and status in respect to name, inheritance of family
property from a father whose parental relationship is not legally
established, and public recognition of parenthood, identical in the
case of children born within and without the legal family circle. Is
such an identical status and condition desirable? If so, in what way
could this goal be accomplished?

If men and women become fathers and mothers without benefit of clergy
or state license and later marry, then the children born before and
those born after the wedding ceremony may, usually do, and always
should, become one flock. In many countries where legal marriage is
difficult because of expense involved or distance from officials, such
cases often occur and with no apparent social harm where there is real
affection and true loyalty between the men and women involved. Many
illegitimate conceptions are similarly taken care of by the enforced
or assisted marriage of the parties concerned just before the birth of
the child. In many cases, however, in our own country doubtless the
great majority, the father concerned has an illicit connection with
some girl quite outside his own social circle and later, as in the
famous "Kallikak" case, marries a woman of his own class and has a
family of recognized children. What would be advised in such a case by
those advocating the legal abolition of illegitimacy? Should a
searching investigation of the whole previous life of every
prospective bridegroom be made, and wherever a previous relationship
can be found which involves parenthood a legal prohibition work
automatically to prevent a second relationship? This seems to be the
plan proposed by Mrs. Edith Houghton Hooker in her recent book, _The
Laws of Sex_, as in her program of "measures designed to minimize
extra-marital sex relationships and to check the commercialization of
vice," she lays down the principle "the common parentage of an
illegitimate child to constitute marriage or if either of the parents
was previously married, bigamy." This would, of course, carry out her
next item of the social program, namely, "place the illegitimate child
on the same plane as the legitimate," but that plane would be a very
low one in the cases that would legally become those of bigamy. In the
case of very unequal partners in an illicit sex-relationship, a legal
union that was based on the fact of equal responsibility for a child
born out of wedlock, and made a legal necessity only becau