EARLY LAW. While the legal relationship be tween mother and child has always been based on the fact of maternity, that between father and child was originally based, not on the fact at paternity, but ou the husband's power over the child's mother. :Marriage (q.v.), as we find it at the dawn of European history, was the appro priation of the woman by the man; and as the husband's power was originally not differentiated from other property rights, so the power of the father over children born of the wife was orig inally indistinguishable from ownership. Wife, children, slaves, and things were equally in the 'hand' (Latin manes, German Aland) of the head of the house. The father had the power of life and death over the child; lie had also the right to sell the child. The marriage of a daughter, which put her in the 'hand' of her husband, and which usually took the form of a sale to the husband, of course carried her out of the father's power, and paternal authority over the son ended, among most of the Indo-European peoples, when the son established a household of his own. The life-long patria potestas (q.v.) of the Roman father seems to have been exception al ; it was connected with the Roman custom by which the son brought his wife into his father's house.
Of maternal authority over children, even when illegitimate, there is little trace in early law, because the woman was regularly herself in the 'hand' of father or husband or kinsman (luring her whole life. In early Frisian law, however, the mother had the same right as the father to kill her new-born child.
The earliest restraints upon the power of the of the house were exercised by his kinsmen, and to sonic extent by those of his wife, and, when the family was recognized as a religions institution, by the priests. These restraints, which at an early period began to lift the wife out of the position of a mere chattel, affected but slightly the position of the child. (For that of the Roman child, see PAriti.A PcrEsrAs.) In the old German law (heathen period) the infant was not to be exposed after it had been sprinkled with water and had received its name; nor was a child to be put to death subsequently without cause; nor was a child to be sold except when the parents were in dire need. With the accept
ance of Christianity by the Germans, the right of exposure disappeared, but the paternal power of punishment for crime and of sale in case of necessity were not at first affected. As regarded personal property, all that the unmarried daugh ter or the son living in the paternal house ac quired was acquired for the father. As regards property, however. the children's eventual rights were protected; inherited realty of the parents was 'tied up' (verfanyen) in the interest of the children, and a sale by the father conveyed no perfect title to the purchaser.
MED1.EvAL LAW. In the course of the :Middle Ages the authority of the father assumed more and more the aspect of a natural guardianship. The mother, also, with the disappearance of the rule that women were themselves always under guardianship, acquired a subordinate authority. After the death of the fattier, or when he was incapable of exercising control over the children, the mother became the natural guardian (at least of the persons) of her children.
The canon law introduced in the mediaeval law of parent and child but one important modifica tion, viz. legitimation of children born out of wedlock by subsequent marriage between the parents. This rule was borrowed from the Roman law', but was extended by the Church; at Roman law• it applied only to children of a concubine. at canon law it applied to all illegitimate chil dren. When it came, however, to recognizing such children as heritors, the Church encountered obstinate resistance. In many parts of Europe German law held its own, especially as regards the inheritance of entailed estates. The reception of the law-books of .Justinian (see CIVIL LAw) had little influence upon the European law of parent and child, for the patria potestas of the Roman law was not generally received.