ECONOMICS OF LARGE FAMILIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 227, 25 September 1930, Page 22

ECONOMICS OF LARGE FAMILIES.

I wonder if all the people- who condemn birth control have had, say, 14 children, or do they belong to a family of 14, ag I do. I don't intend to string a lot of theories together. Suffice to say I was one of fourteen children, and the struggle and misery of my family life would fill a book. I now am married, and have two healthy, happy children. That is as many as I can afford to bring up decently. Although I was brought up in, the, Catholic faith, no priest will ever convince me that I should have more children than I can keep in food and a reasonable amount of healthy comfort. If life is hardly 'worth living for a woman in New Zealand who has 14 children, I wonder what it is like in the slums of London, where six or eight children and mother and father are often housed in one room without sanitation. I hftve formed my opinions, not from theory, but from experience, which is, after all, the best teacher. Of courge, I do not believe in abortion, and that ia where tho necessity of teaching birth control comes in. Self-control, I believe in and practice, but ask any medical man what complete abstinence results in. Repression will breed suspicion, discontent, unhappiness, and ultimately a broken home in most cases, if not insanity. ''Whom God has joined together in love let no. man put asunder." God meant man to live happily and ; harmoniously. It is a.pity so many people have such a distorted opinion of God and cannot believe it. When God gave man a brain he expected him to use ft, and so control his ljfe as to make it happy and harmonious to himself and all around him. NON-THEORIST FATHER.