hat any group has ever been forced by
its experience to put these customs under taboo.[902]

+317. Relation of parent and child.+ Children add to the weight of the
struggle for existence of their parents. The relation of parent to
child is one of sacrifice. The interests of children and parents are
antagonistic. The fact that there are, or may be, compensations does not
affect the primary relation between the two. It may well be believed
that, if procreation had not been put under the dominion of a great
passion, it would have been caused to cease by the burdens it entails.
Abortion and infanticide are especially interesting because they show
how early in the history of civilization the burden of children became
so heavy that parents began to shirk it, and also because they show the
rise of a population policy, which is one of the most important
programmes of practical expediency which any society ever can adopt.

+318. Population policy.+ At the present moment the most civilized
states do not know whether to stimulate or restrict population; whether
to encourage immigration or not; whether emigration is an evil or a
blessing; whether to tax bachelors or married men. These questions are
discussed as if absolute answers to them were possible, independently of
differences in life conditions. In France the restriction of population
has entered into the mores, and has been accomplished by the people,
from motives which lie in the standard of living. In New England the
same is true, perhaps to a greater extent. There are many protests
against these mores, on the ground that they will produce societal
weakness and decay, and ethical condemnation is freely expended upon
them by various schools of religious and philosophical ethics. What is
certain, however, is that in the popular ethics of the people who
practice restriction it is regarded as belonging to elementary common
sense. The motives are connected with economy and social ambition. The
restriction on the number of children, in all modern civilized society,
issues in an improvement of the quality of the children, so far as that
can be improved by care, education, travel, and the expenditure of
capital (sec. 320). Thus the problem of rearing children has pressed
upon mankind from the earliest times until to-day. It is a problem of
the last degree of simplicity and reality,--a problem of a task and the
strength to perform it, of an expenditure and the means to meet it. For