The English law has always looked with great disfavor on the
illegitimately born child. A bastard is _filius nullius_, "nobody's
child." He cannot be legitimized even on the subsequent marriage of his
parents. In Scotland this injustice is not found. There (as also in
every other civilized land except our own) the child becomes legitimized
by the simple natural process of the father marrying the mother. Can the
cruelty of our English law have any positive value? It is difficult to
think so. At common law the illegitimate can have no guardian, he has no
relations and no rights of inheritance; he is given unprotected into the
custody of his mother, and until the age of fourteen is wholly in her
power.
Here we have a clear duty, and another case of the urgent need of a
readjustment of our moral attitude, of a change in our laws and in our
judgments strictly parallel to several we have considered. Once more I
am convinced of the poverty, and selfishness, and the immorality of our
views. Nor do I find great improvement to-day over yesterday. There is
much talk and some tinkering, but though our judgments are less harsh,
still we are choked with the weeds of false sentiment and feminine
egoism. We fail to attack straight and think boldly.
The sin of illegal parenthood is really a collective concern: to turn
our backs on the pitiable plight of these children, to refuse to fulfill
our duties toward them, is to leave them entirely to those who are often
least fitted to help them, and also to open up direct ways to every kind
of wickedness. And it follows, almost necessarily, if we accept this
view of our collective responsibility, that the greatest danger in the
present position arises out of our selfish plan of leaving these
children unprotected in the hands of their mothers, giving them no other
legal relations, making no fixed provision for their guardianship,
allowing each mother to do as she likes; to establish paternity or leave
the child unfathered, to keep the child with her or give it into the
care of strangers, to make any kind of arrangements, good, bad, or none
at all, for its education and upbringing. And what makes it the more
intolerable is the indifference of almost all of us to what is done, or
is not done, by the mother. The subject is difficult and unpleasant:
illegitimacy is wicked and, therefore, must not be talked about. If any
case comes to our notice, we hush it up. We are too selfish and lazy to
attack the deep causes of the evil--to remove temptation; instead, we
directly encourage evil; we place the illegitimately born child in a
position of such disadvantage that its future existence is jeopardized.
V
You will probably say that I am focusing all attention on the
illegitimate mother, and am not considering the responsibility of the
illegitimate father. I grant this, and I am doing it with fixed
intention. I want to consider the problem of illegitimacy from this
definite,[158:1] and as I am aware, restricted point of view, carefully
and very thoroughly to look at it from this one side only, in order to
show others, if I can, what I have found to be true: the urgent need
there is to take the illegitimately born child from its mother's
authority. I would refer my readers to my other books and writings,
where again and again I set forth, as urgently as I know how, the
drastic changes I would advocate in our bastardy and affiliation laws,
in order to bind the illegitimate father to his duty and thus prevent
profligacy being as easy as to-day it is. I do not want to go over this
ground again. But mark this: the stigma attaching to the fatherhood of
all illegitimate children is, at present, the strongest direct cause of
neglect of his duties by the man; his failure to stand by the mother and
pay for the support of the child. He may be willing to do his duty in
both these ways, but not if it involves the abandonment of his entire
career. With public opinion so determined, immoral, irresponsible
conduct is almost inevitable. But this opens up, of course, a whole
series of different questions, which, for the reasons I have just set
forth, I do not try to answer, rather purposely neglecting the second
illegitimate parent, the father, so as better to focus attention on the
evils arising from the existing unprotected relations between the mother
and the child.
And I would urge further, with all the power that I have, the need for
considering this aspect of the problem, for it is one that is very much
neglected. I know it is very unpopular with the majority of those who
care most earnestly about the unmarried mother.
It is to be wished that this question also could be approached free from
all falseness of modern feminist sentimentality. The great hindrance to
straight thinking is the same here as in so many other of the moral
problems we have been considering: that desire for personal possessions,
which so often is a treachery against the universal good. I care for
nothing really except the saving of the child, and I cannot regard the
child as the possession of the mother. So many women seem to take for
themselves the right to claim power over a child by virtue of the
suffering through which they passed to bring it into the world; although
surely this should be denied when conception takes place carelessly and
without any kind of forethought for the birth that may follow. I will
not, however, wait to say more, my position will, I hope, become plainer
as I proceed. _It is an assertion of the child's right to special
protection and care in order that it may be saved from the cruel
injustice of having to pay the penalty of its mother's carelessness and
lack of maternal responsibility._[161:1]