without necessarily incurring these responsibilities and limitations.

It is the knowledge of these physiological laws and the practice of
rules arising out of that knowledge, that account for the declining
birth-rate of civilized nations.

If it be true that the birth-rate is controlled by a voluntary effort on
the part of married people to limit their families, and that that effort
implies self restraint and self denial, it would not be too much to
claim that those most capable of exercising self-control and with the
strongest motives for such exercise, are those most responsible for the
declining birth-rate, and that those with least self-control and the
fewest motives for exercising the control they have, are most likely to
have the normal number of children.

It has already been suggested, that the desire to limit families is due
to a consciousness of responsibility on the part of prospective
parents. They realise the stress of competition in the struggle for
existence, they are anxious for their own pecuniary and social
stability, and even more anxious that the children, for whose birth they
are responsible, should be provided with the necessities and comforts of
life which health and development require. They are eager, too, that
their children should be equipped with a good education, and thus be
given a fair advantage in the race of life.

To the great mass of people this is possible only when the numbers of
the family are limited. As the numbers of the family increase, the
difficulties of clothing and feeding and educating increase, and each
member is the poorer for every birth, and in this sense an increasing
birth-rate is a cause of poverty. The sense in which poverty causes a