If a married woman has independent property, shall she not be liable as well as her husband for the support of the children?
If so, what becomes of the suits at law against "Family Deserters" heretofore applied alone to husbands and fathers?
A study of this class of offenders under the law, published in 1904, shows that in New York alone something over $100,000 was collected in one year in "alimony from men, two-thirds of whom were deserting husbands." In these cases the duty of providing financially for wife and child pursued the husbands and fathers after they had run away from home.

In the 591 cases of "Family Deserters" especially studied two-thirds were men and one-third women, showing not only that the law deals more severely with men than with women, even when women are held to be responsible for any sort of family support, but that desertion is for the most part a masculine offense.

If it can be shown that fathers are or should be relieved from the age-long financial responsibilities of family support, will the showing in "Family Desertion" be different?
There seems to be a consensus of opinion that in present conditions that family is likely to be in the best economic condition, in which the chief, if not the entire, income is supplied by the husband and father, leaving the wife and mother to be specially responsible for the translation of that income in terms of family comfort.

That is admirably indicated in Mrs.Hinman Abel's book, _Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income_.

Does that condition still carry with it the sole economic responsibility of the husband and father for the wife as well as for the children?
Or shall the phrase now beginning to be used in laws passed against family desertion apply to the wife only when it is proved she is "in necessitous circumstances" without her husband's provision?
For the children the newer laws say "him" or "her" when providing penalties for "any person," either father or mother, "who wilfully neglects or refuses to provide for the support and maintenance of minor children." The claim, then, of the wife seems to be increasingly one of either invalid "conditions," or "necessitous circumstances," or "lack of other means of support," when defaulting husbands are brought to court; and the claim of children upon parents is increasingly extended from father to mother whenever there are means at hand from either to supply the children's needs.
In respect to the "choice of domicile," always the right of the husband and father, there is little change in law; but the strong movement to secure to women independent nationality, in place of automatic following of the nationality of their husbands, will, if carried out, make the supreme choice (that of the country to which one shall pledge allegiance) a legal right of women as of men.