaker elements of the species.[3]
Inheritance of Diseases.—The word “disease” is used here in the widest possible signification. Diseased parents as a rule procreate diseased children, or bring up diseased individuals. But the physical, mental, and moral defects of the parents may make their appearance in the children in a transmuted form. A disease in the parent, when transmitted by inheritance, may appear in the offspring as general weakness, either bodily, mental, or moral; or it may appear in the form of a predisposition to the particular disease; and conversely, that which in the parent is no more than predisposition to a disease, may appear in the offspring in the form of the actual disease. In concrete instances, it may be very difficult to determine whether persons are or are not diseased. Again, with respect to atavism and to the hereditary transmission of latent qualities, it is questionable whether, in cases in which the subject of investigation is not himself affected with disease, but his near relatives are so affected, we have reason to fear the hereditary transmission of harmful consequences to the offspring. It is especially with regard to the male sex that the question of the hereditary transmission of morbid qualities is so important, for, in marriage, it is the male partner who contributes the greater proportion of the diseases.
It is not through inheritance only that diseases may be transmitted from parents to children; the same result may follow from the fact that parents and children live in such close association, or because children are brought up by their parents. The existence of morbid qualities or conditions in the parents may lead in the offspring, not only to the inheritance of disease, but to other disastrous results. Morbid conditions in either parent, besides being transmitted to the offspring by inheritance, may be communicated by the husband to the wife, or by the wife to the husband, either in the act of sexual intercourse, or through the close association of married life. Parents suffering from disease cannot bring up their children properly. The treatment of their own illness may be very costly, and may involve the expenditure of much time and pains, and these things work adversely to the interest of the children. Sickly parents whose children are likewise sickly are apt to endeavour to make up for the deficient quality of their offspring by an increase in their number, whereby matters are made considerably worse. Those who enter into marriage when already ill are apt subsequently to reproach themselves upon their conduct towards their sexual partners; this is likely to react unfavourably upon the illness, and to disturb the married life, to the disadvantage of the children. Sickly parents die sooner than healthy ones, whereby the children are prematurely orphaned, and are exposed to the dangers of poverty. The state of engagement to marry (with consequent ungratified sexual excitement up to the time of marriage), sexual intercourse, pregnancy, and childbirth, may all exercise an unfavourable influence upon the diseased organism, may favour or accelerate the course of the disease, and may even lead to its fatal issue. From the children’s point of view, all these things are extremely undesirable. Thus, there are certain persons to whom marriage is permissible, but who should on no account procreate children—that is to say, such a married pair may enjoy sexual congress, but must not fail to use efficient means for the prevention of conception.
Individual Diseases.—(a) Of all diseases transmissible by inheritance, mental disorders pass most readily from parents to offspring, and undergo the least alteration as they pass. In the etiology of mental disorders, hereditary transmission plays an important part.
(b) It is still undecided whether alcohol is a specific protoplasmic poison; but it is an indisputable fact that, among the offspring of those addicted to alcohol, the ill effects of the parental alcoholism may be displayed in other ways besides by the appearance of alcoholic tendencies in the next generation. The children of drunkards tend to be cruel, dissolute, dirty in their habits, hypersensitive, or themselves inclined to drink; and in any or all of these ways they may be a danger to society. For example, it has been found in wine-growing districts that the children born in any one year are stupider in proportion as the vintage of their birth-year was a good one. Often the effects of alcohol are better marked in the children of alcoholics than in the parents themselves. When both parents are drunkards, the children are apt to suffer from moral insanity; and the offspring of drunkards tend to become criminals. Children whose parents were in a state of actual inebriety at the time of procreation will most probably be feeble-minded. Since alcohol increases sexual desire, even though it diminishes sexual potency, alcoholics tend to procreate more children than non-alcoholics; but any advantage that might ensue from the greater quantity of the offspring is more than outbalanced by their inferior quality. And because alcohol strengthens sexual desire, the number of alcoholics who were procreated by parents in a state of inebriety is considerable. Some experts contend that if the father is a drinker, the daughter is unable to suckle her own children.