You will have noted how strongly I have insisted on illegitimacy being the sin of the parents--of the mother even more than of the father--and have refused to use the word in connection with the child. I have done this, as must already be plain, for a clear reason. I wished to mark the separation of the child from its parents' sin. I did not do it from a perverse refusal to accept what is usually accepted. Clearly it is absurd to brand the child "illegitimate," since it can never be the fault of any child that its parents brought it into the world. Let us talk, if you like, of illegitimate mothers, also of illegitimate fathers, but never again of the illegitimate child. The penalty of the parents' sin must not be paid by the child. I cannot emphasize this too often or too strongly. The child must be saved by special protection. Now, it seems to be taken for granted by all modern reformers that the best way to do this and to serve the interests of the child is to make even closer than it is at present the connection of the mother and the child, keeping them more certainly together, except in the few cases when such a course is clearly absolutely impossible, and _under all circumstances_ regarding the separation of any mother from her baby as "an exceptional and deplorable necessity."[166:1] What I have said already will make it abundantly evident that I cannot accept this view. I feel convinced that it is founded on a feeling of sentiment for the mother rather than on a desire for justice to the child. This tendency to confuse two separate issues has been marked in all the numerous recent discussions of the unmarried mother. I have heard the strongest indignation expressed by feminist speakers whose sentiment bubbles from them like a pan of porridge boiling over. "The child should be brought up in the atmosphere of the mother's love"; "Mother and child should not be separated," this is the opinion repeated again and again, and _always without qualification as to the character of the mother_. Even those few workers who realize the situation much more as it presents itself to me, from the standpoint of the child's welfare, and therefore advocate the placing of all illegitimately born children under "authorized protective oversight," yet cling to the sentiment that it is "best for the child to remain with its mother." They apprehend the difficulty of the mother's character--or rather want of character--but they do not take the necessary bold step out of this net of sentiment, and face the truth that, in many cases, the first and great enemy from whom those ill-used little ones have to be protected is their mother.