Since we have been discussing unmarried motherhood, we may appropriately begin our consideration of these disabilities by examining the status of motherhood in marriage. The married mother, particularly in modern times, is the object of a sickly pawing and adulation and enjoys a certain formal respect--not, however, as a mother, but as a mother of legitimate children. While she continues to live with her husband, she may exercise considerable supervision over the rearing of her offspring; indeed in some communities she is, by force of custom, supreme in this province. But in case of separation or the death of her husband, she may find herself without any legal claim to their guardianship or custody, for until recently children born in wedlock have been generally held to belong exclusively to the father. The principle of joint guardianship is coming to be recognized in modern jurisprudence, but there are communities where the old laws still hold. In Virginia, for example, the father’s claim is always preferred to that of the mother. In Maryland and Delaware it is preferred to such an extent that he may even, by his will, deprive her of the guardianship and custody of her children after his death. This provision is a survival from English common law, and is a logical correlative of woman’s status under that law, which was that of a minor. Her position with regard to her children was one of responsibilities with no compensating rights; and although the discriminations against her have been modified here and there, this is still pretty generally her position. In this respect the unmarried mother is better off than the mother of legitimate children, for in most countries, as the only legal parent of her child, she exercises the right of guardianship and control and possesses full claim to their services and earnings. The unmarried mother, in a word, bears her own children; the married mother bears the children of her husband. Usage, as every one knows, is far ahead of the laws governing the rights of the married mother. In France, where her legal position is notoriously bad, her relation to her family is nevertheless one of influence and authority. In this country also her actual position is generally far better than that allowed her by the law. But this is merely to say that most husbands are more humane than the law; and the fact may not be ignored that so long as legal discriminations bar her from an equal share with her husband in the control and guardianship of her children, she exercises parental rights only on sufferance. It is the law which finally fixes her status in this as in other matters; and as long as she may legally be made to suffer injustice on account of her sex, she can hardly be called her husband’s equal, no matter what privileges she may enjoy by virtue of his indulgence.