ate is so small that population is little
more than stationary. In the United States the native birth-rate tends
to decline, while the rate of immigrant foreigners greatly exceeds it.
The higher the degree of comfort and luxury in the home the smaller
the birth-rate seems to be a principle of social experience. There are
selfish people who shirk the responsibilities and troubles of
parenthood, and there are social diseases that tend to sterility, but
the childless home is always an incomplete home. Children are the
crown of marriage, the enrichment of the home, the hope of society in
the future. The needs of the children stimulate parents to unselfish
endeavor. Children are the comfort of the poor and distressed. The
wedded life of a human pair may be ideal in every other respect, but
one of the main functions of marriage is unaccomplished when the
family remains incomplete.

48. =The Right to be Well-Born.=--The child comes into the home in
obedience to the same primary instinct that draws the parents to each
other. He calls out the affections of the parents and their
intellectual resources, for he is dependent upon them, and often taxes
their best judgment in coping with the difficulties that beset child
life. But they often fail to realize that the child has certain
inalienable rights as an individual and a potential member of society
that demand their best gifts.

There is first the right to be well-born. There is so much to contend
with when once ushered into the world, that a child needs the best
possible bodily inheritance. He needs to be rid of every encumbrance
of physical unfitness if he is to live long and become a blessing and
not a burden to society. Handicapped at the start, he cannot hope to
achieve a high level of attainment. It is little short of criminal for
a child to be condemned to lifelong weakness or suffering, because his
parents were not fit to give him birth. Yet large numbers of parents
make the thought of child welfare subordinate to their own desires. A
man's primary concern in choosing a wife is his own personal
satisfaction, not the birth and mothering of his children. Many young
women regard the attractiveness, social position, or wealth of a young
man as of greater consequence than his physical or moral fitness to
become the father of her children. There are thousands of persons who
are mentally deficient or unmoral, who nevertheless are unrestrained
by society from association and eve