The so-called advantages of a few years between one child and the next
so that the parents may give fuller care and attention to each, are
far outweighed from the child's point of view by the advantages of
playmates in the nursery of nearly its own age, who are a source of
education in the give and take of life such as no adult can supply. If
parents wish to have only three or four children, it is to the
advantage of the mother as well as of the children, to have the little
family early in life--they are then all in the nursery together, and
later all at school, and her life work is in this way so arranged
that she may give most service to the world in addition to carrying on
the race.

Our conclusion is that for mothers and children it is very desirable
that no contraceptives should be used in the early years of married
life.

In the vast majority of families where no restrictions or unnatural
means are used and where mothers nurse their children for eight or
nine months, children only come every two years. Even if a young
couple decide that they cannot afford to bring up more than four
children, they have first to prove that four children will be given
them--in many cases they will not have so many, and as years go by the
fertility of the mother becomes progressively less, so that if
child-bearing is postponed till after thirty, in a certain number of
families no children are born. There are many men and women who
bitterly regret having let the years go by in which children might
have been born to them, and it is only fair that young couples of
to-day should fully understand this risk.