Illegitimate child

“ Both parents, in proportion to their fitness and ability, must be made responsible for the support of their children. It is in the highest degree immoral to make a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children, and so to expose them and their mothers to public disgrace because of the fulfilment of a natural function. Is it not senseless, from the standpoint both of ethics and of law, to declare the existence of a child, and therefore of a human being, to be legal or illegal, or to speak of “natural children,” as if the others were unnatural! ”

“ The morality of the future will not be found in sacrificing to the holiness of the family so-called illegitimate children, who are often by nature richly endowed, but who by the prevailing legal system receive such treatment, that they often become what they are called, and so are filled with vengeance against society and the perverse conceptions of law whose victims they are. ”

“ While, on the other hand, if they do not prevent the coming of a child they are, in the present state of society, doing a definite and cruel wrong to their own offspring. To love a child dearly and to know that by your own act you have handicapped it in life from the first must be a bitter experience indeed. I am well aware that law in regard to illegitimate children is unchristian. Even more is the attitude of society to them unchristian. ”

“ The Court of Appeal affirmed, holding that 'child' in Article 2315 means 'legitimate child,' the denial to illegitimate children of 'the right to recover' being 'based on morals and general welfare because it discourages bringing children into the world out of wedlock.' 192 So.2d 193, 195. ”

“ The interest in protecting a child from the social stigma of illegitimacy lacks any real connection to the facts of a case where a father is seeking to establish, rather than repudiate, paternity. The "stigma of illegitimacy" argument harks back to ancient common law when there were no blood tests to ascertain that the husband could not "by the laws of nature" be the child's father. Judicial process refused to declare that a child born in wedlock was illegitimate unless the proof was positive. ”

“ The rights asserted here involve the intimate, familial relationship between a child and his own mother. When the child's claim of damage for loss of his mother is in issue, why, in terms of 'equal protection,' should the tortfeasors go free merely because the child is illegitimate? Why should the illegitimate child be denied rights merely because of his birth out of wedlock? He certainly is subject to all the responsibilities of a citizen, including the payment of taxes and conscription under the Selective Service Act. ”

“ Among children suffering from gross ill-treatment, we find a preponderance, in view of their respective numbers, of illegitimate as compared with legitimate children.
(b) We are always told that an illegitimate child will be horribly ill-treated if its mother marries, not the child’s father, but another man. It will be ill-treated by the man because it is a stepchild, and by the woman because it interferes with her relations to her husband, and awakens unpleasant memories. ”

“ And, although by the statutes of this country, an illegitimate child appears to be exempt from such obligations towards its parent; yet we find, that, in cases of legal issue, the tie of nature is not dissolved by any misconduct of the parent; and consequently a child ought equally to defend the person, or maintain the cause, or suit, of a bad parent, as of a virtuous one ”

“ The duties of parents extend to illegitimate as well as to legitimate children. The duty of caring for an illegitimate child falls primarily on the mother, who, before a year has elapsed from its birth, may obtain from the magistrates a maintenance order against the reputed father, providing for the child's support and education at his expense.
A husband is bound by our law to support the children of his wife by a former husband as well as his own. ”

“ In order to clear the ground, we will first dispose of the illegitimate class; and throughout this paper it must be understood that the words parent and child, when used without any qualifying terms, refer to those between whom that mutual relationship lawfully subsists.
An illegitimate child, or bastard, is one who is born without its parents having been lawfully married; and in England, a bastard born is illegitimate to the end of his or her life ”

“ Advantages and Disadvantages of Illegitimate Birth.—Three different views prevail regarding the relative advantages and disadvantages of illegitimate births. (1) Illegitimate children come into the world favourably equipped, for their parents are young, and their union depends not upon interest, but upon love. (2) Illegitimate children are hereditarily defective, as is clearly manifest in all relationships. Private statistical data show that in respect of body-weight and body-length the illegitimate new-born, boys as well as girls, compare unfavourably with the legitimate. ”

“ I trust the time is at hand when we shall cease to brand any child as "illegitimate" or despise one for another's defect. But though children are never illegitimate, parents may be so; and none more than the woman who sacrifices her child to herself. ”

“ Thus a much smaller proportion of young persons and of adults consists of persons of illegitimate birth than in the case of the new-born. The proper method of comparison would be to ascertain whether the percentage of illegitimate children at a certain age convicted of criminal offences or undergoing education in a reformatory is greater than the percentage of legitimate children of like age found to be undergoing the same punishment or the same education. ”

“ Illegitimate children are in many places refused admission to the crèches. This refusal merits our strongest disapproval. The reasons alleged for this course are of two [137] different kinds. First, we are told that we must not encourage girls to be immoral; secondly, it is said that married mothers will hesitate to entrust their children to a crèche which also receives illegitimate children. The injustice of this practice is more and more generally understood, and the better course more commonly prevails. ”

“ Moreover, logic and common experience also suggest that a father who has publicly acknowledged his illegitimate child will not generally intend to disinherit his child. A man who publicly announces that he has fathered a child out of wedlock has publicly claimed that child for his own. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Perhaps legitimate children are supernatural, or unnatural! Is it not infamous to brand with the seal of shame, even before their birth, poor illegitimate children, and to confirm this indignity by making them bear their mother's name instead of their father's? ”

“ We start from the premise that illegitimate children are not 'nonpersons.' They are humans, live, and have their being. [3] They are clearly 'persons' within the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. ”

“ The same law will hold should a man, who is still of an age to be a father, meddle with a woman, who is also of the proper age, without the introduction of a magistrate; for we shall accuse him of raising up to the state an illegitimate, unsponsored, and unhallowed child. ”

“ What is said about illegitimate children, would point to sexual morality before marriage. But we can hardly conceive how in a society, where females are handed over to their husbands, often before, and at the latest at reaching puberty, there could be illegitimate children at all. ”

“ Then the child, who has received its life from sound, loving human beings and has been afterwards brought up wisely and lovingly, will be called legitimate, even if its parents have been united in complete freedom. Then will the child, who has been born in a loveless marriage, and has been burdened by the fault of its parents with bodily or mental disease, [Pg 45] be regarded as illegitimate, even if its parents have been united in marriage by the Pope at St. ”

“ Legislation admitting illegitimate children to the right of succession is undoubtedly in derogation of the common law, and should be strictly construed, and hence it has generally been held that laws permitting such children, whose parents have since married, to inherit, do not apply to the fruits of an adulterous intercourse. ”

“ The right of the state, as parens patriae, to deny to the child procedural rights available to his elders was elaborated by the assertion that a child, unlike an adult, has a right "not to liberty, but to custody." ”

“ Without the possibility of compulsory isolation of the socially deficient for an indefinite time, we shall perpetuate the disgraceful spectacle now observable in many states which cannot legally prevent a feeble-minded parent removing a feeble-minded girl from an institution to which she may be brought back a few years later with one or more illegitimate, feeble-minded children. ”

“ Often the baby is born wherever the driven mother can find shelter, the baby's interests in the matter being certainly of no account then or later. In the eyes of the law the child is without rights and belongs to no one. In the eyes of our Christian society he is a "branded outcast," in the eyes of his mother too often he [163] is but a mark of her shame: conditions of injustice to the child that must too often result in the growing up of a poor type of child.
It has been found that illegitimates at birth are quite as hardy as legitimate children ”

“ Illegitimacy however greatly deprecated morally has justified itself historically. It has produced some of earth's chosen heroes. It can be condemned ethically because it so often inflicts hardship, privation and misery on the unhappy mother and the innocent child. That subsequent marriage of the parents should bring into the family records the acknowledged previous offspring is obvious common sense, but the child whose father refuses to do its mother the sometimes doubtful "honour" of marriage should be regarded in this respect as a child whose father is dead. ”

“ Because the State is supposed to proceed in respect of the child as parens patriae and not as adversary, courts have relied on the premise that the proceedings are 'civil' in nature and not criminal, and have asserted that the child cannot complain of the deprivation of important rights available in criminal cases. ”

“ The so-styled legitimate children will lose in fortune, it is true; but they will gain in good examples; many children who are now in the category of the illegitimate will be ranked among the former, and will be no longer condemned by desertion to die young, or else to grovel in ignorance, vice and misery; to see their brow branded with the fault of their parents as of their own by a host of imbeciles and men without heart, who have no other guarantee for what they call their legitimacy than the presumption accorded them by the law. ”

“ Domestic Relations Courts.—When the history of cases coming before either Children's Courts or Domestic Relations Courts is studied, certain facts of social condition stand out prominently as causes for juvenile delinquency. First of all, the broken family, one in which there has been separation of father and mother, is a cause of child-neglect and consequent wrong-doing. ”

“ The only points in which infancy created a defect in civil status were that infants were subject to the restraints on complete freedom of action involved in their being in the legal custody of the father, and that it was and is lawful for parents, guardians, employers and teachers to inflict corporal punishment proportioned in amount and severity to the nature of the fault committed and the age and mental capacity of the child punished. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It enables the mother to procure a writ against him, and in case of her success he will be thereupon bound to support the child during a certain number of years. The state, society, does not yet compel him to give his name to the innocent offspring of his illicit act, but it does compel him to provide for it proper maintenance. ”