It is within the family itself that the growing economic independence of woman is producing the highest sociological results. Under the old domestic régime on both sides of the sea the woman who married entered legally, potentially, upon a life of financial bondage. In the theory of the common law the wife, with her children, her goods, and the fruits of her toil, was the sole property of the husband. Only in 1886 did the mother in England gain legal capacity for the partial custody of her offspring;[828] and in but few of the American states has she been placed on equal footing with the father in this regard.[829] Even now the "husband in England can claim damage from the man who has ruined his family life, but the woman can claim none from the rival who has supplanted her."[830] In both England and the United States notable progress has already been made in equalizing the property rights of the sexes; but the process is yet far from complete. The prevailing conception of marriage as a status in which the wife is "supported" by the husband is degrading in its influence on the woman's character. It tends to deaden her moral perceptions and to paralyze her mental powers. Girls are trained, or they are forced by poverty, to look upon wedlock as an economic vocation, as a means of getting a living. The result is that under the old order marriage tends to become a species of purchase-contract in which the woman barters her sex-capital to the man in exchange for a life-support. The man--not the woman as originally--has become the chooser in sex-selection. In the family, therefore, the sex-motive has become excessively pronounced, thrusting into the background higher social and spiritual ideals.[831] The liberation movement thus means in a high degree the socialization of one-half of the human race. Woman declines longer to be restricted to the dwarfing environment of sexual seclusion; and demands the means and the privilege of engaging in the larger activities of self-conscious society.[832]
[828] By the Custody of Infants Act, 1886: see the discussion of CAIRD, _Morality of Marriage_, 49, 55 ff.
[829] BISHOP, _Marriage, Div., and Sep._, II, 452 ff.
[830] PEARSON, "The Decline of the Family," in his _National Life and Character_, 240, 234, 235. In many of the American states the wife may bring action against the seducer of her husband: BISHOP, _Mar., Div., and Sep._, I, 568.