I suspect, too, that marriage will be freer; it will not be made more
easy or more difficult, but greater facilities will be given for divorce
so that human beings may no longer be bound together in dislike, because
they once committed the crime of loving unwisely. This, too, must loosen
the family link, to-day still strong because people know that it is so
hard to break it. It will be a conditional link when it can easily be
done away with, a link that will be maintained only on terms of good
behavior on both sides. The marriage service will need a new clause; we
shall have to swear to be agreeable. The relation between husband and
wife must change more. Conjugal tyranny still exists in a country such
as England where the wife is not co-guardian of the child, for during
his wife's lifetime a husband may remove her child into another country,
refuse her access save at the price of a costly and uncertain legal
action. The child itself must have rights. At present, all the rights it
has are to such food as its parents will give it; it needs very gross
cruelty before a man can be convicted of starving or neglecting his
child. And when that child is what they call grown up--that is to say,
sixteen--in practice it loses all its rights, must come out and fend for
itself. I suspect that that will not last indefinitely, and that the new
race will have upon the old race the claim that owing to the old race it
was born. A socialized life is coming where there will be less freedom
for those who are unfit to be free, those who do not feel categorical
impulses, the impulse to treat wife and child gently and procure their
happiness. Men will not indefinitely draw their pay on a Friday and
drink half of it by Sunday night. Their wages will be subject to liens
corresponding to the number of their children. These liens may not be
light, and may extend long beyond the nominal majority of the child. I
suspect that after sixteen, or some other early age, children will, if
they choose, be entitled to leave home for some municipal hostel where
for a while their parents will be compelled to pay for their support. It
will be asked, "Why should a parent pay for the support of a child who
will not live in his house?" It seems to me that the chief reply is,
"Why did you have that child?" There is another, too: "By what right
should this creature for whom you are responsible be tied to a house
into which it has been called unconsulted? Why should it submit to your
moral and religious views? to your friends? to your wall-paper?" It is a
strong case, and I believe that, as time goes on and the law is
strengthened, the young will more and more tend to leave their homes. In
good, liberal homes they will stay, but the others they will abandon,
and I believe that no social philosopher will regret that children
should leave homes where they stay only because they are fed and not
because they love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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