THE DECLINING BIRTHRATE

Evening Star, Issue 12162, 5 April 1904, Page 3

THE DECLINING BIRTHRATE

[From Oub Sydney Cobeesfondent.]

.According to ' Paulding's Medical Journal,' a creditable Adelaide publication, "a vast amount of hysterical nonsense is being written abous Australia's declining birth-rate" More population is oadly needed, but whether the p<M>ple should hast-va \o remedy the matter by multiplying their families, as their grandmothers did, « a question. While there is much m the Royal Commission's report which is sound and sensible, there is also a good deal which is absurd. The Commission insist that a vast amount of artificial prevention of conception is practised "Now," remarks the journal, "it is very well known that prevention of conception need not be entirely set down to the discredit of artificial means. "Wiser than their progenitors, the modern, woman is aware that personal restraint will largely bring • about the cud she desires. Personal restraint, we are told by all religious teachers, is a much-to-ue-oosired thing, but it seems to be the exception to the rule when applied to the limitation of families. Women are the most vitally concerned, after all. in the controversy. 1 3 the be-all and the end-all of a woman's life to he the production of children? Must she, frcm the dawn of her womanhood to the end of her life, devote her energies, her health, her every welfare, her first thought, and her last care to the bringing into the world of babies? It is all very well to answer Yes. The concern at the decreasing birth-rate in Australia—we need not go outside our own country—arises from a class whose material comfort in this world is placed beyond the rr.nions of doubt and care. Being well-to-do, able to procure the good things of life, and with a capacity to enjoy them, they express worry at a growing c'ondiiion of things which, if'not stopped, may lead to a curtailment of their pleasant positions. They desire to see so many Australian babies born that the country shall grow into a great and powerful nation, which will mean a larger and stronger leisured class. And yet i.iuW fairly wealthy people are the worst offenders in the direction they condemn. It seems to be the rule that the wealthiest people hare the fewest children, whilst the pooro~i> people .have the largess families. The well-to-do woman avoids maternity because she wishes to devote herself to social pleasures, whilst the poor woman, not possessing the knowledge that her wealthy sister has, or the same means for enjoying life, sees her family cares increase to such an extent that they sometimes overwhelm her. The cares of the poor mother with many children are unceasing. She becomes the slave of her family, anxiously drudging from morning till night, and far beyond, to meet their manv wants. When the children are grown up and can shift for themselves, the mother's health is frequently so broken down that existence can offer her no recompensing pleasures. A certain philosopher has said that ' to children sacrifices must ever be offered, and from them none can be obtained.' It is the position of ninety mothers out of every hundred. The condition of woman <s each day changing from what it was when our grandmothers were girls. For good or for ill, the domestic hearth and the cares attaching to it is not now considered to be the sole sphere of women. Their claims to a freer, if not a better, existence; their aspirations for some of the mind and bodyexpanding liberties which meu have so long enjoyed; their wish to be something more than the mere producing machines of humanity, while at the same time not forgetting tho responsibility which m the scheme of creation has been laid upon them, are now being given effect to as never before. Woman's education—and, consequently, her power.! of thought—is now equal to that of man, and with her new knowledge she is, at least in Australia, coming to the conclusion that with two or three children instead of eight or ten her life and theirs can be made happier and better. The New South Wales Commissioners, in their paroxysms of evil prophecy, even refer to the Russo-Japan-ese War. They point out that with the present rate of increase Australia will be 168 years before it reaches the population of Japan, estimated at forty millions. Well, that strikes us 3S constituting a very fair rate of progress. If it is not fast enough for the philosophers who are worrying about it, it would be as well if we altered our code of moral conditions so as to provide for more pace. As matters are, the vork of procreation is held to be the duty cf the married only. A woman who produces a child out of wedlock is subjected to an amount of social and legal obloquy that makes her a disgraceful member of -;he community, although her 'nfant may, in every way, be as physically and mentally fit to serve the State as the child born of parents who have undergone a twentyminutes' religious or civil ceremony. If the Commonwealth must have population quickly, a3 is urged, it follows that, as the legally and socially qualified are unwilling to do all that is required of them, those who are lit, but are at present barred, should be allowed to make up the deficiency without the stigma that attaches to them for so doing under present conditions. We do not, of course, seriously advocate such a course, because we do not think that the welfare of the nation is so jeopardised as is thought; but the alteration suggested is a logical sequence of the ' more population' outcry. What is wanted is the saving of tho Eves of the children already born, and, as the ' natural' child is every whit as valuable as the child of married parents, there should be State maternity homes, where the single mothers and their offspring would receive every attention, and not, as now too often the case be left to work cut their shame and their doom," The experience of "A Mother of Twelve," who writes to the Sydney 'Daily Telegraph,' does not present an alluring picture. This is her story:—"Twenty-nine years ago n..y husband and myself began married life on very small .means—merely what sufficed to furnish a small house. My husband worked in a nune at £2 8s per week. Being a dressmaker, I still continued to take in vhat work I was able to do between the household duties. Living out back, where everything was very dear, even with both earning, we could save but little weekly. Bowever, babies came, who, of course, were welcome ; but we had to work harder. Eventually we managed to open a little shop in a very; small way, I also taking in all the sewing I could manage to do, and my husband still working. At first I could not afford to keep even a girl to help with the children. Later on I managed that. Well. w« struggled on year after year, graudally getting a little better ofL After twelve years in that little shop, whbh had been made bigger, we moved to a rush (goldfidd), and opened a store, taking vitii us seven children. My husband took charge of the store, myself and our oldest son helping. And now, after thirteen more wars, we own the allotment of land, with fair-sized store on it, also a small farm a ;hort distance out of town, a fair stock of goods, ond twelve children, aged from 28 to 3£ years. As a set-off, this has meant for myself and husband, also some of the elder children, years of slavery; we have a mortgage of £SOO over the property, an account for Government seed wheat, £2OO owing to merchants, a very middling crop my husband too old for hard work, myself about ditto, six small children under fifteen, and the country round us in as dull a state as it is possible to be from a business point of view. My eldest daughter and her husband, also a son, have gone to another colony, for since the droughts they found it impossible to make a living in this. New what a prospect is before us after half a lifetime of hard work, sparing little time for pleasure? How are our younger children to fare if we do not recover our former position, which seems very doubtful ? Who could blame us if we had restricted our family to, say, six—a large p amily as families now go? What will the Government do for us? Will they forego the payments on land, or the account for seed, cr 'iay eff our mortgage for us? Surely we have been fulfilling our duty to our country, especially *as our friends say we have a fam-ly to be proud of. I could fill a book of similar cases of struggling parents, many worse off than we are. with large famines. Can you bit me them if no more children are born to them? I cannot see the immoral side of toe qtestion, although I consider myself a God-fear-ing respectable woman. Why should the parents be complete slaves all their l.ves, the mothers especially? Only the poor but conscientious mother knows her endless trials and sufferings, and often and olten privations as well."A despairing note is raised by a correspondent to the same journal signing himself "One of a Degenerate Raie." He relates how his father was induced to emigrate from Scotland by the glowing pictures painted by the latj Dr J, D. Lang while lecturing on luhalf of the Government of New South Wales. He goas on:—"The writer having come to' middle-age, and spent the greater pari of his life in Australia, conscientiously believes that the first and greatest misfortune which in a somewhat varied career has befallen him, was that he was born and reared beneath the Southern Cross. He sees himself looking old before his time—looking older, in fact, at five-and-forty than does bis sturdy siro a*, three score and ten. He sees himself (although both parents still live, mentally and physically alert and vigorous) the last sad survivor of a family of ten, like himself, AustraE-tn-born. What killed them? Australia. 'Maaa±. jEnUuxe, haoa.' said. tha..

aoctors; consumption there,' * pneumonia in this case,' 'child-birth in that.' But what was tho predisposing cause? The deadly climate of all but our tablelands. Not a deadly chmato ; n ife sense that New Guinea or the West Coast of Africa are such, -with malaria, which slays with awful swiftness; but none the less deadly, in that it enervates that it lowers the vitality, till the flame of life goes out after years of undor-health. That is why everybody feels tired, and the reason why the bustling native of a bracing climate declares the Australians to bo a 'lazy lot,' interested only in dress and sport—the latest cricket score or the result of a horse race. We are firmly convinced that we arc a nation of giants and athletes, whereas we are m the main but a poor lot, weedy and anaemic. Let us cultivate the art of seeing, and we shall fm.l that, compared with representatives of the race from which we have sprung, wo are sadly inferior. Instead of the sturdy British type, not always tall, but square-shouldered, deep-chested, bright-eyed, and rosy, retaining the vigor and freshness of youth to advanced age; in comparison with all this, we are narrow-chested, ill-pro-portioned, dull-eyed, and. sallow. Here and there an exception—a man from Snowy River or New England, only to be distinguished frcm the ancestral type by some peculiarities of speech. Tlio writer has yet to sec the Australian woman whose looks—face and figure—survive the test of maternity. Marriage and motherhood wreck her hopelessly. So narrow of shoulder have wo become that the tailor's art is requisitioned to supplv, by much padding, that breadth and squareness ■which Nature has denied us. ' Like produces like' is the stock-breeder's axiom. That is true, but only in a like climate. Because the early colonists and later ones commonly attain advanced age in Australia, tho suitability of (he climate to white men is not thereby established. Such may defy the climate by reason of their constitutional vigor, whereas their Australian-burn sons and daughters, lacking that advantage, and being reared under hothouse, conditions of atmosphere, are far from being, as is generally claimed, acclimatised —are, in reality, less capable of exertion, and in all respects inferior to their parents. Who. then, will say lhat our diminishing population is an unmixed evil? What can be expeeted of degenerates but still further degeneration?''