Divorce: If A Child Could Choose : Part 4

Women's Wild Oats: Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards
by C. Gasquoine Hartley

(Page 9 of 14)

Unmarried mothers are overwhelmingly preponderant among the frivolous and weak-willed. This will be an unpopular statement to feminist sentiment; few women are honest in facing this question, though probably they do not know that they are dishonest. We women need to be more careful in accepting the over-hasty view that these illegitimate mothers in any large numbers are good girls who have been led astray by men. This view, once held by me in common with most women, I have been compelled to give up. Seduction cannot, I am sure, be accepted without very great caution as a common cause for illegitimate births. My experience has taught me that nervous instability, the result often of monotonous or too exhausting work, leading quickly to a desire for excitement and effort to escape dullness, as also love of finery and joy in receiving presents, are the principal motives that lead girls into illegal relations. And what I want to make plain is this: a characterless girl, irresponsible, without care for the future, drifting, snatching at pleasure, taking the easiest course - this is the girl who bears a child illegitimately and this is the girl incapable of becoming a good mother.

This characterless irresponsibility of the average unmarried mother is known to every social worker. The difficulty is dwelt upon in the reports of rescue homes and police-workers. I have read many separate articles which refer to it. "Temperamental instability," as it is fittingly called, inevitably makes capable motherhood impossible. True, these unmarried mothers may, and frequently do, "pour out a wealth of pent-up affection on the child," but often she will do this for half-an-hour and neglect it for days afterwards. Those who talk here of the "mother's right to her child" are being misled by sentiment. Women of the prostitute type, whose love and tears are on the surface, must not be judged too tenderly as capable of great improvement. The child may "steady the mother for a time," but the mother will probably by her carelessness, bad example, helplessness and inefficiency unsteady the child for life.

And it is this that matters. Yes, matters to you, my readers, and to me and to us all. The child illegitimately born is to become a future citizen; and it is not good for society to permit its mother to endanger its future. We - the other members of Society - must object to such a possibility, we cannot allow it to be tolerated on any grounds of sentiment. We object from humane care for the child, but also from patriotism and enlightened self-interest; for the consequences of the mother's unguided mistakes in training must fall on someone, and in this country they fall chiefly on the rate-payers.

I shall not wait to give you the many and overwhelming facts and figures that I could bring forward in support of these statements. To-day all the pitiful statistics of illegitimate births are widely known; at least they are known intellectually, though I doubt their being known emotionally, which is quite another matter and whips our indifference into action. Only the workers in the darkest places of our great cities know how large illegitimacy looms as a factor in the social disintegration that leads to the prison, to the mad-house, to the hospitals, to the casual wards, and to the streets. Only the eye of the scientist can vision in the relation of the unhonored child to its mother the seed of that evil which one day shall become the dishonor of the dishonorable man.

VIII

I can foresee an objection that will be made: it will be urged that much of what I say of the unfitness of the average unmarried mother to train her child is equally applicable to the average married mother. True: I agree. There is, however, this all important difference. The child of the married woman is not placed, either by circumstances or by the law, in the power of its mother. It has a second parent: even if the father is dead and its mother is the only parent, the home is watched by grandmother, by grandfather - perhaps by four grandparents, by sharp-eyed aunts and encouraging uncles; probably there are brothers and sisters, cousins, great-aunts and great-cousins. There will also be a more or less extensive circle of criticizing friends. Thus the baby is surrounded from its birth by watchers - a veritable host of unpaid inspectors. Now, you see my point and understand the immense difference. It is the terrible loneliness of the child born illegitimately, outside the safe publicity of marriage, without relations, belonging by right to nobody, that makes the power given by law to its mother so dangerous.

That is why I would plead, with every power that I have, that we leave sentiment behind us as we approach this question. We are a hopelessly sentimental nation, and we cling to platitudes as a half naked beggar will cling to his tattered shirt. We collect moral antiquities. Inherited and worn-out ideas, psychological fossils, moral survivals, these must be treasured only in romance; they must be deleted from life. Every moral rule, every sentiment, as also every institution, must be tested, from period to period, to see if it works still in a practical and healthful direction to help the individual to do right and for the betterment of the race.

IX

We English are sentimental.

Perhaps it is worth while to wait a moment to ask the cause of this deeply-acting English sentimentality. It rests on two qualities, our moderation and our exclusiveness. But the precise causes of these qualities are not so certain; the English are romantic, but our moderation prevents us being too impulsively romantic; on the other hand, our homely feeling for reality does not lead us to investigate reality too deeply. We dislike the sordid and the "not nice." We are imaginative and passionate, but our imaginations and passions are carefully balanced by reasons and calm reflections. We are kindly, but not to the extent of saintlike self-sacrifice; also we are selfish, but again not to the extent of brutal egoism. Our exclusiveness makes "Birds of a feather flock together" and at the same time fosters our ignorance of, and indifference to, the existence of any other species of bird. Thus the good know nothing of the bad; the people who drink, play bridge, dance and have a fashionably good time, for instance, have hardly heard of the meeting-frequenting, soul-worrying reformers who live in Garden Suburbs. Thus in England there is very little to disturb a comfortable feeling; protected by our moderation and exclusiveness, there is no force inside from ourselves, or outside from observers, to make us revise our position, consider the right or the wrong of our moral attitude, to give up our illusions of comfort. That is one reason why we so often stand aside from the ugly reality of things as they are, "hold high the banner of the ideal," which is the untruthful way in which we allude to things as we want them to be.

Copyright, 1920 by Frederick A. Stokes Company.
All Rights Reserved.