There remains one other non-coercive method of influencing the distribution of marriage, which deserves consideration in this connection.
We have said that society can not well put many restrictions on marriage at the present time. We urge by every means at our command that marriage be looked upon more seriously, that it be undertaken with more deliberation and consideration. We consider it a crime for people to marry, without knowing each other's family histories. But in spite of all this, ill-assorted, dysgenic marriages will still be made. When such a marriage is later demonstrated to have been a mistake, not only from an individual, but also from a eugenic point of view, society should be ready to dissolve the union. Divorce is far preferable to mere separation, since the unoffending party should not be denied the privilege of remarriage, as the race in most cases needs his or her contribution to the next generation. In extreme cases, it would be proper for society to take adequate steps to insure that the dysgenic party could neither remarry nor have offspring outside marriage. The time-honored justifiable grounds for divorce,—adultery, sterility, impotence, venereal infection, desertion, non-support, habitual cruelty,—appear to us to be no more worthy of legal recognition than the more purely dysgenic grounds of chronic inebriety, feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, insanity or any other serious inheritable physical, mental or moral defect.
This view of the eugenic value of divorce should not be construed as a plea for the admission of mutual consent as a ground for divorce. It is desirable, however, to realize that mismating is the real evil. Divorce in such cases is merely a cure for an improper condition. Social condemnation should stigmatize the wrong of mismating, not the undoing of such a wrong.
Restrictions on age at marriage are almost universal. The object is to prevent too early marriages. The objections which are commonly urged against early marriage (in so far as they bear upon eugenics) are the following:
1. That it results in inferior offspring. This objection is not well supported except possibly in the most extreme cases. Physically, there is evidence that the younger parents on the whole bear the sounder children.
2. That a postponement of marriage provides the opportunity for better sexual selection. This is a valid ground for discouraging the marriage of minors.
3. The better educated classes are obliged to marry late, because a man usually can not marry until he has finished his education and established himself in business. A fair amount of restriction as to age at marriage will therefore not affect these classes, but may affect the uneducated classes. In so far as lack of education is correlated with eugenic inferiority, some restriction of this sort is desirable, because it will keep inferiors from reproducing too rapidly, as compared with the superior elements of the population.
While the widespread rule that men should not marry under 21 and women under 18 has some justification, then, an ideal law would permit exceptions where there was adequate income and good mating.
Laws to prohibit or restrict consanguineous marriages fall within the scope of this chapter, in so far as they are not based on dogma alone, since their aim is popularly supposed to be to prevent marriages that will result in undesirable offspring. Examining the laws of all the United States, C. B. Davenport[91] found the following classes excluded from marriage:
1. Sibs (i.e., full brothers and sisters) in all states, and half sibs in most states.