Renowned professor and thinker Felix Adler was the primary figure behind the Ethical Culture movement, a quasi-religious initiative unattached to any particular brand of theism, which flowered in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In this volume, Adler addresses parenthood and child-rearing, placing these activities within a firm moral and ethical framework.

When the concept of eugenics—the practice of selecting for desirable traits in the larger population by encouraging gifted and/or attractive people to breed—began to take hold in the early twentieth century, British thinker and writer G.K. Chesterton took a stance contrary to that of many intellectuals of the period and denounced it as evil in this bold, engaging series of essays.