posed entirely of
hope, that parents prize. Strong-souled people feel that their
personalities are worth perpetuating, especially in conjunction with
their beloveds'! In proportion to their love of life, to the strength of
their joy and the clarity of vision of even better things, people find
one lifetime all too short to fulfill the expanding urges within them.
In their children they see human beings who may carry on their work, or
at any rate transmit their traits to grandchildren and
great-grandchildren.

Just at present people who have found life good, the ideal parents, feel
the need of entrusting the future to people like themselves, the
desperate need to keep power from falling into the hands of morbid
madmen who, under the pretext of enlarging life, precipitate horrible
wars precisely because they themselves, starved, oppressed, or
humiliated from the cradle, have never found life good. Yes, our
children can make all the difference between a life full of hope for the
future of the race and one of pessimism and despair. It is this sense of
children as carrying something of ourselves, our tempers, our hopes,
into the future which is at the bottom of what we call the eugenic
urge--the desire, that is, to beget good stock and pass on only the best
in us.

About the obvious pleasures that children bring, the fascination of
seeing their characters unfold, the happiness of festivals like
Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, which without children lose half
their charm, it is not necessary to speak.

For our purposes, however, the point is that there are literally dozens
of reasons why nearly all of us want children. The problem is when to
have them and in what numbers. For modern man likes to know what he is
about in this world and to direct and control his destiny in the light
of other knowledge and experience.

The time for the first baby is a question of readiness on the parents'
part. Are they ready physically, psychologically, economically? These
are not, of course, three separate ways of being ready; they are
interdependent ways, but they offer suitable heads under which to
discuss the subject.

Economic readiness is of utmost importance. Insecurity of employment,
insufficient means to provide the mother and baby with medical
supervision and good food, or looming debts are in themselves sufficient
to prevent prospective parents from attaining the other kinds of
readiness--physical and psychological. On the