[21] See p. 69.

V

FURTHER ITEMS IN THE INVESTIGATION

It is evident that the need of finding the man strongly influences the course of this type of investigation, especially in the early stages.  Are there other considerations, however, that modify the technique of inquiry into these desertion cases?

There is one crisis in the lives of deserted families which is not duplicated in the history of any other group suffering from social disability.  This crisis is the period of the first desertion.  “If we could learn what preceded and what immediately followed the first desertion, we should know much more than we do now about how to deal with the problem,” said a case worker who has studied many court records.

The number of subsequent desertions may be both interesting and significant, but the circumstances attending them are not nearly so well worth study as are those connected with the critical first break.  We should go back to that spot and probe for causes.  The common practice of recording carefully what led up to a chronic deserter’s last desertion before his family applied, and of passing over his earlier desertions with a mere mention of their number and dates, puts the emphasis in the wrong place.

We must, however, go further back than the first desertion for a working fund of knowledge.  The importance of knowing what were the influences surrounding the man and woman in childhood and youth has already been dwelt upon and is so generally conceded as to need no elaboration here.  Of especial value also is careful inquiry into the period of courtship, the circumstances of the marriage, and the history of the earlier married life.  “We should seek to know what first drew them together, as well as what forced them apart,” said a thoughtful district secretary.  The notorious unhappiness of “forced marriages” leads case workers to scrutinize the relation between the date of marriage and the date of the birth of the first child.  It should be remembered, however, that not all marriages which are entered into during pregnancy are forced marriages.  Studies of forced marriages, so-called, have not always taken this fact into consideration.

The superintendent of a state department for aid to widows made a study of the vital statistics of 500 families chosen at random.  She states that “out of these 500 mothers 96, or 19.2 per cent, had conceived out of wedlock—­or rather before wedlock—­judging by the date of marriage and that of the first child’s birth.  All these women were hard working; several of good standing in the neighborhood and the mothers of large families of children.”  This group of homes represents by no means an unstable segment of the community, since in most instances the couples had lived together in reasonable harmony up to the time of the man’s death.  But do the 96 represent forced marriages as ordinarily thought of by the social worker?  The study just quoted has no facts bearing upon this point.  The likelihood is that a large number of these marriages, termed forced, were in reality not brought about by outside pressure at all, but that the couple were intending to be married at the time the pregnancy occurred and that the circumstances were condoned by public opinion in the community where the marriage took place.