Attention will be called here to only three. The first is the
degradation of the marital relation itself, since the husband and wife
who indulge in any form of this practice come to have a lower idea of
married life. They cannot help coming to regard each other to a great
extent as mutual instruments of sensual gratification, rather than as
cooperators with the Creating in bringing children into the world. This
consideration may be subtle but it undoubtedly represents the facts.
"In the second place, the deliberate restriction of the family through
these immoral practices deliberately weakens self-control and the
capacity for self-denial, and increases the love of ease and luxury. The
best indication of this is that the small family is much more prevalent
in the classes that are comfortable and well-to-do than among those
whose material advantages are moderate or small. The theory of the
advocates of Birth Control is that those parents who are comfortably
situated should have a large number of children (SIC!) while the poor
should restrict their offspring to a much smaller number. This theory
does not work, for the reason that each married couple have their own
idea of what constitutes unreasonable hardship in the matter of bearing
and rearing children. A large proportion of the parents who are addicted
to Birth Control practices are sufficiently provided with worldly goods
to be free from apprehension on the economic side; nevertheless, they
have small families because they are disinclined to undertake the other
burdens involved in bringing up a more numerous family.
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