Chapter 14 of 19
Heredity
THE profession of fatherhood and motherhood has its responsibilities even before the birth of the children. Someone has said, “Every man is an heir; every man is an ancestor.” Just as we receive through our ancestral line many of our traits, so too we found a line of descendants, and we transmit to those descendants something of what we are ourselves.
If we were free to transmit only the good, how truly it would be worth transmitting! But it does not work that way. It is impossible to foresee what part of us will pass on to our successors. Whoever performs the work of imparting life runs the risk of imparting to the one born of him some of his worst with the best. Wherever there is propagation by generation the mystery of heredity has its place, a frightening place. It is not in vain that God gives this warning in the twentieth Book of Exodus: “I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate Me; And showing mercy unto thousands to them that love Me and keep my Commandments.” There is a similar idea expressed in the prophecy of Ezechiel.
A certain father took part as a young man in a sinful escapade. He corrupted his blood; a germ entered into him. Should he be astonished then that at the moment in which he transmits life, that very life will be contaminated? He took precautions; he was cured. That is possible. It is not always certain. There are often unpleasant surprises. Even when the malady does not recur in the first generation, it is possible that it may reappear in the second or third or even later.
It is the same in the case of lesser evils which nevertheless leave their corrupting effects—habits of laziness, intemperance in the use of liquor, a wasting of one’s forces. It all tells.
The mother also formerly lived too fast. Her life was characterized by an excessive effort to follow the capricious changes in styles, too intense a participation in strenuous sports, an abuse of strong liquors or over-indulgence in smoking, too much loss of sleep because of empty and sophisticated night-life or hours of reading thrillers or indiscriminate running to movies. Here she is now leaning over her baby’s cradle. The little thing is weak and puny looking as if it were trouble just to breathe. The doctor is called. There are certainly many reasons for sicknesses and weakness in babies other than the imprudences of the mother and father. But is it not true that in many cases if the doctor were sincere he would have to say, “Madam, there are maladies here which wisdom could prevent but which science cannot circumvent.” To have healthy and vigorous children, parents must deserve it.
But far be from us any unjust generalizations! It often happens that in the most deserving families where parents have always done their duty, God may send weak and sickly children either for the sanctification of the parents or for reasons known to Himself alone.
But it still remains true that in many a household an unbelievable thoughtlessness serves as the prelude for so serious an act as the procreative act. How many fathers and mothers ought to meditate on the words spoken by Our Lord with a different implication to the women of Jerusalem as He trudged along to Calvary, “Weep over Yourselves and your children.”
What a tragic mystery is human heredity! Physical impurities, and in part, tendencies that foster moral weaknesses can be transmitted to one’s descendants. Some children will issue forth victorious over terrible struggles only painfully because there is weighing upon them the crushing weight of faults or frightful frivolities to which others before them have consented!