THE UNMARRIED MOTHER
“The British Empire has invested thousands of its best lives to
purchase future immunity for civilisation. This investment is
too great to be thrown away.”—Right Hon. D. LLOYD GEORGE.
One of the most pressing questions that we shall have to face in the near
future is the attitude and practical action which, as a people, we are
going to adopt towards the unmarried mother and her child. I have so far
said almost nothing upon this problem of illegitimacy, though the whole
difficult question is connected with, and is, in fact, closely dependent
for its solution on, the conclusions we arrived at in the preceding
chapter on Sexual Relationships outside of Marriage; we then realised the
moral advantage that would result from an open avowal and the regulation
of all sexual partnerships, with the fixing, as far as this is possible,
of a standard of conduct to be expected and claimed from those who enter
into them. I have left over this question of the child on purpose that
we may give it special consideration. No other matter is of greater
significance to my book on Motherhood than is this, and none is deeper in
my own interest or, in my opinion, of more urgent importance.
It is really impossible to evade it much longer. There is obviously
something ridiculous, at a time when the fateful importance of child-life
is being forced more and more upon our attention, to repeat our
conventional, unimaginative and inconsistent judgments.
We are learning new and sharp lessons. Terrific war losses are teaching
governments to consider the necessity of preserving the new generation
even to its last and meanest members. At last the movements to improve
the condition of illegitimate children, for which many of us have for
long struggled in vain, have received new impetus. What humanity has been
powerless to do, the most ancient of all inhumanities—war—has suddenly
accomplished.
And it is well. We cannot go on as we have done before. We call
motherhood holy, and yet we have sanctioned the sacrifice of mothers,
driving them to crimes, to abortion, to child-murders and to death; we
have sent them into sweated industries; we have turned them out onto the
streets, forcing them to choose between starvation and prostitution. We
have permitted the yearly destruction of tens of thousands of little
children, born into a hard and barren world without the slightest
provision for their physical and mental needs. At the same time, the fact
has been hammered into us of the declining birth-rate. This has gone on
and on, but we have done nothing that the evils may be stopped and life
take the place of unnecessary death.
I cannot understand an attitude which simultaneously condemns the
non-maternal woman, who does not wish to be a mother, accusing her of sin
in shirking the duty of bearing children, and then brands the unmarried
mother to infamy. By the cruelty of our law and the short-sightedness
of our “moral” attitude we have worked to make life a martyrdom for the
unmarried mother, and for the children born out of wedlock, who are
smirched by us with the shame of their illegitimate birth, and thus are
forced downward in the hard struggle of life.
And such foolish and cruel action has all been done in the name of
morality! Let us tear the mask from the lying face of our social
conscience. We need a clean clearance of a moral attitude that really is
profoundly immoral.
Let no one make a mistake. In pleading for these unhonoured mothers and
their children, I am not advocating illegal parentage. There is a sin of
illegitimacy, as presently I shall show. Irresponsible parentage must
always be immoral. It is, however, the parents who behave illegitimately,
not the child, since it can never be the fault of any child that its
parents have brought it into the world. I would wish for every child
that it should be born within the happy safeguards of a true monogamous
marriage. But I cannot close my eyes to the facts of life. I know that we
shall not be able to make it impossible for extra-conjugal procreation to
take place: love-children will be born. And what we, in our curious moral
muddle-headedness, forget is that by penalising the mother we cannot
escape the penalty being paid by the child. Our attitude in the past has
been a reproach to our social intelligence.
I am very far indeed from any desire to lessen parental responsibility.
And if I want the harshness of our law and our moral attitude changed,
it is first of all because I wish to make it possible for unmarried
parents—the father as well as the mother—to give adequate protection to
their child. If they do not do this willingly, I would use the pressure
of the law and a strong public opinion to bring them to their duty. Under
present conditions this can never be done. It is because our harshness
does no good that I condemn it.
The iniquity of our bastardy laws and public opinion concerning
illegitimacy both reflect the Anglo-Saxon habit of mind, which persists
in ignoring all social problems arising from the sex relation. We have
never yet squarely faced the question, we have just pushed it into the
darkness, and pretended it was not there. It has even been a kind of
disgrace to bring it forward; and the evil and the waste is so hidden up
that most of us have been quite unaware of its immense existence among
us. But we cannot thus escape from what we have done, or rather have left
undone.
The fact is, that all our thought on these questions has been obscured by
the puritan view of punishment, based on the assumption that harshness
in the treatment of sexual offences will make for a higher standard of
morality. Do we really believe this? Surely the underlying fallacy of our
morality has always rested here—in our desire to crucify the offender.
We forget that, by doing this, we but open the way to make easy, even if
not inevitable, the committal of further sin. By our attitude we drive
men to desert the girls made pregnant through their lust, and open the
way for them to escape from responsibility for their sexual sins and to
disown their fatherhood; we do everything that we can to encourage unfit
parenthood.
Few people want to do wrong; they drift into wrong; the circumstances are
too hard or their wills too weak to resist. We are suffering a great deal
of confusion from demanding from men and women a rule of conduct in sex
without taking any care that the conditions of life render such conduct
practicable. In the last chapter I tried to make plain how short-sighted
has been the attempt to force all types into a single mould. The plan I
there outlined for an open acceptance of honourable unions outside of
permanent marriage, would cut at the roots of many of these problems,
and, in particular, by lessening the sufferings from enforced sexual
abstinence, would render much less frequent those disgraceful and hidden
unions which result in illegitimate births; it would also materially
reduce the dire results of venereal diseases, and would be, in my
opinion, more beneficial and far-reaching than anything that yet has
been proposed. I would affirm again that I am not advocating license of
conduct. It is necessary to proclaim allegiance to the God of morals,
who has proclaimed for ever “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not.” But it is
necessary also to understand that repressive terrors may drive men and
women into greater sins.
Our bastardy laws act directly in this immoral way. The child born of
unmarried parents has been branded under Christian teaching as “the child
of sin,” and condemned from its birth as a member of an unclean caste.
But, from the point of view of practical morality, this identification of
the child with the sin of its parents is wholly unjustifiable.
_The urgent duty that rests upon us all is the duty of taking action to
prevent the penalty for the sin of illegitimate parentage being paid by
the child._
It is common sense, after all.
We have to remember that the birth of every child—and it matters not at
all whether the birth is legal or illegal—is always the introduction of a
new individual into the community. Birth is not a personal fact only, but
a social fact, in which the State cannot fail to be concerned.
The effect in increasing the infantile death-rate and the misery caused
in physical and mental unfitness in the children who survive, are the
result of our blind action. This is what we have to change. For it
is such social waste that makes our cruel bastardy laws so absurd.
After all, you cannot go on indefinitely encouraging the production of
wastrels. It is the practical question of health and social well-being
that we need to consider in reforming our laws.
The practical aspects of the question are serious. Illegitimacy has a
far closer relation than is generally understood to the racial wastage
which it helps to feed. Certainly it looms large as a factor in social
disintegration—in the degeneration which leads to the streets and to the
prison, and the ever-increasing hosts of the submerged. The Minority
Report of the Royal Commissioners on the Poor Law 1909, for instance,
estimates (no definite statistics having been kept!) that in the United
Kingdom in each year are born over 15,000 children in the Poor Law
institutions, and of these 30 per cent. are legitimate and 70 per cent.
illegitimate. The yearly harvest of these shame-branded children appears
almost incredibly great. Roughly estimating, in Great Britain (excluding
Ireland) there are 50,000 illegitimate births in each year—that is to
say, about one million of these children are born in this land in a
single generation. Nor is this all. In England, unfortunately, still-born
births are not required to be registered; were these recorded the
illegitimate birth-rate would be much higher than the present statistics
show. In those countries where the records are kept, the number of
still-born illegitimate births is always higher than it is for children
born under the protection of marriage.
And to this vast host of helpless children we, in this land, give
almost no protection. In the English law they have no father. They are
_filii nullius_—nobody’s children; without kin; they have no rights of
inheritance. All through life they are branded. The child in England
is not legitimised even on the subsequent marriage of its parents. In
Scotland this injustice is not found. The illegitimate child becomes
legitimate by the simple and natural process of its father marrying its
mother. Can the cruelty of our English law have any positive value? It
is difficult to think so. Aside from sentimentality, aside even from the
value or worthlessness of punitive measures, here is a law that stands as
a direct obstacle against right and responsible conduct.
And what is the result? The infant mortality rate, high as it is for the
children of married parents, is doubled and more than doubled in the
case of illegitimate children. Three times as many children born out of
wedlock die before reaching adolescence, as compared with those children
born under the protection of the law. Think just a little of the real
significance of this alarmingly high infant death-rate; these tell-tale
figures are the proof of our failure. Do they not speak of a waste of
infant life which, if for practical reasons only, we cannot suffer to
go on? This fact of England’s need for children should drive us on to
action. Here, as in many other cases of indifference, we have failed to
recognise that life—the one thing without which all else must perish—has
been slipping from us by our carelessness, in a way that threatens the
whole future and well-being of our race.
In many towns in England the illegitimate death-rate of infants under
one year has increased, and still is increasing to an extent that ought
to give alarm. In London the illegitimate infant death-rate is more than
twice as high as the legitimate. The exact figures vary in different
boroughs: thus in Poplar the number of legitimate infant deaths per
thousand is 121.5 as against 281.24 illegitimate, whereas Wandsworth has
97 as the death-rate of legitimate children and 276 for illegitimate.
In the city of Manchester, where the death-rate of legitimates is 169,
that of illegitimates is 362. In one division (Clayton) it is 583, in
another (Blackley) it is as high as 667. Bristol, again, has a legitimate
death-rate of 124 per thousand and an illegitimate of 349; Leicester, 130
against 377; Cardiff, 124 against 349; while Cambridge, with a legitimate
death-rate as low as 81 per thousand, has an illegitimate rate of 276.
The meaning of these figures is plain: the unmarried mother cannot give
proper care to her child, as a rule she cannot feed it, and, deprived of
its natural nourishment, it is more likely to die, and, if it lives, it
will be less strong to meet life. This is proved by the vital statistics,
which show that the illegitimate babies, unlike legitimate babies, are
not stricken with death in the first week of infant life; they die more
frequently in the second month than in the first, and more frequently
in the third than in the second month. Illegitimates at birth are equal
to legitimate children; indeed, from these statistics they would seem
to be born stronger. It is evident that the high death-rate among them
is caused only by defective nutrition and want of sufficient care. In
other words, these children are killed needlessly by our neglect. For the
sin of their deaths rests upon each and all of us, until we rise up and
refuse to accept conditions that permit children to be born only to die.
And while you grasp the offence of these facts, do not be consoled by
thinking that this open infantile slaughter is the only or indeed the
greatest, evil that follows from our indifference. No statistics can
do more than shadow the extent of the wrong; motherhood brought to
despair—the child-murders that fortunately remain hidden, the secret
abortions, the concealed births, the still-born children who might have
been born alive. We have suffered these things. But it is the race that
pays and rots; the penalty for our sins of neglect is paid by these
innocent little ones.
Let me at this place insert a brief digression to point out one
particular that it is very necessary for us to remember. There are many
types among these unmarried mothers, as many as there are among married
women; and some would be good mothers did we allow them the opportunity,
others would not be good mothers under any circumstances, because they
are weak in character and are incapable of maternal sacrifice. Now, the
problem of the saving of the child is quite a separate one in these
opposite cases: in the one instance everything ought to be done to keep
the child with its mother, in the other the one safeguard is to keep the
child wholly out of the mother’s power.
I will give the reader four cases from my own knowledge to make this
fact clearer; they will, I believe, speak more forcibly than any mere
statement of my own opinion.
The first case shows illegitimacy at its very lowest—motherhood made
a crime. The facts were told to me by a doctor friend on whose word I
can rely absolutely. A company of five or six men were gathered in some
outbuildings of a country farm, among them was one who was half-witted.
In an adjoining barn was a girl, also half-witted. The men joked one with
another; a bet was made, and the half-witted man was sent to seek the
girl. This he did, and as the result of this hideous act a child was born
and lived. I do not know what became of it.
In the second case also the woman was quite unfitted to be a mother,
though her character and the circumstances were as different as possible.
This time the mother was highly born and educated. Though I knew
her fairly well, I was unacquainted with her family history, which
probably would show many features of great interest. She was of neurotic
temperament, and belonged to the type I have classed as the siren woman.
She had several lovers, as she was strongly sexual. By one of these
men, and by mistake, a child was born. The father refused to accept the
responsibilities of his fatherhood, though he did not deny that the
child was his. The mother also had no love for it, and the little one
would have been neglected and probably would have died. But, when about
two months old, the child was taken from its mother and cared for and
most tenderly loved by one of the woman’s lovers. He left her, as her
indifference to her child killed his affection, but he took her child to
bring up as his own son.
The third case is more usual, and shows us illegitimacy as it most
commonly occurs. The events happened in the north of England, where
once I lived. The girl was well known to me. She was of respectable
parentage, and very beautiful; she would have made a good mother. The
father did not live in the same village, and I did not know him; but I
heard he was young and strong; he was the gardener at the place where
the girl was servant; probably the child would have been healthy. But
the girl was sent from her situation as soon as her condition was known
to her Christian (!) mistress; later she was driven from her home by her
fanatically religious (!) father. Thus hounded to death and to crime she
sought refuge in a disused quarry; she was there for two days without
food. It was winter. When we found her, her child had been born and was
dead. Afterwards the girl went mad.[92]
I will add no comment, because I feel quite unable to write calmly. I can
only record my belief that under a more moral public opinion and saner
social organisation such crimes of mothers against their children would
be impossible. Infanticide is committed always, I believe, under the
biting pressure of want and despair.
The last case is in sharp contrast with all the others, and shows
responsible motherhood outside of marriage. The woman here is strong and
passionate and deeply maternal, but, unable to marry the man she loves,
because he is married already, but to a woman who has no desire to be a
mother, she chooses, therefore, to bear his child. I know several similar
unions. Some of these have been temporary, some have lasted, but in
each case the woman has had strength of character and a social position
which have made it practicable for her thus to assert her right to
motherhood. Such cases we may leave alone. I do not think any one of us
should condemn such action. The immense pity is that women of this strong
maternal type should by any cause be kept from marriage. They are the
fittest wives and mothers.
The relation between marriage and illegitimacy is a very close one; any
cause that hinders early marriage must tend to encourage the increase
of illegal unions.[93] The question is, however, a very difficult one.
And I am not fully convinced of the wisdom of permanent marriage being
undertaken at so young an age that chance births would be prevented; at
any rate, the danger would be great until our young women and young men
are more sanely educated in sex. The young have very little understanding
of their own need, and no experience of life; and for this reason a way
might be opened up that, after marriage, would lead to even more harmful
looseness of conduct. Already numerous illegitimate births are the result
of unhappy marriages. This happens, perhaps, most frequently among the
working classes, though I am not sure, and it may be only that among
them the facts of such births are more openly known. The fear of another
child to the too-hard-worked mother is often very great, and this (when
the means to prevent conception are not known) causes her to refuse to
have intercourse with her husband, which all too frequently sends him to
another woman.
Unmarried mothers are overwhelmingly preponderant among the economically
weak, in particular, among servant girls, factory workers, laundry hands,
waitresses, and all classes of day workers. This does not necessarily
prove greater looseness of conduct among these classes, and the more
numerous illegitimate births are, of course, explained to a great extent
by the fact that among the better-educated girls means to prevent
conception are used; illegitimate births are also very frequently hidden.
This, in particular, happens where both parents belong to the upper
classes of society. It is also frequent with the gentleman father and the
mother of a lower social class.
And here, before I go further, I must again give warning against the
over-hasty view, that men and their uncontrolled passions are alone
responsible. This opinion, once held by me in common with most women, I
have been compelled to give up. Seduction cannot, I believe, be accepted,
without very great caution, as the chief cause of illegitimate births. It
is so comfortable to place the sins of sex on men’s passions. But I doubt
very much if any woman can be made a mother against her own will. I am
inclined to believe that excitement and escape from dulness, as also the
joy in receiving presents, are the principal motives that at first lead
girls into illegal relations.[94]
We find that paternity is acknowledged most frequently in those cases
where the father belongs to a lower social level, where he loses less
by open behaviour. In these classes the man, unless prevented by a
pre-existing tie, usually marries the mother at a later period, and
he does not despise her. The woman’s sin is not as a rule taken too
tragically. If the father of her child does not marry her, it is quite
possible for her to find another husband, who, as a rule, acts as a
father to her love-child. For these reasons the least moral and economic
dangers, alike to the child and its mother, occur when both the father
and the mother belong to the working classes. This is not, however,
always true.
The whole question is a difficult one; the further we inquire, the
more strongly does this appear. We learn that there is no one type of
the unmarried mother, no one cause of the evil of illegitimacy, no one
remedy that will cure it. We cannot wisely be too hopeful. But this is
not an excuse for our indifference. Our system of ignoring this question
and of forcing the unmarried mother into shame, with its incredible
short-sightedness and culpable lack of help and discrimination, is
proved out-of-date, because we now know that it is useless. It does not
prevent illegitimate births, for no law can change the sexual nature of
men and women. As things stand with us at present, honourable or even
decent conduct in illegal sexual relationships has a poor chance of being
cultivated; but those who realise that this is the case are still very
few.
It is because I have come to realise this that I have urged, with all
the power I have, an open recognition of these hidden relationships as
the only way to save them from disgrace and shame. I hope to have made
it clear that I am not thinking of lessening responsibility in asking
for a change in our law. I am not at all advocating any sentimental
legislation; we have had quite enough of that. It is an intelligent
insight that considers causes and their effects that we need to-day in
the administration of our laws.
All thinkers are coming to see the waste of the old system. The modern
tendency is to place _remedy_ in lieu of _punishment_. Thus, we need
scarcely doubt that we are approaching the acceptance of a more truly
moral code, based on the need of protection for the child.
It is this, and this alone, that should guide us in the reform of our
laws. The life of every child must be safeguarded, not on sentimental or
even on ethical grounds, but for the sake of the health and efficiency
of our race. This practical morality is what we need. The State must
have healthy children, and by any negligence in working to this end it
inflicts serious charges upon itself, and at the same time dangerously
impairs its efficiency in the future. The nationalisation of healthy
children is of much greater importance than the nationalisation of
education.
It has needed the catastrophe of War to force upon modern States a just
recognition of their obligations to motherhood and the child-life upon
which their very existence depends. To a surprising and gratifying
degree the position of the illegitimate child is being discussed in all
countries, and practical remedies are being found for some of the worst
evils, by associations for the protection of motherhood and by changes
in the law. Much wise legislation already has been passed by progressive
States.
Among ourselves, however, little has as yet been done.[95] Why is this?
I know that reforms that matter are not easy to make. Our legislators
seem to me as blind fighters, dealing blows that sometimes hit the mark
by chance, but more usually miss it. The difficulty of bringing about
any change in our laws is certainly very great, for respect of the law
is, perhaps, the guiding principle of English life. So far any movement
towards reform has been in the hands of private individuals, and only
the few have cared at all. And there the matter rests, and there it
will rest, until our politicians are by us driven into action. It is
this for which I am hoping. For I do not believe that great changes in
things that really matter are often brought about by Acts of Parliament.
Parliament may register the reforms, may try to modify or check them; it
does not create them. It is public opinion that does this. When we really
care for the injustice with which we treat the illegitimate child, our
bastardy laws will be changed. Till then we shall go on as we have done,
enunciating moral platitudes in which few of us believe and raising
sentimental limitations, but we shall be content to muddle on, careless
of the evils we are sowing by our carelessness.[96]
Yet I do not despair; a change is coming. The widespread interest, and
also the more practical and moral view taken by the majority of people,
during the agitation on the supposed existence of the “war-babies,” were
to me a very hopeful sign. It is true the agitation was short-lived: soon
we were told it was unnecessary. Nothing was done. The lesson must be
driven deeper and then public opinion will awaken to the knowledge that
the conditions causing illegitimacy and its disasters are present in
times of peace as well as in times of war.
In the meantime, it may be salutary for us to know the action that other
countries are taking in this question. Certainly we have much to learn.
Our law, in this matter of protection for the unmarried mother and
maintenance for her child, lags far behind that of other countries, and
is one example only, out of many, of our hide-bound attachment to ancient
abuses.
For the most enlightened legislative advances we have to look to
Scandinavia, the birth-land of Ellen Key. Surely it is due to her
beneficent influence that the position of the bastard child and its
mother has been faced with a quite new practical efficiency; and as a
result constructive legislation has been wisely undertaken, which will
fix the rights of the illegitimate child and enforce responsible conduct
upon both its parents.
In Norway a bill, prepared by the Department of Justice, was laid before
the Storthing in 1909, “whose simple but revolutionary intention was
to give _every child two parents_. It aimed to equalise illegitimate
children and legitimate children before the law: that is, to give the
illegitimate child the right to a father.”[97] This bill, as one might
expect, met with opposition; it was adopted as law only in 1915.
I wish it were possible for me to give in detail all the bill’s wise
enactments. Even its title, _Law Concerning Children Whose Parents
Have Not Married Each Other_, is significant. The unjust stigma
“illegitimate,” as applied to the innocent child, has been discarded.
This gives the clue to the intention of the bill. It is concerned
(1) with the welfare of the child, saving it from social disgrace
and the position of legal disadvantage which hitherto has been the
lot of half-parented children; (2) with the fixing of both parents’
responsibilities, so that no man or woman may escape the results of their
sexual acts.
Undeniably here is a law that at once is moral as well as practical in
its aims. And the double accomplishment is not so difficult as might
at first thought appear. No cumbersome rules are laid down, difficult
of application and likely to fail in their working; indeed, what most
impresses one is the obvious simple common sense of these measures. Were
I younger, I should feel sure that now Norway has shown us so splendidly
what to do in this matter, and how easily right can be done, England and
all other countries would hasten to act in prompt and glad imitation; but
life has taught me that it is just the very simple things to right what
is wrong that as a rule we never do.
Let us glance at the Norwegian bill. I can give only the briefest summary
of its principal clauses.
(1) A child whose parents have not married each other has a right to the
surname of its father.
(2) The child is entitled to demand from both his parents adequate
support and education. The amount to be contributed by each parent for
support to be dependent on the economic position of the father and to
be decided by the authority appointed for that purpose. The cost of the
child’s education to be borne as far as possible by both parents.
(3) On the death of the parents, the child to have full rights of
inheritance.
By these means the child born without the protection of marriage is given
special protection by the law, so that in general his position is the
same as that of the legitimate child. And in this way the child is saved,
while the parents are punished for their careless sin in the one wise
way, by forcing them to undertake the same responsibilities they would
have had to fulfil to their child if they had not acted illegitimately.
But more even than this is necessary; the child must be saved for healthy
life before birth, as well as being maintained and educated after it
is born, and this can be done only by taking care of the mother. The
Norwegian bill, therefore, provides for this to be done; the father is to
bear his right share of the responsibilities of the birth.
Thus, the man has to pay the expenses of the woman’s confinement; his
obligations in this respect extending to providing maintenance during
three months of pregnancy and six weeks following confinement, which
maintenance may be extended to a period of nine months if the mother
keeps the child with her and nurses it for that length of time.
But the most revolutionary clause of the bill relates to those cases
where, owing to the loose character of the mother, or for other reasons,
paternity cannot be fixed. The promoters of the bill, knowing that it
is just these children who most need protection, has provided for their
fatherhood in the following simple, but wise, manner: Where it is not
possible to fix with certainty the man who is the begetter of the child,
the responsibilities and obligations of the father shall rest upon any
man who has had sex relations with the mother at such a time that in the
course of nature he might be the father of her child. In those cases
where several men have had intercourse about the same time with the
mother, then each of them will be accounted, in part, as the father, and
must contribute to the child’s support, the amount to be paid by each to
be determined by the authority prescribed. And the same rule will hold
with regard to the confinement expenses of the mother.
It would be difficult to over-emphasise the far-reaching effects of
such an enactment. So far the plea, “There were others,” what the law
calls the _exceptio plurium_, has served to free men from all the
responsibility for irregular connections. Under the Scandinavian law
there is now no such way of escape. Anonymous parenthood at last is
recognised as a crime against society. The only plea now allowed in
Norway to any man is that he has had _no sexual intercourse_ with the
mother, otherwise he becomes liable for the child’s support, which he may
have to bear alone or in partnership with other men who are also adjudged
to be possible fathers. Here is a law to re-establish the father’s
responsibility. It also closes one of the widest doors whereby profligacy
has been made easy. Casual and transient unions will no longer be able to
be entered into without any thought of the consequences.
Is an act of such clear morality as this one impossible for us in
England? I fear that at present it is.
What, then, have we done in this Christian land for the unmarried mother
and her child? It is little enough that hitherto has been held to be
necessary. The father, if he can be caught and his paternity proved, may
be compelled to pay a few shillings weekly to the mother for aliment.
Under no circumstances can he be made to pay more than five shillings;
this sum is deemed to be sufficient whatever his financial or social
status. Moreover, the payments for the child cease when it reaches the
age of sixteen; and the law makes no provision that the child must be
trained for a livelihood. No help whatever is claimed to ensure for
the mother proper conditions during her confinement and the necessary
rest before and afterwards to enable her to nurse her child. Further
trouble arises for the mother from the costs and difficulties of the
law. Improvements have of late been made in this respect; but much more
waits to be done.[98] The difficulties that have hindered moral and
responsible conduct are really little short of comic. It would seem that
the object of our bastardy laws was rather to protect the father and to
render profligacy easy than to aid the child or its mother. I ask, Is
this justice? Is it even common sense?
One plain result is that a small percentage only—it is stated by some to
be as low as five per cent.—of unmarried mothers ever apply to establish
paternity and claim alimony from the man. It is much easier for the woman
to go on to the streets; the army of prostitutes every year is recruited
by many thousands of these girls. The punishment for the sin of an
illegitimate birth falls on one partner in the act; the man escapes his
payment.
The barriers that have been placed in the path of the unmarried mother
afford certain proof of how greatly we are in need of further changes
in the law. These should be made at once. Other countries are realising
this and are not failing to act. Take, for instance, the lands of our
Allies, where, in France, action at last has been taken regarding the
famous Napoleonic edict, _La recherche de la paternité est interdite_.
In 1913 this prohibition was quietly expunged; and, in certain cases,
the child born out of wedlock now has the right to its father’s name and
nationality, and to half the property which would have descended by law
to a legitimate child. Again, a law has just recently been passed by
the Russian Duma by which the father of an illegitimate child is made
responsible for the birth: he must keep the mother until such time as she
is fit to earn her own living.
In Australia, where women possess a larger share than elsewhere in
making and administering the law, much practical attention has been
given to these matters and a number of reforms have been made which act
directly in helping the child. Thus, in South Australia, paternity may
be proved by the mother _before_ the birth of the child; when this is
done, the father must furnish security, by order of a magistrate, that
he will find lodging for the mother for one month before and one month
after her confinement, as well as pay the doctor and the nurse, and
provide clothing for the child. After the child is born, the father pays
a weekly sum, at the decision of the magistrate, to the mother for its
maintenance. Children are legitimised on the marriage of their parents.
In New Zealand (again a land where women’s influence is strong) an
illegitimate child is now registered in the name of the father, where
paternity is proved.
Changes in the law, all favourable to the legal position of the child,
have been made in Denmark, in Sweden, and in Switzerland. In this last
country the bastard has all the rights of a child born in marriage, when
once paternity has been recognised. And if the mother fails to find the
father, the child himself, or his guardian, can take proceedings. A
similar law, recently enacted, is now in force in Sweden: in Denmark the
father supports the child up to the age of eighteen; he provides for the
mother for one month before and one month after the birth of the child.
The money for such help is paid to the mother by the authorities, and
is afterwards claimed by them from the father. This may seem of small
importance, yet it is our carelessness in such details that, in great
measure, causes the utter futility of our laws.
I would ask you to consider very carefully these different wise and
practical measures. Do they not show more common sense than our methods?
Are they not more in line with the modern spirit—the spirit, that is, of
intelligent seeking for the advantage of the child? And here at length do
we not see the way that in the future may lead us to more moral action
and greater justice in the framing of our laws? A wider knowledge has
grown with our inquiry and an understanding of what we have to do.
_The welfare of the child is the one consideration that matters._
I must drive this fact home again, even though I risk wearying my readers
with repetition: our present immoral laws are practically equivalent to
freeing the man from his obligations as a father; they drive unmarried
mothers to death and prostitution; they are the direct cause of
infanticide. Again I would urge practical and prompt action, which alone
can bring us nearer to moral conduct by making responsibility a necessary
condition of all sexual relationships, however carelessly and transiently
they are entered into.
First, and I think most important of all, the law should take notice of
the desire of the parents. In all cases where parenthood is acknowledged
openly by the father as well as by the mother, and guarantees are given
that the duties of the parents will be fulfilled, the child should be
legitimised, receive the name of the father and be qualified to inherit
from him, even if the parents are unable, or do not wish, to marry. This
opportunity of right conduct once given to the parents by the law, I
believe that many men would voluntarily take this course and gladly
acknowledge their fatherhood.
In all other cases in which paternity is not voluntarily acknowledged I
take the first and most important duty of the law to be the appointment
of guardians. I believe that nothing else is quite so urgently needed
to safeguard the fatherless little one. I do not think the illegitimate
child safely can be left without supervision in the care of its mother.
Those who talk here of the mother’s right to her child are being misled
by sentiment. These mothers are, as a rule, incapable of giving adequate
care or any form of training to their children. I would go further than
this and say that, in entering into such a union with a man, and thus
depriving their child of a father willing to acknowledge his fatherhood,
they have proved already their unfitness for motherhood. But this is not
to say that the mothers must be punished, rather it is the more necessary
that they must be helped, supported, and guarded, just because of and in
proportion to their weakness, _for this is the only way of salvation for
the child_. And, for this reason, the law, as it affects the unmarried
mother, must be made easier in its working. All artificial difficulties
preventing the mother from obtaining alimony must be removed. No
longer should the law make it easy for any man to escape his sexual
responsibilities. It is immoral to countenance laws that make profligacy
easy.
We must, therefore, claim—
(1) The removal of the present limit of the father’s payment to “an
amount not exceeding 5_s._ per week.” The alimony paid should vary
according to the means and social status of the father: in all cases
it should include some kind of training to enable the child to earn its
own living; until that time the payments of the father should continue.
And if the child should be physically or mentally deficient, so as to be
unable to support itself, the father must continue his aid for all its
life.
(2) A further charge should be made upon the man for the support of the
mother for a period, certainly not less than one month before and three
months after the birth of the child. He should be compelled to pay for a
doctor and a nurse for the mother, and provide clothes for the child.
(3) The father’s responsibility should be truly recognised so that, if
the mother is driven to commit any deed of violence against the child, he
must be held accountable with her and punished, should he have known of
her condition and refused to help her.
(4) In the case of the death of the mother, it should be possible to
bring an order against the father or the supposed father. The mortality
in childbed in these cases is much higher than among married women, and
it is clearly unfair that the mother’s death should leave the child
unprotected, without any power on the part of its guardians to compel the
father to fulfil his parental responsibilities.
(5) The father against whom an order has been made must be prevented
from leaving the country unless he has first paid a sum sufficient to
discharge his obligations or has made suitable arrangements for payments
during his absence.
Probably all these conditions could better be secured if paternity was
proved before, instead of after, the birth of the child. Registration on
the part of the woman at the time of conception would be the best way to
prevent the crime of anonymous paternity.
There is much more that ought to be done. We shall still be far behind
the reforms of Norway. But the carrying out of even these simple demands
will lead us a great step forward in practical morality. Can we, I ask
myself, who in this twentieth century no longer are quite ignorant as
to the factors that act in the making of fit citizens, who know that of
all causes tending towards degeneracy, bad ante-natal and early life
conditions are the greatest, can we pursue our policy of carelessness
as if this knowledge were not ours? A recognition of the claims of the
child is being forced home by our need. No longer can we afford to be
careless of the life of the future. A new sense of our responsibility—a
responsibility not to punish sin, but to prevent sin—is surely dawning on
our social conscience. And as soon as we understand, we must hasten to
reform our inhuman bastardy laws.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XIII
THE DANGER OF SECRET DISEASES
Extent of the evil—Why these diseases are not treated—Need
for secrecy prevents those afflicted from obtaining the best
treatment—Recommendations of the Royal Commission—Enlightened
interest in the subject needed—Desire to punish men prevents
wise action—If men fear to tell the truth they are more
likely to infect their wives—Three attitudes towards the
evil—Bad effects on both boys and girls of too romantic
views of love—Woman often to blame for cleavage between
husband and wife—The wife’s responsibility for the husband’s
unfaithfulness—The art of love—Certain reflections.