t healthy children, nor indeed can they, in
many cases, manage even to bear them. As everyone knows, women afflicted
with tuberculosis, heart disease, and kidney changes should probably
refrain from bearing children. But this is a matter for the doctor to
decide. Such people, if their troubles are not severe, may safely bear
at least one child, sometimes two. They should put themselves in the
hands of a good physician and rely implicitly on his findings and
advice. Sufferers from venereal diseases should not attempt to beget
children till they have been given a clean bill of health. Nor should
children be begotten when the body is weakened by temporary disease or
during the stage of debilitating after-effects. For disease and fatigue
affect sex cells unfavorably. So do mental strain, depression and
overexcitement. Unhealthy physical and mental states in the parents lead
to debilitated or deficient offspring. They open the way to the
operation of undesirable hereditary factors which generations of
self-controlled parents have been driving into the background and
attenuating to the point of disappearance. It is possible for the
father, too, to weaken his vitality by excessive sexual activity. In
fine, the best time for conception to take place is when the lovers'
sense of well-being, physical as well as mental, is at its fullest.

Full-bodied passion, which we may think of as a kind of crisis of love
and health, will give us offspring to be proud of. One thing we cannot
plan, however, is the sex of the child to come. Nor should we, in
general, wish to. It was the limited sphere of feminine activities that
once tended to make girls a debit, boys a credit. Nowadays girls have
just as many opportunities of becoming interesting human beings as have
boys. It is a favorite theory of my husband's that they may, and often
do, become more interesting, because they can do not only everything
that boys can do but one thing more--they can bear children, a
humanizing experience of the greatest possible value.

Should you wish to know what are your chances of having twins, I must
remind you that the tendency to give birth to them is an inherited
trait, especially through the father. Twins are much more likely to be
girls than boys, and to be born later rather than earlier in the
mother's married life. Thus it is three times more likely that a woman
of thirty-eight will give birth to twins than that a woman of
twenty-four will do so. S