SMALLER FAMILIES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3101, 9 January 1922, Page 7

SMALLER FAMILIES.

The second International Congress on eugenics, held recently in New York, was marked by a succession of speeches reflecting somewhat pessimistic views of the future of the human race owing to the rapid increase of the poorer strains and the breeding out of the best stocks. The president of the Congress, Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, bewailed, the growth of an individualism which threatened the existence of the family, its motto being: “Let us obey our own impulses let us create our own standards; let .each'individual enjoy bis own rights and privileges—for to-morrow the race dies.’’ He illustrated his views by the development of New England, which in the course of a century has witnessed the passage from a many-child family to the one-child family, and observed that the next stage would be the no-child marriage, and the extinction of t’ne stock which laid the foundations of the Republican institutions of tire country. Other speakers urged that the human race 'must study the science of eugenics to save it from going the way of all species of which we have palaeontological records, and becoming extinct. Major Leonard Darwin discouraged the expectations of great achievements by eugenics in the near future, and declared that the results for which ■ eugenists hope might not be noticeable for several hundred years. He emphasised the impossibility of attempting to regulate human mating by legislation, and deplored the popular misconception which credited eugenics with the design of abolishing romance and jnj Deducing cattle-breeding principles into the domestic affairs of human families. Eugenics did not favour the abolition of love. ‘ “If young people were always allowed to follow the natural inclination of their mating it would usually he wise from the standpoint of eugenics, but the many marriages which were made for wealth and social position did not tend to better the human ra(,-e.”