POPULATION PROBLEMS 211 



recoil from the trials of maternity and the claims of 

 children, so the commendable determination to make the 

 best of life in the direction of fulbiess, freedom, and 

 fitness, may pass, on the minus side, into a lust for 

 gratification without responsibilities. 



Careful students of the decline of the birth-rate have 

 come to the conclusion that it is not due to decline of 

 fertility, e,g. as the result of the higher education of 

 girls ; that it is not more than slightly due to changes 

 in the age of marriage or in the proportion of wives 

 of child-bearing age ; but that it is mainly due to 

 intentional restriction of births, to deliberate birth- 

 control. 



The Registrar-General for England has made the 

 important statement that not more than about 17 per 

 cent, of the decline in the birth-rate can be accounted 

 for as the result of abstinence from marriage or of 

 postponement of marriage, and that nearly 70 per cent, 

 of the decline must be ascribed to voluntary restriction. 

 Dr. Newsholme of the Local Government Board con- 

 cludes that postponement and avoidance of marriage 

 have had little share in causing the reduced birth-rate 

 experienced in Britain and some other countries during 

 the last thirty years. Mr. Sidney Webb made a few 

 years ago (1911) a voluntary confidential census, and 

 found out of 120 fertile marriages among professional 

 men 107 ' limited,' and out of 316 marriages among 

 middle-class people 242 * limited.' Dr. Millard calls 

 attention to a fact believed to have been brought out 



