t is said, however,
that under the influence of religious and social pressure the
people are becoming more anxious to adopt "respectable" ideas of
sexual relationships, though it seems evident, in view of
Livingstone's statement, that such respectability is likely to
involve a decrease of real morality. Livingstone points out,
however, one serious defect in the present conditions which makes
it easy for immoral men to escape paternal responsibilities, and
this is the absence of legal provision for the registration of
the father's name on birth certificates (p. 256). In every
country where the majority of births are illegitimate it is an
obvious social necessity that the names of both parents should be
duly registered on all birth certificates. It has been an
unpardonable failure on the part of the Jamaican Government to
neglect the simple measure needed to give "each child born in the
country a legal father" (p. 258).

We thus see that we have to-day reached a position in which--partly owing
to economic causes and partly to causes which are more deeply rooted in
the tendencies involved by civilization--women are more often detached
than of old from legal sexual relationship with men and both sexes are
less inclined than in earlier stages of civilization to sacrifice their
own independence even when they form such relationships. "I never heard of
a woman over sixteen years of age who, prior to the breakdown of
aboriginal customs after the coming of the whites, had not a husband,"
wrote Curr of the Australian Blacks.[271] Even as regards some parts of
Europe, it is still possible to-day to make almost the same statement. But
in all the richer, more energetic, and progressive countries very
different conditions prevail. Marriage is late and a certain proportion of
men, and a still larger proportion of women (who exceed the men in the
general population) never marry at all.[272]

Before we consider the fateful significance of this fact of the growing
proportion of adult unmarried women whose sexual relationships are
unrecognized by the state and largely unrecognized altogether, it may be
well to glance summarily at the two historical streams of tendency, both
still in action among us, which affect the status of women, the one
favoring the social equality of the sexes, the other favoring the social
subjection of women. It is not difficult to trace these two streams