Margaret Sanger The Children's Era Analysis

Known as a birth control activist, Margaret Sanger, gave her famous speech, The Children’s Era, in 1925. The Children’s Era started the battle for birth control and contraceptives. When Sanger was only 19 she watched her mother die from Tuberculosis. Sanger believed she died from the strain of having eleven children and seven miscarriages. At her own mother’s funeral Sanger turned to her father to say, “You caused this. Mother is dead from having too many children." This horrifying experience leads to Sanger’s determination. Trying to escape her mother 's death, Sanger left her hometown to attend nursing school and eventually became a nurse in New York. While working as a nurse she saw many women faced with her own personal tragedy. Sanger …show more content…
Sanger wanted women to have options. She claims that too many children were being born into the world “unwelcome, unwanted, unprepared for, and unknown”. Sanger uses the technique Pathos by using the words “unwelcome, unwanted, unprepared for, and unknown”, this triggers emotions in the audience, it makes them feel sorry for the children. She explains how children being born into these situations are set up for failure from the beginning. Sanger explains how many of these children will end up in “prisons, homes for the feeble-minded, and institutions for the unfit”. She believes if children were brought into the world welcome, the problems that concern children would resolve. By using Pathos she attempts to make the audience realize they need to take …show more content…
Sanger uses a metaphor that compares parenting to raising a garden. Sanger explains how the world could be a “beautiful garden of children”. She says, “Before you can cultivate a garden, you must know something about gardening. You have got to give your seeds a proper soil in which to grow.” She wants her audience to understand parents must know something about parenting before they will be successful at raising a child. She wants the audience to understand that a child must be prepared for, welcome, and invited before being born into a family. She compares her listeners to poor parents by using the metaphor, “So far we have not been gardeners.” This triggers an emotion in her audience by allowing them to realize they have not taken any steps to solve this issue. Sanger believed if women would use birth control it would eliminate many of the problems in society. She believed birth control would eliminate all unwelcome and unwanted children which could potentially be placed into prisons and institutions for the