For instance, did you know that if a pregnant woman attended a funeral, her baby would be stillborn? Or if you think of or look too long at ugly people while you're 'in the family way', your child will be born ugly? You could never be too careful.
Throughout the period, the message was clear. If a child was born with a birth defect, it was the parents' fault. Light on Dark Corners also suggests the following:
Why Bring Into the World Idiots, Fools, Criminals and Lunatics?
2. EACH AFTER IT'S KIND - "Like parents like children", "In their own image beget", "How can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit?"
3. AS ARE THE PARENTS - Physically, mentally and morally, when they stamp their own image and likeness upon progeny, so will the constitution of that progeny.
4. "JUST AS THE TWIG IS BENT THE TREE'S INCLINED" - Yet the bramble cannot be bent to bear delicious peaches, nor the sycamore to bear grain. Education is something but parentage is everything; because "it dyes in the wool", and thereby exerts an influence on character almost infinitely more powerful than all other conditions put together.
5. HEALTHY AND BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN - Thoughtless mortal! Before you allow the first goings forth of love, learn what the parental conditions in you mean, and you will confer a great boon upon the prospective bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh! If it is within your power to be the parents of beautiful, healthy, moral and talented children instead of diseased and depraved, is it not your imperious duty then, to impart to them that physical power, moral perfection, and intellectual capability, which shall ennoble their lives and make them good people and good citizens?
6. PAUSE AND TROUBLE - Prospective parents! Will you trifle with the dearest interests of your children? Will you in matters most momentous, head-long rush "where Angels dare not tread", seeking only mere animal indulgence? Yet how many parents tread this holy ground completely unprepared, and almost as thoughtlessly and ignorantly as brutes - entailing even loathsome diseases and sexual propensities upon the fruit of their own bodies! Whereas they are bound by obligations the most imperious to bestow on them a good physical organization, along with a pure, moral and strong intellectual constitution, or else not become parents! Especially since it is easier to generate human angels than devils incarnate.
7. HEREDITARY DESCENT - This great law of things fully proves and illustrates in any required number and variety of cases, shows that progeny inherits the constitutional natures and characters, mental and physical, of parents, including pre-dispositions to consumption, insanity, all sorts of diseases, etc. as well as longevity.
8. ILLUSTRATION - A whaleman was severely hurt by a harpooned whale turning upon the small boat, and by his monstrous jaws, smashing it to pieces, one of which, striking him on the right side, crippled him for life. When sufficiently recovered, he married, according to previous engagement, and his daughter, born in due time, and closely resembling him in looks, constitution and character, has a weak and sore place corresponding in location with that of the injury of her father.
9. PARENT'S PARTICIPATION - Each parent furnishing an indispensable portion of the materials of life, and somehow or other, contributes parentally to the formation of the constitutional character of their joint product, appears far more reasonable, than to ascribe, as many do, the whole to either, some to maternity and some to paternity. Still this decision to which way it may, does not affect the great fact that children inherit both the physiology and the mentality existing in both parents at the time they received being and constitution.
10. ILLEGITIMATES AND BASTARDS - Also furnish strong proof of the correctness of this our leading doctrine. They are generally lively, sprightly, witty, frolicksome, knowing, quick of perception, apt to learn, full of passion, quick-tempered, impulsive throughout, hasty, indiscreet, given to excesses, yet abound in good feeling and are well calculated to enjoy life, though in general sadly deficient to some essential moral elements.
11. CHARACTER OF ILLEGITIMATES - Wherein then consists this difference? First, "in novelty lending an enchantment" rarely experienced in sated wedlock, as well as in power of passion sufficient to break through all restraint, external and internal, and hence their high wrought organization. They are usually wary, and on the alert, as their parents drank "stolen waters". They are commonly wanting in moral balance, or else delinquent in some moral aspect; nor would they have ever been born unless this had been the case, for the time being at least, with their parents.
12. CHILDREN'S CONDITION - Depends upon the parent's condition at the time of the sexual embrace. Let parents recall, as nearly as may be, their circumstances and states of body and mind at this period, and place them by the side of the physical and mental constituions of their children, and then say whether this law is a great practical truth, and if so, it's importance is as the happiness and misery it is capable of affecting!
13. THE VITAL PERIOD - The physical condition of parents at the vital period of transmission of life should be a perfect condition of health in both body and mind, and a vigorous condition of all the animal organs and functions.
14. MUSCULAR PREPARATIONS - Especially should parents cultivate their muscualsr system preparatory to the perfection of this function, and of their children, because, to impart strength and stamina to offspring they must of necessity both possess a good muscular organization, and also bring it into vigorous requisition at this period.
15. THE SEED - So exceedingly delicate are the seeds of life, that, unless planted in a place of perfect security, they must all be destroyed, and our race itself extinguished. And what place is as secure as that chosen, where they can be reached only with the utmost difficulty, and then only at the peril of even life itself" Imperfect seed sown in poor ground means a sickly harvest.
16. HEALTHY PEOPLE - MOST CHILDREN - The most healthy classes have the most numerous families; but that, as luxury enervates society, it diminishes the population, by enfeebling parents, nature preferring none rather than those too weakly to live and be happy, and thereby rendering that union unfruitful which is too feeble to produce offspring sufficiently strong to enjoy life.
17. WHY CHILDREN DIE - Inquire whether one or both of those parents who have numerous children who die around us, have not weak lungs, or debilitated stomach, or a diseased liver, or feeble muscles, or else use them but little, or disordered nerves, or some other debility or form of disease. The presence of summer complaints, colic, cholera infantum, and other infections of these vital organs of children is truly alarming, sweeping them into their graves by the million. Is this the order of nature? No, but their death-worm is born in and with them, and by paternal agency.
18. GRAVEYARD STATISTICS - Take grave-yard statistics for August (1894), and then say, whether most of the deaths of children have been caused by indigestion or feebleness of the bowels, liver, etc. or complaints growing out of them? Rather, take family statistics from broken-hearted parents! And yet, those very parents who suffer more than words can tell, were the first and main transgressors, because they entailed those dyspeptic heart, and other kindred affections, and thereby almost as bad as killed them by inches; thus depriving them of the joys of life, and themselves of their greatest earthly treasure.
20. PARENTS MUST LEARN AND OBEY - How infinitely more virtous and happy would your children be if you should be healthy in body, and happy in mind, so as to beget in a constitutionally healthy and vigorous physiology, along with a serene and happy frame of mind. Avoid excesses of all kinds, be temperate (today we are well aware of the affects of alcohol on the fetus), take good care of the body and avoid exposures to sickness and disease, and your children witll be models of health and beauty.
22. THE EFFECTS - The children of affectionate parents receive existence and constitution when love has rendered the mentality of their parents both more elevated and more active than it is by nature, of course the children of loving parents are both more intellectual and moral by nature than their parents.
23. ANIMAL IMPULSE - You may preach and pray until doomsday - may send out missionaries, may circulate tracts and Bibles, and multiply revivals and all the means of grace, with little avail; because, as long as makind go on, as now, to propagate by animal impulse, so long must their offspring be animal, sensual and devilish! Oh! Parents, by as much as you prefer the luxury of concord to the torments of discord, and children that are sweet dispositioned and highly intellectual to those that are rough, wrathful and depraved, be entreated to love one another!
