The White Ribbon: FOR GOD AND HOME AND HUMANITY Saturday, April 14, 1900. Wronged Children.

White Ribbon, Volume 5, Issue 58, 1 April 1900, Page 6

The White Ribbon: FOR GOD AND HOME AND HUMANITY Saturday, April 14, 1900. Wronged Children.

Among the motions to he submitted to the National Council of Women at its next meeting are several passed by the Canterbury Women’s Institute on the subject of illegitimate children. The resolutions .lie as follows : That in viow of the hardships annually imposed upon many innocent children by the condition of illegitimacy, and the absolute uselessness as a deterrent from immorality of legal disabilities inflicted upon these children, it is high time that all such legal disqualifications were removed. That considering (a) the great mortality among illegitimate children, (6) the neglected condition of many of them, who help to swell the ranks of the criminal and the diseased, the Council proposes —(1) that the State should make generous provision for the maintenance, supervision, and education of all such children ; (2) that parents should K* obliged to contribute according to their means to the support of their children; (tf) that these children shall possess an equal legal status w ith those l>oru in wedlock, and shall hear the name of the father ; (4) that in case of intestacy these children should share property equally with any other children of the same parent. That a public officer, who should l** a woman, In* apjiointed, whose duty it would be, on the registration of the birth of an illegitimate child, to discover parentage, w ith a view to enforcing proper maintenance of the child. That in view of the fact that numbers of children in this colony born out of wedlock are seriously neglected, for which reason many become a menace to society, this Council suggests that Cottage Homes should lie established in the various districts for the reception j of such children, who should there be maintained until they have reached a fitting age to pass into a State Industiiil or Technical School.

In a leading at tide on the subject the Lyttelton 1 imes comments in such pertinent terms that we offer no apology for • reprinting a portion of its remarks. The , lime* says :

w e are glad to see that the members of the Women’s Institute are again making some effort to ameliorate the unhappy condition of children born out of wedlock. It is a common axiom of social science that the moral feeling of a people always outgrows the limitations of its national laws, and in no instance is this more true than in the case of our own legislation applying to the unfortunate little waifs who are brought into the world without a parent’s love and even without a parent’s name. The retention of this legislation on our Statute Hook is both a disgrace to the State and an injury 10 the well-being of its people. Children are permitted to

enter the great social auena with a bur. den that is too heavy to be borne. They are loaded with pains and penalties that are the mere encrustations of

decayed usages ; they are permitted to become citizens with no honoured name to give them dignity and place; they

are cast adrift to be a puzzle and a nuisance to the community. The very severity of the law has caused a vast amount of time and trouble to be ex-

pended upon its modification, and there s obviously no remedy for the evil except in a complete removal from the child of the reproach of illegitimacy. The fate of children born in savage countries is in many ways more logically just than the treatment of the little ones who figure in our police courts and drift

to our “ homes ” and “refuges.” The former are at least only the victims of Nature’s disabilities ; no artificial or arbitrary vengeance is heaped upon

them. The latter, on the contrary, are punished for no fault of their own from the hour of their birth to the day of iiieir death. No mental or physical charm can ameliorate the position of the child born out of legal ties; the State, in its short-sighted folly, brands it with

a vile name, handicaps it, neglects it, and finally has to pay the penalty for its

criminal stupidity. The Women’s Institute has done well to bring the subject before the public, and to send a motion bearing upon it to the National Council. . . . Once the paternity of the child is discovered, all the bars and bands of illegitimacy should be cast aside. The child, on finding its father, should find all the social advantages

the father has to confer—name, protection, maintenance and should pass into life unsullied and uninjured, to take its proper place in the world. On the parents alone should remain the stain and burden of their sin.