The Age of Parents 53 



the average parents, generation after generation, 

 less than twenty years of age. 



Another famous group of degenerates is 

 known as "The Jukes." The story begins with 

 a girl known as "Margaret, the mother of crimi- 

 nals." She was an eldest child, born when her 

 parents were quite young, though their ages are 

 not given. In 1784, while Margaret was in her 

 teens, she had an illegitimate son. In turn, this 

 illegitimate son became a father at the age of 

 fifteen, and the son of this fifteen-year-old father 

 became the founder of one of the worst branches 

 of the Jukes family. Observe the three suc- 

 cessive generations of unusually young parents, 

 one of which was a male only fifteen years old 

 when his son was born. 



The records of the Jukes show that one girl 

 became a mother at the age of twelve, and sev- 

 eral others at thirteen and fourteen. One boy 

 contracted syphilis at the age of thirteen. He 

 was born only thirty-six years after the birth of 

 his paternal grandfather. 



Remembering that the different races and tribes 

 of men freely interbreed, and consequently are 

 biologically close cousins, and that apes and 



