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 ILLEGITIMACY

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ILLEGITIMACY

on the rate of illegitimacy. Furthermore, the better showing made by the East End does not imply better relations between the sexes; according to Charles Bootli, illicit intercourse and marriage of the offenders before the birth of their first child are quite common among the lowest classes of that section of London. Instead of considering different geographical sections of a population, it will be more satisfactory to compare classes differing in occupation, but substantially the same in all other important respects. Father Krose adduces statistics from Berlin and Leipzig which show that the great majority of the parents of illegitimate children in those cities are domestic servants and unskilled labourers. It is safe to say that the ma- jority of all illegitimate births occurs among domes- tic servants, factory employees, and agricultural la- bourers, speaking especially of the mothers. Even among these it is not so much poverty as certain asso- ciations and modes of living connected with the occupation that is immediately responsible. It would seem, therefore, that while poverty is one cause of illegitimacy, it is not the most important cause, nor can its influence be even approximately determined.

Ignorance, in the sense of illiteracy, is sometimes numl^ered among the factors, but this contention receives no satisfactory support from statistics. The countries with a high standard of elementary edu- cation have not a better record than the others. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Prussia, and Saxony, where the rate of illiteracy is very low, do not show a lower rate of illegitimacy than Ireland, Italy, or Spain. Different sections of the same country, where other conditions are the same, furnish no evidence that education reduces the proportion of illegitimate births. In France, outside of Paris, illegitimacy is least where illiteracy is greatest. In general, it may be said that education, except in the principles antl practice of morality, is a negligible factor in relation to the phenomenon of illegitimacy.

Nor can it be shown that climate is a factor. It is sometimes thought that warm regions are more pro- ductive of sexual irregularities than those of a lower temperature, but no such conclusion can be derived from the records of illegitimacy. The large cities in the south of Europe are not worse in this respect than those in the north. The net influence of city life does not seem to be very great either in increasing or les- sening the number of illegitimate births. In some of the rural districts of England and Wales, the record is worse than in London, Birmingham, or Liverpool. Outside of England illegitimacy is apparently more frequent in the cities than in the country. This is clearly true of most of the capital cities. As a rule, illicit intercourse between the sexes is more frequent in the cities than out of them, but a smaller propor- tion of it will manifest itself in the records of illegit- imacy. Prostitution, immoral preventives of con- ception, abortion, and concealment of illegitimate births, all tend to reduce the extent of the evil in the cities disproportionally.

Heredity is imdoubtedly a factor, but to what ex- tent cannot be determined even approximately. In general the Teutonic and Scandinavian nations ex- hibit a higher rate of illegitimacy than the Latins and Celts, but, since the former are mainly Protestant and the latter mainly Catholic, the difference might be due to religion. Between the north and south of England there is, however, no such difference, nor any other difference that seems sufficient to explain the greater prevalence of illegitimacy in the former, except that of race. The inhabitants of the north are descendants of the Danes, while the .southern popu- lation traces its ancestry for the most part to the ancient Saxons. There are more than twice as many illegitimate births in the north-eastern as in the north- western counties of Scotland, and this difference has obtained at least as far back as statistics can be found.

The north-western counties referred to are Ross, Cromarty, and Inverness, which are entirely within the Highlands, antl in which there is a greater pro- portion of Celtic blood than in the north-eastern counties. In the Celtic portion of the population of Ireland, the rate of illegitimacy is much lower than in any other nation of Europe of which we have suffi- cient knowletlge. If we compare Ireland with, for example, Belgium, it would seem that the much higher rate which obtains in the latter country can be ex- plained only by the difference of race. Both are Catholic countries. However, a greater proportion of the people of Belgium live in cities, and are engaged in mining and industrial occupations generally; two of the classes within which illegitimate births are very frequent, namely, domestic servants and factory operatives, are more numerous proportionally; and the influence of bad literature and foreign associations is much more prominent. Does heredity, then, go far toward accounting for the different amounts of illegitimacy in these two countries? Perhaps the safest general statement that can be made concerning the influence of heredity is that if heredity be under- stood not merely in the sense of certain psychical and physical characteristics, but also as including the heritage of public opinion and social intercourse, it is undoubtedly a factor of some importance.

The influence of legislation is more certain and more easily traceable. Ever.y legal condition and impedi- ment restricting marriage will inevitably tend to in- crease the number of illegal unions and illegitimate offspring. It has been estimated that there are in Paris 80,000 couples living together who have refused to undergo the trouble or the expenses of a marriage ceremony, civil or ecclesiastical. Many marriages take place in Italy before the ministers of the Church which are not recognized by the State, owing to the omission of the civil ceremony. In the eyes of the State, the offspring of these unions are illegal. Until the year 1S68, a man could not get a license to marry in Bavaria unless he possessed an amount of economic advantages that was lieyond the reach of a large proportion of the population. Soon after the modifi- cation of this legal restriction, the birth rate of ille- gitimates dropped from twenty per cent to twelve per cent. The rate in Bavaria is still the highest in Europe, with the exception of Austria, but this is undoubtedly due in some measure to the unfavour- able legal restrictions which yet remain, and to the surviving influence of the bad customs and the indul- gent pubHc opinion which were produced by the older regulations. That the large proportion of illegitimacy in Bavaria is not, as some have assumed, to be at- tributed to the Catholic religion, clearly appears from the fact that the evil is greater in the Protestant than in the Catholic sections of the country. Unreason- able civil restrictions on marriage are likewise re- sponsible, though in a less degree, for the large num- ber of illegitimate children in Austria. While these restrictions have for the most part been removed within the last quarter of a century, their evil influ- ence is still exerted through custom and public tolera- tion of illicit relations.

It has been suggested that the law of Scotland, which legitimizes children upon the subsequent marriage of their parents, explains to some extent the high rate of illegitimacy in that country. This hypothesis is very doubtful. In the first place, this legal provision exists in other countries of Europe as well as in Scot- land; in the second place, its influence in promoting illicit relations would seem of necessity to be very slight. In so far as the expectation of marriage in- duces a woman to sin, it refers to marriage before the birth of a child. The hope of a marriage later on is usually less solid and less effective as a temptation. The possibility of legitimatization after birth might, however, make public opinion more indulgent toward