Drunkards.—Don’t marry into a family where there are several drunkards and don’t marry a person addicted to strong drink. Remember that you are choosing the father or the mother of your children; and that choice is final. If children could choose their parents, they would hesitate before making such a choice.
Consumptives.—If you are suffering from any form of tubercular disease, you should not marry. Neither should you marry one having consumption, nor into a family where consumption is common. It is possible to overcome all tendencies to consumption and to effect a cure in the earliest stages.
Consumption and cancer.—For a person having consumption to marry into a home where cancer is common would be a combination fraught with great danger to the offspring. The children would be handicapped from birth with frail bodies, liable to similar diseases, and most of them would die during adolescence, or before. The worst results follow where both companions have inherited the same disease.
A low vitality.—A parent cannot transmit to the child what he does not possess himself. Children of immoral parents, invalid parents, feeble-minded parents, sexually exhausted parents will necessarily inherit impoverished vitality.
The immature.—In all countries where immature marriages are tolerated or encouraged the children are small, wretched, unhealthy and shortlived. This was observed in the days of Greece, in past generations in France, to-day in India and may be observed wherever encouraged in our country. From four to ten per cent, more children born of immature parents will die in the first year than among children of matured parents. Idiocy and physical imperfections; a lack of energy and courage will be quite common among them. As a rule girls mature at twenty and boys at twenty-four. Marriage earlier than these ages should be considered immature.
Difference as to age.—The young man, as a rule, should be four to six years older than his bride. Unless a man’s strength and vigor are exceptionally well maintained, he should not become a father after he is fifty. Sociologists claim that a larger per cent. of the children born after their fathers were fifty become sexual offenders, dishonest and criminals than among children whose fathers were younger.
Criminals.—Don’t marry into a family where there is a number of criminals. Where crime is common in a family you will find many of the outward signs of constitutional degeneracy mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. Frequency of crime in a family indicates deterioration.
Wealth should have no influence.—The choice of a companion should not be influenced by money interests, base desires, or any other unworthy motive. If one’s choice is influenced in one of these ways domestic harmony and well-born children will not be possible.
Masculine women and feminine men.—Don’t marry an effeminate man. Don’t marry a masculine woman. The masculine should predominate in man. The feminine should predominate in woman. Where the feminine nature predominates in the wife and the masculine nature in the husband soul-union will be possible, domestic harmony will prevail and the children will be well-born.
Marriage of cousins.—Don’t marry into a family where first and second cousins have married for several generations. This custom gradually leads to constitutional degeneracy. Should first cousins marry where there have been no previous intermarriages, no serious defects will likely be transmitted to the children.