Back to "Helter-Skeher " Families?
THE first of these volumes is the report recently issued by the Medical Committee, appointed by the National Council of Public Morals, in connexion with the investigations of the National Birth-rate Commission ; the other is a new and enlarged edition of Dr. Stopes's well-known Manual for the Medical and Legal Professions. Neither is intended for general reading, but for those men and women " upon whom responsi- bility lies for giving advice on this most difficult subject "- to quote a rather depressed sentence from the Medical Committee's prefatory note.
" Difficult "—certainly ; as all are aware who take account of the lost tempers, uncivil terms, and wild irrelevances exhibited in the long controversy. concerning Birth Control. But perhaps the difficulty would diminish, and, proportionately, tempers would recover, were one or two plain, unanswerable facts to be faced at the beginning of every argument on the subject, which is everywhere " generally " discussed, on the biological, sociological, economical, and sentimental sides, if not in its strictly medical aspect.
The first fact may be given us by the opening sentence of the statement added by Lord Dawson of Penn to the Medical Committee's report. He tells us—he - teas • the aggrieved opponents of birth control—that " to ask that this generation
should go back to the helter-skelter method of hiving families is like crying for .the moon." For parenti of hi-day "reduction of the number of children has become a necessity."
Let us add that, amongst the middle classes, upper and lower, and right down almost to the " lowest ". (or -lowest-paid) classes in the community it has become a fact ; the first of facts that must precede argument. Birth control is not a question or a controversy amongst those classes. It exists. The beginning of honesty in this matter is surely to recognize the fact, which may be lamented or approved, but to ask that it shall be reversed is like crying for the moon." No amount of persuasion will restore to our time what one side regretfully names the " good old -Victorian family' "—helter-skelter families, as Lord Daivson prefers to call them ; or, as the thing has recently been put by the Dean of St. Paul's, those " inter- minable processions of cradles and coffins " ; births and deaths almost mechanically rising together ; and this tragic rhythm of avoidable loss, being, as of old, fatalistically endured as a dispensation of Providence.
The thing is settled. The change has come about—irrevo- cably. If, as invited by these two books, we are to keep as closely as we can to the medical aspect, we have, then, to ask ourselves whether the birth-controlling classes are visibly suffering from their " dangerous " decision.
There is absolutely no convincing evidence that it is so. There is no convincing evidence in the Medical Report that health—as apart from numbers—is declining amongst the middle classes on this account. Parental prudence has not turned them into a collection of degenerates and maniacs. These suppositions, or charges, are symptoms merely of loss of head, or temper, amongst those who talk about " race suicide." Hear the considered judgment of the 'Commission :
" We are of opinion that no impediment should be placed in the way of those married couples who desire information as to- contra- ception, when this is needed for medical reasons or because of excessive child-bearing or poverty."
If " needed for medical reasons "—as for the others mentioned —then surely not for medical reasons harmful ! . But the medical side, after all, cannot be usefully isolated.
We have to ask why, in the face of much public denunciation (accompanied, as so often, by private encouragement), the middle classes have adopted birth control.
In the vast majority of cases it is because they cannot help it. " Reduction of the number of children has become a necessity." Not, surely, on account of a suddenly increased selfishness and love of luxury, but because, in rates and taxes, the middle classes are required to educate, partly to feed, and largely to endow, by ever-increasing public services, the still helter-skelter families of those from whom medical know- ledge is deliberately withheld ; so that, in many cruel cases, they get it, if they do get it, from those whose knowledge i3 unsound, and whose influence is " a public bane," as the report justly remarks. A darker result still of this forcibly maintained ignorance is the frequency of abortion and infanticide. .
Is not the remedy to allow those who most need it the know. ledge now commonly possessed by all educated people ? One thing, one other fact, beside that already cited, is sure : more and more will the State (that is, the tax-payer) have to concern itself with the welfare of poor children. Only a few days ago, the latest report on " The Health of the School Child," from. Sir George Newman, Chief Medical Officer of the Board of. Education, emphasized the logic of State control here. If we are to educate we must make fit for education. Health authorities (food, nurture, medical attention) have to work with educational aid. Another fact to be recognized! _Recognizing these two facts, are we not driven to the- con- clusion that the State, which is obliged to " diminish the birth- rate" in the tax-paying class, by forcing it to provide these services for others, must in time limit, or permit limitation of, the families of the only section of our people who at present know nothing of birth control-,unless voluntaryeffort provides . them, cleanly and scientifically, with the knowledge they have so long sought from the unclean and unscientific ? R. J.
Previous page
