hildren. In England
the proportion is about forty per cent.; in some other countries it is
doubtless larger still. But even when there are children no one who
realizes what the conditions are in families where the parents ought to be
but are not divorced can have any doubt that usually those conditions are
extremely bad for the children. The tension between the parents absorbs
energy which should be devoted to the children. The spectacle of the
grievances or quarrels of their parents is demoralizing for the children,
and usually fatal to any respect towards them. At the best it is
injuriously distressing to the children. One effective parent, there
cannot be the slightest doubt, is far better for a child than two
ineffective parents. There is a further point, often overlooked, for
consideration here. Two people when living together at variance--one of
them perhaps, it is not rarely the case, nervously abnormal or
diseased--are not fitted to become parents, nor in the best condition for
procreation. It is, therefore, not merely an act of justice to the
individual, but a measure called for in the interests of the State, that
new citizens should not be brought into the community through such
defective channels.[353] From this point of view all the interests of the
State are on the side of facility of divorce.

There is a final argument which is often brought forward against facility
of divorce. Marriage, it is said, is for the protection of women;
facilitate divorce and women are robbed of that protection. It is obvious
that this argument has little application as against divorce by mutual
consent. Certainly it is necessary that divorce should only be arranged
under conditions which in each individual case have received the approval
of the law as just. But it must always be remembered that the essential
fact of marriage is not naturally, and should never artificially be made,
an economic question. It is possible--that is a question which society
will have to consider--that a woman should be paid for being a mother on
the ground that she is rearing new citizens for the State. But neither the
State nor her husband nor anyone else ought to pay her for exercising
conjugal rights. The fact that such an argument can be brought forward
shows how far we are from the sound biological attitude towards sexual
relationships. Equally unsound is the notion that the virgin bride brings
her husband at marriage an important capital which is