How great weight has illegitimacy in pushing people below the threshold of self-support? Would that we knew! We can only say that it is much less influential in causing poverty than in producing dependency among women and children.1 1 The extent of illegitimacy is indicated by a comparison of the legitimate birth-rates and the illegitimate birth-rates per thousand of babies born. A more refined method of comparing the birth-rates of legitimates and illegitimates is to compare them with reference to their ratio to a thousand women between the ages of 15 and 49. The following table will indicate the situation with regard to illegitimacy on the latter basis just before the outbreak of the Great War. Number of Births in Proportion to the Number of Women from 15 to 49 Years. Annual Average, Infants Born Living. American Journal of Anthropology, Vol. I, No. 3, July-September, 1918, pp. 342-343. (Adapted from a table prepared by Emma O. Lundberg in an article called "The Illegitimate Child and War Conditions," based upon the Annuaire International de Statistique, publie par l'Office Permanent de l'Institut International de Statistique. Partie II. Mouvement de la population (Europe), pp. 5456; La Haye, 1917.) The figures for the United States are very much less accurate than those for Europe because of our backwardness in birth registration. The following table, prepared by Mangold and Essex, indicates the situation in the United States just before the War: Mrs. Bowen made a study from the records of the Court of Domestic Relations in Chicago for the Juvenile Protective Association of that city, published in 1914, of 419 cases of mothers of illegitimate children. About seven-eighths of the girls were under 25 years of age. No comment is necessary upon the relative helplessness of women of that age under the circumstances. Of these girls, one-third were housekeepers, one-fifth factory workers, one-tenth hotel workers, one-tenth tailoresses, seamstresses, or milliners, and 6 per cent were laundresses. In other words, in over two-thirds of the cases, unless the girl changed her occupation, it would have been impossible for her to have kept her child with her and have made a living. Before they got into trouble, in 216 cases investigated, less than 3 per cent received $12 a week, and 92 per cent less than $12 a week. The average wage among these 216 girls was $6.75. 'Kammerer, The Unmarried Mother, p. 6. One hundred and sixty-three cases were studied to ascertain what responsibility was placed upon the man in the case for the support of the girl and child. In spite of the fact that the Illinois law provides that in a case of bastardy the father can be made to pay $100 for the first year of the child's life, and $50 for each of the succeeding nine years, amounting to $550 in all, yet out of the 163 cases studied this maximum payment of $550 was ordered in only seventeen cases, and in only twelve cases was it lived up to.1 It is a well-known fact that the mortality rate of illegitimate children is two or three times that of the legitimate.2 The following table 2 in 'Louise De Koven Bowen, A Study of Bastardy Cases, Chicago, 1914, pp. 10, 22. "The infant mortality of illegitimate babies is three times that of legitimate." Amey Eaton Watson, "The Illegitimate Family," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia, May, 1918, p. 110. England and Wales the birth rate of illegitimate children has shown a very decided decrease from 1876 when it was 14.6 per 1000 unmarried and widowed women of conceptive age to 7.8 per 1000 in 1907. Blue Book on Public Health and Social Conditions, London, 1909, p. 5. In 1893 there died for every legitimate child which died The situation in England is indicated by the following table: will indicate the relative number of deaths in illegitimate infants and legitimate infants: While the death of the illegitimate child relieves the mother of the burden of its support, and in many cases prevents the mother becoming a pauper, and so from this point of view a high illegitimate deathrate may seem to be an offset to illegitimacy as a cause of poverty and pauperism, nevertheless the high mortality rate of an infant whether legitimate or illegitimate is a waste of community resources and a tax upon the hospitals and the strength of the woman that means social waste. Many of these children are potentially capable of developing into strong, efficient citizens if society gives them the proper care. The influence of illegitimacy in making paupers or criminals out of these unfortunate mothers, while not so important as some economic causes in the production of pauperism, bears with heavy weight upon a class of people who are least able to bear the burden. A report on a study of unmarried mothers coming to the Cincinnati General Hospital by Dr. Helen Thompson Wooley and Jean Weidensall, and reported at the National Conference of Charities and Correction at Pittsburg in 1917, says: "The combined results of the twc sys-, tems of tests lead to the conclusion that not more than 20 per cent of the unmarried mothers can be safely pronounced normal. Of the married mothers, about 50 per cent may be so considered. From 40 to 45 per cent of the unmarried mothers are also without question so low grade mentally as to make life under institution care the only happy one for themselves and the most economical and the only safe arrangement for society." 2 These facts indicate that, as a group, unmarried mothers are less able than girls with normal mentality under similar hard conditions to make a living for themselves and their babies. 5. Disharmony in the Unbroken Family. Divorce, desertion and 'Kammerer, The Unmarried Mother, Boston, 1918, pp. 10, 11. Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1917, p. 294. unmarried parenthood are only surface symptoms of deep-lying conditions which, often breaking forth in the disruption of the family, yet many times do not so manifest themselves. The heads of a family may not get a divorce. They may not even separate. Yet their family life is often one long disharmony. They may not agree on the way in which the income should be spent. They may wrangle over investments of funds. Ambition may be slain by the constant nagging of the other partner. The family is the unit in society in the expenditure of the income of its members. The economic future of that family is quite dependent upon the active coöperation of the members of it. This is especially true of the husband and wife. The husband in most cases earns the income; the wife spends it. Unless these two work together harmoniously in this important partnership, economic as well as other forms of disaster will inevitably overtake the family. The wisdom of the ages has recognized the importance of harmony. in this relationship. While the Biblical description of the Ideal Wife 1 in some of her productive activities will no longer hold in a world in which machine and factory production have displaced household production, yet the picture of her interest in the economic affairs of the family and of the results of her sympathy with the economic life of her husband upon the welfare of the family still holds good. That attitude is reflected in the saying that "Some women can throw more out of the window with a teaspoon than a man can bring in with a scoop shovel." It must not be forgotten in this connection that domestic harmony is important not only directly for the welfare of the family, but that the future of the children is affected by the relationships of the partners. It is quite possible that the man and the woman who will not agree about the expenditure of money and the earning of money will not agree in the training of the children and therefore there will neither be united guidance for the child nor whole-hearted backing in his preparation for life. Domestic disharmony results often in poor work in school, early leaving school and early marriage, with all the attendant evils already discussed. In these indirect ways domestic disharmony reacts unfavorably upon its members and produces poverty and pauperism. |