I'm pretty sure that in "The Road To Wigan Pier" Orwell makes an observation about the effect on the British population of having a significant proportion of the youngest and healthiest men killed in the the Great War.

Interesting. I didn't know that unmarried mothers in England at that time were "often condemned to asylums". Is such harsh treatment of single motherhood common? I can think of societies where it often carries the death penalty, but those societies also permit polygyny.