Читать книгу Women, Children, Love, and Marriage - C. Gasquoine Hartley - Страница 11

Table of Contents

In spite of the rapid advance that has been made, the legal disabilities of women are still great. Especially is this so in their relationship to their children.

Here where they should be supreme women have really no rights at all under our laws.

They are not the legal parents of their own children. Only if their child is illegitimately born, have they any rights of guardianship. The law recognises the father as the one parent. He is entitled to the custody of the children. He alone can say where they shall live or how they shall be brought up: he alone has the legal right to decide how they shall be educated or what religion they shall follow. No promise that he makes, either before or after marriage is binding. The man may change his mind at any time. The woman has no remedy. It is evident how terrible a force for evil these rights may easily become in the hands of an unscrupulous or vindictive man. If, for instance, the woman does not choose to live where the husband directs, he may take her children from her. Again, if there is any difference of opinion between the two parents the opinion of the one parent—the father, must prevail. And this is so even when the mother, and not he, is the supporter of the family.

And the injustice continues even after death. The father has the right to appoint a guardian to act with the mother, but a guardian appointed by the mother can act only after both parents are dead. The children have to be brought up according to any wishes expressed by the father or even which it is inferred he has intended to express. This is especially apt to cause trouble with regard to religion. Any relation of the father (even when he himself has been either indifferent or irreligious) may claim to have a woman’s children trained, against her wishes, in the religion professed by the father’s family on the ground that the father was nominally a member of that church.

Of course, when there is agreement between the parents, as happily is the case in the great majority of marriages, the law does not matter. Indeed very few mothers have any conception of their position under the law. That is the only reason why these horrible and out-of-date laws have not been repealed.

Fortunately they are unlikely to remain a dark blot upon our statute book. An admirable Bill has been formulated under the direction of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, which will remedy this long-standing injustice. It has the long title of the Guardianship, Maintenance, Custody and Marriage of Infants Bill. Its two great objects are:—

(1) To make the mother as well as the father the legal parent of her children.

(2) To impose upon both fathers and mothers the liability to maintain their children according to their means.

There are many further admirable provisions, as for instance, the one which gives both parents equal rights in appointing guardians. Where the child is under 16 and has no property, present or expectant, the case may be dealt with in Courts of Summary Jurisdiction (or Police Courts). This is most important, as it makes the benefits of the equal guardianship possible to the working classes, which would not be so, if cases, as at present, had to be heard in High Courts or County Courts.

I shall not trouble to answer the few determined obstructionists who have opposed this Bill. They say that it will cause difficulty in the home, and provide a reason for quarrel between husband and wife. I have too high an opinion of men and women and of their love of their children to believe this. The cases of dispute, sufficiently serious to be brought into the courts, will always be comparatively few. And a decision of justice will be much easier when the partners have an equal status. Then the welfare of the children will be the decisive factor and not as now, the desires of the parents.

Equal guardianship laws are in operation already in many countries: and wherever they have been established they have worked excellently and must be regarded as a complete success.