The Children's Era: Mo' Babies, Mo' Problems (Sentences 28-48) Summary

There Are Babies We Like and Babies We Don't Like. Cootchy-cootchy-coo!

  • When Sanger points out that clearly the resources of the world cannot keep up with all these poor people and immigrants having loads of kids, she's told to stop being so emotional.
  • When she suggests birth control, she's told it's unnatural and gross and weird and morally wrong.
  • Sanger says all the good stuff people are trying to do—cleaning up cities, stopping child labor, saving babies' lives, opening playgrounds and schools—doesn't create that garden she was talking about earlier.
  • Sanger says it's too late to make the world good for children after they're born: we have to start before. We need prenatal care. We need to make sure mothers are in a good place when they conceive because they sure aren't going to get there simply by having a baby.
  • On the contrary, in fact.
  • Sanger says probably all those people we don't like having around so much (people with mental and physical disabilities, criminals) were conceived in less than ideal conditions.