Children InnumerableBy Florence Kiper(In “The Forum.”)
By Florence Kiper
(In “The Forum.”)
Our age, it is true, is not a very reverential age, a sceptical age, one questioning the traditions. It is doubting the dignity in the lot of a soldier driven to martial courage by conscription. It is finding attenuated beauty in unwilling motherhood, though submission be in the name of God or Social Duty. It has asked itself this question and the answers are perturbing—For what and for whom are we breeding humanity if it be not for humanity itself?... Indeed, it is unbelievable that there should be a cry for breeding, when children innumerable crowd the city slums, deprived of air and spiritual breathing place, or in small towns and little farm houses grow dull and vicious through lack of appeal to the imagination and the intellect. Society as a whole cannot be too thankful for those women, who, celibate in body, have given themselves to the rearing of this “child material below par”, in the belief that the world is not for its superman but for the many.