He made a list of the most distinguished of eminent British persons and studied everything about them, from their religious opinions to the color of their hair.
In the matter of the age of their parents, he finds that the average age of the father at the birth of the person of genius was thirty-seven years, while the average of the mother was thirty-one. His conclusion is: “On the whole it would appear, so far as the evidence goes, that the fathers of our eminent persons have been predominantly middle-aged and to a marked extent elderly at the time of the distinguished son’s birth; while the mothers have been predominantly at the period of greatest vigor and maturity and to a somewhat unusual extent elderly. There has been a notable deficiency of young fathers and, still more notably, of young mothers.”
And did you ever see the study which Mr. R. 35 S. Holway made for the Department of Education of Leland Stanford University on “The Age of Parents: Its Effects upon Children”? His conclusions are:
“In most physical qualities the children of mature parents tend to come out best.
“In mental ability the children of young parents show best at an early age but rapidly lose their precocity.
“The elder children who show best tend to be the children of mature and old parents.
“The children of elderly mothers show a tendency to superiority throughout.”
Mary did not know about all this, but she had a very strong opinion to the effect that, in so far as the quality of her children could be affected by their home training, she was glad she had spent at least a few years earning her living.
“Every woman,” said Mary, “ought to have some little time for developing into an individual. Home won’t do it altogether. Not nowadays. The colonial home did, being part of the working world. But what is the modern home? It is a nest, an eddy, a shelf, a nook. 36 It’s something apart from the world. If a woman is going to prepare her son for a knowledge of the real world, if she’s going to be able to give him a training which has in it an understanding and an appreciation of the real world, if she’s going to be able to educate him into real living, she must nowadays and increasingly in the future have some experience of her own on her own account in the real world before she becomes a mother. There’s no getting away from that. A reasonable postponement of motherhood till the future mother becomes a competent individual will hereafter be urged, not opposed.”
“The trouble about that,” said John, “is that it makes you too independent of me. Your proposition is to start in and earn your living till you’re pretty good at it. That is, you wouldn’t marry me till you were sure you could chuck me. How about that?”