ALUMNA'S CHILDREN. 5* 



once the mother realized what it would mean. When the mother can 

 not do it, perhaps she can arrange for a little time of private lessons, 

 when her daughter, working at just the rate right for her, can accom- 

 plish a term's work with a minimum of study and with none of the 

 nervous strain which comes from competition. I can think of nothing 

 better worth a mother's time than to establish her daughter's health 

 for the rest of her life and make possible for her all the blessed things 

 that womanhood may mean. 



Finally, there is no doubt that some husbands and wives limit their 

 families to one or two that they may thus do more for those few chil- 

 dren, or have none because they can thus do more for themselves — 

 'social ambition,' in other words. There may be to some extent a de- 

 crease in race fertility in certain racial groups without other signs of 

 physical deterioration; yet there seems to me an amount of evidence 

 too large to disregard which goes to show that the small families among 

 schooled women are clue to the physical weakness of the wives. Ask 

 yourself how many really strong women you know. And while there 

 are undoubtedly differing conditions operating in different classes and 

 in different countries, and the contrasts between England and Germany 

 (the birth rate is even lower for the English alumna than for the Amer- 

 ican), France and Italy, the United States and Canada, can by no 

 means all be explained by this theory, yet I wish some investigation 

 could be instituted to determine how much of the decrease of birth rate 

 among native born American women comes from arrested development 

 in our young girls — due in some classes to lack of proper food, 

 to lack of sleep, to physical overwork, but in very many cases to their 



unwise manner of work and to untimely nervous strain in our gram- 

 mar and high schools. 



