female graduates the lowest fecundity prevails,- 1.6. The relatives of these girls, who do not go to college, are more prolific, 1.89. In England, among female college graduates, there are 1.53 children to a marriage, while the average fertil- ity of English women in the Victorian Year-Book is put down as 4.2. In Engelmann's genealogical records from 1600 to 1750, he found each marriage producing on the average at least six children, a number which at the beginning of the nineteenth century was reduced to 4.5. Benjamin Franklin stated that, one and all considered, each married couple in this country produced eight children. Indeed, Malthus uses the United States and Canada as the basis of his theory for super-fecundation, and, according to his table, the United States leads with a fecundation of 5.2. French Canadians to-day probably exceed all others, with an average fecundity of about 9.2 children per child-bearing mother. In a recent Russian district there were 7.2; in Norway, 5.8 children per family.
Herbert Spencer declared that " absolute or relative infertility is generally produced in women by mental labor carried to excess." This has probably been nowhere better illustrated than by college graduates. Miss Howes found that of 705 graduates, 196 were married, but 66 of these had no children, while the remaining 130 had 232 living children, or 1.7+ each, and had borne 31 who had died. On the important topic of the age of marriage, she says nothing. In Mrs. Sidg- wick's census only 10.25 per cent of the English graduates and 19.5 per cent of their sisters were married, and of these 72.4 and 63.2 per cent respectively had children and of these 9 and 31 per cent were dead. An anonymous writer1 com- putes that of the 27.8 per cent of 2,000 college women who married, 66 per cent had no children. Dewey found that of the married, whom he studied, 37 per cent had no children, although the average number of years of married life was 6.2; 109 bore 202 children, of whom 12 per cent died, and of those who died about one-quarter died from causes con- nected with parturition. If all married female graduates in this report were taken together, there would be 1.2 children to 1 Health and Fertility of Educated Women. Med. Record, 1885, p. 407.
ADOLESCENT GIRLS AND THEIR EDUCATION 603 every five years of married life. If we exclude those bearing no children, there are two children to seven years of married life. The non-graduate English sisters of the four colleges Mrs. Sidgwick included in her survey bore 64 more children than the same number of married graduates. President Thomas, in her valuable monograph, ignores this topic, and there are no available statistics on this subject for Bryn Mawr.
While from the knowledge at hand it is plain that our race would be speedily extinct if it depended upon the rate of replenishment of the educated classes, this is met by the wide- spread view expressed long ago by an intellectually gifted woman,1 that further human evolution requires a decline in fertility. High nervous development augments the complete- ness, intensity, and fulness of individual life, but weakens the power of its transmission. " Evolution is thus seen to pro- vide for the intellectual elevation of woman by constantly de- creasing demands upon her for the performance of those functions which are purely physical." When only an average of two children is required, the barrier to woman's intellectual development will be slight. And she even adds that her sexual life is often in danger of unfolding at the expense of intellect, etc. Is not the reverse true of this class?
Two cultured German ladies,2 who undertook a compre- hensive psychological and sociological study, with the aid of an international committee and questionnaire, have collected opinions and data concerning actresses, female musicians, artists, poets, women devoted to science, journalism, agita- tion, and essay writing, from all of which they are led to conclude that mental work on the part of women in any of the above fields does not interfere with fruitfulness or with nursing. Culture, they deem absolute necessity, and its ideal harmonization with the life of woman a problem practically solved. The individual testimonies are numerous, varied, and interesting, but are by no means all in the line of these con- clusions. The professional women, chiefly considered here, certainly on their own testimony have generally excellent 1 Woman and Skilled Labor, by Frances E. White, M. D. Penn. Mo., July, 2 Mutterschaft und geistige Arbeit, von Adele Gerhard und Helene Simon.
604 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE health; some even insist that pregnancy gives adacd power of work. To be sure, some testify, the children of such women lack imagination, moral quality, affection, and other powers, not perhaps so easily obvious to parents as to others. Indeed, a report might be made out from these data that would strongly confirm views almost exactly the reverse of the conclusions of these authors.
My statistics,1 gathered, like those on marriage-rate, from three colleges by correspondence with the class secretaries, are as follows: The total number of children born to the 55.4 per cent of Vassar graduates of the first ten classes ending with that of 1876 who married was 365, or 3.09 per mother, or 2.03 per married member, 58 married members having no children. Of the next ten classes, ending with that of 1886, 294 children had been born up to the spring of 1903, 2.57 per mother, or 1.53 per married member, 78 married members having no children. The 28 per cent married of the graduates of the next ten years, ending in 1896, bore 135 chil- dren, or 1.58 per mother, or 0.79 per married member, 84 mar- ried members having no children. Of the Smith graduates of the first ten years, ending with the class of 1888, had been born in the spring of 1903, 315 children, 2.08 per mother, or 1.99 per married member, 7 having no children, and 26 chil- dren having died. Of six of the next ten classes ending with that of 1898, reporting, there were 161 children, or 1.22 per mother, or 0.77 per married member, 78 married members having no children, and 9 children having died. Of the eight out of the first ten classes of Wellesley, ending with that of 1888, reporting, there were 311 children, or 2.37 per mother, or i. 8 1 per married member, 40 married members having no children, and of these children 25 were dead. Of five of the ten Wellesley classes, ending with that of 1898, reporting, there were 176 children, or 1.67 per mother, or 1.04 per mar- ried member, 64 married members having no children, and 1 1 children having died. These figures need no comment.
Turning to male colleges, we find that of the Harvard classes graduating from 1860 to 1878, the average number 1 See Marriage and Fecundity of College Men and Women. Fed. Sem., Sep- ADOLESCENT GIRLS AND THEIR EDUCATION 605 of children per married man ranges between the extreme of 1.83 and 2.71. The classes 1870 to 1879 average 1.95 per married man and 1.43 per graduate. Amherst shows a steady decline from four and five children in the earlier decades till, for the six classes ending with that of 1878, the extremes are 2.4, and 2.92 per father. At Wesleyan the six classes ending with that of 1870 show a maximum of 2.71 and a minimum of 1.37 per married man. At Yale the classes 1872 to 1878 average 1.96 per married man, and 1.27 per graduate. At Bowdoin the classes 1871 to 1877 average only 1.23 per class member. The size of families of male grad- uates has greatly declined, those of six and more being once frequent and now very rare, while families of one, two, and three children only have increased. This is due to many causes, economic and other. Engelmann concludes that the " male college graduate does more toward reproducing the population than does the native American of other classes." 1 But these data for native fecundity are based only on certain classes in two cities and are therefore too meager, while this standard of comparison should be the country. The delay of marriage is often very marked, and the increasing number of men who do marry and have no children now ranges all the way from 10 to 30 per cent. The record of children who die is too incomplete for inferences or comparisons. It would certainly seem that college men who do marry have little if any advantage in fecundity over college women, and that the higher education is sterilizing in its results for both in nearly the same degree. Even families where either parent is a graduate, especially if infant mortality is taken into account, fall considerably short of reproducing themselves, while if we consider classes as wholes, women are nearly twice as far from doing so as men, because but half as many of them marry. Any college that depended on the children of its graduates would be doomed to extinction, less than one- seventh of the entering classes of Harvard, e. g., being de- scendants of previous graduates. Colleges have grown and educated classes increased till some professions are over- crowded, but old families are being plowed under and lead- 1 The cause of race decline is not education. Pop. Sci. Monthly, June, 1903.
606 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE ers are recruited from the class below, so that the question of race suicide is a very different matter, and the bearing of these facts upon the question of shortening the college course less direct. Perhaps the inference from all these facts is that the stage of apprenticeship to life should be prolonged, if graduates represent the advance guard of progress, bearing the chief burden of the advance and often falling in the front line of battle, because success is ever harder and progress ever more costly. To give $10,000 tastes and aspirations on $1,000 incomes tends to delay and perhaps repress the desire for a family, and the best years for genesis are lost. Once marriage and children were felt to be religious, if not also patriotic, duties, and now many, but not all, bachelors who shirk it without adequate excuse should perhaps be taxed pro- gressively beyond a certain age. In the best periods of the best races, too, there has been a wholesome sentiment that both wedlock and parenthood were needed for the full matur- ity of the individual, and that if this stage of development was not attained, the moral, mental, and physical nature was liable to warp.
(a) Galton has shown us by convincing figures that if a woman is not married before twenty-eight and the man a few years later, even the most fertile races are doomed to extinc- tion far sooner than those with low natality, because there are not enough children born after this age to keep up the popu- lation. [< Postponement of marriage on the part of a woman conduces to infertility, as the reproductive system, if unused, becomes inoperative." About one- fourth of the children born are of mothers whose age does not exceed twenty-four, ac- cording to Coghlan,1 and before women pass their twenty- eighth year they give birth to one-half their offspring. Women who marry after thirty can not expect more than two children, and after twenty-six not more than three. The age of women at marriage is the chief factor in determining the number of her children, the younger the more numerous the offspring, and this rule appears to hold even where the woman marries at an immature age. The proportion of fertile marriages is becoming very gradually less in most civilized lands.
1 Childbirth in New South Wales. A Study in Statistics. Sydney, 1899.
ADOLESCENT GIRLS AND THEIR EDUCATION 607 (b) Again, unless we insist on extreme Weismannism, as few biologists now do, we must admit that children born of generations of cultured ancestry have some advantage, even though their parents do not live to see their birth, over those born of the lowest classes, postnatal environment and nurture being the same in the two cases. If this be so, each generation ought to add a little, infinitesimal though it be, to progress in that most ancient form of wealth and worth which birth bestows, so that rotation of classes, while it may have many advantages, is thus bought at a very dear price.
(r) Another principle involved, suggested by the statistics of natality and by biological considerations, is that, while children born of parents slightly immature are liable to remain undeveloped, or, at least, have peculiar difficulties in coming to full maturity of powers of mind and body, those born of parents in slightly post-mature years tend more or less to pre- cocity. The generalization here important is that by youthful parents heredity is more confined to older and lower qualities, so that those who attain sexual maturity early do not advance the phyletic series. Species and individuals, on the other hand, that attain propagative power late, make for progress of the stock, because they have not only the wealth of heredity in its completeness, but contribute individual additions, in- finitesimal though they may be. Very early marriages, there- fore, tend to the decay of culture and civilization, and all con- ditions that make for its " neotenia " are retrogressive, and each generation must reacquire everything anew because young parents transmit nothing not transmitted to them. Conversely, if we follow Mehnert,1 hyperheredity due to long delay of propagation may be a factor for accounting for the overgrowth of the horns of certain stags, some of the monsters of the geologic past, and other hypertrophied organs of individual species and functions, even those of genius.
(d) Closely connected with this is a law brought out with ominous suggestiveness by child study, viz., that only children, and, to some extent, offspring limited to a pair of children, tend to be feeble and need special care.
(e) Another general consideration also pertinent in this 1 Biomechanik. E. Mehnert, Jena, 1898.
6o8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE discussion is, that the children of the rich tend to be prema- turely or over-individualized, and those of the poor to be under-individualized by their postnatal environment, even where the age of parenthood remains the same.
(/) Not only are families produced by parents who marry late, small; but another consideration, often overlooked in this discussion, is that they are still more outbred by those who marry young, because, while the latter have four or some- times even five generations per century, the former have per- haps three or even less. This reduces still more the ratio of increase.
(g) Yet another principle which I think may be sug- gested as following from the above is that if the children of post-mature parents mature early, such children themselves, if they marry, should do so earlier than those who mature late; hence, if they marry at the same age at which their parents did, they are biologically and psychologically older when they do so than were their parents, so that the evils of post-mature fertility increase in successive generations even if the age of marriage remains the same.
(h) One test of the complete domestication of an animal species is not only that it tends to grow larger than its wild congeners, but to breed well. This, too, is a test of the possi- bility of permanent captivity. Now, if we consider civiliza- tion as the domestication of man by himself, we may apply this criterion as an effective test of its soundness. This prin- ciple, too, would seem to apply to any trade or industry, or to any social class, or to educated classes. If so, it follows either that education is per se bad, when considered from a large racial point, or else that a postulate is laid upon us to find, as the right way of education, one which shall not tend to sterility. Otherwise, if higher education became universal, posterity would gradually be eliminated and the race pro- gressively exterminated by schools and teachers.
With these ideas in view a peculiar pathos attaches to those who early in life have not wanted offspring, but do so when it begins to be a little too late. Many such parents con- sole themselves by lavishing upon one or two care enough for half a dozen children. The result of this is, that instead of broadening by retarding their development, their offspring are ADOLESCENT GIRLS AND THEIR EDUCATION 609 robbed of many elements of a proper childhood, pass too rap- idly over the developmental stages, and are hastened on to maturity by the excessive stimulus of too much adult environ- ment and influence and too little wise neglect. They are in- fected too early with the insights and sometimes even the sentiments of early senescence, and show all the mingled charm and sadness of precocity. Their life has the flavor of fruit that ripens before its time. The buds are picked open and the tree of knowledge blooms and bears its fruit too early. A larger view is that we must develop such a system of higher education as shall conserve youth and increase not only viabil- ity but natality.
Excessive intellectualism insidiously instils the same aver- sion to " brute maternity " as does luxury, overindulgence, or excessive devotion to society. Just as man must fight the battles of competition, and be ready to lay down his life for his country, so woman needs a heroism of her own to face the pain, danger, and work of bearing and rearing children, and whatever lowers the tone of her body, nerves, or morale so that she seeks to escape this function, merits the same kind of opprobrium which society metes out to the exempts who can not or who will not fight to save their country in time of need. In an ideal and progressive state those exempted from this function would be at the bottom among those least fitted to survive, but where the birth-rate goes down in proportion to intelligence and education, either the principle of the survival of the best is false or else these classes are not the best, or are impaired by their training or environment. While we need not consider the cranky and extreme left wing of this movement, which strives to theoretically ignore and prac- tically escape the monthly function, or the several coteries of half-cultured scientific women, personally known to the writer, who devote time, money, and effort to investigating artificial methods of gestation (which will probably be arrived at when Ludwig's humorous dream of injecting prepared chyme into the veins and dispensing with eating and the alimentary tract to release lower nutritive energy for higher uses is realized), we find wide-spread among the most cultured classes the one or two child system which would atone for numbers by lav- ishing wealth and even care to safeguard and bring the few 6 io THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE to the highest possible development. But only children are usually twice spoiled — first by enfeebled heredity at birth, and second by excessive care and indulgence, as Bohannon 1 has shown. The enfeebled nature of only children often needs exceptional incubating all through childhood and youth, but with the decline of reproductive vigor not only the wise neg- lect but the sound motherly good sense in treatment is prone also to lapse toward the senile and grandmotherly overfoster- ing, so that partial sterility always involves the danger of perverted motherly instincts. From a biological point of view, there is an unutterable depth of pathos in the almost morbid oversolicitude of the invalid and highly educated mother for an only child to whom she has transmitted her enfeebled exist- ence, and among the decadent families of New England this spectacle is not infrequent.
As Augustine said, the soul is made for God and is not happy till it finds rest in him, so woman's body and soul are made for maternity and she can never find true repose for either without it. The more we know of the contents of the young woman's mind the more clearly we see that everything conscious and unconscious in it points to this as the true goal of the way of life. Even if she does not realize it, her wrhole nature demands first of all children to love, who depend on her for care, and perhaps a little less, a man whom she heartily respects and trusts to strengthen and perhaps protect her in discharging this function. This alone can complete her being, and without it her sphere, however she shape it, is but a hemi- sphere; she is a little detraque, and her destiny is more or less disarticulated from her inmost and deepest nature. All ripe, healthful, and womanly women desire this, and if they attain true self-knowledge confess it to themselves, however loath they may be to do so to others, and some who attain it too late wear their lives out in regret. Nothing can ever quite take its place, without it they are never completely happy, and every other satisfaction is a little vicarious. To see this is simple common sense and to admit it only common honesty. In an ideal society, with ideal men in it, woman's education should focus on motherhood and wifehood, lfThe Only Child in a Family. Fed. Sem., April, 1898, vol. v, pp. 475-496.
ADOLESCENT GIRLS AND THEIR EDUCATION 611 and seek in every way to magnify these functions and to invest them with honor.
But the world is not right, and this career is not always optimal. Man is not always manly, but prone to be selfish and even sensuous, and so woman must strive to make the best of- the second best and follow the principle of cypres, which English law admits for wills when it is impossible to carry them out exactly according to the testator's intent. This by no means signifies that every woman who takes to other absorbing pursuits has been disappointed. Happily for her, perhaps she often does not know her true rights but miscon- strues them. She often loses a little light-heartedness, but is not consciously, or it may be even unconsciously, wearing off heartache. She feels a little lack of purpose. She had tasted adoration and felt her womanhood a noble thing, and in its place comes a little distrust, her self-respect is not quite so invincible, and she catches herself at self- justifica- tion that she is unwed. Her yesterdays seem a little dusty and her to-morrows a trifle faded. She craves something dif- ferent and afar, and drags her anchor and perhaps slips adrift. Her joy in the many substitutes provided for her true happi- ness is nervously intense, yet she is harder to please and feels a trifle at odds with the world. As the years pass she perhaps grows fastidious and lavishes care upon herself, her regimen and toilet, and becomes, what I believe there is justification for calling, overcleanly in her person and all its surroundings in a way that suggests misophobia. She craves the costly; if unoccupied, grows inactive, luxurious, capricious, and freaky even in appetite, or gives herself up to Vanity Fair and de- velops a peculiar Americanized type, or else, in store or office, goes a trifle off in dress or form. Her disposition sags from its wonted buoyancy and the haze of ill health slowly gathers in her horizon. Her opinion of men is less favorable, and she perhaps at last falls a conscious prey to the gospel of the feminists, and learns that for ages woman was a drudge and man a brute whom women should now rise and subdue or at least insist for herself on all his rights and positions.
Fortunately few and now ever fewer reach this extreme. Among the greatest achievements of our race, I esteem the work of woman, largely in the last generation or two, in work- 612 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE ing out manifold new careers for herself, wherein those whom men exclude from it can rebuild so fair a substitute for their original Eden. So happy can the unwed now be in self-support- ing vocations of charity, teaching, art, literature, religious and social vocations, and lighter manual callings requiring skill, fidelity, taste, in many of which lines she naturally excels man, that she finds not only consolation but content and joy. Here she is making the best possible original solution of her great problems, imposed on her by existing conditions, while many declared she could never do so, and no lover of his kind can fail to bid her so hearty a godspeed in all these endeavors. Those who see most clearly that bad conditions have forced her to compromise with her ideals, most fervently trust that her success in so doing may never make them forgotten.
VI. Education. — The long battle of woman and her friends for equal educational and other opportunities is essentially won all along the line. Her academic achievements have forced conservative minds to admit that her intellect is not inferior to that of man. The old cloistral seclusion a'nd exclu- sion is forever gone and new ideals are arising. It has been a noble movement and is a necessary first stage of woman's emancipation. The caricatured maidens " as beautiful as an angel but as silly as a goose," who come from the kitchen to the husband's study to ask how much is two times two, and are told it is four for a man and three for a woman, and go back with a happy " Thank you, my dear "; those who love to be called baby, and appeal to instincts half parental in their lovers and husbands; those who find all the sphere they desire in a doll's house, like Nora's, and are content to be men's pets; whose ideal is the clinging vine, and who take no interest in the field where their husbands struggle, will perhaps soon sur- vive only as a diminishing remainder. Marriages do still occur where woman's ignorance and helplessness seem to be the chief charm to men, and may be happy, but such cases are no farther from the present ideal and tendency on the one