necessarily, if we accept this
view of our collective responsibility, that the greatest danger in the
present position arises out of our selfish plan of leaving these
children unprotected in the hands of their mothers, giving them no other
legal relations, making no fixed provision for their guardianship,
allowing each mother to do as she likes; to establish paternity or leave
the child unfathered, to keep the child with her or give it into the
care of strangers, to make any kind of arrangements, good, bad, or none
at all, for its education and upbringing. And what makes it the more
intolerable is the indifference of almost all of us to what is done, or
is not done, by the mother. The subject is difficult and unpleasant:
illegitimacy is wicked and, therefore, must not be talked about. If any
case comes to our notice, we hush it up. We are too selfish and lazy to
attack the deep causes of the evil--to remove temptation; instead, we
directly encourage evil; we place the illegitimately born child in a
position of such disadvantage that its future existence is jeopardized.

V

You will probably say that I am focusing all attention on the
illegitimate mother, and am not considering the responsibility of the
illegitimate father. I grant this, and I am doing it with fixed
intention. I want to consider the problem of illegitimacy from this
definite,[158:1] and as I am aware, restricted point of view, carefully
and very thoroughly to look at it from this one side only, in order to
show others, if I can, what I have found to be true: the urgent need
there is to take the illegitimately born child from its mother's
authority. I would refer my readers to my other books and writings,
where again and again I set forth, as urgently as I know how, the
drastic changes I would advocate in our bastardy and affiliation laws,
in order to bind the illegitimate father to his duty and thus prevent
profligacy being as easy as to-day it is. I do not want to go over this
ground again. But mark this: the stigma attaching to the fatherhood of
all illegitimate children is, at present, the strongest direct cause of
neglect of his duties by the man; his failure to stand by the mother and
pay for the support of the child. He may be willing to do his duty in
both these ways, but not if it involves the abandonment of his entire
career. With public opinion so determined, immoral, irresponsible
conduct is almost inevitable. But this opens up, of course,