In the vast majority of families where no restrictions or unnatural
means are used and where mothers nurse their children for eight or
nine months, children only come every two years. Even if a young
couple decide that they cannot afford to bring up more than four
children, they have first to prove that four children will be given
them--in many cases they will not have so many, and as years go by the
fertility of the mother becomes progressively less, so that if
child-bearing is postponed till after thirty, in a certain number of
families no children are born. There are many men and women who
bitterly regret having let the years go by in which children might
have been born to them, and it is only fair that young couples of
to-day should fully understand this risk.
CHAPTER III
METHODS
There are certain points in regard to methods of preventing conception
which should be made clear.
It is, of course, obvious that conception can be voluntarily
controlled by abstention from intercourse except when children are
desired. This has been called a counsel of perfection. It could only
rightly be so described where such a method of life was both desired
and approved by both husband and wife. It would not be a fair thing
for either to enforce a practically celibate life on the other without
the fullest understanding and consent before the marriage vows were
taken.
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