The illegitimate child at law

Abstract

The problem of human rights is essentially one of the protection of minorities. Whether the deprived be limited to one citizen or many thousands, They have in common, the fact that society is giving them a rougher time than the majority of their fellow citizens to whom by definition they do not belong. Illegitimate children and their mothers are a particularly vulnerable minority and to make matters worse, it is often not easy for the law to help them. For the unpalatable truth is that illegitimate children and their mothers are more unpopular with their neighbours than they are with the law. Occasionally, the law has "developed support for their rights, but, generally, they still continue to be rejected by society, and in fact illegitimate children are made to suffer in innumerable subtle ways from a sense of guilt that was never truly theirs. There is of course, a strong element of hypocrisy in social attitudes towards illegitimate children. For although teenage sexuality is encouraged by commercial advertising, by the mass media and by current pop culture, when as is bound to happen, some girls exposed to this atmosphere of sexual encouragement, get themselves with child, they and their children are subjected by society to the black sheep treatment. They are sometimes, even rejected by their own families, looked down upon by their neighbours and are denied the respect to which each member of society is entitled.