e custody of the child or to the child as being
in the sole custody of the mother, no explicit reference being made to
illegitimacy except in birth certificates or records of judicial
proceedings in which the question of birth out of wedlock is at
issue." The general law in the States of our Union legitimatizes a
child born out of wedlock by the subsequent inter-marriage of the
parents. This makes it easy for men and women to repair an injury if
they can marry after the birth of their child. In any case the
recommendations for uniform State laws make it clear that the tendency
is strong to bring legal pressure to bear upon the father of a child
by an unwedded mother to pay the expenses of her confinement, to
support the child under the laws requiring "support of poor relatives"
or under statutes specifically obligating recognition of parental
responsibility outside the marriage bond; and this obligation, it is
held, should continue in recognition and enforcement until the child
is sixteen years of age.

Although there is strong demand on the part of many to give the child
born out of wedlock the "right to inherit from the father's estate
even though not legitimated," the Committee of the Commissioners on
Uniform State Laws do not so recommend. Their statement concerning
Liability of the Father's Estate is as follows: "The obligation of the
father where his paternity has been judicially established in his
lifetime or has been acknowledged by him in writing or by the part
performance of his obligations is enforceable against his estate in
such an amount as the court may determine, having regard to the age of
the child, the ability of the mother to support it, the amount of
property left by the father, the number, age, and financial condition
of the lawful issue, if any, and the rights of the widow, if any."

To this writer this covers the just obligation if rightly administered
and by leaving still a distinction in law between the rights of
children born within and those born outside the marriage bond helps to
preserve the interests of the majority of children.

In any case the preservation of such distinctions as are left in the
milder and more humane laws advocated should help in making men and
women anxious to give all the children for which they may be
responsible a legal right to both parents by due process of marriage.

=Have Unmarried Women a Social Right to Motherhood?=--It is not alone
philanthropic interest