Fear of the Unborn
February 24, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 427 FEAR OF THE UNBORN HP HAT "there has never been a time when the prob•*- lem of population has received more attention than now," is a statement Mr....
...If, for the average man and woman, parenthood is not made an individual affair, it is not likely to be made at all...
...Financial premiums for successful motherhood and government bonuses of every sort are too likely to lead towards further officious interference with the r.ffairs of the family circle...
...Because a great deal of darkness still shrouds the question of population, an unreasonable and wholly unscientific fear of the unborn Has created a stampede...
...We do not withhold assent to this and to most of what Mr...
...These children are not "numbers" in a future population, or citizens of a state to be...
...America does not sensibly fear the unborn...
...We must revive what may be called "the creative art" of domestic life...
...Secondly, the state which has been powerless to quash this insidious education, has also been powerless to stave off the social shambles which balk the ordinary mother's readiness to welcome the adventure of childhood...
...and undoubtedly one of the causes is implied in Father C. C. Martindale's statement that affairs have arrived, sadly enough, at a pass where we must rank "an unwilling mother among the feeble-minded...
...It may stir the consciences of the frivolously egoistic, who use marriage as a convenient fagade for journeying to Hollywood undisturbed by servants of the law...
...Patriotism is at best a very weak spur toward assuming obligations which, particularly at the present moment, are bewildering and burdensome...
...All of this is eminently valuable, coming as it does from a man who speaks from knowledge of population facts which are not purely theoretical or neurotic...
...First, there is a point in the fact that the birth-rate in England has fallen to the lowest percentage on record...
...They are the shadows of their forefathers flung by the benevolent light of Divine fantasy, and shall carry on into the future the happy outlines of the present...
...It will—in spite of some passages which dodge the ultimate moral issue of marital life—fortify those whose effort to write religious principle into their lives is not modified by the pressure of the modern world...
...Birth control has argued a bad case on the basis of insufficient and faulty generalization from random facts...
...But we do not feel that it will change the large body of opinion which cannot but regard the rearing of children with trepidation...
...He urges those "who engage in this propaganda to follow a more constructive program" and realize that the matter of parenthood is not entirely an individual affair...
...Obviously, a problem which is so closely identified with general social and economic conditions cannot be disposed of by special legislation...
...Because "the logical consequence of an attempt to keep the number of our dependents down to a minimum is nothing short of a challenge to the permanence of the state...
...In a country which assumes that home life is of minor consequence, and is legally entitled to destruction whenever a storm brews, the real meaning of childhood is largely dissipated even by the law...
...For in the life-giving view of the "poet of marriage," the emphasis is not placed upon things as vague as society and as impersonal as service, but upon the old, firm reality of affection that has been written into a sacramental bond...
...There is no doubt that the race has been instructed in methods of contraception to a point of alarming and disgusting proficiency...
...and that a careful mathematical study of all the factors operative in maintaining the present population increase proves that this increase is wholly illusory and may come to a sudden, calamitous halt...
...The true function of the state, therefore, is not—as Mr...
...We have exacted the price of luxuries which are imposed as necessities...
...The very legitimate effort to reduce infant mortality has raised the price of lying-in to the fabulous figure which certain recent investigators found no difficulty in turning into sensational reading matter...
...The abiding constitutional phrase—* "promote the general welfare"—should guarantee rather the adjustment of industrial circumstance to the healthy progress of the home...
...Nothing else is civically so important...
...Dublin, who has earned both bread and laurels as chief statistician for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, devotes to the peculiar variety of hysteria which has been advertised by the Birth Control League...
...We have fattened realtors and crowded the domesticities into a room or two...
...Dublin seems to suggest— to get on any band-wagon bearing exact numerical figures for the future population, but to do its best to remedy the practical ills of parenthood...
...It may reasonably be anxious about the vacancies in the ranks of the born...
...General prosperity has been fostered to an extent which makes family life in urban surroundings extremely difficult...
...He shows that such evidence as exists does not warrant the belief that the United States will be overcrowded by the year 2000...
...Even such an item as certified milk—almost indispensable in cities if the child is to live—makes inroads into the family budget which the average wageearner cannot ignore...
...Louis Dublin prefixes to his recent Atlantic Monthly article, The Fallacious Propaganda for'Birth Control...
...that science has established the fact uthat a natural decline in the native American birth-rate began as early as 1810 and has continued ever since...
...In a word, we are hungry for Coventry Patmore rather than for Malthus...
...Dublin would allay this fear...
...What he says ought to silence a few of the ridiculously talkative...
...Law alone, however, cannot recover the bliss of childhood for the empty home...
...We need, therefore, to face a few facts squarely...
...We need to admit that it is a false humanism which separates the flowering of love from the practice of love...
...We need to feel the triumphant joy which lies in the interweaving of generations, of little hearts and great ones...
Vol. 3 • February 1926 • No. 16
