which make it unduly difficult to carry out your decision. Drink
stimulates the sex urge; few decent people would enjoy remembering that
their first sex experience came when they were stimulated by liquor. If
you drink, avoid emotional situations in secret thereafter, until this
stimulus has worn off. If you harass your serenity and loving contacts
by reopening the decision every time you meet, try to do things together
in which this sex element does not present itself as a perpetual
problem. One couple beset each time they were together with the
difficulty of carrying out their decision not to, deliberately decided
to visit art museums together instead of merely "petting"; this new
interest minimized the other problem and gave them something most worth
while to discuss, and it is now one of the many fine things in their
married life.
Margaret Culkin Banning, in _The Reader's Digest_ for August, 1937,
summarizes "The Case for Chastity." For the engaged couple, the
following of her points apply: the girl who is unchaste with her fiancé
often hesitates to get competent medical advice; venereal disease is a
danger; abortions are dangerous physically and emotionally; fear should
never accompany sex; sex experience before marriage may harm sex later
on; one's "moral code" is violated; some discoveries should be saved for
marriage itself; premarital relations stimulate jealousy after marriage;
early marriage is a better solution.
* * * * *
From the sociological standpoint we should take great satisfaction in
the increasingly wise way in which young Americans are approaching
marriage. Fifteen years ago the subject was entirely neglected in our
colleges; today at least 100,000 college boys and girls have the
opportunity to enroll in college courses or to attend discussion
conferences on marriage. Wise men and women have studied the basis for
successful marriage and have written about it. Laws have been changed so
that such books--written by American sociologists, doctors, and
psychiatrists--are generally available in college libraries today.
However, even the best books do not answer all the normal questions
which arise. In many progressive communities marriage clinics have been
established, where both engaged and married persons may secure advice
from wise, trained authorities.
The ideal consultant is a wise family doctor--especially if he has known
both young people from childhood--to whom they can go together for a
personal conference. Sometimes the family minister is wise enough to
give help.
Appropriate knowledge about sex is necessary for the engaged. Sexual
experience is not. Certainly it can now be said--as it could not five
years ago--that no modern marriage need be wrecked because the young
couple did not know where to turn for helpful advice.
_Dr. Ellsworth Huntington_
CHAPTER THREE
_Ought I To Marry?_
"Ought I to marry?" is not a simple question. Its answer is full of a
thousand complications. For the great majority of people it is one of
the three most important questions that are ever answered or left
unanswered in a whole lifetime. The other two are "What is my main
purpose in life?" and "What is to be my occupation?" They are old
questions, but "Ought I to marry?" is new. In the old days everyone was
married as a matter of course. Perhaps in the future the main question
will be, "Am I fit to be married?"
"Ought I to marry?" is really three questions in one. First, "Have I a
right to marry?" Second, "Is it wise for me to marry?" Third, "Is it my
duty to marry?"
You say, perhaps, that these questions are your own business and nobody
else's, but you are wrong. They _are_ somebody else's business, and the
somebodies else are a good deal more numerous than you think. The first
somebody is the man or girl whom you want to marry. Will it be good for
him or her to marry _you?_ The next somebodies are the children whom
you and your mate may have. They have a right to be born with a good
inheritance, to be reared in good health, and to be well trained in a
happy home. Your children's children, too, will have a right to bless
you or curse you, according to your way of answering the question,
"Ought I to marry?"
But even your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are not
all the somebodies who are vitally concerned with your answer. Hundreds
of people will be helped or hindered by your home, by the kind of person
you become under its influence, and by the kind of children who go out
from it. You and "he," or you and "she," are certainly the ones most
immediately concerned in the question "Ought I to marry?" but your
children's stake in the matter is even greater than yours.
Now for the three questions which are implied when you ask, "Ought I to
marry?" First, "Have I a right to marry?" Every young person should ask
this question. Fitness includes several aspects, among which the first
is physical. The most inexcusable unfitness is venereal disease. There
is no meaner crime than for a young man to acquire venereal disease by
reason of weakness of will, and then pass it on to an innocent girl and
perhaps to unborn children. Physicians say that in spite of so-called
modern prophylaxis and supposed cures, syphilis is still alarmingly
common, and other venereal diseases are rampant. A person having any of
these diseases has absolutely no right to marry. Even if he is
pronounced cured, he ought not to marry until a physician pronounces him
cured _beyond danger of recurrence_.
For this reason the strictest premarital examination by a competent
physician should be required. Marriage should be contracted only after
such a physician has given both man and woman a clean bill of health.
This is desirable as a means not only of creating a public opinion
which will express itself in laws, but of giving both parties a feeling
of security. No matter how completely they may trust each other, it is
well to have a physician verify the trust.
Another reason for a complete physical examination before marriage is to
determine whether it is possible for both parties to have children.
Sometimes expert medical advice and treatment make all the difference
between a childless home and one that has the happiness of a
well-rounded family. In every marriage children should be an essential
feature--the most essential feature in the long run. In many countries
sterility is sufficient grounds for divorce. In an ideal civilization
probably no marriage would be permitted between a person who appears to
be sterile and one who appears normal. The sterile would marry the
sterile, and the fertile the fertile. Even in our civilization what
right has anyone to doom his partner to a childless marriage? The
overwhelming majority of people want children. Only the highly
exceptional and pitiable woman is without this desire. The normal man
feels it almost as strongly as the woman when once the little hand of
his own child clasps his finger. Of course unforeseen conditions may
unexpectedly make one partner to a marriage sterile, but that is another
matter and by no means prevents a happy marriage. In certain cases, too,
it may be allowable for a fertile partner to marry one who is known to
be sterile. That should never happen, however, without the fullest
knowledge on the part of both, and without full time to think the matter
over quietly and in complete freedom from the emotional strain caused by
the loved one's frequent presence.
Many childless marriages are rendered not only happy but very useful to
society by the adoption of children. It should always be remembered that
from the standpoint not only of family life but of old age and of
society in general, children are the most important result of marriage.
The worst forms of unfitness for marriage are hereditary, but some
hereditary defects are mild, some terrible. There is much doubt as to
whether many defects are hereditary or are the result of unfavorable
conditions during pregnancy and early infancy. Far too much emphasis is
placed upon external and easily visible defects in comparison with
internal ones which cannot be so readily detected. Such minor hereditary
defects as hare lip or misshaped fingers do not necessarily indicate
unfitness for marriage. They are far less dangerous than hereditary
susceptibility to diseases such as diabetes or weakness of the heart,
which lead to unhappy marriages by reason of frequent illness or early
death. A hereditary tendency toward short-sightedness or defective
teeth, on the contrary, may permit the longest and happiest of
marriages. All inherited defects are regrettable, but practically no one
is free from them in some minor form.
The sensible attitude toward minor hereditary defects is to balance
their real importance against both the good and the bad qualities shown
not only by the individual but by his brothers, sisters, parents, and
other relatives. Conscientious sufferers from visible defects of any
kind are apt to overestimate their importance. Moreover, many supposedly
hereditary defects may equally well be the result of an unfavorable
environment like that which caused similar defects in the parents. Under
ideal conditions they might never appear at all. In such matters, too,
the best course is to consult a good physician. Often, perhaps usually,
the best thing is merely to avoid marriage with a person showing defects
like one's own, and then strive to give your children so good an
environment that only the best in them will have a chance to develop.
Fortunately the vast majority of people inherit a fairly good
assemblage of traits which balance in such a way as to produce normal
human beings.
One type of deficiency, however, renders people genuinely unfit for
marriage. It takes various forms. One form, easily recognized, is what
is commonly called "mental deficiency." By this we mean not merely the
kind of mind found in idiots and imbeciles, but that which appears in
morons and other "high grade" mental weaklings. Such mental weakness, or
feeble-mindedness, is especially dangerous to society because it often
afflicts people who are physically strong and attractive, and who are
eager to marry. When such persons marry, they exercise little
self-control and are likely to have large families. In this respect they
are unlike mental defectives of lower types, who rarely have many
children and whose children are likely to die young. "High grade" mental
defectives tend to marry one another. The result is bad in two ways.
First, if the mental deficiency of one or both parents is hereditary, as
is often the case, children with defective mental capacity are sure to
be born, and will in turn produce other defectives. Second, even if the
defects of the parents are due to accident or disease, the children are
almost sure to be badly brought up.
The chief type of mental weakness is emotional in nature. Here is a
young fellow who as a boy was always a cry-baby and mamma's darling. He
is afraid to stand up for himself, afraid of athletics, afraid of girls;
and, because of all this, he is lonely, morose, and secretive. Here is a
girl of great ability and charm but subject to fits of deep depression.
Another young man loses his temper very easily and cherishes resentment
for a long time over trivial matters. The girl whom he is interested in
is extremely self-conscious and thinks that she is being purposely
slighted unless she is the center of everything. Others, both boys and
girls, are excessively irritable, very suspicious, inordinately
selfish, hysterical, vainglorious, or in other ways show lack of
self-control and emotional stability. Later in life such conditions may
lead to intense misery. Nevertheless traits of this sort are often
combined with very fine qualities in other respects. This renders it
extremely hard to decide whether such persons are fit for marriage.
It is extremely difficult to determine whether emotional instability,
selfishness, and other undesirable traits are due to heredity or
environment. At this point we enter a field of great difficulty because
a trait may be inborn, but not hereditary. A child may be born with
serious handicaps because some ailment due to unfavorable environment
prevented its mother from nourishing it properly before it was born.
Such weakness is not truly hereditary. It will not appear in later
generations unless the mothers of those generations also suffer from
environmental conditions similar to those which prevented the first
mother from nourishing her child. It often happens that such conditions
are repeated from generation to generation. If this happens very early
in the pre-natal life of the child, the results are very likely to be
misinterpreted as hereditary.
In the last few decades the study of heredity has been so fascinating
and fruitful that biologists have given comparatively little attention
to early environmental influences. Recent work, however, suggests that
such influences are far from negligible. My own studies of season of
birth illustrate the matter. They suggest that the effect of physical
environment upon the health of the parents before a child is conceived
has an important effect upon the child's future health and achievement.
Only a hint of the chain of evidence leading to this conclusion is here
possible. Many investigations of deaths, fatigue, work, and disease, as
well as numerous carefully controlled laboratory experiments, indicate
that people feel most comfortable and vigorous, and have the best
health, when the average temperature for night and day together is about
63°. Nothing is more pleasant than a day of this optimum kind in May or
June. At midday the thermometer rises to 70° more or less; at night it
falls low enough so that people sleep soundly and restfully.
A study of season of birth in many countries indicates that children who
are conceived when optimum weather of this kind arrives in the spring
have stronger constitutions and greater powers of application than do
those conceived at any other season. Evidence of constitutional vigor is
found in length of life. In four large groups of Americans and in one of
Italians it has been found that those born in March, and therefore
conceived in June at the time of optimum weather, live longer than those
born at other seasons. Among 39,000 people who were born in the eastern
United States and who lived beyond the age of two years I found that on
an average those born in March lived 3.8 years longer than those born
from July to September.
Other evidence, into which we cannot go, suggests that man, like other
animals, inherits a definite seasonal cycle of reproduction. As the
temperature rises toward the optimum in the spring the functions of the
body change in such a way that not only is there a pronounced feeling of
well-being, but the children conceived at that time have more than the
average vigor, and hence correspondingly long life.
The evidence that these children have greater powers of application, or
at least that some of them do, lies in the birthdays of eminent people
in countries as diverse as India, Spain, Russia, England, France,
Germany, Sweden, and the United States. In all these countries the
percentage of eminent people conceived when the optimum weather prevails
rises much higher than does the corresponding percentage among ordinary
people. Moreover, the greater the degree of eminence, the more marked
is the contrast with people as a whole.
The reason for this condition must be that the vigor which gives to many
people long life gives to highly gifted people a sort of power of steady
application and hard work--an emotional stability--which enables them to
use their faculties to the best advantage. Thus they achieve fame in
greater measure than do equally well-endowed persons with less vigor.
There is not the slightest reason to suppose that children conceived at
one season of the year inherit any better minds than do their brothers
and sisters conceived at other seasons. There is equally little reason
to believe that the average inheritance of mental ability declines as
the period of conception approaches midwinter, the low point in the
seasonal cycle of reproduction. On the other hand, length of life
furnishes evidence that physical vigor varies according to the degree to
which the mothers at least, at the time of a child's conception, have
been under the influence of environmental conditions which assist the
germ cells in developing into vigorous babies. Many studies of eminent
people show that they are uncommonly long-lived. When deaths in war and
by accident are omitted, the average length of life of 11,000 people in
the British _Dictionary of National Biography_ was 71 years. Eminence
and the kind of constitutional vigor that leads to long life go
together.
This brings us back to the problem of fitness for marriage. If the
effect of the weather on the vigor of parents can have such an influence
on health, longevity and achievement, such conditions as diet and mode
of life may produce similar effects. This possibility adds still greater
interest to the two-edged bearing of what we have just been saying upon
the problem of fitness for marriage. In the first place it appears that
an unexpected number of weaknesses which are sometimes considered
hereditary are environmental. Nevertheless, they are also inborn and
cannot easily be eradicated by education. Therefore the chance that
ordinary normal people carry a dangerous heredity is reduced, but the
responsibility of parents to see that their children are properly born
is increased. In the second place, it becomes more evident than ever
that fitness for marriage implies intelligent willingness and
persistence in acting upon the discoveries of science in whatever way
may be best for the unborn child. We have long insisted upon the right
environment for the expectant mother during pregnancy. The new
discoveries suggest that we must insist equally upon the right
environment and manner of life before pregnancy begins.
This brings up a very interesting question upon which biologists are not
agreed. Does what has just been said about the period before pregnancy
apply to the father as well as the mother? Many biologists doubt whether
we have any proof that environmental influence can weaken the sperm
cells of the male in such a way that the offspring are thereby weakened.
Other biologists, such as Professor Pearl, of Johns Hopkins University,
and Professor C. A. Mills, of Cincinnati, have made some interesting
experiments which lead them to believe that sperm cells weakened by
environmental conditions may affect the vitality of the developing
offspring. In short, at the present time there is no agreement among
competent scientific men that the health and mode of life of the father,
as well as of the mother, influence the physical well-being of the
developing child, and thereby affect its emotional stability and other
qualities. Until this question is scientifically settled it is obvious
that the men best fitted for marriage and parenthood are those who act
in such a way that they cannot harm their children no matter which view
is correct.
Let us return once more to the problem of deciding how far the mental
and social characteristics of ourselves and of the persons we are
interested in are due to inheritance and how far to pre-natal and
postnatal environment. In the present state of knowledge no exact
decision is possible. Nevertheless, in some families an undesirable
trait is exhibited by a parent, brothers or sisters, and perhaps by more
distant relatives. In such cases, it is probably inherited, or at least
due to an inherited deficiency or tendency of some sort, and there is a
chance that it may be handed down to the next generation. On the other
hand, many persons who suffer from some form of emotional instability
come from families in which the parents and near relatives appear normal
in this respect. In such cases it is probable that the trait is not
hereditary, but due to some influence in pre-natal life or childhood.
Until the sciences of human genetics and eugenics have made more
progress, the safest way to judge in such matters is by the qualities of
a family as a whole.
Whether you have any doubt about this or not, a thorough examination by
a good physician who is also a psychiatrist and a man of fine character
will be a great help. The physician must frame his judgments for the
good not only of the individual who consults him, but of the prospective
partner, and of the children who may be born to such a couple. Even the
best physician is often unable to decide whether a given defect is
hereditary. He can merely frame an opinion based on the _whole family_.
Young people find it hard to believe that they marry into families, but
they do. As the old Jewish saying puts it, "It is not good to marry a
maid who is the only good maid in her family." The responsibility that
thus rests on physicians is tremendous. That of the young people who
wish to be married is also great, but very different. Theirs is to
submit themselves fully and frankly to the physician's examination and
advice. He may decide that it is safe to marry a person of stable
temperament, but not one who is nervously unstable.
It must always be remembered that even if the physician has given you a
clean bill of health, you are still unfit for marriage unless you are
willing to go more than halfway in adjusting your life to "his" or
"hers." Lovers generally feel sure that they can do this, but have you
proved it in your treatment of parents, brothers, sisters, and friends?
If you are free from transmissible disease and innate defects, and if
you are capable of having children, it is still unwise for you to marry
unless you display good evidence of the qualities which make a happy
home and insure the right training of children. Darwin once said that
the trouble with mankind is not lack of ability, but failure to use the
abilities that we possess. Even if it is not wise for you to marry now,
perhaps you can take yourself by the scruff of the neck and make
yourself fit.
If you are fit, the next question is, "Is it wise for me to marry?" For
the vast majority of people the answer is emphatically "Yes" both for
your own sake and that of society as a whole. For most people the
married state is happier and more useful than the unmarried state.
Biologically the two sexes are meant to live together. Long experience
has proved that the only permanently happy way of living together is as
husband and wife. If the marriage is of the right kind, both the man and
the woman become happier, healthier, more adaptable, more interested in
the community, and, in many cases, better workers. Marriage is
unquestionably one of the best schools and one of the best health
resorts. It often has a wonderful effect in steadying people's nerves,
provided the partner is wise as well as loving.
The probability that any given marriage is wise is greatly increased
where the two young people have reasonably similar ideals and habits
and are sufficiently intelligent so that each can enjoy the interests of
the other. It is increased still more when both the man and the woman
realize that marriage is a comparatively hollow affair unless entered
into with the purpose of having a family. Few experiences have greater
value than the sacrifices which parents must make if they are to create
a real home. The making of such a home brings out the best that is in
people. Hence from the purely personal standpoint marriage is a
priceless advantage.