Chapter 6: Parenthood 2. Birth Regulation and Birth Release

The problem for the married pair is the regulation and spacing of pregnancy, not its undue avoidance. All couples will desire to select the very best time to start each of the pregnancies with due regard to the health of the mother and of the children, and the welfare of the whole family.

To begin with pregnancy before the home is settled is usually unwise. It is found that if time is allowed wherein husband and wife can work out the detail of daily living, the future happiness is more likely to be based on clear and considerate understanding than if from the beginning a complicated situation like the care required for the pregnant wife has to enter all their actions. Except in the case of couples with the wife well past thirty or wealthy enough to have ample service, postponement of pregnancy for six months or a year usually works out best. Then for the well-being of children an adequate spacing, perhaps of two years, is usually better. Children born only a year apart show a much higher death rate. When there are as many children as wisdom would dictate, again protection against unwise pregnancy may be needed.

Protection — that is, contraception — should be undertaken, not on the basis of what some friend has found successful, but by advice of one of those physicians who have the necessary special knowledge, or of a birth control clinic or maternal health agency. One must beware of the claims of most advertisements because scientific studies have found them to be unwarranted. The accredited methods of adequately trained doctors and clinics are harmless. They do not produce unfavorable after-effects, as long years of analysis of results in very many thousands of cases have proven. They remove that sense of apprehension which mars the peace of marital union for many couples.

Those who have been taught that no method but observance of the "safe period," the sterile period, is right, may give a year's study to a calendar marked with the date of each period, and then take advice as to whether the wife's regularity is such as to warrant a trial of this method. One difficulty about it is that there are so many women who do not produce the egg on the usual calendar date near the mid-month, and there is no way of telling when a woman is uncertain. So the risk is considerable.

The choice is then between ascetic marriage, the brother and sister life, except for the brief periods when children are to be started, and birth control by accredited methods. This protection has now been developed so that skilled advice conscientiously followed gives well nigh complete success.

If in spite of all precautions there should be an unforeseen pregnancy such an event should not be treated as a misfortune, for, though unintended, the coming of the child may result in greater happiness to the family than would otherwise be possible. It is especially necessary for the sake of the child's emotional health, that he should have the sense of being wanted and treasured by his parents. If they give him the impression that he is an unwelcomed burden, it destroys his emotional security and puts a weight upon his mind which is likely to bear him down. Every child deserves to be wanted. At the opposite extreme are those tragic cases in which people resort to dangerous and criminal abortion.