The influence of the age of parents on the vitality of their children / by Joseph Korösi.

  • Kőrösi, József, 1844-1906.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of the age of parents on the vitality of their children / by Joseph Korösi. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ^0 servations —is a very important one and so less to under- value as it is in pretty lively contradiction with the general custom. The ideal of each mother — at least in our country — is to get her daughter married at the age of 18 or 19; girls of 20 years of age will not be in general considered as standing- still on the threshold of marriable age. There are in Budapest yearly 40 couples where the bride has not yet reached her seventieth year, 50 where she is not yet 18 and 120 where she is not yet 19 years old. The number of brides below 20 years represents 13 per cent of the proto- gam brides, with the Gathohcs even 18^0, whilst with Protestants and Galvinists 12^0 and with Israelite only 10. Also in England 12 per cent of the brides step to the altar bolow 20 years of age and their yearly number is not less than 23.000! As to the influence of the combined age of parents, our observations may be considered as a proof of the gene- ral rule, that old men ought not to marry young Avomen. But as statistical data to prove this rule were up to iiow failing, it was perhaps not quite superfluous to produce them. We are thus enabled to assert, guided not only by Instinct but by statistical reasoning, that women under 30 years and even between 30 and 35, would do better to R u b i n-W ester gaard in their statistics of marriages in Gopen- hague, published in 1890, have obtained a similar result. They in fact remark, that this influence of age is a very small one. In respect to that we wish still to point out, that in our investigations Ave distin- gnish between intrauterine and extrauterine causes and that the prominent influence is just found in the intrauterine ones, and besides this, that the work of the excellent Danish statisticians is based upon the paternal age, which also in Budapest was not found to be of so im- portant «an influence like the maternal age.