The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1917-11-13
STILL AN OPEN QUESTION.
Dispute Concerning Longevity Of Large
and Small Families.

Tue dispute over the relative lon
seylty Of members Of large and small
families has broken out in a new placa.
Blrth-control advocates have argued
that the children live longer when
there are few of them because their
mothers are not weakened BY continued
ehildbcaring. while the opposing side
has eontended that nothing of the kind
Is true. Now Alexander Graham Bell.
who has been gathering statistics on
the subject, says that the proportion
OF persons who live - OLD age IN
crcasas with the size OF the family 10
t. ten children, although beyond that
point il declines. He finds that the
bigger the family, other conditions be-
ing normal. the better off are its indi-
Yldual members. The small family. he
says. is handicapped at all ages, by
comparison with the large ones. Even
in excessively large families the chill
dren have higher death rate only in
infancy. Having reached maturity.
they are likely to equal or exceed 9th
ers in longevity.
Professor Bell s figures are employed
lsy writer in the Journal of Hereditv
to refute statements made by another
writer that las the number of chill
drcn increases the death rate goes up. =
This seems 70 havo been BASED upon an
investigation into child mortality
among $40 families IN tbs Hull House
district III Chicago, and upon figures
compiled by the Children 5 bureau al
Washington in its Johnstown survey
which tended to show that Large fam
lies only serve to FL the ranks III our
hospitals and the rows in our grave
yards. The writer believes that the
Idea that large families are evil is
false and dangerous.
The difficulty Of agreeing upon a rule
Tor making deductions is responsible
Tor the impression that figures can be
mad" to prove anything. The oppo-
nents Of birth control, taking comfort in
such statistics as those Of Professor
Bell, contend that the Hull House dis
triet III Chicago and Johnstown, Penn,
are characterized by slun conditions.
by people who are below par physical
" and mentally. and by families la
boring constantly under economic DIFF
ficulties. This would create a situation
IN which the definite question Of the
relation between the size of the family
and the death rate would not have a
fair chance for an answer. If the IA
ther IS barely able to support two chill
dren. if he has a slum physique, if he
IS deficient i'll intelligence, large mum
Der Of births in that family is likely TO
mean high death rate. But this
| high death rate would be chargcable,
not to the size Of the family in itself
| but to the other factors mentioned
Poverty, not the large family, would
| be charged with the deaths
| Professor Bell 5 studies embrace an
American family, not dwelling in the
slums, not particularly poor and not
rich, whose genealo5v he has been at
pains to trace. The discovery that the
child with nine brothers and sisters
has twice as good chance of living to
old age as the child with single
brother or sister is highly interesting,
to say the least. That is what the
statistics do for the eugenists in this
instance. They seem to show that the
large family docs not by itself mean
weakened constitutions, although the
large family in poverty is quite likely
70 suffer from neglect. 1t is necessary
for Us to ascertain real causes behind
the figures; otherwise statistics will
lead US acknowledgements.