Graduate Mothers’ Scheme

What is the similarity between the Nazi regime and the graduate mothers’ scheme? The answer is Eugenics. Eugenics is intervention in human evolution in order to improve on the human species. You can either practise it in a positive way or negative way. Positive would be to encourage those who are ‘fitter’ to breed while discouraging those who aren’t to not breed or to inter-breed with those who are. Negatively, it would entail the sterilization or more extremely the gradual elimination of an entire race.

The most notorious example would be Hitler’s concentration camps where ‘undesirables’ were put away. On a lesser scale would be the various sterilisation programmes enforced throughout the United States when eugenics was still endorsed as a way to improve the human race and lessen suffering.

Of course, the Graduate Mothers; Scheme would be an example of positive eugenics, where people who are considered more intelligent are encouraged to reproduce in order to increase the amount of such people in the population. “2 or more if you can afford it” targets those of a better socio-economic background and expensive dating agencies preclude those who can’t afford it. As anyone with an inkling of sense and social awareness can tell, intelligence is directly correlated with wealth/social background so these campaigns can be seen as an attempt by a certain person/people to specifically target those who are better or more ‘elite’.

Thankfully, eugenics has long been discredited and abandoned, although largely more due to the atrocities commited by the Nazis then genuine care for the human race’s gene pool. Remants of eugenics still remain, with genetic screening for people with heritable diseases; this is necessary to avoid the pain to both parent and child when a child is afflicted with such an illness.