Tomorrow's children : the goal of eugenics / by Ellsworth Huntington in conjunction with the directors of the American Eugenics Society.

  • Ellsworth Huntington
Date:
1935
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Tomorrow's children : the goal of eugenics / by Ellsworth Huntington in conjunction with the directors of the American Eugenics Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/160 page 4
    4 INTRODUCTION They probably are, but the percentage of our children coming from the finer types of homes is now far less than in the past. In other words, we have what is called a differential birthrate, and the difference is in the wrong direction—low among the more competent and self-controlled types as a rule (but with fortunate exceptions), and high among those of less intelligence and foresight. 16, Was not the same thing true a century or two agof At that time in colonial America the families of the more intelligent and able people were larger than those of the rank and file, or at least had more survivors per family. In other words, there was a differential rate of survival such that the more com¬ petent and intelligent people increased in number more rapidly than the rest of the population. This presents so strong a contrast to the present situation, and is so contrary to what is commonly believed that the evidence should be stated. More than two thousand New England and New York families of the eighteenth century have been divided into two groups: first, the quarter who occupied the leading positions, and second, the other three quarters. The average num¬ ber of children whose births were recorded is approximately seven (7.2) per family among the leaders, and six (6.2) among the others. Part, but probably not all of this difference may be because infants who died very young were fully recorded in the families of higher intelligence. In that case the deathrate among the children of the leaders must have been lower than among the rank and file. This seems reasonable, for at present, even with all our activities in behalf of public health, the deathrate among children diminishes rapidly as one goes from lower to higher levels of intelligence. Regardless of whether the cause is found in more births or fewer deaths among the leaders, the essential fact is that in the eighteenth century the number of persons who survived to be¬ come adults averaged about 14 per cent more in the families of the leaders than in those of the rest of the population. A favor¬ able differential birthrate of this kind continued until the early
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3