Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/722

 ILLEGITIMAC7

652

ILLEGITIMAC7

aiegitimacy. Undoubtedly this would tead to in- crease the evil.

Certain other social forces of more or less impor- tance may be conveniently grouped together. All of these are, indeed, affected by still other factors, yet each exerts an influence of its own. A lax public opinion is undoubtedly responsible for some of the illegitimacy in Scotland, Wales, Prussia, and the Scandinavian countries. The modes of intercourse and amusement among young men and women; the presence of a large number of soldiers in a community; the power or ascendancy exercised by the upper classes over the women of the lower walks of life; erotic and immoral literature, all have some influence in some regions. The evil results of a large influx of tourists are seen in Tyrol, where the rate of illegit- imacy rose during the last decade of the nineteenth century from five to seven per cent. Late marriages, to whatever cause they may be due, have a decisive tendency to increase the proportion of illegitimate births. In Denmark and Sweden, the majority of illegitimate children were born when their mothers were between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age; about one-half of them were born after their mothers had reached the age of thirt}'. If early marriages had lieen more frequent some of these women wouUl have been wives before they became mothers. In this connexion it is worth noting that two nations having the same proportion of illegiti- macy, as compared with either the total population or the total number of births, may have a very different rate as compared with the total number of unmarried females between the ages of 15 and 45. The last method of computation obviously furnishes the most accurate indication of the comparative morality of different peoples.

Marriage between the conception and the birth of a child reduces to some extent the rate of illegitimacy. In statistics, as well as in law and in popular estima- tion, those children that are conceived out of wedlock but born after the marriage of their parents are reckoned as legitimate. Such children form a large proportion of the total numlier in some communities. Father Krose conclutles from the investigations and testimony of Protestant pastors and social students that, among the poorer classes in the country dis- tricts of Prussia, illicit intercourse before marriage is the rule rather than the exception (op. cit., pp. 2-1 sq.). Since the great majority of these couples en- tered matrimony before the arrival of their first child, the number of illegitimate births registered in Prussia was relatively small. The same author attributes to Dr. Neumann, a prominent statistician, the statement that more than thirty-nine per cent of the first-liorn of Danish marriages saw the light before their parents had been married seven months. As we have already seen, Charles Booth declares that the very poor in some districts of London quite commonly marry between the conception and birth of their first child.

The extent to which illegitimacy is lessened by immoral preventives of conception and birth cannot be estimated even approximately, but it is undoubt- edly very large. No one doubts that the lowered birth-rate, which h:us become so general and so pro- nounced in both America and Europe, is chiefly due to deliberate restriction of offspring by men and women who are capable of having children, or of having a larger number of children. It is safe to say that in the great majority of cases this result is ol> tained through means that are immoral. Unfortu- nately the knowledge and use of these methods are not confined to married persons. Preventives of con- ception and devices for procuring abortion have been so shamelessly published through the printing press and private agencies of publicity during the last few years that they have come to the attention of the majority of the young people in most of the cities of

Europe and America. In all probability it is to the knowledge and practice of these perverse devices, rather than to improved moral conditions, that we must attribute the slight decline in illegitimacy that has taken place in some countries during the last twenty years. To this factor we must also ascribe in some degree the relatively low rate of illegitimacy in the cities as compared with the country districts. Indeed, a larger proportion of illegitimate births in the cities would, in the present conditions, indicate a smaller degree of immorality, inasmuch as it would imply the aljsence of many unnatural sins and pre- natal homicides.

The appalling number of prostitutes in the large cities is likewise convincing evidence that the number of illegitimate children would be much larger than it is but for their presence. A few years ago Hausner estimated that the proportion of fallen women to the population was: in Hamburg, one in forty-eight; in Berlin, one in sixty-two; in London, one in ninety- one. While it is true that a large proportion of the sins of unchastity of which prostitution is the occa- sion would never have been committed if there were no prostitutes, it is none the less true that a large proportion of them represent a choice between fallen women and respectable women who might yield to temptation. Since prostitution is confined to the cities, it lowers the rate of town as compared with rural illegitimacy.

The factor of illegitimacy that has most vital interest for Catholics is, of course, that of religion. We believe that the influence of our religion for mo- rality in general, and the special .stress that our teach- ing lays upon the importance of chastity, renders the proportion of sexual immorality considerably less among our people than it is among those without the Catholic fold. And if long and varied observation by trustworthy students and observers, both Catholic and Protestant, is to receive due credit, we have good and sufficient reasons for this conviction. But we cannot get very satisfactory confirmation from the statistics of illegitimacy. Austria and Bavaria, which are Catholic countries, have a higher rate than any Protestant nation. True, there are, as we have already seen, certain legislative requirements which to some extent explain the bad eminence of these two Catholic lands, but it is impossilile to measure the precise importance of this or any other factor. Con- sequently we are unable to isolate and accurately appraise the effect of religion. The difficulty of esti- mating the influence of rehgion is especially great when we compare one entire country with another. For in no two countries do all the other important factors operate in the same way or to the same extent. The only safe method is to study different sections of the same country which resemble each other in all pertinent influences except that of religion.

Taking the Kingdom of Prussia, we find that in 1895 the percentage of illegitimate births was: in Catholic Miinster 2.09, in Protestant KosUn 9.24; in Catholic Oppeln 5.65, in Protestant Liegnitz 12.57; in Cathohc Aachen 2.42, in Protestant Hanover 9.30. In each of these compared regions the legal, industrial, social, and all other noteworthy conditions were the same, or were conducive to a lower percentage of illegitimacy in the Protestant than in the Catholic section. Compar- ing all the Catholic portions of Prussia with all ths Protestant sections in which other conditions are the same, we find that the rate of illegitimacy in the latter is from two to four times as high as in the former. Moreover, statistics show that both in Prussia and in other parts of the empire the rate among Catholic minorities is higher than among Cathohc majorities, but lower among Protestant minorities than among Protestant majorities. During the decade of 1SS6- 1896 the Catholic cantons of Switzerland had a rate of illegitimacy of 3 per cent, while the rate for the entire