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The Journal of Heredity 



married ought to have a distinctly 

 larger family than the man who has 

 had but a single wife. It would not be 

 twice as large, because (a) the first 

 wife was physically weaker than the 

 average, as witness her premature 

 death, hence she bore fewer children 

 or they were more frequently weak and 

 died; and {b} the second wife was in 

 some cases past the child-bearing age 

 when she married. 



It is impossible to say how much 

 allowance should be made under (a), 

 but a rough allowance can be made for 

 (6). It is certain that in most cases a 

 minister would choose as his second 

 wife a woman somewhat younger than 

 himself. The average minister was 

 27 years old when first married; if his 

 second marriage was even fifteen years 

 after his first, and his second wife only 

 two 3'ears younger than himself, she 

 would still be capable of child-bearing. 

 If, then, all second marriages are 

 excluded which took place more than 

 fifteen years after the first, the total 

 number of second marriages will be 

 reduced by 30%. Hence, it seems 

 reasonable to think that if the small 

 families of clergyTnen are due to the 

 debility of their wives, the man twice 

 married will have at least 50% more 

 children than the man once married. 



If, on the other hand, the size of the 

 family is limited voluntarily, in accord- 

 ance with the minister's economic 

 position, the children of a man twice 

 married will be little more numerous 

 than those of a man once married. 

 The birth rate will be slightly increased, 

 however, because even if a man has by 

 his first wife as many children as he 

 can afford to educate, neverthele:-:s his 

 second wife will desire the experience of 

 motherhood. This is likely to add at 

 least one more child to the family. 



The foregoing sj^eculations are not 

 represented as conclusive. They are 

 intended to show that numerous coun- 



terbalancing influences are at work on 

 the birth rate but that, on the average, 

 two mothers ought to produce a dis- 

 tinctly larger family than one mother, 

 unless the husband limits the size of 

 the family for financial reasons. 



FAMILY LIMITATION SHOWN 



What do the statistics show.'' On 

 the average, a second wife adds only 

 half a child to the minister's famil}-. 

 It is impossible to interpret this in 

 any way except as showing that the 

 size of these Methodist families is 

 determined mainly by the intelligent 

 plan of the parents, not by the capacity 

 of the women to bear children. The 

 Methodist clergy appears to offer a good 

 illustration of effective birth control. 



The extent of this birth control can 

 be shown in another way. From a 

 study of the marriages of less than 

 twenty years duration, it appears that 

 1,000 Methodist clergATnen's wives in 

 the United States bear about 115 

 surviving children a year. In New 

 South Wales, where there seems to 

 have been little or no limitation of 

 offspring when A. O. Powys collected 

 his statistics, 1,000 Anglo-Saxon mothers 

 bear about 295 children a year. The 

 latter rate is gross and that of the 

 American Methodists net, but as infant 

 mortality is low in Australia, it must 

 be concluded that the reproduction 

 rate among Methodists is less than half 

 the normal rate for Anglo-Saxon women. 

 The causes of this 50% reduction are, 

 of course, complex — it is not intended 

 here to suggest that the low rate is 

 wholly due to voluntary limitation, 

 although it must be largely so. 



If the available number of second 

 marriages were larger, important con- 

 clusions might be drawn from a study 

 of the childless families. Actually, any 

 conclusions drawn can hardly be taken 

 seriously. With this warning, it can 

 be shown^ that there are four times 



* As 11% of the single marriages are childless, the chance that a clergyman will have no 

 children by his first wife is V»- The chance that his second wife will likewise be childless 

 is ('/»)*. or Vsi- Making allowance for those cases where the second wife was possibly beyond 

 the child-bearing age when she married, the percentage of childlessness among the twice-married 

 is 4.9, when chance allows but 1.29c- ^^ the various assumptions involved in this reasoning are 

 valid, it must be concluded that three-fourths of the childlessness among the twice-married is 

 either voluntary or due to the husband — probably the latter. But, as stated above, the numbers 

 involved are not large enough to give the example any weight. 



