WHAT TO SAY ABOUT MARRIAGE? 
Many of Those Who Seek Help from Eugenics Do Not Receive Satisfying Replies 
—Others Handicapped by Lack of Sufficient Acquaintance Among 
Marriageable Persons—Scope of the Science is Not 
Adequate Unless It Meets These Two 
Problems. 
A. E. Hamitton, New York, N. Y. 
POPULAR article in one of our 
A very popular magazines, entitled 
“Do You Choose Your Child- 
ren,” brought to the Eugenics 
Record Office hundreds of inquiries con- 
cerning heredity in relation to marriage 
and parenthood. These ranged up and 
down the emotional scale from cold 
questions concerning genealogical data 
to the most intimately confidential out- 
pourings of mind and heart on subjects 
of vitally personal concern. A casual 
leafing through of this batch of letters 
gives an adequate sampling of their 
trend. The following fragments are 
typical. 
“This article brought home to me 
things I had never thought of before’’ 
. “Too late to profit by this article 
myself but I have two sons who” : 
‘Will you trail my ancestors as far back 
as possible ?”’ “T am deeply attach- 
ed to a certain young lady and on her 
family history our future relations will 
probably rest” .. My ‘family is 
seemingly all right, but lam paralyzed in 
my left leg”... “I am now in college 
and in splendid health, but when a child 
I had an epileptic fit. What would hap- 
pen if I married a girl without this 
trait. “Now that I am engaged 
the subject of heredity looms important”’ 
. Jf I had read that article a year 
ago, I would not have married until I 
had investigated my ancestry” .. 
“There are weak eves on both sides, ten- 
dency to catarrh and deafness” ... “I 
am intensely interested in the highest 
development of the race”’ “Ts can- 
cer inherited. Glaucoma. Astigmatism.”’ 
... ‘My baby was born before time, 
and lived only a couple of hours, can you 
tell me why?” 
So they run, page after page going into 
minute description of family diseases, 
abnormalities, slight deviations from the 
supposedly normal, apparent tendencies 
to this or that condition of mind or body. 
These people want to know about ma- 
ternal impressions, about the prenatal 
care of children, about the possibility of 
overcoming inherited tendencies by 
proper compensatory training in early 
years. They bitterly regret the lack of 
knowledge that was theirs, and equally 
rejoice in their belief that now this 
knowledge, backed by all the weight of 
scientific authority, can be had for 
their children. 
AN UNSATISFYING ANSWER 
The Eugenics Record Office answers 
most of these letters of inquiry with the 
suggestion that if the accompanying 
record of family traits 1s properly filled 
out, perhaps something may be said in 
regard to the specific situation. 
A small percentage of those who re- 
ceive these record blanks fill them out 
and send them hack. <A small per- 
centage of those that come back are care- 
fully wrought and show that their mak- 
ers have caught both the spirit and the 
letter of scientific inquiry into family 
traits. But the number of people who 
have the interest, intelligence, patience, 
perseverance and time thoroughly to fill 
out one of these rather complicated rec- 
ord blanks is negligible in so far as it con- 
cerns the problem of what the science of 
Eugenics is called upon to say to those 
who, for themselves or their children, 
are thinking in terms of marriage. 
Eugenics has pointed to the defective 
fruit on our family trees. It has chilled 
the hearts of many into furtive inquiry 
77 
