Forward (Excerpts)
In the earlier pages of this book, the author has permitted herself the liberty of making an exposé of certain typical "happy" homes of England. These private places, though an unexpectedly rich mine of information with regard to present-day ideas and tendencies, and an undoubtedly intriguing subject to the anthropologists of to-day and the historian of to-morrow, were not the prime objective. The presented themselves for investigation in answer to a question which faces the student of current events: Why is it that, during the last twenty or thirty years, doctors and lawyers, scientists and civil servants, engineers and educationalists, artists and architects, and all the rest of the men and women who earn their living in professional fields, have so severely curtailed their fertility?
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It is not difficult to account for the retreat from parenthood when the determining factors have been abstracted from this material.
Among these, pride of place must be given to three: the prevalence of the idea that, from the womb to the school door, the needs of the child in this group must be supplied within the family as a unit; the fact that, in so many cases, women determined to breed have to pay the price of exile form professional fields; the further fact that, in so many cases, women determined on a professional life-work have to pay the price of sterility.
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In the second part of this book, the author has accordingly sketched a scheme—one perhaps of many—for arresting the decline of breeding among professional workers....
Contents
Book I: These Happy Homes