Children Born Out of Wedlock; A Sociological Study of Illegitimacy, with Particular Reference to the United States (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II CAUSES AND CONDITIONS UNDERLYING ILLEGITIMACY Illegitimacy is a product of extra-conjugal sex relations and its causes are identical with the causes of such relations. If in the British West Indies and parts of South America and probably other localities more than one-half of all births are illegitimate, we must assume that family life in these localities is largely absent, and that promiscuous sex relations are normal conditions. Here the causes of illegitimacy lie in the primitive nature of the civilization, the low standards of the people and their unbridled sex impulses. These conditions, however, are not at all typical of European races or their descendants and, therefore, throw no light on the nature of the problem that faces us today. Special Causes Affecting Europe In Europe, too, we have conditions that cannot be compared with ours. In most countries the rate of illegitimacy is at least twice that of American cities and in several it is five or six times as high.12 At once it is clear that such a cause as low mentality must be relatively a minor factor and that other dominant and overshadowing causes must exist. Many years ago Dr. Leffingwell enumerated the principal factors influencing the rates of illegitimacy as follows: 1. Religion 2. Legislation and legal impediments to marriage 3. Heredity, or the influence of race and ancestry. He said further "Differences in the annual prevalence of illegitimacy in different localities or sections of the same country are so marked and so persistent, that only by the hy- "Illegitimacy, p. 86. pothesis of hereditary influence can we at present account for them." In the light of recent studies the argument concerning heredity must be almost entirely remodeled and restated. It has become co...