DYSGENIC INFLUENCES OF THE INSTITUTIONAL TABOO

Taboo survivals act dysgenically within the family under present conditions; Conventional education of girls a dysgenic influence; Prostitution and the family; Influence of ancient standards of “good” and “bad.” The illegitimate child; Effect of fear, anger, etc., on posterity; The attitude of economically independent women toward marriage.

It is evident that in the working of old taboos as they have been preserved in our social institutions there are certain dysgenic influences which may well be briefly enumerated. For surely the test of the family institution is the way in which it fosters the production and development of the coming generation. The studies made by the Galton Laboratory in England and by the Children’s Bureau in Washington combine with our modern knowledge of heredity to show that it is possible to cut down the potential heritage of children by bad matrimonial choices. If we are to reach a solution of these population problems, we must learn to approach the problem of the sex relation without that sense of uncleanness which has led so many generations to regard marriage as giving respectability to an otherwise wicked inclination. The task of devising a sane approach is only just begun. But the menace of prostitution and of the social diseases has become so great that society is compelled from an instinct of sheer self-preservation to drag into the open some of the iniquities which have hitherto existed under cover.

In the first place, the education of girls, which has been almost entirely determined by the standardized concepts of the ideal woman, has left them totally unprepared for wifehood and motherhood, the very calling which those ideals demand that they shall follow. The whole education of the girl aims at the concealment of the physiological nature of men and women. She enters marriage unprepared for the realities of conjugal life, and hence incapable of understanding either herself or her husband. When pregnancy comes to such a wife, the old seclusion taboos fall upon her like a categorical imperative. She is overwhelmed with embarrassment at a normal and natural biological process which can hardly be classified as “romantic.” Such an attitude is neither conducive to the eugenic choice of a male nor to the proper care of the child either before or after its birth.

A second dysgenic influence which results from the taboo system of sexual ethics is the institution of prostitution, the great agency for the spread of venereal disease through the homes of the community, and which takes such heavy toll from the next generation in lowered vitality and defective organization.

The 1911 report of the Committee on the Social Evil in Baltimore showed that at the time there was in that city one prostitute to every 500 inhabitants. As is the case everywhere, such statistics cover only prostitutes who have been detected. Hospital and clinic reports for Baltimore gave 9,450 acute cases of venereal disease in 1906 as compared with 575 cases of measles, 1,172 cases of diphtheria, 577 of scarlet fever, 175 of chickenpox, 58 of smallpox and 733 cases of tuberculosis.

Statistics on the health of young men shown by the physical examinations of the various draft boards throughout the country give us a more complete estimate of the prevalence of venereal disease among the prospective fathers of the next generation than any other figures for the United States. In an article in the New York Medical Journal for February 2, 1918, Dr. Isaac W. Brewer of the Medical Reserve Corps presents tables showing the percentage of rejections for various disabilities among the applicants for enlistment in the regular army from January 1, 1912, to December 31, 1915. Among 153,705 white and 11,092 coloured applicants, the rejection rate per 1,000 for venereal disease was 196.7 for whites and 279.9 for coloured as against 91.3 for whites and 75.0 for coloured for heart difficulties, next on the list. In foreshadowing the results under the draft, Dr. Brewer says: “Venereal disease is the greatest cause for rejection, and reports from the cantonments where the National Army has assembled indicate that a large number of the men had these diseases when they arrived at the camp. It is probably true that venereal diseases cause the greatest amount of sickness in our country.”

Statistics available for conditions among the American Expeditionary Forces must be treated with great caution. Detection of these diseases at certain stages is extremely difficult. Because of the courtesy extended to our men by our allies, cases were treated in French and English hospitals of which no record is available. But it is fairly safe to say that there was no such prevalence of disease as was shown by the Exner Report to have existed on the Mexican Border. It may even be predicted that the education in hygienic measures which the men received may in time affect favourably the health of the male population and through them their wives and children. But all who came in contact with this problem in the army know that it is a long way to the understanding of the difficulties involved before we approach a solution. We do know, on the basis of the work, of Neisser, Lesser, Forel, Flexner and others, that regulation and supervision seem to increase the incidence of disease. Among the reasons for this are: (1) difficulties of diagnosis; (2) difficulties attendant on the apprehension and examination of prostitutes; (3) the infrequency of examination as compared with the number of clients of these women; and perhaps as important as any of these reasons is the false sense of security involved.

The model woman of the past has known very little of the prostitute and venereal disease. It is often stated that her moral safety has been maintained at the expense of her fallen and unclean sister. But such statements are not limited as they should be by the qualification that her moral safety obtained in such a fashion is often at the expense of her physical safety. If the assumption has a basis in fact that there is a relation between prostitution and monogamic marriage, the complexity of the problem becomes evident. It is further complicated by the postponement of marriage from economic reasons, hesitation at the assumption of family responsibilities at a time of life when ambition as well as passion is strong, when the physiological functions are stimulated by city life and there is constant opportunity for relief of repression for a price. It is here that the demarcation between the man’s and the woman’s world shows most clearly. It may well be that the only solution of this problem is through the admission of a new factor the “good” woman whom taboo has kept in ignorance of a problem that is her own. If it be true that the only solution for the double standard whose evils show most plainly here is a new single standard which has not yet been found, then it is high time that we find what that standard is to be, for the sake of the future.

The third dysgenic influence which works under cover of the institutional taboo is akin to the first in its ancient standards of “good” and “bad.” We are only recently getting any standards for a good mother except a man’s choice and a wedding ring. Men’s ideals of attractiveness greatly complicate the eugenic situation. A good matchmaker, with social backing and money, can make a moron more attractive than a pushing, energetic girl with plenty of initiative, whose contribution to her children would be equal or superior to that of her mate. A timid, gentle, pretty moron, with the attainment of a girl of twelve years, will make an excellent match, and bring into the world children who give us one of the reasons why it is “three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves.” For such a girl, the slave to convention, exactly fits the feminine ideal which man has built up for himself. And she will be a good wife and mother in the conventional sense all her life. This following of an ideal feminine type conceived in irrational processes in former days inclines men to marry women with inferior genetic possibilities because they meet the more insistent surface requirements. The heritage of our children is thus cut down, and many a potential mother of great men remains unwed.

The same survival of ancient sex taboos is seen in the attitude toward the illegitimate child. The marriage ceremony is by its origin and by the forms of its perpetuation the only sanction for the breaking of the taboo on contact between men and women. The illegitimate child, the visible symbol of the sin of its parents, is the one on whom most heavily falls the burden of the crime. Society has for the most part been utterly indifferent to the eugenic value of the child and has concerned itself chiefly with the manner of its birth. Only the situation arising out of the war and the need of the nations for men has been able to partially remedy this situation.

The taboos on illegitimacy in the United States have been less affected by the practical population problems growing out of war conditions than those of other countries. As compared with the advanced stands of the Scandinavian countries, the few laws of progressive states look painfully inadequate. Miss Breckinridge writes:

“The humiliating and despised position of the illegitimate child need hardly be pointed out. He was the son of nobody, filius nullius, without name or kin so far as kinship meant rights of inheritance or of succession. In reality this child of nobody did in a way belong to his mother as the legitimate child never did in common law, for, while the right of the unmarried mother to the custody of the child of her shame was not so noble and dignified a thing as the right of the father to the legitimate child, she had in fact a claim, at least so long as the child was of tender years, not so different from his and as wide as the sky from the impotence of the married mother. The contribution of the father has been secured under conditions shockingly humiliating to her, in amounts totally inadequate to her and the child’s support. In Illinois, $550 over 5 years; Tennessee, $40 the first year, $30 the second, $20 the third. (See studies of the Boston Conference on Illegitimacy, September, 1914, .) Moreover, the situation was so desperate that physicians, social workers and relatives have conspired to save the girl’s respectability at the risk of the child’s life and at the cost of all spiritual and educative value of the experience of motherhood. This has meant a greatly higher death rate among illegitimate infants, a higher crime and a higher dependency rate.”

The fifth of the dysgenic influences which has been fostered by the institutional taboo is uncovered by recent studies of the effect of certain emotions on the human organism. The life of woman has long been shadowed by the fact that she has been the weaker sex; that even when strong she has been weighted by her child; and that throughout the period of private property she has been the poor sex, dependent on some male for her support. In an age of force, fear has been her strong emotion. If she felt rage it must be suppressed. Disappointment and discouragement had also to be borne in silence and with patience. Of such a situation Davies says:

“The power of the mind over the body is a scientific fact, as is evidenced by hypnotic suggestion and in the emotional control over the chemistry of health through the agency of the internal secretions. The reproductive processes are very susceptible to chemic influences. Thus the influences of the environment may in some degree carry through to the offspring."

The studies of Drs Crile and Cannon show that the effects of fear on the ganglionic cells are tremendous. Some of the cells are exhausted and completely destroyed by intensity and duration of emotion. Cannon’s experiments on animals during fear, rage, anger, and hunger, show that the entire nervous system is involved and that internal and external functions change their normal nature and activity. The thyroid and adrenal glands are deeply affected. In times of intense emotion, the thyroid gland throws into the system products which cause a quickened pulse, rapid respiration, trembling, arrest of digestion, etc. When the subjects of experiments in the effect of the emotions of fear, rage, etc., are examined, it is found that the physical development, especially the sexual development, is retarded. Heredity, age, sex, the nervous system of the subject, and the intensity and duration of the shock must all have consideration. Griesinger, Amard and Daguin emphasize especially the results of pain, anxiety and shock, claiming that they are difficult or impossible to treat.

To the bride brought up under the old taboos, the sex experiences of early married life are apt to come as a shock, particularly when the previous sex experiences of her mate have been gained with women of another class. Indeed, so deeply has the sense of shame concerning the sexual functions been impressed upon the feminine mind that many wives never cease to feel a recurrent emotion of repugnance throughout the marital relationship. Especially would this be intensified in the case of sexual intercourse during the periods of gestation and lactation, when the girl who had been taught that the sexual functions existed only in the service of reproduction would see her most cherished illusions rudely dispelled. The effect of this long continued emotional state with its feeling of injury upon the metabolism of the female organism would be apt to have a detrimental effect upon the embryo through the blood supply, or upon the nursing infant through the mother’s milk. There can be no doubt that anxiety, terror, etc., affect the milk supply, and therefore the life of the child.

The sixth dysgenic effect of the control by taboos is the rebellion of economically independent women who refuse motherhood under the only conditions society leaves open to them. The statistics in existence, though open to criticism, indicate that the most highly trained women in America are not perpetuating themselves. Of the situation in England, Bertrand Russell said in 1917: “If an average sample were taken out of the population of England, and their parents were examined, it would be found that prudence, energy, intellect and enlightenment were less common among the parents than in the population in general; while shiftlessness, feeble-mindedness, stupidity and superstition were more common than in the population in general ... Mutual liberty is making the old form of marriage impossible while a new form is not yet developed."

It must be admitted that to-day marriage and motherhood are subject to economic penalties. Perhaps one of the best explanations of the strength of the present struggle for economic independence among women is the fact that a commercial world interested in exchange values had refused to properly evaluate their social contribution. A new industrial system had taken away one by one their “natural” occupations. In the modern man’s absorption in the life of a great industrial expansion, home life has been less insistent in its claims. His slackening of interest and attention, together with the discovery of her usefulness in industry, may have given the woman of initiative her opportunity to slip away from her ancient sphere into a world where her usefulness in other fields than that of sex has made her a different creature from the model woman of yesterday. These trained and educated women have hesitated to face the renunciations involved in a return to the home. The result has been one more factor in the lessening of eugenic motherhood, since it is necessarily the less strong who lose footing and fall back on marriage for support. These women wage-earners who live away from the traditions of what a woman ought to be will have a great deal of influence in the changed relations of the sexes. The answer to the question of their relation to the family and to a saner parenthood is of vital importance to society.