The question of the right age for parenthood is naturally of importance. But it depends on many factors, chief among which, after the economic problem has been disposed of, are physical and psychological health. Some time between twenty-three and twenty-eight seems to me to be a satisfactory time for a woman to bear her first baby; but any time up to thirty-five presents no difficulty, provided the physical and mental conditions are healthy and propitious. Plenty of women of forty and over have been known to go through first and subsequent pregnancies successfully, but there is no reason for postponing children to this age except failure to find the right mate earlier in life. People who have their first child when over thirty-five are themselves over fifty when the child goes through adolescence—an age which may make it difficult to help the child meet its crucial problems in the tone of one good friend to another. If you cannot have your children before thirty-five, you must make every effort to remain young enough for spiritual companionship with them. The best age for parenthood is to be determined, not in terms of years, but of physical and psychological health and happiness.
In marriage psychological health and happiness are largely dependent on love. It is of the utmost importance that every child should be a love child, in the best sense of the term. Love is a splendor that eludes definition, but it is characterized by an inexhaustible desire for the beloved's company and a steadily burning fire of enthusiasm and admiration. So-called disillusion in love comes from the failure of these emotions. Young lovers, through plenty of courting and companionship, should try to make sure of the lasting quality of their love. This is sometimes impossible, however, and for this reason and others I think it is just as well for married people to wait a year or even two before having their first child. In the happiest marriages there are many adjustments, unforeseen before the wedding, to be made. And it may very well be that only in the continued intimacy of marriage can the strength of love be tested. Only there can love gutter out or prove itself stronger than death—so much stronger indeed, that, as it deepens and widens in fullness and power, it turns of its own accord directly toward the creation of more life.
In other words, the best time to have children is when the lovers, sure of themselves and of each other, feel an imperious need to stamp the gold of life with each other's images. I feel no hesitancy in urging married couples to take a year or so to make sure of their love, if only for the children's sake. Economic conditions being adequate, there is no reason to suppose that real lovers will put off having children until it is too late to obtain the best eugenic results. To paraphrase the poet, we may say that those who restrain their desire for children do so because their desire is weak enough to be restrained. Such people will probably not make good parents. True lovers will beget children after a year or two, nor will they mind making a few so-called sacrifices, as of parties and new automobiles, for the sake of having children. They recognize the distinction between entertainment and joy. Man may be a laughing animal, but he is more essentially a creative animal. His deepest pleasures are simply the by-products of his activity. In building a home around a family of children both men and women often find the deepest of all possible pleasures. And when it is in this spirit of vital affection that the child is begotten, we get, as the eugenists say, a vital fertilization. The chances are that children so begotten will themselves be capable of strong, sound, deep-seated feelings. As Dr. Kugelmass says in Growing Superior Children, "The degree of emotional devotion of one parent to another is reflected dominantly in the transmission of the more vital elements in the constitution of the progeny."
To the question of physical readiness for childbirth I come last, but not because it is of least importance. Without physical health the parents cannot expect to beget healthy children, nor indeed can they, in many cases, manage even to bear them. As everyone knows, women afflicted with tuberculosis, heart disease, and kidney changes should probably refrain from bearing children. But this is a matter for the doctor to decide. Such people, if their troubles are not severe, may safely bear at least one child, sometimes two. They should put themselves in the hands of a good physician and rely implicitly on his findings and advice. Sufferers from venereal diseases should not attempt to beget children till they have been given a clean bill of health. Nor should children be begotten when the body is weakened by temporary disease or during the stage of debilitating after-effects. For disease and fatigue affect sex cells unfavorably. So do mental strain, depression and overexcitement. Unhealthy physical and mental states in the parents lead to debilitated or deficient offspring. They open the way to the operation of undesirable hereditary factors which generations of self-controlled parents have been driving into the background and attenuating to the point of disappearance. It is possible for the father, too, to weaken his vitality by excessive sexual activity. In fine, the best time for conception to take place is when the lovers' sense of well-being, physical as well as mental, is at its fullest.
Full-bodied passion, which we may think of as a kind of crisis of love and health, will give us offspring to be proud of. One thing we cannot plan, however, is the sex of the child to come. Nor should we, in general, wish to. It was the limited sphere of feminine activities that once tended to make girls a debit, boys a credit. Nowadays girls have just as many opportunities of becoming interesting human beings as have boys. It is a favorite theory of my husband's that they may, and often do, become more interesting, because they can do not only everything that boys can do but one thing more—they can bear children, a humanizing experience of the greatest possible value.
Should you wish to know what are your chances of having twins, I must remind you that the tendency to give birth to them is an inherited trait, especially through the father. Twins are much more likely to be girls than boys, and to be born later rather than earlier in the mother's married life. Thus it is three times more likely that a woman of thirty-eight will give birth to twins than that a woman of twenty-four will do so. Should you fear that the unpredictable appearance of twins will unbalance your baby budget, you can, for a moderate sum, insure yourself against this chance with many of the larger insurance companies. The insurance must be taken out before the existence of twins in the uterus can be diagnosed—that is, in the first two or three months of gestation. One twin birth occurs to about 90 single births, one triple to about 8000, and one quadruple to about 650,000. In all medical literature only about 30 cases of quintuplets have been recorded. Multiple births are not only rare, but the babies are often so delicate that they are extremely difficult to rear. We can be well pleased if our first pregnancy eventuates in a single healthy baby of either sex.
All the reasons for wanting the first child apply in the case of the second, and to them are added more. What was in the first instance simply a hope and a vague if powerful urge has now grown into a conscious desire, based on the self-knowledge and experience gained from loving and looking after the first child. We have had a real taste of the joys of home and family building, and now nothing short of economic catastrophe is likely to stop us from building higher. I assume, of course, that the mother did not encounter any severe difficulties in giving birth to her first child. If she was in good medical hands, she probably did not, though certain unusual formations of the pelvis may have made her labor longer than usual. I do not say more painful, because medical science has found ways of minimizing the pains of childbirth. Even if it was found necessary to deliver the first child by Caesarean operation, a woman in normal health can without danger bear at least two children by this method. And at the very least a family should include two children.
Quite apart from the parents' natural desire to go on expressing their mutual love by building a full-voiced home on the foundations laid by the first child, it soon becomes apparent that this first child, for the sake of its own social and moral development, needs a little brother or sister. It needs companionship. It needs to share its toys and its parents. Otherwise it will tend to grow self-centered. By being too much with grown-ups it may become moody and negative.
After the question, "Can you afford it?"—and I sincerely hope you can—the next question facing the mother who wants a second child is, "When can I bear it with the maximum amount of benefit to it, to my first child, and to myself?" Clearly, if it is to be a playmate for the first child, you will want to have it as soon as possible. But, in fairness to both the mother and the child-to-be, there should elapse a period of about two years between the birth of the first and the conception of the second offspring. Less time than that will seldom allow the mother, who put so much of her best blood and bone into building and nursing the first baby, to recover fully her maximal physical health and strength. All authorities are agreed on this point. There may be exceptions, of course, and there are always mothers who, by reason of having married late, perhaps, are anxious to have as many babies as quickly as possible. But most women neither can nor will nor should produce children in this fashion. There is too much risk of weakening the mother's body and of begetting poor stock.