Bastardy

Woven into the fabric of complex New York City is the scarlet thread of bastardy which Dr. Ruth Reed of Indiana University has been unraveling for three years. Last week she reached a point where she could tell the metropolis just what sort of women bear bastards.

The typical unmarried mother in New York is a domestic servant with only a grammar school education, is aged 16 to 24. Most of the servants were either Negro or immigrant white women.

Miss Reed discovered one unmarried mother who was only 11 years old and a 14-year-old girl who had two fatherless babies The number of women who had illegitimate children after they were 40 was negligible. When Miss Reed realized that only 1% of the mothers were normal school graduates and only 2% were college graduates, she hastened to denounce "a belief prevalent among some social agencies, that unmarried mothers now come largely from the better educated classes."

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