Illegitimacy

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As generally defined, and as understood in this article, illegitimacy denotes the condition of children born out of wedlock. It should be noted, however, that, according to theRoman law and the canon law, an illegitimate child becomes legitimate by the subsequent marriage of itsparents. This legal provision has been adopted by manyEuropean countries, but it does not obtain inEngland or in most of theUnited States. Illegitimacy is probably more general, more frequent, and more constant than the majority ofpersons are aware. Owing to the absence of statistics, no estimate can be given of its extent in theUnited States andCanada. The following tables show the percentage of illegitimate births (that is, the proportion which they form of the total number of living births) in the principal countries ofEurope at different periods during the last thirty years. The figures in the first column are taken from "Der Einfluss der Confession auf die Sittlichkeit" by H. A. Krose, S.J.; those in the second are derived from the "Statesman's Year Book" for 1908: —

These figures are sufficiently disturbing, and yet they do not exhibit the full extent of theevil. Many illegitimate births are registered as legitimate, while many others escape registration entirely. This happens in all countries; probably it is particularlytrue of Greece and Servia. While the percentages in the first column are about the same as those which obtained for a long period previous to 1891, those in the second column indicate a decline in the rate of illegitimacy in most of theEuropean countries since thatdate, and in some countries a very notable decline. All authorities agree that the rate has decreased during the last twenty years, but not all admit that the downward movement has been quite as pronounced in some countries as represented by the "Statesman's Year Book". At any rate, the decline does not necessarily indicate an improvement in sexual morality. Nor does a high rate of illegitimacy in a country prove that the inhabitants are less chaste than those of some other region where the rate is low. The number of illegitimate births implies at least an equal number ofsins between the sexes, but it describes neither the full nor the relative extent of such immorality, nor does it represent the relative resistance offered by a people totemptations of this kind. Illegitimacy is subject to many social influences, some of which tend to increase and some to diminish the illicit intercourse from which it results, some of which diminish it without lessening such intercourse, and some of which increase it in the statistical records without increasing it in the eyes ofGod. In general, illegitimacy is an index of comparative sexual morality only among peoples having the samelaws, customs, and social conditions.

It is not difficult to enumerate all the important factors that tend to increase or diminish illegitimacy, but it is practically impossible to measure accurately the relative weight of each. Poverty, heredity,ignorance, town life, religion, have all been set down by one or more authorities as the predominant influence. In this article nothing more will be attempted than a general description of the significant factors and their apparent influence.

Poverty is undoubtedly a factor within certain limits. Owing to the lack of privacy in their homes, the absence of decent facilities for the entertainment of young men in the homes of the youngwomen, and the temptation to which the latter are subjected of exchanging their virtue for material advantages, thepoor, at least the very poor, are confronted by moral dangers that do not threaten the rich or the comfortable classes. Moreover, poor girls are generally less familiar with methods of forestalling the consequences of lapses from virtue, and less able to conceal these consequences. On the other hand, poverty that is not so deep as to be degrading is more conducive to the formation of a strong moral character than circumstances which make possible a life of ease and abundant material satisfactions. In some cities, notably inParis, a considerable number of couples, who have never been united by a marriageceremony, live together and rear children. Probably the great majority of these are impelled to this course by poverty. In so far as the average age of marriage is later among the poor than among those in better circumstances, it will tend to increase illegitimacy. On these points, however, as well as on the influence of poverty generally, statistics give us little information. They tell us, for example, that there is much less illegitimacy inIreland than inEngland andScotland, but they do not prove that this condition is to be attributed exclusively, or even mainly, to the greater material comfort enjoyed by the English and Scotch. Other factors are operative, such as differences in religion, heredity, and town life.

The particular influence of poverty can be observed only where all the other important factors are the same. As a matter of fact, this situation is scarcely verified in the case of any two countries, and it is not often verified as between different sections of the same country. Thus, the rate of illegitimacy in the County Mayo, which is probably the poorest county inIreland, is only one-tenth as great as the rate in the prosperous County Down, but the latter includes part of the large city of Belfast, and its people differ largely both in race and religion from the inhabitants of the former county. Again, the proportion of illegitimate births is much greater in the prosperous West End ofLondon than in the poverty-stricken East End, but the marriage age seems to be earlier in the East End, while the proportion of domestic servants is very much greater in the West End. Both these circumstances have a well recognized influence on the rate of illegitimacy. Furthermore, the better showing made by the East End does not imply better relations between the sexes; according to Charles Booth, illicit intercourse and marriage of the offenders before the birth of their first child are quite common among the lowest classes of that section ofLondon. Instead of considering different geographical sections of a population, it will be more satisfactory to compare classes differing in occupation, but substantially the same in all other important respects. Father Krose adduces statistics fromBerlin and Leipzig which show that the great majority of theparents of illegitimate children in those cities are domestic servants and unskilled labourers. It is safe to say that the majority of all illegitimate births occurs among domestic servants, factory employees, and agricultural labourers, speaking especially of the mothers. Even among these it is not so much poverty as certain associations and modes of living connected with the occupation that is immediately responsible. It would seem, therefore, that while poverty is one cause of illegitimacy, it is not the most important cause, nor can its influence be even approximately determined.

Ignorance, in the sense of illiteracy, is sometimes numbered among the factors, but this contention receives no satisfactory support from statistics. The countries with a high standard of elementaryeducation have not a better record than the others.Denmark,Norway,Sweden,Prussia, and Saxony, where the rate of illiteracy is very low, do not show a lower rate of illegitimacy thanIreland,Italy, orSpain. Different sections of the same country, where other conditions are the same, furnish no evidence thateducation reduces the proportion of illegitimate births. InFrance, outside ofParis, illegitimacy is least where illiteracy is greatest. In general, it may be said thateducation, except in the principles and practice of morality, is a negligible factor in relation to the phenomenon of illegitimacy.

Nor can it be shown that climate is a factor. It is sometimes thought that warm regions are more productive of sexual irregularities than those of a lower temperature, but no such conclusion can be derived from the records of illegitimacy. The large cities in the south ofEurope are not worse in this respect than those in the north. The net influence of city life does not seem to be very great either in increasing or lessening the number of illegitimate births. In some of the rural districts ofEngland andWales, the record is worse than inLondon,Birmingham, or Liverpool. Outside ofEngland illegitimacy is apparently more frequent in the cities than in the country. This is clearlytrue of most of the capital cities. As a rule, illicit intercourse between the sexes is more frequent in the cities than out of them, but a smaller proportion of it will manifest itself in the records of illegitimacy. Prostitution, immoral preventives of conception, abortion, and concealment of illegitimate births, all tend to reduce the extent of theevil in the cities disproportionally.

Heredity is undoubtedly a factor, but to what extent cannot be determined even approximately. In general the Teutonic and Scandinavian nations exhibit a higher rate of illegitimacy than the Latins and Celts, but, since the former are mainlyProtestant and the latter mainlyCatholic, the difference might be due to religion. Between the north and south ofEngland there is, however, no such difference, nor any other difference that seems sufficient to explain the greater prevalence of illegitimacy in the former, except that of race. The inhabitants of the north are descendants of the Danes, while the southern population traces its ancestry for the most part to the ancient Saxons. There are more than twice as many illegitimate births in the north-eastern as in the northwestern counties ofScotland, and this difference has obtained at least as far back as statistics can be found. The northwestern counties, referred to areRoss, Cromarty, and Inverness, which are entirely within the Highlands, and in which there is a greater proportion of Celtic blood than in the north-eastern counties. In the Celtic portion of the population ofIreland, the rate of illegitimacy is much lower than in any other nation ofEurope of which we have sufficientknowledge. If we compareIreland with, for example,Belgium, it would seem that the much higher rate which obtains in the latter country can be explained only by the difference of race. Both areCatholic countries. However, a greater proportion of the people ofBelgium live in cities, and are engaged in mining and industrial occupations generally; two of the classes within which illegitimate births are very frequent, namely, domestic servants and factory operatives, are more numerous proportionally; and the influence of bad literature and foreign associations is much more prominent. Does heredity, then, go far toward accounting for the different amounts of illegitimacy in these two countries? Perhaps the safest general statement that can be made concerning the influence of heredity is that if heredity be understood not merely in the sense of certain psychical and physical characteristics, but also as including the heritage of public opinion and social intercourse, it is undoubtedly a factor of some importance.

The influence of legislation is more certain and more easily traceable. Every legal condition and impediment restricting marriage will inevitably tend to increase the number of illegal unions and illegitimate offspring. It has been estimated that there are inParis 80,000 couples living together who have refused to undergo the trouble or the expenses of a marriageceremony, civil orecclesiastical. Many marriages take place inItaly before theministers of theChurch which are not recognized by the State, owing to the omission of the civilceremony. In the eyes of the State, the offspring of these unions are illegal. Until the year 1868, a man could not get a license to marry inBavaria unless he possessed an amount ofeconomic advantages that was beyond the reach of a large proportion of the population. Soon after the modification of this legal restriction, the birth rate of illegitimates dropped from twenty per cent to twelve per cent. The rate inBavaria is still the highest inEurope, with the exception ofAustria, but this is undoubtedly due in some measure to the unfavourable legal restrictions which yet remain, and to the surviving influence of the bad customs and the indulgent public opinion which were produced by the older regulations. That the large proportion of illegitimacy inBavaria is not, as some have assumed, to be attributed to theCatholic religion, clearly appears from the fact that theevil is greater in theProtestant than in theCatholic sections of the country. Unreasonable civil restrictions on marriage are likewise responsible, though in a less degree, for the large number of illegitimate children inAustria. While these restrictions have for the most part been removed within the last quarter of a century, theirevil influence is still exerted through custom and public toleration of illicit relations.

It has been suggested that thelaw ofScotland, which legitimizes children upon the subsequent marriage of theirparents, explains to some extent the high rate of illegitimacy in that country. This hypothesis is verydoubtful. In the first place, this legal provision exists in other countries ofEurope as well as inScotland; in the second place, its influence in promoting illicit relations would seem of necessity to be very slight. In so far as the expectation of marriage induces awoman tosin, it refers to marriage before the birth of a child. The hope of a marriage later on is usually less solid and less effective as a temptation. The possibility of legitimatization after birth might, however, make public opinion more indulgent toward illegitimacy. Undoubtedly this would tend to increase theevil.

Certain other social forces of more or less importance may be conveniently grouped together. All of these are, indeed, affected by still other factors, yet each exerts an influence of its own. A lax public opinion is undoubtedly responsible for some of the illegitimacy inScotland,Wales,Prussia, and the Scandinavian countries. The modes of intercourse and amusement among young men andwomen; the presence of a large number of soldiers in a community; the power or ascendancy exercised by the upper classes over thewomen of the lower walks of life; erotic and immoral literature, all have some influence in some regions. Theevil results of a large influx of tourists are seen in Tyrol, where the rate of illegitimacy rose during the last decade of the nineteenth century from five to seven per cent. Latemarriages, to whatever cause they may be due, have a decisive tendency to increase the proportion of illegitimate births. InDenmark and Sweden, the majority of illegitimate children were born when their mothers were between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age; about one-half of them were born after their mothers had reached the age of thirty. If early marriages had been more frequent some of thesewomen would have been wives before they became mothers. In this connexion it is worth noting that two nations having the same proportion of illegitimacy, as compared with either the total population or the total number of births, may have a very different rate as compared with the total number of unmarriedfemales between the ages of 15 and 45. The last method of computation obviously furnishes the most accurate indication of the comparative morality of different peoples.

Marriage between the conception and the birth of a child reduces to some extent the rate of illegitimacy. In statistics, as well as in law and in popular estimation, those children that are conceived out of wedlock but born after the marriage of theirparents are reckoned as legitimate. Such children form a large proportion of the total number in some communities. Father Krose concludes from the investigations and testimony ofProtestantpastors and social students that, among the poorer classes in the country districts ofPrussia, illicit intercourse before marriage is the rule rather than the exception (op. cit., pp. 24 sq.). Since the great majority of these couples entered matrimony before the arrival of their first child, the number of illegitimate births registered inPrussia was relatively small. The same author attributes to Dr. Neumann, a prominent statistician, the statement that more than thirty-nine per cent of thefirst-born ofDanish marriages saw the light before theirparents had been married seven months. As we have already seen, Charles Booth declares that the very poor in some districts ofLondon quite commonly marry between the conception and birth of their first child.

The extent to which illegitimacy is lessened by immoral preventives of conception and birth cannot be estimated even approximately, but it is undoubtedly very large. No onedoubts that the lowered birth-rate, which has become so general and so pronounced in both America andEurope, is chiefly due to deliberate restriction of offspring by men andwomen who are capable of having children, or of having a larger number of children. It is safe to say that in the great majority of cases this result is obtained through means that are immoral. Unfortunately theknowledge and use of these methods are not confined to marriedpersons. Preventives of conception and devices for procuring abortion have been so shamelessly published through the printing press and private agencies of publicity during the last few years that they have come to the attention of the majority of the young people in most of the cities ofEurope and America. In all probability it is to theknowledge and practice of these perverse devices, rather than to improved moral conditions, that we must attribute the slight decline in illegitimacy that has taken place in some countries during the last twenty years. To this factor we must also ascribe in some degree the relatively low rate of illegitimacy in the cities as compared with the country districts. Indeed, a larger proportion of illegitimate births in the cities would, in the present conditions, indicate a smaller degree of immorality, inasmuch as it would imply the absence of many unnaturalsins and prenatalhomicides.

The appalling number of prostitutes in the large cities is likewise convincing evidence that the number of illegitimate children would be much larger than it is but for their presence. A few years ago Hausner estimated that the proportion of fallenwomen to the population was: inHamburg, one in forty-eight; inBerlin, one in sixty-two; inLondon, one in ninety-one. While it istrue that a large proportion of thesins of unchastity of which prostitution is the occasion would never have been committed if there were no prostitutes, it is none the lesstrue that a large proportion of them represent a choice between fallenwomen and respectablewomen who might yield to temptation. Since prostitution is confined to the cities, it lowers the rate of town as compared with rural illegitimacy.

The factor of illegitimacy that has most vital interest forCatholics is, of course, that of religion. We believe that the influence of our religion for morality in general, and the special stress that our teaching lays upon the importance of chastity, renders the proportion of sexual immorality considerably less among our people than it is among those without theCatholic fold. And if long and varied observation by trustworthy students and observers, bothCatholic andProtestant, is to receive due credit we have good and sufficient reasons for this conviction. But we cannot get very satisfactory confirmation from the statistics of illegitimacy.Austria andBavaria, which areCatholic countries, have a higher rate than anyProtestant nation. True, there are, as we have already seen, certain legislative requirements which to some extent explain the bad eminence of these twoCatholic lands, but it is impossible to measure the precise importance of this or any other factor. Consequently we are unable to isolate and accurately appraise the effect of religion. The difficulty of estimating the influence of religion is especially great when we compare one entire country with another. For in no two countries do all the other important factors operate in the same way or to the same extent. The only safe method is to study different sections of the same country which resemble each other in all pertinent influences except that of religion.

Taking theKingdom of Prussia, we find that in 1895 the percentage of illegitimate births was: inCatholic Münster 2.09, inProtestant Köslin 9.24; inCatholic Oppeln 5.65, inProtestant Liegnitz 12.57; inCatholic Aachen 2.42, inProtestantHanover 9.30. In each of these compared regions the legal, industrial, social, and all other noteworthy conditions were the same, or were conducive to a lower percentage of illegitimacy in theProtestant than in theCatholic section. Comparing all theCatholic portions ofPrussia with all theProtestant sections in which other conditions are the same, we find that the rate of illegitimacy in the latter is from two to four times as high as in the former. Moreover, statistics show that both inPrussia and in other parts of the empire the rate amongCatholic minorities is higher than amongCatholic majorities. but lower amongProtestant minorities than amongProtestant majorities. During the decade of 1886-1896 theCatholic cantons ofSwitzerland had a rate of illegitimacy of 3 per cent, while the rate for the entire country was 4.72 per cent. In 1896 the rate in theCatholic provinces of North Brabant and Limburg inHolland was 2.8 and 2.20, respectively, but 3 for the whole of that country. All of the foregoing figures are taken from the work of Father Krose (pp. 46-54). It has already been noted that inIrelandProtestant Down had in 1880 ten times as many illegitimate births as equally populousCatholic Mayo, a difference that is certainly not sufficiently explained by the presence of part of a large city in Down. In 1894 the illegitimate births were twice as high in dominantlyProtestant Belfast as in dominantlyCatholic Dublin. It seems safe to say that none of the differences described in this paragraph can be satisfactorily explained by any other factor than religion.

It may not be amiss to set down some general considerations which account, in part at least, for the comparatively high rate of illegitimacy in someCatholic countries. We have called attention above to the powerful influence of perverse legislation inBavaria andAustria; in the latter country there has for a long time been in operation an additional factor, namely, those ecclesiastico-political forces, summed up under the name of Josephinism, which have gone far to demoralize theseminaries, theclergy, and the public life of the country, and which have in a hundred ways prevented theChurch from exercising her normal influence.France,Italy, andBelgium have a considerably higher rate thanEngland andWales, butFrance is no longer aCatholic country in the normal and vital sense, whileItaly, as already noted, has an unfavourablecivil marriage law. InEngland the registrationlaws permit many illegitimate births to be counted as legitimate; moreover, the proportion of marriages between the conception and birth of the first child, the comparative prevalence of prostitution, and the use of immoral preventives of conception and birth, are all undoubtedly greater in that country than inItaly orBelgium. Indeed, competent observation and statistics, in so far as they are available, show that these three important causes of a low rate of illegitimacy are, generally speaking, much more prevalent amongProtestant than amongCatholic peoples. Finally, the very low rate inProtestantHolland seems to be explained by the astoundingly large percentage of still-births set down in the statistics of that country. They are one hundred per cent more numerous than inAustria-Hungary. If this excess of still-births inHolland, that is, one-half the whole number, be reckoned as illegitimates who were killed either before or immediately after birth — and this is a reasonable inference — the rate of illegitimacy would be almost twice as high as the existing statistics indicate.

The most important factors which tend to increase illegitimacy are, therefore, badlaws badeconomic conditions, lax public opinion, lax customs of social intercourse, latemarriages, and lack of sound moral and religious convictions. The most important influences that tend to lessen and check it are religion, especially, thetrue religion, immoral practices, and marriage between the conception and birth of the first child. Most of the first set of factors go to prove that illegitimacy is not a correct measure of the moral character of a people or class in the presence oftemptations against the virtue of chastity; the last two factors in the second set show that illegitimacy is not atrue index of the actual violations of thisvirtue. Nevertheless every illegitimate child that is born represents at least one grievoussin against the sixth commandment, and forebodes many harmful consequences for itself, itsparents, and the community. The child is frequently deserted by itsparents, or by the father, and is deprived of many of the social,economic,educational, and religious advantages which he would have obtained if he had been born in wedlock. Infant mortality among illegitimate children is at least twenty-five per cent higher than among those that are legitimate, while the proportion of criminals among them is also considerably larger. Theparents, particularly the mother, suffer a greater or less degree of social ostracism, which, in the case of thewoman, often includes inability to find a spouse. In addition she bears by far the greater portion of the burden of rearing the child. On the other hand, where theparents fall but slightly in social esteem the public regard for chastity is deplorably lax. In any case, the presence of illegitimacy in a community always tends to weaken the popular appreciation of chastity, and the popular disapproval of its violation.

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