o marry women with
inferior genetic possibilities because they meet the more insistent
surface requirements. The heritage of our children is thus cut down, and
many a potential mother of great men remains unwed.

The same survival of ancient sex taboos is seen in the attitude toward
the illegitimate child. The marriage ceremony is by its origin and by
the forms of its perpetuation the only sanction for the breaking of the
taboo on contact between men and women. The illegitimate child, the
visible symbol of the sin of its parents, is the one on whom most
heavily falls the burden of the crime. Society has for the most part
been utterly indifferent to the eugenic value of the child and has
concerned itself chiefly with the manner of its birth. Only the
situation arising out of the war and the need of the nations for men has
been able to partially remedy this situation.

The taboos on illegitimacy in the United States have been less affected
by the practical population problems growing out of war conditions than
those of other countries. As compared with the advanced stands of the
Scandinavian countries, the few laws of progressive states look
painfully inadequate. Miss Breckinridge writes:[1]

"The humiliating and despised position of the illegitimate child need
hardly be pointed out. He was the son of nobody, filius nullius, without
name or kin so far as kinship meant rights of inheritance or of
succession. In reality this child of nobody did in a way belong to his
mother as the legitimate child never did in common law, for, while the
right of the unmarried mother to the custody of the child of her shame
was not so noble and dignified a thing as the right of the father to the
legitimate child, she had in fact a claim, at least so long as the child
was of tender years, not so different from his and as wide as the sky
from the impotence of the married mother. The contribution of the father
has been secured under conditions shockingly humiliating to her, in
amounts totally inadequate to her and the child's support. In Illinois,
$550 over 5 years; Tennessee, $40 the first year, $30 the second, $20
the third. (See studies of the Boston Conference on Illegitimacy,
September, 1914, p. 47.) Moreover, the situation was so desperate that
physicians, social workers and relatives have conspired to save the
girl's respectability at the risk of the child's life and at the cost of
all spiritual and educative value of the experience of