A First Study of the Influence of Parental Alcoholism on the

Physique and Ability of the Offspring.

(1) Introduction. An attempt is made in this paper to measure the effect of alcoholism in the parents on the health, physique and intelligence of their offspring. The question of intemperance is one of the chief problems of our national life, and as such it is beset with difficulties. It is surrounded with prejudices and has been too often treated with rhetoric, so that it is extremely difficult to free the mind from preconceived opinions and approach the subject with a purely judicial and calm statistical spirit. Yet if we are to deal with the drink question in a satisfactory and permanent fashion, reform must be guided by an instructed public opinion. No greater evil is done to a good cause, than when statistically undemonstrable statements receive, owing to emotional appeals, general credence, and then wider experience shows them later to be inexact. Nor again when we demonstrate that certain social results do not flow from alcohol, ought we to be charged with asserting that other results which we have not considered may not be directly due to it. The desire to know before acting, and the mind which refuses to express an opinion before knowledge, are so unfamiliar to many workers in the field of social reform, that the possibility of starting an inquiry without any bias as to its result seems to them almost an iniquity, the mark of an abnormal temperament.

Students of eugenics are not measuring the effect of any occupation or habit on the individual, but the effect that such occupation or habit may have on the racial qualities of future generations. They are not concerned with the effect of drink on the person who drinks, but they are concerned with the results that drinking produces in the offspring. These results may be due to three different sources:

(i) Alcoholism in the parent may, like insanity, be the somatic mark of a defective germ plasm in the stock. The child is defective not because the parent is alcoholic, but because it is the product like the parent of a defective germ plasm. The child may be physically and mentally fit, and yet when adult may exhibit alcoholic tendencies. This is the direct heredity of alcoholism. It is a subject not touched on in this paper, although material for its discussion is accumulating in the Galton Laboratory. It may be demonstrable to the hilt, and possibly justify the seclusion of the alcoholic ; it does not occupy us, however, in this present study; we are concerned only with the offspring of the alcoholic as children. An equally important point is the cross-heredity of alcoholism. If alcoholism is a mark of a defective plasm, that defect may take one form in one individual of the stock and another form in a second; such associated heredities are well known to the student of insanity and of human deformities. The fact that the parent is alcoholic may lead us to expect an

germ

G. M. x.

1

increase of imbecility, epilepsy or tuberculosis in the offspring. This matter is only indirectly touched on in the present paper. It is not easy to distinguish such crossheredity from our second source of alcoholic influence.

(ii) Alcoholism in the parent may have no hereditary origin; it may be considered as a habit due to environment and not to constitution, the effect on the child may be due to an environmental influence and not to any cross-heredity. The former cross-heredity would have come into play, if the parent had been forcibly deprived during life of alcohol; the child would still have been defective. This second source of harm to the children would arise even in the case of a parent, who was nonalcoholic by heredity, but who became alcoholic by habit or environment. The source of harm to the offspring lies in an enfeeblement of the physique, or possibly of the germ plasm of the parents, owing to a toxic property of alcohol.

(iii) Alcohol may thirdly be the source of evil to the children, not because of physical changes wrought in the parents, but because of economic and moral changes produced in the home environment. Mental and moral degradation of the parents, distress and poverty in the home may and probably do follow in the train of intemperance. Money spent excessively on drink means less money spent on the necessities of life; it leads to neglect of the children, to unhappy homes, and to undesirable environment. In any consideration of the results of alcoholism these very obvious facts arrest our attention, and we are inclined to lose sight of the really fundamental question: What is the quantitative measure of these environmental influences on the physical and mental characters of the offspring? It seems useful to class the three sources of alcoholic influence of the parent under the categories: (i) Hereditary Influence (a) Direct, (b) Cross; (ii) Toxic Influence, and (iii) Environmental Influence.

With (i) (a) we are not at present concerned, but hope that it will be dealt with later. We are dealing only with children, not yet of an age to exhibit definite alcoholic tendencies. Between (i) (b), (ii) and (iii), it will be difficult to differentiate on the basis of the present material. But the necessity for differentiation will only arise, if we demonstrate a substantial correlation between alcoholism in the parent and defectiveness in the child. Should such a correlation exist, then for a permanent and valuable scheme of social reform it is needful above all things to ascertain whether it is the cross-heredity, the toxic influence or the environmental influence which is the source or chief source of the resulting harm to the child. Complete prohibition would not remedy the cross-hereditary influence, it could only be met by the prohibition of parentage for members of affected stocks. Complete prohibition would put a stop at once to the toxic influence; either complete prohibition, or the removal of offspring would meet the environmental influence. Surely it is worth while to get some light on these points, before we tackle this great problem of alcoholism. And if it should be that more extensive data confirm the results of this preliminary study would it not be of considerable importance to realise that we must look to other factors besides drink as potent sources of our social difficulties?

Some hesitation will no doubt be felt by some of our readers at the lay treatment of a problem of this kind. But the reply to this is two-fold. The medical man as

a rule has no opportunity of dealing with a random sample of the general population; it is the social worker who goes into the homes who alone can appreciate the extent of the drinking habit, and record the economic conditions of the working population, Individual medical men see, of course, much more of special and extreme cases, but it is not part of their duty to appreciate and report on random samples of the general population. In the next place but few medical men at present have either the statistical training or the statistical tastes needful for an inquiry of this kind. It must fall to those whose duty it is at present to inquire into the social condition of the people-i.e. the social worker-and to those whose occupation is the treatment of statistics. We believe firmly that the day must come when for the treatment of these great social problems a laboratory shall be adequately endowed in which it shall be possible for sociologically trained, medically trained and statistically trained minds to work side by side for their solution. But until that day dawns, it is not reasonable to postpone sociological inquiry until a medical diagnosis can be taken of each individual. Such a diagnosis would be of immense value as making our classification precise. But failing it we must content ourselves with such categories as are provided by a single worker, or by a system of workers trained on a common plan. Such categories as sober, drinks, has drinking bouts, are not final, but they at least enable us to see further than we can without the knowledge they convey. Accordingly by the term alcoholism in this paper is not necessarily meant the "chronic alcoholism" of medical literature. We believe that many, possibly the majority, of our drinking class would be found to suffer more or less from chronic alcoholism; they at any rate in the opinion of trained social workers-assisted by the judgment of police and employers—are drinking more than is good for them or their homes. On the other hand by "sober" is not meant total abstinence, but cases in which the use of alcohol is so moderate, if it exists, that it does not appear to interfere with the health of the individual or the welfare of the home. Such then is the distinction between "parent drinks" and "parent is sober" of the following investigation. Parent has drinking bouts" denotes a third well-marked class from the standpoint of the social observer; namely periodic outbreaks of alcoholism usually marked when they occur by more obvious immediate detriment to health, and more intense destruction of home welfare, e.g. discharge from employment, or visits to the police court.

(2) Characteristics of Alcoholic Parents. In any attempt to study the results of environment we are at once met by many difficulties, which in some cases are insoluble owing to our lack of adequate data. We may measure the effect of some environmental condition and find it correlated with definite characteristics in the children. We may then assume the latter to flow from the former, whereas the environmental condition may be a result of a physical or mental condition in the parents, which in itself is hereditary. Thus the correlation may be solely a secondary hereditary effect. It is possible that the more virile members of the community habitually take more alcohol than the feebler members and we might thus be led to a spurious correlation between alcoholism and good physique in the offspring. Or, the more stupid members of the community may be those who take more alcohol, and we might thus be led to the result that parental drinking destroys the intelligence of the

offspring. One of the greatest needs of the time, as the school surveys will show, is to associate the survey of the physique and mentality of the children, not only with a survey of the homes, but with a survey of the health of the parents, and if possible with some anthropometric examination of the parents. This at present is not feasible. But how, failing it, are we to be certain that drinking parents may not be physically or mentally differentiated from sober parents, and therefore differentiation of the offspring a secondary hereditary result? Nay, it might even be argued that if drinking parents were physically and mentally fitter than sober parents, the equality in the physique and mentality of children of both types of parents was due to alcohol pulling down to the average a child who should have been above the average. The point may seem at first sight an unnecessary one to raise; but therein lies really a vital question to the student of modern statistical methods: What are the correlations of physique and intelligence with the drinking habit? The answer cannot be given on the data used in this paper, but there is other material in the Laboratory upon which an answer to this question can ultimately be based. The only light that can be thrown on this matter from our present data is an indirect one. The wages of the father are to some extent a measure of the general status as to physique and intelligence of the parent. A man who is physically and mentally unfit will hardly receive high wages, whether he be drunk or sober. Clearly the general tendency of drink must when it reaches a certain intensity tend to lower a man's wages. We should therefore expect to find the wages of the drinking man somewhat less than those of the sober man; if in addition he has defective physique and intelligence, we should expect to find them markedly less than those of the sober man. In certain special cases no doubt peculiar skill ir, craftsmanship may lead to high wages and high wages to alcoholism; but the maintenance of high wages under such conditions can only be very exceptional and can only affect individual cases and the average but little. We think it may be safely affirmed that if the alcoholic parent were markedly inferior in physique or intelligence his average wages would be markedly less than those of the sober parent. Now in part of the material dealt with in this paper, the Edinburgh data, the wages are given in nearly every case. Parents were divided into three classes: (1) both parents drink, (2) one parent drinks and (3) neither parent drinks. The mean wage of the father when both parents drink wats 24s. 8d.; when one parent drinks 25s. 6d. and when neither parent drinks 25s. 5ď. Or, grouping in another way, when either or both drink 25s. and when neither drink 25s. 5d. If we consider the father alone, for it is not possible to apply the wages test to determine the drinking mother's status in comparison with other mothers, we finų that the wages of a drinking man are on the average 25s. and a non-drinking man 26s. It would be reasonable to suppose that the 6d. or 1s. difference shown in the above results is what the employer is willing to pay for the convenience of sobriety. It can hardly mean that there is a great differentiation in physique and intelligence between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic*. At any rate if the alcoholic are physically and mentally inferior, one might expect this fact together with the inconvenience of insobriety would be indicated by a higher wage difference. Of course

* A reply to Professor Marshall's criticism of these wage-results will be found in Questions of the Day and the Fray, No. I, Dulau & Co.

a somewhat higher physique or intelligence in the alcoholic might be screened by their habits giving them a lower market value. On the whole it seems reasonable to assume that the drinking parents are in physique and mentality the equal on an average of the sober, or possibly a little above their standard. This possible slight difference will hardly sensibly affect the correlations between parental alcoholism and the health and intelligence of the children.

(3) Material. We have used for the purposes of this paper two series of statistics bearing on the question of drink and its effect on the children; the Edinburgh Charity Organization Society Report and a manuscript account of the children in the special schools of Manchester provided for us by Miss Mary Dendy*. In dealing with the children in these special schools it must be remembered that we are considering a selected class of homes; of the children in these homes one at least is mentally defective. In the families chosen for investigation by the C.O.S. in Edinburgh the selection is much less stringent; the homes of all the children attending a certain school in Edinburgh were examined and the school was chosen because "It has upon its rolls children from the poorest parts of the city, and yet it has also an admixture of the substantially comfortable and thoroughly respectable working class," and the report goes on to say, "In the poorest part of a city of many centuries' growth there are also many old families' who continue to reside in the houses their fathers and grandfathers lived in, for old times' sake, despite of the degeneration of the immediate neighbourhood. This gives the school a widely representative character, which especially commended itself to the Committee in making its selection."

In the Manchester data the parents were divided into "temperate" and "intemperate" and information was given about the health and in most cases about the intelligence of the brothers and sisters of the mentally defective child.

In the Edinburgh report more details were given as to the degree and kind of drinking of the parents but the numbers are too few to enable us to use these divisions in detail, the tables in the Appendix give the numbers in each class. We were able to divide the parents into the following classes. Parent: (1) Teetotaller, (2) Sober, (3) Suspected to drink, (4) Drinks, (5) Has bouts of drinking. As will be seen from the tables, classes (1) and (3) were too small to be kept separate and teetotallers had to be included with sober people and suspected drinkers with drinkers.

We have worked out the correlation coefficients between the drinking of the parents and the actual height and weight of the children, their health, intelligence, diseases and eyesight and the effect on the infant death rate. In determining the drinking capacities of the parents we have used the account of each home given in the Report, in the same manner as we have done in other memoirs. It is a personal judgment, but one substantially repeated on going through the data a second time.

(4) Drink of Parents and Height and Weight of Children. We will first consider the effect of the drinking of the parents on the actual height and weight of their children. The tables are Numbers I to XVI inclusive in the Appendix. In this * The material was collected by the late Dr Ashby, who personally saw one or both parents. The houses were visited by trained visitors.