You see, if we accept this standard of the child's good as the one thing of importance, we shall have great changes to make in our thought and in our action. I must follow this a little, though it takes me away from the main line of my argument, but I want to make quite plain the failure in our attitude. Perhaps on no other aspect of this question is greater nonsense talked than on this one of the effect of divorce on children. It is said so universally that it is better for the marriage to be broken than for children to live in a home in which the parents have ceased to love each other. I am not sure that this is true, the child's values are often very different from our adult values. Only just now I am reading "Joan and Peter," by Mr. Wells, and I am amazed at the levity with which he makes his characters treat this serious subject. You will remember the situation, almost at the opening of the book. Dolly, Peter's mother and the adopted-mother of Joan, has discovered that Arthur, her husband, has been unfaithful to their marriage. She is considering whether she will remain or will go to Africa with her cousin, Oswald Sydenham, who has for long loved her. These are the passages of which I wish to speak: "Then, least personal and selfish thought of all, was the question of Joan and Peter. What would happen to them?" Dolly goes over the details of the situation, her certainty that Arthur would allow her the custody of the children, then the passage ends with this remarkable statement: Oswald would be as good a father as Arthur. The children weighed on neither side. A little later Oswald speaks on the same matter of the children's future. Dolly has asked him, "But what of Peter and Joan?" He answers, Leave them to nurses for a year or so, and then bring them out to the sun.
Now, to some people that sort of talk sounds all very well on paper, but as Mr. Wells and everyone ought to know, it is damnably different in practice. Shaw, Wells, Cannan, Beresford, and other writers have, in my opinion, done immense evil. They will present situations and treat them intellectually, without any honest facing of the facts. Children cannot be left for a few years and then picked up again like a bag or a trunk. The change of a father or a mother is a tremendous fact to a child, quite independent of whether the new parent is better or worse than the parent who has left. We know, as yet, very little of the results probable upon such a change, but we do know that confusion and jealousy are very likely to be stirred in the childish soul, and that these may work tremendous and lasting harm.
It has seemed worth while to bring this forward to show a little more clearly the complications which are set like a thick hedge around this problem. There is no easy way out, and the protection of the child's interests mean much more than provision for its bringing up and the satisfying of its physical needs. Only the parents who are sure that they are not claiming their individual right to freedom at the expense of the stronger home rights of their child or children can be held blameless in dissolving their marriage. We talk a great deal to-day about children and their welfare, but very few of us realize at all practically the change of attitude, the restrictions of the adult liberty and sacrifice that are likely to be necessary, if, under all circumstances, our theories are to be expressed in our daily conduct.
And this brings us straight back to the question we are considering at the very point at which we left it. For, if we place first the child's rights, we see at once that our existing divorce law does already in this matter fail, and fail very seriously.[110:1] A parent, either the father or the mother, may by neglect and many unkindnesses do far more injury to a child than by an act of unfaithfulness. I need not wait to prove this perfectly obvious fact. It seems to me, however, that these home-destroying acts, the result of any sort of daily indecency of living, which brings suffering, with lasting injury, to little children, are the one condition that makes divorce necessary and also right in a marriage where there are children.
I admit the difficulties of framing a law sufficiently elastic to meet this need. I do not, however, see that it would be impossible. The one who claimed the divorce—the father or the mother—or both if the dissolution of the marriage was desired by both parents, could be desired to state in the application for the divorce full answers to the following questions:—
(1) The reason or reasons on which the divorce was sought.
(2) The arrangements one or both parents propose to make for the after care of the child or children.
(3) The guarantees offered that these arrangements would be honorably fulfilled.
(4) Proof to be given by one or both parents that the continuance of the marriage would be harmful to the welfare of the children.