200 TABOO AND GENETICS 



ditions than those of other countries. As 

 compared with the advanced stands of the 

 Scandinavian countries, the few laws of progres- 

 sive states look painfully inadequate. Miss 

 Breckinridge writes (i) : 



" The humiliating and despised position of the 

 illegitimate child need hardly be pointed out. He 

 was the son of nobody, filius nullius, without name or 

 kin so far as kinship meant rights of inheritance or 

 of succession. In reality this child of nobody did in a 

 wa}'' belong to his mother as the legitimate child 

 never did in common law, for, while the right of the 

 unmarried mother to the custody of the child of her 

 shame was not so noble and dignified a thing as the 

 right of the father to the legitimate child, she had 

 in fact a claim, at least so long as the child was of 

 tender years, not' so different from his and as wide 

 as the sky from the impotence of the married mother. 

 The contribution of the father has been secured 

 under conditions shockingly humiliating to her, in 

 amounts totally inadequate to her and the child's 

 support. In Illinois, $550 over 5 years ; Tennessee, 

 $40 the first year, $30 the second, $20 the third. 

 (See studies of the Boston Conference on Illegitimacy, 

 September, 1914, p. 47.) Moreover, the situation 

 was so desperate that physicians, social workers 

 and relatives have conspired to save the girl's re- 

 spectability at the risk of the child's life and at the 

 cost of all spiritual and educative value of the ex- 

 perience of motherhood. This has meant a greatly 

 higher death rate among illegitimate infants, a higher 

 crime and a higher dependency rate," 



The fifth of the dysgenic influences which 



