It often happens that if the daughter is right, the mother is wrong, and the mother is not going to have this if she can help it. The desirability of controlling the appearance of the child(ren) in the family brings us to the question of contraception. That is a question around which in the immediate past much controversy raged. It cannot even be said that it has ceased to rage.  And since in some countries of the West there are still legal disabilities to be remedied in order to bring the law into harmony with customs and opinion, propaganda is artificially stimulated. There is, however, no longer the shadow of doubt that both the principle and the practice of birth control are now firmly established in all civilized lands, and gradually becoming accepted by every class of the community, so that before long the only matter of dispute will be concerning the best method by which it can be carried out.  It is estimated that at the present rate birth control will become practically Universal in our civilization within from twenty-five to fifty years, and it may be that with better conditions of sexual initiation, increased medical study of the difficult problems involved, and the cultivation of self-control, mechanical methods of control will become less necessary. There are three main lines along which this development has proceeded.  

In the first place there has been the insistence of women that they will no longer be breeding machines, destroying alike themselves and their excessive progeny.  In Russia, where the birth-rate rises and the infantile death rate is falling, the requirement of contraception is recognized, but not yet fully established. Abortion is legalized and conducted with due precaution, but on a large scale this is a poor substitute for contraception.  In the second place the economic conditions of life for all social classes in the modern World tend to render caution and foresight necessary in family life, and there are now but few parents who can afford to disregard so completely these conditions, and the responsibilities of bringing up children in the World of to-day, as to have an unlimited family.  In the third place, scientific demographers and statisticians are now, with ever increase in the Earth’s population, which up to about two centuries ago was practically stationary, cannot be much longer continued, since even another few decades may suffice to reach the limit of possible expansion. Each of these lines of debate are legitimate. When combined, they are of irresistible force.   

Some people practice celibacy as a form of birth control and to preserve their virtue and chastity. Another modern condition which has an important bearing on the family in our Western civilization is constituted by the increase of divorce and the ever-greater legal facilities for securing it.  Speaking generally (there are always exceptions) it may be said that in savage societies, as probably in the primitive World, mating, provided they are formed with members of the group with which mating is permitted, are easily formed and rather easily ended. In more advanced barbarous societies, in which property becomes a chief factor in society, masculine influence is more predominant than before over feminine influence, the marriage bond grows more rigid and especially rigid in favour of the husband.  In the later civilized social states this rigidity is relaxed, divorce becomes easier and more frequent, and the rights of the genders tend to be equalized. We may see that process in classic Rome. Beginning, it may well be, in a social state of more or less matriarchal constitution, when the Roman social order became patriarchal, marriage in some of its forms was almost indissoluble, and divorce, so far as it existed, was usually a privilege confined to the husband, except in a free marriage, where the wife did not fall under the manus of her husband.  However, in the later development the privileges of free marriage were extended to manus marriages, and Roman law became equally liberal to husbands and wives in the matter of divorce. That represents approximately the stage that we have to-day reached in Western civilization.  

 The Winchester Mystery House

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