254 ESSENTIALS OF ZOOLOGY 



rate. A recent study made by Kunkel* shows that 4,567 college teach- 

 ers have 5,932 living children, an average of 1.3 children per teacher. 

 Dividing the teachers surveyed into three groups according to age, he 

 found that in the oldest group there is an average of 1.6 children, the 

 middle group averages 1.42, and in the youngest group, which consists 

 of those less than forty-three years of age, there are 0.86 children 

 per teacher. Since the families of this last group are not complete, the 

 average of the other two groups, or about 1.5 children per family, 

 might be taken to indicate the reproductive rate of college professors. 



A correspondingly low birthrate is found among other groups whose 

 members would be expected to possess traits that should be preserved 

 for our race. Cattell reports that the average number of children in 

 the families of the persons listed in American Men of Science is 1.88. 

 But small families are not limited to college professors and scientists, 

 for those distinguished people whose names are recorded in Who's 

 Who in America have families averaging only slightly more than two. 



Since the families from which college students come can reasonably 

 be taken as a eugenic group, several studies have been made of the 

 sizes of the families represented on the campuses of various American 

 colleges and universities. The author kept a record for a ten-year 

 period of the sizes of the families represented by the students of a city 

 university of the Southwest. The average number of children in those 

 families was found to vary from year to year from slightly under to 

 slightly over three. Since there were no childless families represented, 

 these figures are high for the social stratum concerned. What effect 

 college education may have on familj' size may be inferred from other 

 studies. Harvard graduates whose year of graduation would give us 

 reason to suppose that their families are complete, have produced 1.9 

 children per married alumnus ; allowing for the members of the group 

 who did not marry, the average falls to 1.6 children. Corresponding 

 averages for Yale are 1.9 and 1.5, for Swarthmore 2.15 and 1.9, and 

 for Vassar 2.15 and 1.25. 



A false sense of eugenic security might be prompted by the belief 

 that the figures exceeding two in the foregoing citations indicate that 

 the parents are being replaced and that any residual value represents 

 a gain. But in the cases of two-child families, what assurance have we 

 that those children will live to reproductive age, that they will marry, 

 and if they marry that they in turn will have children? Considering 



♦Kunkel. B. W. : A Survev^ of College Faculties, Bulletin of the Association of 

 American Colleges 23: No. 4, Dec, 1937. 



