The motives behind the universal condemnation of extra-legal motherhood are various and complex; but I believe it is safe to say that the strongest is masculine jealousy. Motherhood out of wedlock constitutes a defiance of that theory of male proprietorship on which most societies are based; it implies on the part of woman a seizure of sexual freedom which, if it were countenanced, would threaten the long-established dominance of the male in sexual matters, a dominance which has been enforced by imposing all manner of unnatural social and legal disabilities upon women, such, for example, as the demand for virginity before marriage and chastity after it. The woman who bears an illegitimate child violates one of these two restrictions. On the other hand, the man who begets an illegitimate child violates no such restriction, for society demands of him neither virginity nor chastity; therefore he is not only not punished by social ostracism, but he is often protected by law from being found out.[20]
The fact that paternity may so easily be doubtful furnishes a strong motive for the attempt to enforce chastity upon women; but that this is not so potent as the idea of male proprietorship is evident from the practice which exists in many primitive societies, and appears formerly to have existed in Europe, of lending wives to visitors, as a mark of hospitality. Adultery thus imposed on a woman by her husband is not only regarded as quite proper, but the children that may result are considered his legitimate offspring. The superstitious notion that a woman’s honour is a matter of sex, and that she can not be considered virtuous if her sex-life is not conducted in accordance with regulations imposed by organized society, also has something to do with the disgrace that attaches to illegitimate motherhood; but of course this superstition itself has its source in masculine dominance. Indeed, there is no need to emphasize the fact that the whole mass of taboo and discrimination arrayed against the unwedded mother and her child is the direct result of the subjection of women; for in a society where women dominated—or even where they were the equals of men—illegitimacy would either not exist at all, or its consequences would be made to bear either upon the father or upon both parents equally. This may seem an extravagant statement in view of the harshness with which women themselves are prone to treat the unmarried mother. But it should not be forgotten that women are what the procrustean adaptations of a factitious morality have made them. They have been taught to believe that motherhood out of wedlock is a cardinal sin, and the value and fragility of reputation have been effective hindrances to any impulse of lenience toward the sinner. Their attitude, moreover, has been tinged with a feeling that may be termed professional. Marriage has been, generally speaking, the only profession open to them; their living and their social position have depended on it, and still do in great measure; therefore the woman who commits a sexual irregularity acts unprofessionally, somewhat as the trader who smuggles wares into a tariff ridden country and undercuts his competitors. The position of the unmarried mother is analogous to that of the married mother in certain societies of which I have already spoken, whose children are considered illegitimate because she has not been bought. Even the prostitute, although she is a social outcast, is sooner tolerated, because while prostitution, like marriage, has been established on a commercial basis, it is a non-competing institution. It does not impair the economic value of the “virtuous” woman’s chief asset. Prostitution is condoned as a protective concession to the postulated sexual needs of men; the prostitute has been justified, and even praised in a back-handed way, as “the most efficient guardian of virtue”;[21] that is to say, of the arbitrary restraints on women which pass for virtue in a society where woman is the repository of morality. Illegitimacy, on the other hand, or at least that large share of it which implies a fall from conventional virtue, is an embarrassing suggestion of sexual need in woman. Therefore, it is a disturbing phenomenon, intimating as it does to virtuous women that the duplex morality to which their freedom is sacrificed is unnatural and unworkable.
There is a sense, of course, in which extra-legal motherhood is, if not sinful, at least unjust. The mother knows that the child she bears out of wedlock will be forced, although innocent, to share with her in the world’s displeasure at her defiance of conventional taboo, and that the sneers of its legitimately born playmates may have a blighting effect upon its spiritual development. She knows also, unless she be well-to-do or especially well qualified to earn, that her child will be at a disadvantage from the start in the matter of livelihood and education unless the father be willing—or required by law—to contribute to its support. There is likely to be a grim consistency in legal injustices. Sometimes the denial of one right makes expedient the denial of another, as when the poor, having been reduced by legalized privilege to want and squalor, are legally deprived of the alcohol with which they increase their wretchedness in an attempt to find forgetfulness of their misery. The denial to women of economic opportunity has made expedient denial of freedom in performing the function of motherhood. Men, having enjoyed a virtual monopoly of earning power, have been regarded as the natural providers for women and children; therefore a woman has been required to get a legal provider before she could legally get a child; and if one accepted her legal disabilities without questioning their justice, this restraint might appear quite justifiable. This may be taken as an argument for weakness or wantonness in the unmarried mother. If so, it must certainly apply with equal force to the unmarried father—with double force indeed, for he knows that his act will not only add to the difficulties, numerous enough under the best circumstances, that his child will have to contend with, but that it means social ostracism for the mother. Thus every illegitimate child, as society is at present constituted, is the victim not only of social but of parental injustice.
It is hardly necessary to discuss further the economic aspects of the question. In a society where economic opportunity is pretty well monopolized by men, the task of the mother with children to support is, as I have shown in the preceding chapter, extremely difficult; and it may even be rendered impossible where the disgrace of unmarried motherhood decreases such comparatively slight opportunity as industry, even now, offers a woman. The effect of this disability shows clearly in any comparison of the death-rates among legitimate and illegitimate babies. The rate among illegitimate children is often twice as high as that among children born in wedlock. Truly marriage is an invaluable protection to motherhood and childhood in a society which denies them any other.
Instead of joining in the universal condemnation of illegitimacy, it seems more reasonable to question the ethics of a society which permits it to exist. Certainly no social usage could be more degrading to women as mothers of the race than that which makes it a sin to bear a child; and nothing could be more grotesquely unjust than a code of morals, reinforced by laws, which relieves men from responsibility for irregular sexual acts, and for the same acts drives women to abortion, infanticide, prostitution and self-destruction. I know of no word that may be said in justification of such a code or of a society that tolerates it. As marriage ceases to be a vested interest with women, and as their growing freedom enables them to perceive the insult to their humanity that this kind of morality involves, they will refuse to stand for it. Those who prefer to regard woman as a function will devote their energy to securing conditions under which she may bear and bring up children with a greater degree of freedom and self-respect than conventional morality allows her. As for those who prefer to regard her as a human being, they will naturally demand the abolition of all discriminations based on sex; while all women must certainly repudiate the barbarous injustice of organized society to the illegitimate child.
This is hardly to be regarded as a prophecy, for the revolt has already begun. A small minority of women in Europe have for some time been denouncing this injustice, the most prominent among them being the famous Swedish champion of childhood, Ellen Key. Their influence has already been reflected in the laws of several countries. In Scandinavia, in Switzerland, and even in France, laws have already been enacted either removing or modifying the legal disabilities of the child born out of wedlock, and fixing the responsibilities of the father. There are similar laws in Australia and New Zealand. These laws vary in scope, but their general tendency is toward the abolition of illegitimacy and recognition of joint parental responsibility for every child brought into the world. In this country, where unjust legal discriminations against unmarried mothers and their children are still in force, the Woman’s Party is demanding laws recognizing every child as legitimate, and determining the responsibilities of unmarried parents. The abolition of illegitimacy will naturally mean that the child of unmarried parents will have the same right to the father’s name, and to support and inheritance, as the child born in wedlock.
There is a general impression, to which I have adverted, that marriage is a great protection to women. Bachofen and his followers even went so far as to suppose that she herself originally devised it for that purpose. This school quite overlooked the fact that in so far as it has been a protection it has been so only because society has been inimical to her interests, and has allowed her no other defence against itself. Marriage has certainly not protected her in the past from hard labour, cruelty, and mental and spiritual deterioration. In spite of these well-known facts, the notion persists that it is of inestimable benefit to her; and those influenced by this superstition are likely to fear that to abolish illegitimacy, with its humiliating consequences, will be to encourage “free love” and thus to expose women to victimization by unscrupulous men. Such a view not only carries an untenable assumption of feminine inferiority, but it carries an equally untenable assumption that marriage constitutes a protection against victimization by unscrupulous men. Not only did our marriage-laws until recently give a woman into the absolute power of her husband, however unscrupulous he might be, but they left her no way of escape. On the other hand, they protected the husband’s sexual monopoly of his wife and his right to be considered the only legal parent of their children. Indeed, the law has gone further; it has exposed women to victimization by protecting men from detection in illegitimate parentage. Laws equalizing the responsibilities of men and women towards illegitimate children, will reduce temptation to unscrupulous conduct, for men will be aware that if it result in the birth of a child they will be obliged to acknowledge their parenthood and assume the attendant responsibilities.
I might remark here that some communities have tried to deal with this question in what seems to me a very bungling manner, namely: by forcing the “seducer” of a woman under the legal age of consent to choose between marrying her and going to jail. Such laws represent concessions to traditional prejudices, and have little relation either to justice or common sense. They take no cognizance of the inclination of the parties or their fitness for marriage; hence they afford a stupid way of legitimizing the child. It would be much more sensible to regard every child as legitimate by the very fact of having arrived in the world, and to demand of its parents a full discharge of parental responsibility, without complicating it with the very different question of marital obligations. Another legal provision which is as general as it is humiliating to women is that which permits a father to recover damages from the seducer of his daughter. This law, which is in force in several of our States, is supposed to find justification in the daughter’s status as a servant in her father’s house; but since the law grants him no similar redress for the seduction of a servant who is not his daughter, it is evident that its real basis is in a surviving notion of woman as the natural property of a male owner. These laws do not lessen the disgrace that attaches to extra-legal birth; rather they recognize and endorse it.
The importance of abolishing illegitimacy is not to be underrated, for it means the removal of the legal sanctions which have enforced a barbarous custom. But the abolition of illegitimacy can not be expected entirely to remove the stigma attaching to unmarried motherhood and birth out of wedlock. That will disappear only when the economic independence of women shall have resulted in a spiritual independence which will lead them to examine critically the social dogmas that have been forced upon them, and to repudiate those which conflict with justice. In other words, it will involve an adaptation to more humane ethical standards; an adaptation which has begun but may be long in reaching completion, for superstition and taboo are not easily eradicated.