BIRTH RATES OF COEDUCATIONAL GRADUATES 401 



likely to continue much longer in any class of society, to cause a worrisome 

 differential between class birth rates. But the failure of many college 

 women to marry at all and the custom of both sexes to marry late are 

 problems we will have with us for some time yet. 



Many straws seen in this study suggest to me that deficient fertility in the 

 married is often associated with such mental laziness and general physical 

 debility as can be found among graduates (who, after all, cannot be really 

 weaklings, at least in college years). Of course, however, one cannot rule 

 out venereal disease and malformations entirely. 



On the other hand, the highly intelligent women when they marry are 

 really prolific and moderate wealth is perhaps favorable in both sexes to 

 both matrimony and progeny. 



It occurs to me that the most direct aid to eugenics open to a college 

 for women would be for it to appoint a psychologist to labor with all the 

 high ranking students. He should study and report on each individual as 

 to the likelihood of her marrying, and if it is unlikely should recommend 

 any corrective measures that may be developed. 



Say not that there are no such measures. A college is in a position to 

 arrange it that its girls should not spend their summers, as now they often 

 do, in places containing ten girls to every young man, and also in places 

 which suggest to both men and girls that a wife is an ornament to be sup- 

 ported rather than a hard-working partner. Since grain was first sown 

 in ground by the women of the tribe, women have usually done the arduous 

 work of this world, "from sun to sun . . . never done," while men were 

 making many of the military, artistic and scientific advances. It is still 

 the same old world, and girls had better make choice: will they reconcile 

 themselves to working harder than men both before and after marriage, 

 or will they weakly commit race suicide? A girl of hard-working economic 

 views cheerfully held, with slight savings of her own earmarked to buy the 

 furniture, might expect to increase the number of her suitors. 



Honor students, if only they can be persuaded to marry sound men early, 

 would, it seems, have very large families, as families run among the educated 

 classes. 



Finally, as regards the high birth rates found among these coeducational 

 graduates as distinct from the segregated graduates of Harvard, Holyoke, 

 Goucher, etc., the chief cause remains an open question. Is it coeducation? 

 Is it that those who choose such a college are a selected body predisposed 

 to family life, partly because they are less worldly than those who go to more 

 famous institutions? For the "spirit of striving" has been justly convicted 



