Health, happiness and life worth living is made possible through parenthood.
If a child was intelligently planned for and warmly welcomed into every home, the first year of married life, then one by one at reasonable intervals until the family consists of four to eight healthy, happy, well-cared-for children, most of the problems of marriage would be solved.
The childless homes.—All efforts to evade the fiat of nature and God, “multiply and replenish the earth,” not justified by the authors of this law, will lead to health blighted, happiness destroyed, a home wrecked and two souls will be arrested in their endless progress. In homes, voluntarily childless, and in homes where one or two little intruders were accidentally and unwillingly admitted, can be found the most serious and perplexing social problems.
Childless homes made happy.—The involuntarily childless homes, and the homes voluntarily childless, because of justifiable reasons, need not be unhappy. Their paternal and maternal natures may be developed by adopting homeless children. In this land there are many such happy homes. If the mother love, in childless homes, annually wasted on poodle dogs, was expended on homeless children, there would soon be no childless homes, orphan homes and homeless children, and more happiness in the world.
How shall family troubles be solved?—While natural sex preference and the birth of children solve almost all the domestic problems and make possible the solution of all family troubles, they do not render the husband and wife immune to all differences, disagreements, incompatibilities and perplexities. It is not possible for the husband to see everything from his wife’s view point, or the wife to see everything from the husband’s point of view. If they differ in taste, retain their personalities, have lofty ambitions, possess sensitive natures and have their individual ideals, they will often differ in their opinions, and, occasionally very good people will find themselves in disastrous disputes. Commendable ideals and virtues, as well as faults, may become the sources of domestic trouble. What should they do—separate? No. Secure a divorce? Certainly not. Let these steps be the last possible resort. Where a family of children are to be scattered and injured by the disgrace, perhaps a divorce should not be sought, on any grounds. The bleeding hearts and blasted hopes caused by one divorce is greater than that caused by a score of deaths. Divorce degrades morals, withers ideals and causes untold human suffering. What is the remedy? Agree to let past differences, disagreements and quarrels remain in the past. Don’t bring the dead yesterdays over into the living to-days. Each morning, give each other a clean slate. Resolve each morning to please, rather than to displease your partner. By doing this, irreconcilable differences will gradually disappear. This does not mean that they should lose their individualities, or compromise with their convictions. This is not a radical or expensive remedy, but one that works in nearly every case.