The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

towards parenthood has retained enough strength to
prevent the population from declining.
Official moralists in every Western country have
endeavoured to treat this problem by means of
exhortations and sentimentality. On the one hand,
they say that it is the duty of every married couple
to have as many children as God wills, regardless
of any prospect that such children may have of
health and happiness. On the Other hand, male
divines prate about the sacred joys of motherhood
and pretend that a large family of diseased and
poverty-stricken infants is a source of happiness.
The State joins in with the argument that an
adequate crop of cannon fodder is necessary, for
how can all these exquisite and ingenious weapons
of destruction function adequately unless there are
sufficient populations left for them to destroy?
Strange to say, the individual parent, even if he
accepts these arguments as applied to others,
remains entirely deaf to them as applied to himself.
The psychology of the divines and the patriots is at
fault. The divines may succeed so long as they can