CAUSES OF DECLINING BIRTH-RATE.
_Influence of self-restraint without continence_.--_Desire to limit
families in New Zealand not due to poverty_.--_Offspring cannot be
limited without self-restraint_.--_New Zealand's economic
condition_.--_High standard of general education_.--_Tendency to migrate
within the colony_.--_Diffusion of ideas_.--_Free social migration
between all classes_.--_Desire to migrate upwards_.--_Desire to raise
the standard of ease and comfort_.--_Social status the measure of
financial status_.--_Social attraction of one class to next
below_.--_Each conscious of his limitation_.--_Large families confirm
this limitation_.--_The cost of the family_.--_The cost of maternity.
The craving for ease and luxury_.--_Parents' desire for their children's
social success_.--_Humble homes bear distinguished sons. Large number
with University education in New Zealand_.--_No child labour except in
hop and dairy districts_.--_Hopeless poverty a cause of high
birth-rates_.--_High birth-rates a cause of poverty_.--_Fecundity
depends on capacity of the female to bear children_.
The first or direct cause of this decline in the birth-rate then, is the
inhibition of conception by voluntary means, on the part of those
capable of bearing children.
This inhibition is the result of a desire on the part of both sexes to
limit their families.
Conception is inhibited by means which do not necessitate continence,
but which do necessitate some, and in many cases, a great amount of
self-restraint. But how comes it, that in these days of progress and
prosperity, especially in New Zealand, a desire to limit offspring
should exist amongst its people, and that the desire should be so strong
and so universal?
The desire for this limitation must be strong, for there is absolutely
no evidence that the passion for marriage has lost any of its force; it
must be extensive for the statistics show its results, and the
experience of medical men bears the contention out.
While the marriage passion remains normal, offspring cannot be limited
without the exercise of self-restraint on the part of both parties to
the marriage compact. Artificial means of inhibiting conception, and
intermittent restraint are antagonistic to the sexual instinct, and the
desire for limitation must be strong and mutual to counteract this
instinct within the marriage bond.
The reasons for this strong and very general desire, that marriage
should not result in numerous births must have some foundation. What is
it?
It cannot be poverty. New Zealand's economic experience has been one of
uniform progress and prosperity. There is abundant and fertile land in
these islands where droughts, floods, and famine years, are practically
unknown. Blissards and destructive storms are mysterious terms.
Fluctuations in production take place of course, but not such as to
result in want, to any noticeable extent. There are no extremes of heat
and cold, no extremes of drought and flood, no extremes of wealth and
poverty. The climate is equable, the progress is uniform, the classes
are at peace.
Every natural blessing that a people could desire in a country, is to be
found in New Zealand. Climate, natural fertility, and production,
unrivalled scenery in mountain, lake, and forest, everything to bless
and prosper the present, and inspire hope in the future. Why is it that,
with all this wealth, and with the country still progressing and yet
undeveloped, a desire exists in the heart of the people to limit
families.
The reason is social not economic, if one may contrast the terms.
Take women's attitude to the question first. Our women are well
educated. A state system of compulsory education has placed within the
reach of all a good education, up to what is known as the VI. or VII.
Standard, and only a very few in the colony have been too poor or too
rich to take advantage of it.
Most women can and do read an extensive literature, and to this they
have abundant access, for even small country towns have good libraries.
Alexandra, a little town of 400 inhabitants amongst the Central Otago
mountains, has a public library of several thousand volumes, and the
people take as much pride in this institution as in their school and
church.
People move about from place to place, and it is surprising how small
and even large families keep migrating from one part of the colony to
another. They are always making new friends and acquaintances, and with
these interchanging ideas and information.
Class distinctions have no clear and defined line of demarcation, and
there is a free migration between all the classes; the highest, which is
not very high, is always being recruited from those below, and from even
the lowest, which is not very low.
The highest class is not completely out of sight of any class below it,
and many families are distributed evenly over all the classes. A woman
is the wife of a judge, a sister is the President of a Woman's Union,
another sister is in a shop, and a fourth is married to a labourer.
If one of the poorer (they do not like "lower") class rises in the
social scale, he or she is welcome--if one of the richer (they do not
like "higher") falls, no effort is made by the class they formerly
belonged to to maintain her status in order to save its dignity or
repute.
In other words, there are not the hindrances to free migration between
the various strata of society that obtain in other lands. Not only is
that migration continually taking place, but there are very few who are
not touched by a consciousness of it.
Members of the lower strata, all well educated voters, can give
instances of friends, or relatives, or acquaintances, who are higher up
than themselves--have "made their way," have "risen in society," have
"done well," are "well off." And this consciousness inspires in all but
the very lowest classes an ambition to rise.
Because it is possible to rise, because others rise, the desire to be
migrating upwards soon takes possession of members of all but the lowest
or poorest class, or those heavily ballasted with a large or increasing
family.
The desire to rise in social status is inseparably bound up with the
kindred desire to rise in the standard of comfort and ease.
Social status in New Zealand is, as yet, scarcely distinguishable from
financial status. Those who are referred to as the better classes, are
simply those who have got, or who have made, money. All things,
therefore, are possible to everyone in this democratic colony.
There is thus permeating all classes in New Zealand a spirit of social
rivalry, which shows no tendency to abate nor to be diverted. The social
status of one class exerts an attractive force on the class next below.
But, apart from the influence of status, one class keeps steadily in
view, and persistently strives to attain, the ease, comfort, and even
luxury of the class above it.
Because the members of different grades are so migratory, there are
many in one class known well to members in some class or classes below,
and the ease and luxury which the former enjoy are a constant
demonstration of what is possible to all.
Many who do not acquire wealth enough to make any appreciable difference
in their social status, are able, through family, to improve their
position. Their sons and daughters are given an University education,
and by far the largest number of those entering the learned professions
in New Zealand are the sons of farmers, tradespeople, and retail
dealers.
The great mass of the people in our Colony are conscious of the fact
that their social relations and standard of comfort, or shall one say
standard of ease, are capable of improvement, and the desire to bring
about that improvement is the dominant ambition of their lives.
Anything that stands in the way of this ambition must be overcome. A
large family is a serious check to this ambition, so a large family must
be avoided.
This desire to rise, and this dread too of incurring a responsibility
that will assuredly check individual progress were counselled by
Malthus, and resulted, and he said should result, in delayed marriage,
lest a man, in taking to himself a wife, take also to himself a family
he is unable to support.
But if this man can take to himself a wife without taking to himself a
family, what then?
Men and women, in this Colony at least, have discovered that conformity
to physiological law makes this possible.
A wife does not really add very much to a man's responsibility--it is
the family that adds to his expense, and taxes all his resources. It is
the doctor and the nurse, the food and the clothing, and the education
of the uninvited ones to his home, that use up all his earnings, that
keep him poor, or make him poorer.
Then there is one aspect of the question peculiar to the women
themselves. Women have come to dread maternity. This is part of a
general impatience with pain common to us all. Chloroform, and morphia,
and cocaine, and ethyl chloride have taught us that pain is an evil.
When there was no chance of relieving it, we anæsthetised ourselves and
each other with the thought that it was necessary, it was the will of
Providence, the cry of our nerves for succour.
Now it is an evil, and if we must submit we do so under protest. Women
now engage doctors on condition that chloroform will be administered as
soon as they scream, and they scream earlier in their labour at each
succeeding occasion.
Women are less than ever impressed with the sacredness and nobility of
maternity, and look upon it more and more as a period of martyrdom.
This attitude is in consonance with the crave for ease and luxury that
is beginning to possess us.
It is, however, no new phase in human experience. It characterised all
the civilisations of ancient times, at the height of their prosperity,
and was really the beginning of their decay.
Women with us are more eager to limit families than are their husbands.
They feel the burdens of a large family more. They are often heard to
declare that, with a large family around her, and limited funds at her
disposal with which to provide assistance, a woman is a slave. A large
number think this, and, if there is a way out of the difficulty, they
will follow that way. And they are not content to escape the hardships
of life. They want comforts, and seek them earnestly. With the advent of
comfort, they seek for ease, and, when this is found, they seek for
luxury and social position.
Parents with us have a high ideal of what upbringing should be. Every
parent wants his children to "do better" than himself. If he does not
wish to make a stepping-stone of them, on which to rise to higher social
things, he certainly wishes to give them such a "start in life" as will
give them the best prospects of keeping pace with, or outstripping their
fellows.
The toil and self-denial that many poor parents undergo, in order to
give their children a good education, is almost pathetic, and is not
eclipsed by the enthusiasm for education even in Scotland.
There is a shoemaker in a small digging town in New Zealand, still
toiling away at his last, whose son is a distinguished graduate of our
University, author of several books, and in a high position in his
profession.
There is a grocer in another remote inland village whose son is a doctor
in good practice. There is a baker in a little country district whose
sons now hold high positions in the medical profession, one at home and
the other abroad.
These facts are widely known amongst the working classes, and inspire
them with a spirit of rivalry.
With regard to the general education of the people, the
Registrar-General says, (New Zealand Official Year Book for 1898, page
164) "In considering the proportions of the population at different age
periods, the improvement in education is even more clearly proved. It is
found that, in 1896, of persons at the age-period 10-15 years, 98.73 per
cent, were able to read and write, while 0.65 per cent. could merely
read, and 0.62 per cent. were unable to read. The proportion who could
not read increased slowly with each succeeding quinquennial period of
age, until at 50-55 years it stood at 4.04 per cent. At 75 to 80 years
the proportion was 7.05, and at 80 and upwards it advanced to 8.07.
Similarly, the proportion of persons who could read only increased from
0.65 at 10-15 years to 3.66 at the period 50-55 years, and again to 9.74
and upwards. The better education of the people at the earlier stages is
thus exhibited."
Further evidences of improved education will be found in the portion of
his work relating to marriages, where it is shown that the proportion of
persons in every thousand married, who signed by mark, has fallen very
greatly since 1881. The figures for the sexes in the year 1881 were
32.04 males, and 57.04 females, against 6.19 males and 7.02 females in
1895.
For the position of teacher in a public school in New Zealand, at a
salary of £60 a year, there were 14 female applicants, 10 of whom held
the degree of M.A., and the other four that of B.A.
The number of children, 5-15 years of age, in New Zealand, was estimated
as on 31st December, 1902, at 178,875. The number of children, 7-13
years of age (compulsory school age), was estimated as on 31st December,
1902, at 124,986. The attendance at schools, public and private, during
the fourth quarter of 1902, was European 150,332, Maoris and half-castes
5,573. If children spend their useful years of child life at school,
they can render little or no remunerative service to their parents.
Neither boys or girls can earn anything till over the age of 14 years.
Our laws prohibit child labour.
In New Zealand, children, therefore, while they remain at home, are a
continual drain on the resources of the bread-winner. More is expected
from parents than in many other countries.
At our public schools children are expected to be well clad; and it is
quite the exception, even in the poorest localities of our large cities,
to see children attending school with bare feet.
During child-life, nothing is returned to the parent to compensate for
the outlay upon the rearing and educating of children.
If a boy, by reason of a good education, soon, say, at from 14-18 years,
is enabled to earn a few shillings weekly, it is very readily absorbed
in keeping him dressed equally well with other boys at the same office
or work.
An investment in children is, therefore, from a pecuniary point of view,
a failure. There are, perhaps, two exceptions in New Zealand--in dairy
farming in Taranaki, where the children milk outside school hours; and
in the hop districts of Nelson, where, during the season, all the
children in a family become hop-pickers, and a big cheque is netted when
the family is a large one.
Quite apart from considerations of self, parents declare that the fewer
children they have, the better they can clothe and educate them; and
they prefer to "do well" for two or three, than to "drag up" twice or
three times as many in rags and ignorance.
Clothing is dear in New Zealand. The following is a labourer's account
of his expenditure. He is an industrious man, and his wife is a thrifty
Glasgow woman. It is drawn very fine. No. 7 is less than he would have
to pay in the city by two or three shillings a week for a house of
similar size. No. 9 is rather higher than is usual with Benefit
Societies, which average about sixteen shillings a quarter.
WEEKLY EXPENSES OF FAMILY COMPRISING FIVE CHILDREN AND PARENTS.
Per Week.
£ s. d.
1. Groceries and milk 0 15 0
2. Coal and light 0 4 0
3. Butcher 0 4 0
4. Baker 0 4 0
5. Boots, with repairing 0 2 6
6. Clothing and underclothing 0 5 0
7. Rent in suburbs 0 10 0
8. Sundries 0 2 0
9. Benefit Society 0 2 0
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Weekly total £2 8 6
Most young people make a good start in New Zealand. Even men-servants
and maid-servants want for nothing. They dress well, they go to the
theatres and music-halls, they have numerous holidays, and enjoy them by
excursions on land or sea. It is when they marry, and mouths come
crying to be filled, that they become poor, and the struggle of life
begins.
In our Colony, there is no more prevalent or ingrained idea in the minds
of our people than that large families are a cause of poverty.
A high birth-rate in a family certainly is a cause of poverty. Many
children do not enable a father to earn higher wages, nor do they enable
a mother to render the bread-winner more assistance; while in New
Zealand, especially, compulsory education and the inhibition of
child-labour prevent indigent parents from procuring the slight help
that robust boys and girls of 10 years of age, or so, are often able to
supply.
These considerations go far to explain the desire on the part of married
couples to limit offspring; and, if there were no means at their
disposal of limiting the number of children born to them, a great
decline in the marriage-rate would be the inevitable result of the
existing conditions of life, and the prevalent ideas of the people.
Hopeless poverty appears to be a cause of a high birth-rate, and this
seems to be due to the complete abandonment by the hopelessly poor of
all hope of attaining comfort and success.
Marriage between two who are hopelessly poor is extremely rare with us.
Each is able to provide for his or herself at least, and in all
probability the husband is able to provide comfortably for both.
If he is not, the wife can work, and their joint earnings will keep them
from want. But, if one of the partners has not only to give herself up
to child-bearing, and thus cease to earn, but also bring another into
the home that will monopolise all her time, attention, and energy, and a
good deal of its father's earnings, how will they fare?
If a man's wages has to be divided between two, then between three, then
four, six, eight, ten, while all the time that wages is not increasing,
have we not a direct cause of poverty, and, moreover, is not that cause
first in time and importance?
Later on in the history of the family their poverty will become a cause
of an increase in the children born to them. At first they may struggle
to prevent an increase, but, when they are in the depths of hopeless
poverty, they will abandon themselves to despair.
Could they have had born to them only one, or two, or three, during
their early married life, they might not only have escaped want, but
later in life may have had others born to them, without either their
little ones or themselves feeling the pinch of poverty.
It must be remembered in this connection that fecundity and sexual
activity are not convertible terms.
It is certainly not true to say that the greater the fecundity of the
people the stronger their sexual instinct, or the greater the sexual
exercise.
A high fecundity does not depend on an inordinate sexual activity.
Fecundity depends on the child-bearing capacity of each female, and a
sexual union at an appropriate time once in two years between puberty
and the catamenia is compatible with the highest possible fecundity.
It would be quite illogical, and inconsistent with physiological facts,
to aver that, were the poor less given to indulge the pleasures of
sense, their fecundity would be modified in an appreciable degree.