belief is that a number of children adds to the cares and
responsibilities of life more than they add to its joys and pleasures,
and many have come to think with John Stuart Mill, that a large family
should be looked on with the same contempt as drunkenness.




CHAPTER VII.

WHO PREVENT.


_Desire for family limitation result of our social system._--_Desire and
practice not uniform through all classes._--_The best limit, the worst
do not._--_Early marriages and large families._--_N.Z. marriage rates.
Those who delay, and those who abstain from marriage._--_Good motives
mostly actuate._--_All limitation implies restraint._--_Birth-rates vary
inversely with prudence and self-control._--_The limited family usually
born in early married life when progeny is less likely to be well
developed._--_Our worst citizens most prolific._--_Effect of poverty on
fecundity._--_Effect of alcoholic intemperance._--_Effect of mental and
physical defects._--_Defectives propagate their kind._--_The
intermittent inhabitants of Asylums and Gaols constitute the greatest
danger to society._--_Character the resultant of two forces--motor
impulse and inhibition._--_Chief criminal characteristic is defective
inhibition._--_This defect is strongly hereditary._--_It expresses
itself in unrestrained fertility._