The union of the fit and the unfit is a calamity or a catastrophe in cases of knowledge, it is a crime where the victim is deceived into ignorance. The union of two unfit persons entered into in complete knowledge will be an infinitely smaller evil.
To make marriage attractive we must very greatly increase the facilities for unmaking it, and we must lay down some general principles for its healthy continuance. The absolute right of a woman to her own person, and her prerogative to refuse to bear children, seem elementary conditions of civilised wedlock. Woman must be protected from outrage, be she wife or not. A married woman must have the same right over her own person and her own children that an unmarried woman has over hers. It is an unmistakable slight on marriage to compel a woman to relinquish any of the legal or social rights she would enjoy if unmarried. We cannot afford to throw these obstacles in the way of marriage, we want the best women to marry and not to abstain on account of the altogether unnecessary and unnatural disabilities which laws and men have made.
Eugenists are willing to concede that divorce should be cheap, easy and free from shameful scandal. This can only be done however without grave injustice to women and the race if, apart from religious and moral considerations, the family is made the first consideration. The problem is largely an economic one. It is not likely that the State willingly intends to take upon itself the burden of maintaining thousands of wives unable to maintain themselves discarded by husbands wealthy enough to incur new responsibilities and expense. Whether marriage should be regarded as giving a claim to equal shares in the property and income of either partner is worthy of discussion. It is likely enough that the thinking woman of the present day and her successors will insist on wages for wives, wages for motherhood, and wages for housekeeping, and that these stipulations will receive the sanction of State law wherever they are reasonably scheduled and definitely approved. The children of divorced parents occupy an onerous position. Mr. Henry James, in "What Maisie Knew," has touched convincingly on this point. It cannot be dismissed as unimportant for there is hardly a single good environment in children's lives so potent as that of a happy home in which the two parents' love for each other is only rivalled by their united love for the young lives their love has so miraculously created. But there is no worse condition for children than the home of hate. Divorce may be horrid, but the atmosphere of love turned to indifference and hate is hell for all who breathe there.