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Page 47
[54] See _Statistics of Marriage and Divorce_, prepared by the Bureau of
the Census, beginning in 1906, and published in 1910.
While divorce is increasing steadily all over the world, and most
rapidly in the most intelligent and progressive sections, the subject is
so bound up with our most deep-seated prejudices that it is difficult to
secure any intelligent thinking on the subject. Thus, most people think
Sioux Falls, in South Dakota, and Reno, Nevada, are places of free
divorce, but the fact is that twenty-one other States have a higher
divorce rate than South Dakota; and fourteen have a higher rate than
Nevada. So, too, the impression that divorces spring from hasty action
is certainly wrong, for in 46.5 per cent. of those for which we have
records there had been a separation of more than three years before the
divorce was granted. The idea that people generally seek divorces that
they may marry some one else seems also unfounded, since in the cases
for which we have records, less than forty per cent. remarry within a
year.
There are three main objections which one hears urged against free
divorce. The first is that organized society rests on the family, and
with free divorce anarchy would ensue. In reply, it is pointed out that
the same argument was used to support kings, aristocracies and a
universal church. All these have been set aside, in many parts of the
earth, and society seems even more stable than before. The love of men
and women is probably more powerful and less in need of adventitious
support than either patriotism or religion.
In the second place, it is claimed that children will suffer when
parents separate. It is replied that this is true, but they were already
suffering when parents had ceased to love each other. The fact that
children are involved in only two out of five divorces seems to indicate
that children hold parents together when the opposition is not too
strong; and when a separation occurs, those who favor divorce claim that
a child is better off with either father or mother alone than with both
if love is absent.
In the third place, it is pointed out that often only one desires the
divorce and that this brings tragedy to the other life. In reply it is
claimed that many of the tragedies of life have always gathered around
the love of men and women, that when marriage is declined tragedy often
follows, and that compelling a person to live with some one whom he does
not love, and may even dislike, is more tragic than any separation.
In conclusion, advocates of free divorce claim that their proposals are
profoundly conservative, that they are seeking to bring marriage back to
its eternally binding realities. They say that under our present
conditions of restricted divorce, we have wide-spread prostitution,
constant irregularities that are tolerated and condoned, and a million
divorced people, some prevented from remarrying and all socially
ostracized, so that the whole group is a dangerous element in our midst.
These advocates claim that with free divorce, granted some months after
the determination to separate had been registered in the public records,
the love of men and women and their mutual love for their children would
be free to bind families together in permanent trust and open honesty;
and that with all excuse for irregularity absent, the unfaithful man or
woman would sink to the level of unfaithfulness in business or political
life. With freedom to readjust their lives, if they preferred to keep
what they had and get what they could, they would simply take their
place among thieves and liars, and most of them would disappear.
All transitions are hard, and this one in which we are involved is most
difficult of all; but no one can study the conditions around him without
seeing that change is inevitable and that we are not going back to our
earlier ideals. At the same time, no one can read the singularly
scholarly and fair-minded presentations of Ellen Key[55] without feeling
that she has a vision of the future.
[55] _The Century of the Child._ New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1907.
_Love and Marriage_, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1911. _Love and Ethics._ New
York: B.W. Huebsch, 1911.
With regard to the nature of the material plant in which the family
should live, there are also two widely different ideals struggling for
favor in the public mind, and for realization in practice. The one
ideal, while recognizing the changes necessitated by modern conditions,
would still seek to retain those features which have been supposed to
make for family privacy, the kitchen, the nursery, and the garden. The
other would frankly accept our changed conditions, and pass on to the
larger groups of socialized buildings, with common kitchens, day
nurseries, and parks.[56]
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