# Marriage and Morals/Chapter XV

Chapter XV
The Family and the State
The family, though it has a biological origin, is in civilized communities a product of legal enactment. Marriage is regulated by law, and the rights of parents over their children are minutely determined. Where there is no marriage the father has no rights, and the child belongs exclusively to the mother. But although the law means to uphold the family, it has in modern times increasingly intervened between parents and children, and is gradually becoming, against the wish and intention of law-makers, one of the chief engines for the break-up of the family system. This has happened through the fact that bad parents cannot be relied upon to take as much care of their children as the general feeling of the community considers necessary. And not only bad parents, but such as are very poor, require the intervention of the State to secure their children from disaster. In the early nineteenth cen​tury, the proposal to interfere with the labour of children in factories was fiercely resisted on the ground that it would weaken parental responsibility. Although the English law did not, like that of ancient Rome, allow parents to kill their children quickly and painlessly, it did permit them to drain their children of life by a slow agony of toil. This sacred right was defended by parents, employers, and economists. Nevertheless, the moral sense of the community was revolted by such abstract pedantry, and the Factory Acts were passed. The next step was a more important one, namely, the inauguration of compulsory education. This is a really serious interference with the rights of parents. For a large number of hours on all days except holidays, the children have to be away from home, learning things that the State considers necessary for them to know, and what the parents think about the matter is legally irrelevant. Through the schools, the control of the State over the lives of children is being gradually extended. Their health is cared for, even if their parents are Christian Scientists. If they are mentally deficient, they are sent to special schools. If they are neces​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/218 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/219 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/220 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/221 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/222 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/223 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/224 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/225 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/226 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/227 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/228 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/229 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/230 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/231 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/232