!INCREASING THE MARRIAGE RATE OF THE SUPERIOR!

CHAPTER XII!

!

!INCREASING THE MARRIAGE RATE OF THE SUPERIOR!

!

No race can long survive unless it conforms to the principles of

!eugenics, and indisputably the chief requirement for race survival is that the superior part of the race should equal or surpass the inferior part in reproduction.

It follows that the superior members of the community must marry, and at a reasonably early age. If in the best elements of the community

!celibacy increases, or if marriage is postponed far into the reproductive period, the racial contribution of the superior will necessarily fall, and after a few generations the race will consist mainly of the descendants of inferior people, its eugenic average being thereby much lowered.

!If one sought, for example, to find a group of women distinctly superior to the average, he might safely take the college graduates. Their superior quality as a class lies in the facts that:

!They have survived the weeding-out process of grammar and high school, and the repeated elimination by examinations in college.

!They have persevered, after those with less mental ability have grown tired of the strain and have voluntarily dropped out.

!Some have even forced their way to college against great obstacles, because attracted by the opportunities it offers them for mental activity.

!Some have gone to college because their excellence has been discovered by teachers or others who have strongly urged it.

!All these attributes can not be merely acquired, but must be in some degree inherent. Furthermore, these girls are not only superior in themselves, but are ordinarily from superior parents, because

(a) Their parents have in most cases co-operated by desiring this higher

!education for their daughters.

!Therefore, if marriage within such a selected class as this is being avoided, or greatly postponed, the eugenist can not help feeling concerned.

!Statistics compiled on marriages among college women (1901) showed that: 45% of college women marry before the age of 40.

90% of all United States women marry before the age of 40.

96% of Arkansas women marry before the age of 40.

!80% of Massachusetts women marry before the age of 40.

!In Massachusetts, it is further to be noted, 30% of all women have married at the age when college women are just graduating.

It has, moreover, been demonstrated that the women who belong to Phi Beta Kappa and other honour societies, and therefore represent a second selection from an already selected class, have a lower marriage rate

!than college women in general.

Particularly pernicious in tending to prevent marriage is the influence of certain professional schools, some of which have come to require a college degree for entrance. In such a case the aspiring physician, for example, can hardly hope to obtain a license to practice until he has reached the age of 27 since 4 years are required in Medical College and 1 year in a hospital. His marriage must in almost every case be

!postponed until a number of years after that of the young men of his own class who have followed business careers.

This is enough to prove that the best educated young women

(and to a less extent young men) of the United States, who for many reasons may be considered superior, are in many cases avoiding marriage altogether, and in other cases postponing it longer than is desirable.

!The women in the separate colleges of the East have the worst record in this respect, but that of the women graduates of some of the coeducational schools leaves much to be desired.

It is difficult to separate the causes which result in a postponement of marriage, from those that result in a total avoidance of marriage. To a large extent the causes are the same, and the result differs only in degree. The effect of absolute celibacy of superior people, from a eugenic point of view, is of course obvious to all, but the racial

!effect of postponement of marriage, even for a few years, is not always so clearly realised.

!

Certainly the object of eugenics is not to merely increase human

numbers. Quality is more important than quantity in a birth-rate. But it must be evident that other things being equal, a group which marries early will, after a number of generations, supplant a group which marries even a few years later. And there is abundant evidence to show

!that some of the best elements of the old, white, American race are being rapidly eliminated from the population of America, because of postponement or avoidance of marriage.

!Taking the men alone, we find that failure to marry may often be ascribed to one of the following reasons:

!The cultivation of a taste for sexual variety and a consequent unwillingness to submit to the restraints of marriage.

!Pessimism in regard to women from premature or unfortunate sex experiences.

!Infection by venereal disease.

!Deficiency in normal sexual feeling, or perversion.

!Deficiency of one kind or another, physical or mental, causing difficulty in getting an acceptable mate.

The persons in groups 4 and 5 certainly and in groups 1, 2, and 3 probably to a less extent, are inferior, and their celibacy is an advantage to the race, rather than a disadvantage, from a eugenic point of view. Their inferiority is in part the result of bad environment. But since innate inferiority is so frequently a large factor, the bad

!environment often being experienced only because the nature was inferior to start with, the average of the group as a whole must be considered innately inferior.

!Then there are among celibate men two other classes, largely superior by nature:

!Those who seek some other end so ardently that they will not make the necessary sacrifice in money and freedom, in order to marry.

!Those whose likelihood of early marriage is reduced by a prolonged education and apprenticeship. Prolongation of the celibate period often results in life-long celibacy.

!Some of the most important means of remedying the above conditions, in so far as they are dysgenic, can be grouped under three general heads:

!Try to lead all young men to avoid a loose sexual life and venereal disease. A general effort will be heeded more by the superior than by the inferior.

Hold up the role of husband and father as particularly honourable, and proclaim its shirking, without adequate cause, as dishonourable. Depict it as a happier and healthier state than celibacy or pseudo-celibacy.

For a man to say he has never met a girl he can love simply means he has not diligently sought one, or else he has a deficient emotional equipment; for there are many, surprisingly many, estimable, attractive,

!unmarried women.

Cease prolonging the educational period past the early twenties. It is time to call a halt on the schools and universities, whose constant lengthening of the educational period will result in a serious loss to

the race. External circumstances of an educational nature should not be allowed to force a young man to postpone his marriage past the age of

25. This means that students must be allowed to specialise earlier. If there is need of limiting the number of candidates, competitive entrance

examinations may be arranged on some rational basis. Superior young men should marry, even at some cost to their early efficiency. The high efficiency of any profession can be more safely kept up by demanding a minimum amount of continuation work in afternoon, evening, or seasonal classes, laboratories, or clinics. No more graduate fellowships should

!be established until those now existing carry a stipend adequate for marriage. Those which already carry larger stipends should not be limited to bachelors, as are the most valuable awards at Princeton, the ten yearly Proctor fellowships of $1,000 each.

The causes of the remarkable failure of college women to marry can not be exhaustively investigated here, but for the purposes of eugenics they may be roughly classified as unavoidable and avoidable. Under the first heading must be placed those girls who are inherently un-marriageable, either because of physical defect or, more frequently, mental

defect,--most often an over-development of intellect at the expense of the emotions, which makes a girl either unattractive to men, or inclines her toward a celibate career and away from marriage and motherhood.

Opinions differ as to the proportion of college girls who are inherently

un-marriageable. Anyone who has been much among them will testify that a large proportion of them are not inherently un-marriageable, however, and their celibacy for the most part must be classified as avoidable. Their

!failure to marry may be because

!They desire not to marry, due to a preference for a career, or development of a cynical attitude toward men and matrimony, due to a faulty education, or

!They desire to marry, but do not, for a variety of reasons such as:

!They are educated for careers, such as school-teaching, where they have little opportunity to meet men.

!Their education makes them less desirable mates than girls who have had some training along the lines of home-making and mothercraft.

!They have remained in partial segregation until past the age when they are physically most attractive, and when the other girls of their age are marrying.

Due to their own education, they demand on the part of suitors a higher degree of education than the young men of their acquaintance possess. A girl of this type wants to marry but desires a man who is

!educationally her equal or superior. As men of such type are relatively rare, her chances of marriage are reduced.

!Their experience in college makes them desire a standard of living higher than that of their own families or of the men among whom they were brought up. They become resistant to the suit of men who are of ordinary economic status. While waiting for the appearance of a suitor who is above the average in both intelligence and wealth, they pass the marriageable age.

!They are better educated than the young men of their acquaintance, and the latter are afraid of them. Some young men dislike to marry girls who know more than they do, except in the distinctively feminine fields.

These and various similar causes help to lower the marriage-rate of college women and to account for the large number of alumnæ who desire to marry but are unable to do so. In the interest of eugenics, the

!various difficulties must be met in appropriate ways.

Marriage is not desirable for those who are eugenically inferior, from weak constitutions, defective sexuality, or inherent mental deficiency.

But beyond these groups of women are the much larger groups of celibates who are distinctly superior, and whose chances of marriage have been reduced for one of the reasons mentioned above or through living in

cities with an undue proportion of female residents. Then there are, besides these, superior women who, because they are brought up in families without brothers or brothers' friends, are so unnaturally shy

that they are unable to become friendly with men, however much they may care to. It is evident that life in a separate college for women often intensifies this defect. There are still other women who repel men by a manner of extreme self-repression and coldness, sometimes the result of parents' or teachers' over-zealous efforts to inculcate modesty and

!reserve, traits valuable in due degree but harmful in excess.

When will educators learn that the education of the emotions is as important as that of the intellect? When will the schools awake to the fact that a large part of life consists in relations with other human beings, and that much of their educational effort is absolutely valueless, or detrimental, to success in the fundamentally necessary practice of dealing with other individuals which is imposed on every one? Many a college girl of the finest innate qualities, who sincerely desires to enter matrimony, is unable to find a husband of her own

class, simply because she has been rendered so cold and unattractive, so over-stuffed intellectually and starved emotionally, that a typical man does not desire to spend the rest of his life in her company. The same indictment applies in a less degree to men. It is generally believed

!that an only child is frequently to be found in this class.

On the other hand, it is equally true--perhaps more important--that many innately superior young men are rejected, because of their manner of

life. Superior young men should be induced to keep their physical records clean, in order that they may not suffer the severe depreciation

!which they would otherwise sustain in the eyes of superior women.

But in efforts to teach chastity, sex itself must not be made to appear an evil thing. This is a grave mistake and all too common since the rise

!of the sex-hygiene movement. Undoubtedly a considerable amount of the celibacy in sensitive women may be traced to ill-balanced mothers and teachers who, in word and attitude, build up an impression that sex is indecent and bestial, and engender in general a damaging suspicion of men.[115]

Level heads are necessary in the sex ethics campaign. Whereas the venereal diseases will probably, with a continuation of present progress in treatment and prophylaxis, be brought under control in the course of a century, the problem of differential mating will exist as long as the race does, which can hardly be less than tens of millions of years.

Lurid presentation, by drama, novel, or magazine-story, of dramatic and highly-coloured individual sex histories, is to be avoided. These often impress an abnormal situation on sensitive girls so strongly that aversion to marriage, or sex antagonism, is aroused. Every effort should be made to permeate art--dramatic, plastic, or literary--with the

!highest ideals of sex and parenthood. A glorification of motherhood and fatherhood in these ways would have a portentous influence on public opinion.

"The true, intimate chronicle of an everyday married life has not been written. Here is a theme for genius; for only genius can divine and reveal the beauty, the pathos, and the wonder of the normal or the commonplace. A felicitous marriage has its comedy, its complexities, its element, too, of tragedy and grief, as well as its serenity and fealty.

!Matrimony, whether the pair fare well or ill, is always a great adventure, a play of deep instincts and powerful emotions, a drama of two psyches. Every marriage provides a theme for the literary artist. No lives are free from enigmas."[116]

More "temperance" in work would probably promote marriage of able and ambitious young people. Walter Gallichan complains that "we do not even recognise love as a finer passion than money greed. It is a kind of

!luxury, or pleasant pastime, for the sentimentally minded. Love is so undervalued as a source of happiness, a means of grace, and a completion of being, that many men would sooner work to keep a motor car than to marry."

Men should be taught greater respect for the individuality of women, so that no high-minded girl will shrink from marriage with the idea that it means a surrender of her personality and a state of domestic servitude. A more discriminating idea of sex-equality is desirable, and a recognition by men that women are not necessarily creatures of inferior mentality. It would be an advantage if men's education included some instruction along these lines. It would be a great gain, also if

intelligent women had more knowledge of domestic economy and mothercraft, because one of the reasons why the well-educated girl is handicapped in seeking a mate is the belief all too frequently well

!founded of many young men that she is a luxury which he can not afford.

!Higher education in general needs to be reoriented. It has too much glorified individualism, and put a premium on "white collar" work. The trend toward industrial education will help to correct this situation.

Professor Sprague[117] points out another very important fault, when he says: "More strong men are needed on the staffs of public schools and women's colleges, and in all of these institutions more married instructors of both sexes are desirable. The catalogue of one of the [women's] colleges shows 114 professors and

instructors, of whom 100 are women, of whom only two have ever married. Is it to be expected that the curriculum created by such a staff would idealise and prepare for family and home life as the greatest work of

!the world and the highest goal of woman, and teach race survival as a patriotic duty? Or, would it be expected that these bachelor staffs would glorify the independent vocation and life for women and create employment bureaus to enable their graduates to get into the offices, schools and other lucrative jobs? The latter seems to be what occurs."

Increase of opportunity for superior young people to meet each other, as discussed in our chapter on sexual selection, will play a very large

part in raising the marriage rate. And finally, the delayed or avoided marriage of the intellectual classes is in large part a reflection of

!public opinion, which has wrongly represented other things as being more worth while than marriage.

"The promotion of marriage in early adult life, as a part of social hygiene, must begin with a new canonisation of marriage," Mr. Gallichan declares. "This is equally the task of the fervent poet and the

!scientific thinker, whose respective labours for humanity are never at variance in essentials.... The sentiment for marriage can be deepened by a rational understanding of the passion that attracts and unites the sexes. We need an apotheosis of conjugal love as a basis for a new appreciation of marriage. Reverence for love should be fostered from the outset of the adolescent period by parents and pedagogues."

If, in addition to this "diffusion of healthier views of the conjugal relation," some of the economic changes suggested in later chapters are put in effect, it seems probable that the present racially disastrous

!tendency of the most superior young men and women to postpone or avoid marriage would be checked.

• The importance of Relaxation
• The importance of Relaxation