Illegitimacy and the Social Structure

There are two approaches to the study of illegitimacy: the social welfare approach and the sociological. The latter tries to understand the institutional norms which define certain births as illegitimate and to explain, in terms of the functional and structural connections of these norms with the rest of society, why illegitimacy occurs in spite of the norms, and why the illegitimate child and its parents have an inferior social status. This type of analysis reveals the basic defects in existent proposals for the elimination or the diminution of illegitimacy, and indicates that the simple measures that would be necessary for abolition will never be taken so long as the reproductive institutions of society are familial in character.