The outrage upon the woman does not end there, however. Excessive
childbearing is now recognized by the medical profession as one of the
most prolific causes of ill health in women. There are in America
hundreds of thousands of women, in good health when they married, who
have within a few years become physical wrecks, incapable of mothering
their children, incapable of enjoying life.
"Every physician," writes Dr. Wm. J. Robinson in _Birth Control or The
Limitation of Offspring_, "knows that too frequent childbirth, nursing
and the sleepless nights that are required in bringing up a child
exhaust the vitality of thousands of mothers, make them prematurely
old, or turn them into chronic invalids."
The effect of the large family upon the father is only less disastrous
than it is upon the mother. The spectacle of the young man, happy in
health, strength and the prospect of a joyful love life, makes us
smile in sympathy. But this same young man ten years later is likely
to present a spectacle as sorry as it is familiar. If he finds that
the children come one after another at short intervals--so fast indeed
that no matter how hard he works, nor how many hours, he cannot keep
pace with their needs--the lover whom all the world loves will have
been converted into a disheartened, threadbare incompetent, whom all
the world pities or despises.
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