Concerning children / by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

  • Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 1860-1935.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Concerning children / by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/320 (page 8)
    the stock; we should have gradually im- proving relays of children. So far as environment is to really develope the race, that development must be made before the birth of the next generation. If a young man and woman are clean, healthy, vigorous, and virtuous before parenthood, they may become dirty, sickly, weak, and wicked afterward with far less ill effect to the race than if they were sick and vicious before their children were born, and thereafter became stalwart saints. The sowing of wild oats would be far less harm- ful if sowed in the autumn instead of in the spring. Human beings are said to have a longer period of immaturity than other animals; but it is not prolonged childhood which dis- tinguishes us so much as prolonged parent- hood. In early forms of life the parent promptly dies after having reproduced the species. He is of no further use to the race, and therefore his life is discontinued. In the evolution of species, as the parent becomes more and more able to benefit the young, he is retained longer in office; and