The social position of the parents, and the existence or non-existence of differences in social rank between father and mother, are circumstances which may exercise a decisive influence upon the position of an illegitimate child. It might almost be maintained that the higher the social position of the unmarried mother, the worse will be the position of her child. For the higher the social position, the more sinful is sexual indulgence considered on the part of a woman except under the forms of marriage; the unmarried mother, when her social position has been a good one, is apt to be driven from her family, boycotted by society, and abandoned by her seducer. The greater the difference in social rank between the two parents, the worse will be the position of the child; when the father’s position is much better than the mother’s, he usually refuses to acknowledge the child at all. (_c_) The assumption that those women who marry after bearing an illegitimate child, marry in most cases the father of their child, is erroneous. Erroneous also is the assumption that the position of an illegitimate child with a step-father is less favourable than the position of the illegitimate child which has been legitimised through the subsequent marriage of its true parents. As regards Germany, we learn from private statistical data, on the one hand, that nearly 50 per cent. of the women who marry after giving birth to an illegitimate child, marry another man than the father of that child; and, on the other hand, that the position of illegitimate children who thus acquire a step-father is about as good as that of legitimate children in similar classes of society; and their position is certainly much better than that of those illegitimate children whose mothers remain unmarried. We should be led to expect this from the fact that the step-father in such cases marries the woman because he loves her, and does not regard the child as a serious objection; moreover, the records show that such marriages are commonly effected when illegitimate children are still quite young, so that from its early youth upwards the child is a member of the family circle. It seems almost incredible that it should be better for an illegitimate child for its mother to die than for her to remain alive, but unmarried; and yet this may very well be the case, for the upbringing the illegitimate child receives from its own mother is apt to be most unsatisfactory; but should the mother die, the child will usually be cared for by the poor-law authorities.