family. The teaching now being advocated by certain books and
pamphlets advises deliberate delay in child-bearing for a period after
marriage, and the spacing of certain periods between the births of
such children as are allowed to come into the world, with limitation
of the number in each family.

Teaching on these lines, if followed, would involve an artificial mode
of sex life always--natural spontaneous union would find no place.
Already young wives are seeking advice for some relief from methods of
preparation which they say have destroyed in them all spontaneous
desire. The tragedy of it all is that even to attain the end in
view--moderation in the size of families--such methods are to a large
extent unnecessary. Not to every young married couple does a child
arrive at the end of a year. Some, using no artificial checks, wait
two or three years before the first baby comes. Even if it does come,
however, at the end of a year, there are many advantages to
counterbalance the small means and perhaps hard living of the young
pair. For when people are young they can put up with small means,
because they are strong enough to work hard and help each other;
indeed, the demand for little work and many luxuries in youth is not a
healthy one, it is a sign of decadence in the race.

Moreover, even though an early family involve real hardship for
awhile, it has the great advantage that parents and children later on
are still young together, and that means far more to the child in
understanding friendship and helpfulness during the most critical
period of life than extra comforts or pleasures would have meant to
the parents, and if young parents realised this, would they not put
the child first?