NEGLECTED WIDOWHOOD IN THE JUVENILE

COURT 1

SOPHONISBA PRESTON BRECKINRIDGE

The University of Chicago and the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy

The right of the wife to be supported by her husband and the claim of the widow to a continued enjoyment of her husband's property have long been recognized. In the obligation, acknowledged if not well enforced, of the husband to supply his wife with necessaries2 and in the dower right of the widow, together with the "reasonable part" assigned her by early custom out of his personal effects are found the expression in law of a claim on her part enduring not merely during the joint lives of husband and wife but surviving until her death. In recent American legislation this provision for separate participation on her part in the earnings and property of the husband has been supplemented by legislation directed toward the maintenance of the family as a group in whose uninterrupted unity and integrity the community felt large concern. In many states this concern has been expressed by statutes providing for the continued use of the homestead in case of death or pecuniary misfortune and allowing to the widow on the death of the husband enough from the husband's goods to hold the group together until they can be readjusted to the new and maimed condition.

In the recent statutes imposing a new and larger liability on both husband and wife for family expenses and in the so-called

This article is the substance of a paper read at a section meeting on the "Care of Widows with Children," at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections at St. Louis, May 21, 1910, and is based upon a portion of the material used in a forthcoming volume of the Russell Sage Foundation Publications, The Delinquent Child and the Home, by Sophonisba P. Breckinridge and Edith Abbott.

* See Blackstone, I, chap. xv, § iii, 442.

3 * Ibid., II, chap. viii, § iv, 129.

See for example Illinois Revised Statutes, chap. lii.

6

Ibid., chap. iii, § 74.

Ibid., II, chap. xxxii, 516.

"Ibid., chaps. Ixix, § 15.

non-support laws is found evidence of the same determination to subject the husband's property and energy to the maintenance of the family group as a unit.

It is not the purpose of this article to discuss the theory of public interest justifying the enforcement of these obligations on the part of the husband. Admitting that the theory of family relationship here embodied in legislation is a sound one, it is of interest to note that when the husband is the owner of property there is now a fairly substantial guaranty furnished to the woman who becomes a wife and mother that she is putting her hand to a task in which the community feels deep concern, for which reasonable support and maintenance will be supplied.

When there is no property, however, and the support of the family group is dependent upon the labor of a husband and father who is either unable or unwilling, the provision during his life now offered under the non-support law is most inadequate, and in case of his death there is no substitute provided by which she may be enabled to continue the work to which she has set her hand. Sometimes under these conditions there may be children old enough to carry the family, and sometimes after the husband dies there is a fairly prompt remarriage. But what often happens is that the unsupported mother undertakes to carry the double burden of earning the support and of performing the domestic duties which, under our present habits of thinking, are inextricably intertwined with her maternal duties. When any one of these phases of her work must be neglected it is the side of nurture and personal care which is slighted, since the dollars and cents with which to pay for the daily meal and the weekly rent must be found, while the discipline and coddling can, of course,

be deferred.

When failure meets these efforts to obtain the dollars and cents, she may appear in the office of the charitable society where she will present a problem in treatment. Of the theory regarding that treatment little need be said; since experts in the care of needy families in their homes are in substantial agreement with the theory of treatment and the measures of competence recom

Ibid., §§ 24-26.

mended by the minority of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law-"that for widows or other mothers in distress, having the care of young children, residing in homes not below the national minimum of sanitation, and being themselves not adjudged unworthy to have children entrusted to them, there should be adequate home aliment on condition of their devoting their whole time and energy to the care of the children."

Translating the terms "national minimum of sanitation" into everyday language, it may be said that if the mother is a woman of good habits who keeps the home and the children clean, the agents of the relief society to whom she has appealed find themselves in a position to take hold of the family difficulties with a reasonable hope of bringing them to a successful issue. When, on the other hand, the lack of discipline and child care results in some acts on the part of the child, of which the police or possibly an injured neighbor takes note, the mother is summoned with the young offender to the Juvenile Court. It is interesting to ask what problem in particular she then presents, and how far the implications of her presence at the bar of the court are different from those suggested by her presence in the office of the relief society.

It may be answered at once that she does not present a statistical or quantitative problem as to the bearing of her gainful employment or her widowhood upon juvenile delinquency. In the first place, the causes of juvenile delinquency cannot be stated in terms of quantity; and, if she is a widow, widowhood can less fitly be subjected to quantitative measures than many other delinquency-producing conditions, primarily because there are no data showing the number of widows with children who might come into court; secondly, widowhood can rarely be separated from other possible causes of delinquency-such as poverty, the crowded home, the congested neighborhood, lack of recreation facilities, and irregular school attendance; and finally, a more striking reason to be found in the fact that widowhood may be a less unsatisfactory condition than that of having two parents. For while it is axiomatic that two good parents are better than Webb, The Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission, Part II, 345.

one and one better than none, and so, when there is only one, the fair thing is to see that she remains one in fact instead of trying to be both and becoming in reality neither-it is likewise true that if the parents are degraded and degrading, the fewer the better. And so with work, which may be evidence of competence and "worthiness," or part of a degraded habit of living. serving sometimes as a blind for immoral practices and sometimes as an indication that the worker has ceased to observe the ordinary restraints and decencies of life.10 Obviously, in case a mother works and is guilty of degrading practices, or the victim of intemperate habits, it is impossible to determine the bearing of her employment on her child's delinquency.

The fact is, that here again, at the bar of the court, as in the office of the charitable society, she presents a problem in treatment; and, in the hope of giving some assistance in the statement of this problem, in order that its solution may be more clearly worked out, a study has been made of cases of children of "widows and other mothers in distress" who, during a single year, became delinquent wards of the Juvenile Court of Chicago.

The material used is a portion of that collected by the Department of Social Investigation of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy in an attempt to gain an understanding of the home conditions surrounding the delinquent children of Chicago. The whole material consisted of the court records of 11.329 boys and 2,770 girls, all of the children brought into court during the first ten years of its existence, and a detailed study of the home conditions of 580 boys who came into court for the first time during a single year, and of 154 girls who were at one time or another committed to the State Training School for Girls at Geneva, Illinois.

Among the children who become delinquent wards of the court it appears that a very considerable number come from

10 In an interesting statement, Conditions That Make Wayward Girls, recently published by Miss Mary Dewson, superintendent of probationers in Massachusetts, with reference to the home conditions of 121 delinquent girls, it appears that out of 28 mothers who worked only 13 could be called decent women, while 12 worked and were immoral, and 10 worked and were intemperate.

broken homes.1 11 Neglecting, however, those who are wholly orphaned and those who are motherless, it is significant that the court records showed that 14 per cent of the boys (1,557) and 18 per cent of the girls (494) were fatherless, while of those about whom more exact knowledge was obtained, 23 per cent of the boys and 25 per cent of the girls were in this group.

It is clear that in the family when the father's death is accompanied by poverty, disaster to the children may easily result. It is also important to notice that in the families of this class the loss of the father is likely to have more serious consequences than the loss of the mother. This is, of course, quite unlike the situation in the ordinary well-to-do family where the father's death does not mean any material change in the family resources, and where the children probably suffer most from the loss of the mother who is the more intimate parent. When the mother in the poor home dies, the father may secure a housekeeper, one of the older children may succeed in taking the mother's place, a woman relative may be at hand to tide over the interval until the remarriage which is probable. But when in the poor family the father dies, the chief source of income of the family is suddenly cut off and there is not only the difficulty involved in a radical readjustment of the standard of living, but there is in effect the loss of both parents; for the mother is no longer able to perform 11 The data in the court records show that among 11,328 boys and 2,770 girls who came into court during ten years, at least 349 boys (3 per cent) and 173 girls (6 per cent) were wholly orphaned; 1,557 boys (14 per cent) and 494 girls (18 per cent) were fatherless; 1,013 boys (9 per cent) and 353 girls (12 per cent) were motherless. And further data gathered on the family schedules indicate that these figures understate, rather than overstate, the extent to which the court's wards have been orphaned. Among the children for whom this more detailed information was secured, 23 per cent of the boys, instead of 14 per cent, were fatherless, and 14 per cent, instead of 9 per cent, were motherless; and among the girls 25 per cent, instead of 18 per cent, were fatherless, while 26 per cent, instead of 12 per cent, were motherless. It should also be pointed out as a significant fact that there were 80 homeless boys in this 1903-4 group who had no families to be visited and who are therefore not included among the fatherless and motherless children for whom family schedules were secured. There are no corresponding figures for the girls, but the court records show 96 to have been not merely orphaned, but homeless, and a study of the addresses given would indicate in many other instances that the home was a temporary or accidental shelter.