Large Families 



301 



child mortality are eliminated. To 

 show this, Dr. Wright has prepared Fig. 

 7, in which only those individuals who 

 reached the age of twenty are con- 

 sidered. 



9-10 I/- 12 



l3-h<-SlZC0F 



HISTORY OF 100 BABIES 



The top of the diagram shows the children 

 "starting from scratch." By following 

 down the vertical lines, one can see that 

 their longevity depends largely on the 

 size of family from which they come. 

 Those who had ten or a dozen brothers 

 and sisters are most likely to live to 

 extreme age. (Fig. 6.) 



LARGEST FAMILIES GAIN 



Comparison of this with the preceding 

 graph shows at once that the small 

 families are still handicapped, but that 

 the largest families have made a gain. 

 A family of ten children is no longer the 

 most favorable one ; the families of thir- 

 teen and more have just about as large a 

 proportion of members living to an ad- 

 vanced age. The bigger the family, 

 the better off are its members, if survival 

 beyond the age of twenty be the measure- 

 ment, as in this case. 



It is evident, then, that the small 

 families (though they are not very small, 

 either, by present-day standards) make 

 the poorest showing under all condi- 

 tions; their members are handicapped 

 at all ages. The larger families — those 

 around ten children — make the best 



showing at all ages, few of their members 

 dying young and many living to old 

 age. Children in the very largest 

 families suffer from a high death rate 

 when young, but once they reach 

 maturity, the members of these very 

 large families not only suffer from no 

 handicap, but they equal or excel all 

 others in longevity. 



The explanation of this is fairly 

 obvious. In any collection of records 

 such as the Hyde genealogy furnishes, 

 most of the one and two-child families 

 are those in which one parent was either 

 feeble or died prematurely. It must be 

 remembered that birth control was little 

 practiced in this group (most of the 

 births fall in the first half of the last 

 century). The average family con- 

 tained five or six children, and when 

 parents had only one or two it was a 



/'JZ 3-4 5-^ 7-9- f-IO U-i% 



ThoSC WhIO 

 LIVE. TO ?0. 



,3-f <— S/Zt OF 



Famii-Y. 



ADULT MORTALITY 



If child mortality is eliminated, and only 

 those individuals are studied who live 

 to the age of twenty or longer, the 

 small families are still found to be 

 handicapped; but in general it may be 

 said that the larger the family, the 

 longer a member of it will live. 

 (Fig. 7.) 



pretty good indication of some con- 

 stitutional weakness that would make 

 itself felt in the children's heredity. 



On the other hand, the mother who 

 bore ten children was certainly of 



