| dc.description.abstract | This is a study of illegetitmact primarily in the Negro population of Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the period, 1940 through 1950. The study uses the trend in illegitimate briths in the white population of the same city as a control factor. The study employs age of parents, race, education, residence, marital status, and occupations of both parents of illegitimate children as indpendent factors in illegitimacy. Other closely related variables which are likely contributors to illegitimacy are housing conditions and socio-economic status of parents. The data for the study are derived from (1) published census reports, (2) official reports of schools, welfare agencies, and courts, and (3) a direct survey of 412 "family" groups having illegitimate children. These data are analyzed by simple description and historical techniques. The study tests the hypothesis that the observed rise in illegitimacy since 1940, as evidenced by growing numbers of paternity cases in courts, as well as in numbers recorded by other public agencies, is symptomatic of an intensification of scrutiny upon the problem. The study seems to justify the following conclusions: (1) The data do not fully prove or disprove the hypothesis, although there has been and increasingly rigid scrutiny of the illegitimacy problem. (2) Social welfare agency reports indicate an increased activity on their part to focus light in illegitimacy in order that appropriate action may be taken. (3) Evidently, a mere biological increase in recorded illegitimacy overestimates the total increase. Births have been reported with greater completeness in later than in earlier years of the past two decades. Hence, the incresae has been both biological and legal. (4) traditionally weak armorphous family life coupled with economic instability and insecurity, segregation, unwholesome housing, and social insolation provide a more fertile medium for the occurence of illegitimacy in the Negro than in the white population. | |
