the maximum amount of benefit to it, to my
first child, and to myself?" Clearly, if it is to be a playmate for the
first child, you will want to have it as soon as possible. But, in
fairness to both the mother and the child-to-be, there should elapse a
period of about two years between the birth of the first and the
conception of the second offspring. Less time than that will seldom
allow the mother, who put so much of her best blood and bone into
building and nursing the first baby, to recover fully her maximal
physical health and strength. All authorities are agreed on this point.
There may be exceptions, of course, and there are always mothers who, by
reason of having married late, perhaps, are anxious to have as many
babies as quickly as possible. But most women neither can nor will nor
should produce children in this fashion. There is too much risk of
weakening the mother's body and of begetting poor stock.

Later children may be spaced to suit the desires of the parents, a
recovery period of two years or more always being allowed the mother.
But will there be any later children? Dr. Ellsworth Huntington in his
contribution to this volume has told us that most of us who are not
shiftless and incompetent, on one hand, or wealthy and well-established,
on the other, belong to a group in which the average number of
children, including those who die young, is fewer than three. Dr.
Huntington rightly deplores this "rapid fall of the birthrate,
especially among intelligent, far sighted, industrious, progressive
people whose ideals of family life are high." The trouble with a family
of fewer than three is that it cannot be counted on to project very far
into the future those sound souls, that good biological inheritance,
which the parents flatter themselves are so definitely worth preserving.
A family of two or even three children will not, on the average, produce
two who, by becoming parents, may be thought of as replacing their
father and mother. Thus a family of fewer than four children may be said
to be dying out. This is a sorry state of things for those parents who,
as I said above, like to think of themselves as affecting the destinies
of the race by transmitting their best characteristics from generation
to generation.

When intelligent people are forced to limit their families to one or two
children by lack of money, it is a great pity. There is a great
abundance of good things in America, but we do not seem to