And yet still that does not meet the challenge to show the _reason_ for
society's standard. The reasons are really many. In the first place, if
unmarried lovers take steps to prevent their intimacy from having its
due fruit in a child, they are robbing their experience of its fine
spontaneity, and introducing an element of calculation and caution into
what should be a thing unbound. While, on the other hand, if they do
not prevent the coming of a child they are, in the present state of
society, doing a definite and cruel wrong to their own offspring. To
love a child dearly and to know that by your own act you have
handicapped it in life from the first must be a bitter experience
indeed. I am well aware that law in regard to illegitimate children is
unchristian. Even more is the attitude of society to them unchristian.
But so long as things remain as they are, the parents of an
illegitimate child do it a wrong. Further, even though law and custom
should alter, it would still be true that a child without both its own
parents is seriously handicapped in life.
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