y school. And our real task is to establish a
test that will gauge the desirability and benefit of a parent's
continued parentage. There are certainly parents and homes from which
the children might be taken with infinite benefit to themselves and to
society, and whose union it is ridiculous to save from the divorce court
shears.

Suppose, now, we made the willingness of a parent to give up his or her
children the measure of his beneficialness to them. There is no reason
why we should restrict divorce only to the relation of husband and wife.
Let us broaden the word and make it conceivable for a husband or wife to
divorce not only the partner, but the children. Then it might be
possible to meet the demands of the Shaw-esque extremist up to the point
of permitting a married parent, who desired freedom, to petition for a
divorce, not from his or her partner simply, but from his or her
family, and even for a widow or widower to divorce a family. Then would
come the task of the assessors. They would make arrangements for the
dissolution of the relationship, erring from justice rather in the
direction of liberality towards the divorced group, they would determine
contributions, exact securities appoint trustees and guardians.... On
the whole, I do not see why such a system should not work very well. It
would break up many loveless homes, quarrelling and bickering homes, and
give a safety-valve for that hate which is the sinister shadow of love.
I do not think it would separate one child from one parent who was
really worthy of its possession.

So far I have discussed only the possibility of divorce without
offences, the sort of divorce that arises out of estrangement and
incompatibilities. But divorce, as it is known in most Christian
countries, has a punitive element, and is obtained through the failure
of one of the parties to observe the conditions of the bond and the
determination of the other to exact suffering. Divorce as it exists at
present is not a readjustment but a revenge. It is the nasty exposure of
a private wrong. In England a husband may divorce his wife for a single
act of infidelity, and there can be little doubt that we are on the eve
of an equalisation of the law in this respect. I will confess I consider
this an extreme concession to the passion of jealousy, and one likely to
tear off the roof from many a family of innocent children. Only
infidelity leading to supposititious children in the case of the