Why few children are well-born.—Where married people have been falsely educated in the idea that marriage means unrestricted indulgence, and under this delusion have created unnatural demand, a horde of evils will follow. If this unfortunate class care only for a selfish pleasure, the children will follow each other closely and will receive a poor heredity. If they use preventive means to restrict the size of the family, the few children born into the homes will be far more unfortunately born. Excess in the marriage relation impoverishes the body, mind and soul and unfits for true parentage those who practice such excess. Every device used to prevent conception or to destroy unborn life will work untold injury to the parents, and the occasional, accidental and unwelcome child will receive a most unfortunate heredity. The mental and moral states, as well as the physical condition, of the parents, for months before and at the initial moment and during gestation must necessarily become a part of the child.
Whatever is received into our physical, mental and moral life becomes an essential part of ourselves and is transmissible to our offspring. Prospective parents should not at any time engage in anything that would be undesirable if reproduced in their children.
Intelligent preparation.—A knowledge of the laws of heredity will enable parents largely to overcome in their children any undesirable qualities possessed by themselves or their parents and to transmit to their children desirable qualities in a larger degree than that possessed by themselves.
In planning for a child, the parents should carefully study each other’s good and bad qualities, weak and strong points, their active and latent talents with a view to an intelligent cultivation of their good qualities and the restraining of the bad, strengthening their weak points and calling into activity every valuable latent capacity. In this way they may transmit only the best to the child. Both parents should ardently desire a child. Both should begin the preparation months before the initial of the new life and both should continue the preparations until the child is born. While the father’s direct hereditary influence upon the child ceases with the inception of life, his continued training will encourage and inspire his wife to continue her training until the birth of the child.
Physical preparation.—Both husband and wife should be in a perfectly healthy condition while planning for a child. The intelligent stock breeder appreciates this statement. He knows that the offspring will be defective if either of the parents is in a low state of vitality. Systematic treatment and feeding will be followed until the animal is brought to a normal condition before the initial of reproduction is allowed. The healthy or unhealthy condition of the blood determines the health of the body. The blood is the creative source of new life. Every new life is affected by the physical condition of its parents’ blood. It is a sin and a crime for parents knowingly to inflict physical weakness upon their children. Is it not strange that men will take every precaution to have their stock well-born and yet utterly ignore these essential precautions in relation to their children? There are some married people who have physical ailments that render them permanently unfit for parentage. Such should be wise enough to refrain from becoming parents.
An invalid mother.—When a mere boy I overheard a man say, “This is our twelfth child in a little over fourteen years and my wife has not been out of the bed since the birth of the first child.” I think there were two other children born into this home. Only one of these children lived to reach middle life. There is not an intelligent stock raiser in the world that would allow propagation among his swine under these conditions. This man was not brutal to his family. He was a kind husband and a loving father, but he was ignorant and thoughtless. He was controlled by the false teachings of “Physical necessity,” and “the wife’s body belongs to the husband.” We must recognize that the unborn have absolute and inalienable rights which we must not violate. No man has a right to engage in the creative act when he or his wife is in a physical, mental or moral condition that would, if transmitted, be undesirable in the possible offspring.
Morbid conditions transmissible.—Since incompetency, thievishness, drunkenness, tuberculosis, venereal poison, idiocy, insanity and criminal degeneracy may all be transmitted from parents to children, and to children’s children; young people before marriage should ascertain whether any of these conditions exist in the families of the prospective union. The father who spends his time lounging on street corners and telling questionable anecdotes cannot parent an industrious child. No thoughtful girl will marry an idle young man.
The society mother.—Mothers who lead in the dissipation of modern social life, such as balls, card parties, theaters, wine suppers, seldom have children that are well-born either physically, mentally or morally. Their children are strongly inclined to the same dissipations.
The need of rest.—Both parents should be well rested in body for several days before the initial of a new life takes place. If the vitality in their blood has been much exhausted by overwork, the creative cells will be lacking in vitality and the offspring will be weakened in its constitution.