Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders | Page 6

conditions of
life, and habits of the community; and, on the other hand, we must promote and
encourage parenthood on the part of the best and stablest stocks, and do everything in our
power to discourage, or in the extreme cases even to prevent, proliferation of unfit and
degenerate strains.
For the purpose of the present inquiry we need merely state as a practical preliminary
regarding heredity that it has been proved beyond question that if two feeble-minded
persons marry they will most probably produce abundant offspring, of whom all may be
subnormal, and a large proportion will become a burden on the State; and that if one such
person is mated with a healthy individual an undue proportion of their children are likely
to prove degenerate or defective, and the unsoundness will continue to make its
appearance in succeeding generations.
While local evidence confirmatory of this came before the Committee, first place will be
given to certain classic and exhaustive investigations and life-histories of degenerate
families, going back many generations, such as no young country could possibly supply.
However, the forcible and far-sighted report of the late Dr. Duncan Macgregor (originally
Professor of Mental Science at Otago University, and subsequently Inspector-General of
Asylums, Hospitals, and Charitable Aid), quoted in the Appendix, shows clearly that
some very degenerate stocks imported into this country under the active immigration
policy of the "seventies" and "eighties" were already threatening, thirty-five years ago, to
become a serious tax on the country, as well as tending to lower the high physical, mental,
and moral standard established by the original pioneers and settlers.
We shall now revert for the moment to the environmental factor. The first most pressing
and immediate practical duty of the Government and the community is to spare no pains
to improve the status and environment of the family so as to promote the highest
attainable standard of physical, mental, and moral health for the new generation--already
in our midst or bound to arrive in the course of the next few years.
It is becoming more and more widely recognized that by due attention to the pre-natal
and post-natal care of mother and child an infinity of good can be done--indeed, a great

deal is already under way in this direction throughout the Dominion. But the Committee
are satisfied that much more ought to be done to ensure for children of the pre-school and
school ages more generally favourable home conditions, and healthier environment and
habits outside the home.
In the meantime it is obvious that very little can be effected in the way of bettering the
average heredity; but are we taking adequate measures in the direction of improving the
environment of mother and child? The housing problem is still far from satisfactory; help
in the home can scarcely be procured, and the rearing and care of children throughout the
pre-school and school periods, in a large proportion of cases, is neither conducive to a
high standard of nutrition, growth, and moral development, nor to the establishment of
normal self-control, especially as regards sexual habits and manifestations. The
Committee cannot ignore the fact that the leading medical and psychological authorities
lay it down as an axiom that the power of self-control is at its highest when the individual
is physically active, well-nourished, and in perfect bodily health, and that impaired
control always accompanies impaired nutrition, debility, and disease. It has been said,
with profound wisdom and insight, that ultimately and fundamentally reproduction
should be regarded as essentially "an exuberant phase of nutrition"; and there is no
escaping the wide implication of Schiller's aphorism that "Love and Hunger rule the
World."
In view of these considerations the Committee feel compelled to refer to such serious
handicaps to all-round health, control, and efficiency as the prevalence of wrong feeding
habits--e.g., giving children food between meals and the insufficient provision of fresh
fruit and vegetables in the daily diet and the abuse of sweets. Other prominent and
avoidable handicaps, seriously affecting many children throughout the Dominion, which
ought to receive more serious attention are insufficiency of sunlight and fresh air in the
home and at school, insufficient daily outing and exercise, lack of adequate provision in
the way of playgrounds and swimming-baths, and last, but not least, the highly injurious
practice of frequenting "picture-shows."
As the Committee are called on to deal specially with the problem of increasing
manifestations of sexual depravity they cannot pass by the fact that in the course of the
last twenty years the younger members of the community have been spending a steadily
increasing proportion of their time, during the most impressionable period of life, in what
are liable to prove forcing-houses of sexual precocity and criminal tendencies. There is
every reason for regarding the habit of "going to the pictures"