MEANS ADOPTED.
_Family Responsibility--Natural fertility undiminished.--Voluntary
prevention and physiological knowledge.--New Zealand
experience.--Diminishing influence of delayed marriage.--Practice of
abortion.--Popular sympathy in criminal cases.--Absence of complicating
issues in New Zealand.--Colonial desire for comfort and happiness._
There is a gradually increasing consensus of opinion amongst
statisticians, that the explanation of the decrease in the number of
births is to be found in the desire of married persons to limit the
family they have to rear and educate, and the voluntary practice of
certain checks to conception in order to fulfil this desire.
It is assumed that there is no diminution in the natural fertility of
either sex. There is no evidence to show that sexual desire is not as
powerful and universal as it ever was in the history of the race; nor is
there any evidence to show that the generative elements have lost any of
their fertilizing and developmental properties and power.
Dr. J.S. Billings in the June number of the _Forum_ for 1893, says that
"the most important factor in the change is the deliberate and
voluntary avoidance or prevention of child-bearing on the part of a
steadily increasing number of married people, who not only prefer to
have but few children, but who know how to obtain their wish."
He further says, "there is no good reason for thinking that there is a
diminished power to produce children in either sex."
M. Arsène Dumont in "Natalite et Democratie" discusses the declining
birth-rate of France, and finds the cause to be the voluntary prevention
of child-bearing on the part of the people, going so far as to say that
where large families occur amongst the peasantry, it is due to ignorance
of the means of prevention.
The birth-rate in none of the civilized countries of the world has
diminished so rapidly as in New Zealand. It was 40.8 in 1880; it was
25.6 in 1900, a loss of 15.2 births per 1000 of the population in 20
years.
There is no known economic cause for this decline. The prosperity of the
Colony has been most marked during these years.
Observation and statistics force upon us the conclusion that voluntary
effort upon the part of married couples to prevent conception is the one
great cause of the low and declining birth-rate. The means adopted are
artificial checks and intermittent sexual restraint, within the marriage
bond, the latter tending to replace the former amongst normal women, as
physiological knowledge spreads.
Delayed marriage still has its influence on the birth-rate, but with
the spread of the same knowledge, that influence is a distinguishing
quantity.
Delayed marriage under Malthusian principles would exert a potent
influence in limiting the births, because early marriages were, and,
under normal circumstances would still be, fruitful.
In the 28th annual report relating to the registration and return of
Births, Marriages and Deaths in Michigan for the year 1894 (p. 125), it
is stated that "The mean number of children borne by females married at
from 15 to 19 years of age inclusive, is 6.76. For the next five year
period of ages, it is 5.32, or a loss of 1.44 children per marriage,
this attending an advance of five years in age at marriage."
Voluntary effort frequently expresses itself in the practice of
abortion. Many monthly nurses degenerate into abortionists and practise
their calling largely, while many women have learned successfully to
operate on themselves.
The extent to which this method of limiting births is practised, and the
absence of public sentiment against it, in fact the wide-spread sympathy
extended to it, may be surmised from the facts that at a recent trial of
a Doctor in Christchurch, New Zealand, for alleged criminal abortion, a
large crowd gathered outside the Court, greeting the accused by a
demonstration in his favour on his being discharged by the jury. A
similar verdict in a similar case in Auckland, New Zealand, was greeted
by applause by the spectators in a crowded Court, which brought down the
indignant censure of the presiding Judge.
In New Zealand there is no oppressive misgovernment, there is no land
question in the sense in which Nitti applies the term, there is no
poverty to account for a declining birth-rate or to confuse the problem.
There is prosperity on every hand, and want is almost unknown. And yet,
fewer and fewer children, in proportion to the population, and in
proportion to the number of marriages, are born into the colony every
year. The only reason that can be given is that the people, though they
want marriage and do marry, do not wish to bear more children than they
can safely, easily, and healthfully support, with a due and
ever-increasing regard for their own personal comfort and happiness.
They have learned that marriage and procreation are not necessarily
inseperable and they practice what they know.