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Title: The Family and it's Members
Author: Anna Garlin Spencer
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* * * * *
LIPPINCOTT'S
FAMILY LIFE SERIES
EDITED BY
BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D.
TEACHERS COLLEGE. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
THE FAMILY AND ITS MEMBERS
By ANNA GARLIN SPENCER
LIPPINCOTT'S HOME MANUALS
Edited by BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D.
Teachers College, Columbia University
CLOTHING FOR WOMEN
By LAURA I. BALDT, A.M., Teachers College, Columbia University.
454 Pages, 7 Colored Plates, 202 Illustrations in Text.
SUCCESSFUL CANNING AND PRESERVING
By OLA POWELL, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. 425
Pages, 5 Colored Plates, 174 Illustrations in Text. Third
Edition.
HOME AND COMMUNITY HYGIENE
By JEAN BROADHURST, Ph.D. 428 Pages, 1 Colored Plate, 118
Illustrations in Text.
THE BUSINESS OF THE HOUSEHOLD
By C.W. TABER, Author of _Taker's Dietetic Charts_, _Nurses'
Medical Dictionary_, etc. 438 Pages. Illustrated. Second Edition,
Revised.
HOUSEWIFERY
By L. RAY BALDERSTON, A.M., Teachers College, Columbia
University. 351 Pages. Colored Frontispiece and 175 Illustrations
in Text.
LAUNDERING
By LYDIA RAY BALDERSTON, A.M., Instructor in Housewifery and
Laundering, Teachers College, Columbia University. 152
Illustrations.
HOUSE AND HOME
By GRETA GREY, B.S., Director of Home Economics Department,
University of Wyoming. Illustrated.
MILLINERY (_In Preparation_)
By EVELYN SMITH TOBEY, B.S., Teachers College, Columbia
University
LIPPINCOTT'S FAMILY LIFE SERIES
Edited by BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D.
Teachers College, Columbia University
CLOTHING--CHOICE, CARE, COST
By MARY SCHENCK WOOLMAN, B.S. 290 Pages. Illustrated. Second
Edition.
SUCCESSFUL FAMILY LIFE, ON THE MODERATE INCOME
By MARY HINMAN ABEL. 263 Pages.
THE FAMILY AND ITS MEMBERS
By ANNA GARLIN SPENCER, Special Lecturer in Social Science,
Teachers College, Columbia University.
LIPPINCOTT'S FAMILY LIFE SERIES
EDITED BY BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D., TEACHERS
COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
THE FAMILY
AND ITS
MEMBERS
BY
ANNA GARLIN SPENCER
SPECIAL LECTURER IN SOCIAL SCIENCE, TEACHERS COLLEGE OF
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, FORMERLY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF THE
NEW YORK SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK, SPECIAL LECTURER AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AND HACKLEY PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY
AND ETHICS AT MEADVILLE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL; AUTHOR OF
WOMAN'S SHARE IN SOCIAL CULTURE
PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PRINTED AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.
TO THE MOTHERS AND FATHERS, IN
NUMBER BEYOND COUNT, WHOSE
COURAGE, LOVE AND FAITHFULNESS
CARRY ONWARD THE GENERATIONS
AND KEEP THE MAIN CURRENTS
OF LIFE STRONG AND WHOLESOME.
INTRODUCTION
=A Threefold Aim.=--This book is based upon three theses--namely,
first, that the monogamic, private, family is a priceless inheritance
from the past and should be preserved; second, that in order to
preserve it many of its inherited customs and mechanisms must be
modified to suit new social demands; and third, that present day
experimentation and idealistic effort already indicate certain
tendencies of change in the family order which promise needed
adjustment to ends of highest social value.
Many learned books have been written concerning the evolution of sex,
the history of matrimonial institutions and the development of the
family. This volume is not an attempted rival of any of these. The
work of Havelock Ellis, of Le Tourneau, of Otis T. Mason, of Geddes
and Thompson, and others building upon the foundations laid by the
great pioneers in the study of the family, constitute a sufficient
mine of historical information and scientific analysis and evaluation.
The studies and suggestions of Olive Schreiner, Mrs. Clews Parsons,
Mrs. Helen Bosanquet, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ellen Key and others
indicate the tendency of modern inquiry into the just basis of the
family order. The work of Professors Howard, Giddings, Thomas, Boss,
Goodsell, Calhoun, Patten, Dealey, Cooley, Ellwood, Todd and others in
college fields, shows the importance of the family and the necessity
of giving all that concerns it the most serious attention.
This book aims to begin where many of these students leave off and to
turn specific attention to the problems of personal and ethical
decision which now face men and women who would make their own married
life and parenthood successful. The past experience of the race is
drawn upon only in so far as it seems to explain present conditions
and point the way to future social and personal achievements.
=Basic Principles Underlying All Socially Useful Changes.=--A
fundamental principle in democracy is the right and duty of every
human being to develop a strong, noble and distinctive individuality.
For such development it is necessary that a person be self-supporting,
free of despotic control by others, and able and willing to bear equal
part with every other human being in the social order to which he or
she belongs.
This implies that no human being should be wholly sacrificed in
personal development to the service or welfare of any other human
being, or group of human beings, either inside or outside the family
circle. On the other hand, after temporary excursions into an extreme
individualism that ordained a free-for-all competition in every walk
of life, society is now keenly alive to the need for control of
personal desire and individual activity within channels of social
usefulness. It is beginning to be clearly seen that society has a
right to demand from any person or class of persons that form of
community service which definitely inheres in the social function
which is assumed by, or which devolves upon, such person or class of
persons. In the old days of "status," when each and every person found
himself in a place set for him and from which he could not depart,
there was only the duty of being content and useful in the "sphere of
life to which he was called." In the new condition of "contract," in
which each and every person in a democratic community finds himself at
liberty to use all common opportunities in the interest of his own
achievement, there is the duty of choice along every avenue of purpose
and of activity. This gives the new double call to the intelligence
and conscience; the call to become the best personality one can make
of oneself and the call to serve the common life to ends of social
well-being.
=The Sense of Kind and the Sense of Difference.=--Doctor Giddings
declares in fine summary "we may conceive of society as any plural
number of sentient creatures more or less continuously subjected to
common stimuli, to differing stimuli and to inter-stimulation, and
responding thereto in like behaviour, concerted activity or
coöperation, as well as in unlike or competitive activity; and
becoming, therefore, with developing intelligence, coherent through a
dominating consciousness of kind while always sufficiently conscious
of difference to insure a measure of individual liberty." Democracy
tends to enlarge the area of those who, while conscious of kind that
unites, are also keen in desire to develop in liberty any natural
difference which can make their personality felt as distinctive or
powerful. The individual differences among women were wholly ignored
in the past. They were never in reality all alike, as they were
commonly thought to be. The usual designation of a subject class lumps
all together as if all were the same. It is the mark of emergence from
the mass to the class, and from the class to the individual, that more
and more defines differences between persons. Women have now, for the
first time in the civilization called Christian, arrived at a point in
which differences between members of their sex can claim social
recognition. They are, therefore, now called upon as never before to
balance by conscious effort the personal desire and the social claim.
The family, more than any other inherited institution, feels the
oscillations between the individual demand for personal achievement
and the response to the social need for large service within group
relationships which now, for the first time, stir in the consciousness
of average women.
=The Family as We Know It Is the Central Nursery of Character.=--The
inevitable outcome of the new freedom, education and economic
opportunity of women gives us the problem of the modern family. The
ideal of the democracy we are trying to achieve is higher personality
in all the mass of the people. The method of democracy so far as we
can see is education, perfected and universalized, by which all the
children of each generation may be developed physically, mentally,
morally, and vocationally to their utmost excellence and power. The
family, as we have inherited it, is so far the central nursery and
school in this development. So far in the history of the race or in
its present social manifestation no rival institution, even the formal
school, offers an adequate substitute for the family in this beginning
of the educative process. The intimate and vital care and nurture of
the individual life still depends for the mass of the people upon the
private, monogamic, family. This intimate and vital care of the
children of each generation has so far in human experience cost women
large expenditure of time and strength; so large expenditure that
personal achievement has been wholly and is even now largely
subordinated to the social service implied in home-making. The deepest
problems of the modern family inhere in the effort to adjust the new
freedom of women, and its new demands for individual development in
customary lines of vocational work, to the ancient family claim. New
adjustments are called for not only in the family itself but in all
the educational, political, economic, and social arrangements of life
to accommodate this new demand of women to be achieving persons
whether married or single. Women have entered, as newly emerging from
status to contract, into a man-made social organization, a man-made
school, a man-made industrial order, and a man-made state.
Achievement, individual and successful, means to most of them, as to
any newly enfranchised class, the type of distinctive activity and
accomplishment which their elder brothers have outlined. The
antithesis, therefore, which now works toward acute problems in the
minds of both men and women is between the sort of achievement which
men have sought after and attained, and the sort of social service
which the past conditions required of women. Slowly it is being
perceived that in the actual family service, as it is now aided by
social mechanisms surrounding the household, is place and economic
opportunity for high personal achievement by competent women. Still
more slowly is it being apprehended that in the new adjustments of
economic and professional life there is or may be opportunity for
married women and mothers to serve the family in high measure and also
attain outside some distinctive vocational pride and satisfaction of
craftsmanship. Most slowly of all is it being understood that the
future calls for such modification of specialization in outside work
that men and women alike may serve the generations in family devotion
to the sort of work fathers and mothers have to do and yet cherish
some personal and ideal vocational effort which may sweeten and enrich
their lives.
=Vital Changes in All the Basic Institutions of Society.=--There are
five basic institutions in modern social organization. They may be
named the family, the school, the church, the industrial order, and
the state. They have all come to us as parts of our social inheritance
from time too remote to reckon. They have mingled and intermingled
their tendencies of control and influence in varieties of social
functioning too numerous to mention. They are now emerging to
distinctness only to be engaged in new forms of interaction that make
the highest ideals of each and all seem fundamentally akin.
The main tendency of development in all these institutions is,
however, identical and one clearly perceived. It is the tendency from
status to contract, from fixed order to flexible adjustment, from
static to dynamic condition, already noted in regard to the family.
In the school we have moved and are now moving from an aristocracy of
command, by which ancient life was reproduced, to a democracy of
comradeship in which it is aimed to make each generation improve upon
its predecessor. In the church, as it has moved from the family ritual
at the domestic fireside to the self-chosen altar of each worshipper
in the world's cathedrals, the reactionaries have held on to "the
faith once delivered to the saints" and the progressive minds have
moved to some new prophecy of the truth and right; until to-day, as
Professor Coe well says, "the aim of the modern church is to give
education in the art of brotherhood," and to evoke "faith in a
fatherly God and in a human destiny that outreaches all the accidents
of our frailty." In the industrial order, still in the trial stage of
conflict between the fixed status of the "hand" and the "master" and
the contract of equal partners in a coöperative enterprise, the
movement is steadily toward the social requirement of equality,
justice, and good-will. In the state we have achieved mechanical
expression of complete democracy. We still lack, and in our own
country woefully lack, the "spirit within the wheels" that can move
with power toward an actual government by the people, for the people,
and truly of the people. Yet by fire and sword and through blood and
suffering the handwriting of equality, justice, and fraternity has
been set in our Constitutions and Bills of Right. What remains to be
done is the socializing of the political mechanisms. That means simply
that we shall learn to live our democracy and be no longer content to
merely write it in law. The difficulty now is not so much to get a
good statement of democratic right as to make it work effectively in
common action. This fact makes it of doubtful wisdom that men and
women so often concentrate effort on the eighteenth-century
doctrinaire position of appeal for Constitutional Amendments and
blanket state legislation as if of themselves these could secure
actual personal liberty and social welfare. The objection that some
forward-looking persons have to the demand of the "National Woman's
Party," so called, for a Federal Amendment that shall "abolish all sex
discriminations in law" is not that its principle is too radical, but
that its method is too antiquated.
The business of the present and the immediate future is to so adjust
the family life to "two heads" as to keep love and to balance duties.
The next job is to adjust the family order itself to a contract system
of industry that gives each member of the family a free and often a
separating access to daily work and to its return in wages or salary,
in such manner as to retain family unity and mutual aid while giving
freedom and opportunity for each of its members. The pressing
political duty is to use the new voters, the women recently
enfranchised, for needed emancipation from partisan and selfish
political despotism in the interest of effective choices for the
public good. The ever-growing demand of the school is for some
translation of freedom of self-development in terms of respect for
social order and in the spirit of social service. The family life, in
the United States, at least, stands not so much in need of manifestoes
of equality of rights between men and women as of delicate and
discriminating adjustments of that equality to the social demands upon
husbands and wives and upon fathers and mothers. This book aims to
suggest some of the changes in external customs and inherited ways of
living which may lead toward a firmer hold upon social idealism within
the family, as well as within all other inherited institutions, while
new bases of democratic freedom are being firmly installed.
=Coveted Uses of the Book.=--This volume is intended to meet the needs
of college and teacher-training school students; of university
extension classes; of study groups in Women's Clubs, Consumers'
Leagues, Leagues of Women Voters and Church Classes. It is also hoped
that it may form the basis for private study by groups within the
home.
The book is written with a poignant sense of the breaking up of old
social foundations in the agony and terror of the Great War. It is
sent forth with a keen understanding of the spirit of youth that
to-day challenges every inherited institution and ideal, even to the
bone and marrow of the church, the state, the industrial order, the
educative process, and even the family itself. It issues from an
abiding faith that "above all things Truth beareth away the victory"
and hence that no fearless inquiry can harm the essential values of
life. It confesses a clear trust in "the Spirit that led us hither and
is leading us onward." It would sound a call to hold all that has
dowered the race at the sources of life sacred and of worth. It would
echo all that bids us move onward to higher and better things.
The greatest ambition herein recorded is to serve as one who opens
doors of insight into the House of the Interpreter.
--THE AUTHOR.
JANUARY, 1923.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 5
A Threefold Aim. Basic Principles Underlying All Socially
Useful Changes. The Sense of Kind and the Sense of Difference.
Vital Changes in All the Basic Institutions of Society.
Coveted Uses of This Book.
I. THE FAMILY 19
The Experience of the Past. New Ideals Affecting the Family.
The Headship of the Father. Is It Possible to Democratize the
Family? What Is the Modern Ideal in Child-care? Modern Ideals
of Sex-relationship. Ellen Key and Her Gospel. What is Meant
by the Demand that Illegitimacy be Abolished? The Legitimation
of Children Born Out of Wedlock. Philanthropic Tendencies
Respect Legal Marriage. Illicit Unions of Men and Women in
Divergent Social Position. Shall We Return to Polygamy? All
Children Entitled to Best Development Possible. The Work of
the Children's Bureau. The Suggested Uniform Laws. Have
Unmarried Women a Social Right to Motherhood? Ellen Key's
Estimate of Motherhood. Monogamic Marriage Does Not Work
Inerrantly. New Demand that Motherhood Have Social Support.
The Increasing Tendency of Women Toward Celibate Life. Women
Cannot be Forced Back to Compulsory Marriage. A Few Believe in
a Third Sex. Most Social Students Believe in Marriage. Dangers
of Extreme Specialization. Industrial Exploitation of Children
and Youth. Social Measures Needed to Prevent These Evils. The
Attack upon the Family by Reactionaries. The Prevalence of
Divorce. Old Institutions Need New Sanctions. The Monogamic
Family Justifies Itself by Social Usefulness. The Inherited
Family Order Demands New Social Adjustments. The Family as an
Aid to Spiritual Democracy. The Family the Nursery of
Personality. Life, Not Theory About Life, Teaches Us. The
Moral Elite in the Modern Family. Questions.
II. THE MOTHER 46
Antiquity of the Mother-instinct. Recognized Essentials in
Child-care. The Protective Function. Social Elements in Modern
Protection of Children. Women's Leadership in Social
Protection. The Provision of Food, Clothing and Shelter. The
Woman in Rural Life. Modern Demand for Standardization. The
Apartment House and the Family. New Uses of Electric Power.
Certain Duties the Mother Cannot Delegate. The Mother's
Compensation for Personal Service. Early Drill in Personal
Habits. Early Practice in Talking, Walking, Obedience, and
Imitation. Special Responsibility of the Average Mother.
Women's Relation to More Formal Education. Women's Relation to
Educational Agencies. The Social Value of Parental Affection.
What Women Need Most. Questions.
III. THE FATHER 69
Historic Background of Fatherhood. Purchase and Capture of
Wives. The Patriarchal Family. The Three Chief Sources of
Influence. Ancient Military Training of Youth.
Ancestor-worship. The Double Standard of Morals. Basic Needs
for Equality of Human Rights. Special Protection of Women
Needed in Ancient Times. The Social Value of the Patriarchal
Family. The Responsibilities of the Ancient Father
Commensurate with His Power. Moral Qualities in Women
Developed by Masculine Selection. The Highest Ideal of
Fatherhood. Incomplete Adjustment to Equality of Rights in the
Family. The Marriage Question To-day the "Husband-problem."
Women Cannot Have All the New Freedom and Also All the Old
Privileges. New Social Advantages for Fathers. Questions.
IV. THE GRANDPARENTS 90
Relative Increase of the Aged in Modern Life. Savage Treatment
of the Aged. The Relation of Ancestor-worship to Respect for
Aged Men. The Position of Chief-mother in the Ancient Family.
Memory of the Aged Valued in Primitive Life. Old Women and the
Witchcraft Delusion. Older Women in Religious Vocations
Honored in Middle Ages. To-day Comparatively Few Really Old at
Seventy. Is Any House Large Enough for Two Families? Reasons
Why Husbands Desert Their Families. The Financial Provision
for Old Age. Needed Ways of Preparing for Old Age. Pension
Laws. Old age Home Insurance. To Prevent Premature Old Age.
Check Extreme Requirements for Youth in Labor. Need of
Experience in Many Fields of Work. Prepare Vocationally for
Old-age Needs. The Attitude of Mind Toward Old Age. The
Special Gifts of the Old to the Home and the World. Questions.
V. BROTHERS, SISTERS AND NEXT OF KIN 116
The Ancient Kinship Bond. Present Demands of Kinship. Special
Burden of Women in Family Obligation. Disadvantages of the
Only Child. Permanent Value of the Family Bond. Questions.
VI. FRIENDS AND THE CHOSEN ONE 124
The Power of Friendship. The Newly-wed and Old Friends. Some
Advantages in Choices of Marriage by the Elders. New Demands
for Social Control of Marriage Choices. The Young Should be
Helped to Make Wise Choices. The Revolt of Youth. The Wisdom
of the Ages Must be the Guide of Youth. Personal Choice in
Marriage Has Now Widest Range. The Value of the Church in
Social Life. Easy Divorce Does Not Lessen Marriage
Responsibility. New and Finer Marriage Unions. Questions.
VII. HUSBANDS AND WIVES 141
Not Fancied but Genuine Happiness in Marriage Now Demanded.
Social Restraints on Marriage Choices. Shall the Wife Take the
Husband's Name? Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Nationality?
Who Shall Choose the Domicile? Shall the Married Woman Earn
Outside the Home? Economic Considerations Involved. Is It Bad
Form to Earn After Marriage? Shall Parenthood be Chosen? Some
People Have a Right to Marry and Remain Childless. What is the
Just Financial Basis of the Household? What Shall be the
Accepted Standard of Living? The Need for Full and Mutual
Understanding Before Marriage. The Supreme Satisfactions of
Successful Marriage. Questions.
VIII. THE CHILDREN OF THE FAMILY 164
Conditions to be Secured for Every Child. The Need for Two
Parents. Equal Guardianship of Both Parents. Every Child
Should Have a Competent Mother. Every Child Should Have a
Competent Father. Economic Aspects of the Father's Competency.
The French Plan of Extra-wage. The Endowment of Mothers. Does
this Plan Make Too Little of Fathers? Just Limits to Number of
Children in Subsidized Families. The Right of a Child to be
Officially Counted. Every Child Should Have Social Protection.
Child-labor. Children Must be Protected in Recreation.
Standards of and Aids to Health. Health Boards Should Help All
Alike. Items of Work in Child Hygiene. The Educational Rights
of Children. The Use of Married Women as Teachers. Individual
Sharing in the Social Inheritance. Questions.
IX. THE FLOWER OF THE FAMILY 189
The Proportions of Genius to the Mediocre. Eugenics. Euthenics
and Eudemics. Only Men in Lists of Geniuses. Social Need to
Learn What Children Are. "Charting Parents." New "Observation
Records" for Children. What to Do with the Specially Gifted
Child. Genius Universal in Nature. Genius Its Own
School-master. Varieties of the Gifted. Questions.
X. THE CHILDREN THAT NEVER GROW UP 205
The Defective Children. Custodial Care of the Defective.
Heredity. Difficulties in Care of Morons. The Colony Plan.
Mental Hygiene. Special Rooms in Public Schools. Training the
Nervous System. Responsibility of Women in Marriage. The Call
for Preventive Work. Questions.
XI. PRODIGAL SONS AND DAUGHTERS 219
Who Should Hear Sermons on the Prodigal Son? Distinction
Between the Mentally Competent and the Defective in Criminal
Classes. Moral Invalids. Rehabilitation of the Competent. The
Right Use of Leisure Time. The Moving Picture. The Automobile
and Its Influence. Parents Need Social Help in Moral Training
of Children. Parental Love for the Black Sheep. Children's
Courts. Domestic Relations Courts. Dangerous Rebound from
Ancient Family Discipline. Do Modern Youth Need New Community
Disciplines? Questions.
XII. THE BROKEN FAMILY 233
The Problems of Divorce. Frequency of Divorce in the United
States. Cannot Now Make Family an Autocracy. New Standards of
Marriage Success. Dangers of Extreme Individualism in
Marriage. Free Love Not Admissible. Must Work Toward Desired
Permanency in Marriage. Needed Changes in Legal and Social
Approach to Divorce. Prohibition of Paid Attorneys in Divorce.
Divorce Proceedings Should be Heard in Secret. Earlier and
Better Use of the Domestic Relations Court. The Children to be
Affected Society's Chief Care. A Uniform or Federal Divorce
Law. Education Our Chief Reliance. Helps Toward Family
Stability. Shall Society Favor the Remarriage of Divorced
Persons? Turning from Compulsory to Attractive Methods of
Reform. Questions.
XIII. THE FAMILY AND THE WORKERS 246
Changes from Ancient to Modern Forms of Labor. The Old
Household a Work-place. Welfare Managers in Modern Times.
Child-labor. Increase in Women Wage-earners. Social Pressure
on the Individual Worker. Demands of Family Life Should be
Considered in Industry and in Labor Legislation. The Code for
Women in Industry. Should Adult Women and Children be Listed
Together in Labor Laws? Women in War Work. Minimum Wage for
Fathers of Families the Vital Need. The Attitude of Women
Toward Labor Problems. Necessary Protection of Children and
Youth in Labor. Women and the Cost of Living. The Family
Demand upon Unmarried Women. Farming and the Farmer's Wife.
Domestic Help and Family Life. The Application of Democratic
Principles to Life. Women Must be More Democratic. The Social
Effect of Trade Unions. Women in Trade Unions. The New
Solidarity of Women. Questions.
XIV. THE FAMILY AND THE SCHOOL 269
New Forms of Education Demanded by Modern Industry. Education
a Social Process. The Three Learned Professions. New Calls for
Trained Leadership. The Special Education of Girls. Formal
School Training of Women New. Modern Training for Social
Service. Departments of Household Economics in Colleges.
Society Now Based upon Man's Economic Leadership. Women
Socially Drafted for Motherhood. Father-office and
Mother-office Still Differ. Should the Education of Girls
Include Special Attention to Family Claims? Adjustment of
Family Service and Vocational Work. Dangers of Specialization
in Professional Work. The New Training in Sex-education.
Heroes Held Up for Admiration. Moral Training at the Heart of
Education. Drill to Avert Economic Tragedies. A Graduated
Scale of Virtues. Dr. Lester Ward's Types of Education.
Questions.
XV. THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER STATE 290
The Socialization of the Modern State. The Interest and Work
of Women in This Process of Political Change. Health a Social
Enterprise. General and Vocational Training for All. Women's
Work in Philanthropy. Culture Aids to the Common Life. Many
Languages in One Country. The Children's Bureau. A Women's
Lobby at the National Capitol. Women's Interest in Public Life
a Social Asset. Social Service in Peace. Problems Voters Must
Solve. Confusion Between National and Local Effort.
Preferential Voting. Proportional Representation. What Shall
Public and What Shall Private Social Service Attempt?
Difficulty in Being a Good American Citizen. Our Country a
Member of the Family of Nations. Vows of Civic Consecration.
Questions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 314
THE FAMILY AND ITS MEMBERS
CHAPTER I
THE FAMILY
"The family is the heart's fatherland; the fatherland is the
cradle of humanity."--MAZZINI.
"The family has two functions; as a smaller group it affords
opportunity for eliciting qualities of affection and character
which cannot be displayed in a larger group; and in the second
place it is a training for future members of the larger group in
the qualities of disposition and character which are essential to
citizenship. Marriage converts an attachment between man and woman
into a deliberate, permanent, responsible, intimate union for a
common end of mutual good. Modern society requires that the
husband and wife contemplate lifelong companionship, and the
affection between husband and wife is enriched by the relation of
parents to the children which are their care. The end of the
family is not economic profit but mutual aid and the continuance
and progress of the race."--PROFESSOR TUFTS, in _Ethics_, by Dewey
and Tufts.
=Social Work and Family Conservation.=--"By whatever name they may
be called, the most essential elements of social work are those
which seek to conserve the family life; to strengthen or
supplement the home; to give children in foster homes or elsewhere
the care of which tragic misfortune has deprived them in their
natural homes; to provide income necessary in the proper care of
their children; to restore broken homes; to discover and, if
possible, remove destructive influences which interfere with
normal home life and the reasonable discharge of conjugal and
parental obligations. The institutions which exist for the benefit
of those individuals who have no home or who need care of a kind
that cannot well be supplied in the home, only emphasize the
importance of conserving family life when its essential elements
are present."--EDWARD T. DEVINE.
"Human nature has achieved the consciousness that existence has an
aim. Human life, therefore, is a mission; the mission of reaching
that aim, by incessant activity upon the path toward it and
perpetual warfare against the obstacles opposed to it."--MAZZINI.
The Home:
"For something that abode endued
With temple-like repose; an air
Of life's kind purposes pursued
With ordered freedom, sweet and fair;
A tent, pitched in a world not right,
It seemed, whose inmates, every one,
On tranquil faces bore the light
Of duties beautifully done."
--COVENTRY PATMORE.
=The Experience of the Past.=--By many experiments, over many
differing "folk-ways," the modern family has arrived. We name it now
"monogamic," and mean by the name the union of one man and one woman,
in aim at least for life, and their children. Whereas once it was the
rule of a tribe or clan which determined every detail of
sex-relationship, a rule represented either by the mother or the
father, it is now an individualistic choice of two adult persons only,
socially legalized by a required certificate and ceremony. Whereas
once it was the basis of all social order and mutual aid, it is now
one of several institutions inherited from the past, and is itself
subject to the state, which is the chief heir to our social
inheritance. The family, however, is now, as it has always been, the
interior, vital, and so far indispensable social relationship,
beginning, as it does, at first hand the training of each individual
toward membership in society-at-large. In the past, under the
mother-rule, the social elements of the family were emphasized, since
her power was one delegated by the group of which she and her children
were a part and closely related to peaceful ways and to primitive
industrial arts. Under the father-rule, the political and legal
elements of the family were emphasized, since his was an autocratic
and personal control of wife and children, even of adult sons, and in
many cases of his own mother, and marked the beginning and worked
toward the power of the modern state. In all cases, however, it was as
a representative of the group-ideal and the group-control that the
parents held sway over the family; and if the family is to persist in
the future as an institution it will hold its authority over
individual lives as trustee of society-at-large. Name, line of
inheritance, rights and duties of one member toward other members and
to the family group as a whole, must all be determined in the last
analysis by the "mores" of the people and the time concerned.
=New Ideals Affecting the Family.=--To-day the ideal of equality of
rights for men and women, and the ideal of ministration to childhood's
needs, are stronger than the ideal of family control. The social
demand is, therefore, for standardization of family life and of
child-care on a high plane of physical, mental, and moral development
of each individual life rather than for an autocratic representation
of the power of what Professor James called "the collectivity that
owns us." Hence certain problems which have never before been clear in
social consciousness are now arising to enter all debates on family
stability and family success.
=The Headship of the Father.=--During the middle ages of our
civilization and for centuries of our later past the headship of the
family rested securely in the father. Now the ideal of "Two heads in
council; Two beside the hearth; Two in the tangled business of the
world" is working toward democratization of the family. This leads
toward a legal status and an economic adjustment in which the relation
of husband and wife may be equalized toward each other and toward
their children. In this new process, which is a part of the general
movement we call democracy, there are special difficulties of
modification peculiar to the family relation. The monogamic ideal and
practice demands permanency, solidarity of interest and unity of
control both within and without the family circle, at least until all
the children of a marriage have reached maturity. The ideal of the
rightful individuation of women, and even of minor children, works
against that legal solidarity and obvious unity. The old way of
obtaining these elements of family stability, a method still in vogue
in many places and still defended by some persons, was to place all
power of control in the hands of the husband and father, and thus make
the wife a perpetual minor and leave the children wholly under
patriarchal bondage. The modern ideal of women as entitled to
self-ownership and self-control even when married, and the social
need, just beginning to be understood, for women as for men to fully
develop their powers and capacities militates against the legal
headship of the father. To-day there is a demand, growing in
insistency, that we accept the right of each member of the family
circle to individual development and work toward its realization.
There is also the demand that we retain inviolate the social means for
successful family life. Some do not hesitate to say that to fulfil
both these demands is not within human power.
=Is It Possible to Democratize the Family?=--The witty writer who
declares that "the democratization of the family is impossible, since
the family is by nature an autocracy and ruled by the worst
disposition in it," is not without endorsers. There are also those,
more serious in intent, who claim that the family as an inherited
institution is by virtue of its inmost quality inimical to the
personal freedom of its members, and hence that the state, which is
now standardizing child-care, must undertake the practical duties
involved and leave both parents free to change marital relationship at
will before or after the birth of children and maintain their separate
bachelor or spinster freedom.
=Mating and Parenthood.=--This latter view is stated definitely by one
writer who believes that a new morality will "separate entirely,
mating from parenthood" in the interest of a more effective social
arrangement--"mating," or the free union of a man and a woman in
sex-relationship, to be in that case "solely a private matter with
which no one but the parties involved have any concern." "Parenthood,"
on the other hand, having relation, as it must, to society, requires,
so this writer declares, from either the father or the mother, as
inclination and capacity indicate, or from both parents if such should
be the wish of both, a "contract with the state" binding to an
upbringing of the child in accordance with accepted standards of
physical, mental, moral, and vocational demands. Such a contract with
the state in respect to child-care and the training of youth might
give far better results, be it confessed, than follow the utterly
ignorant and careless breeding of the young of the human race by those
on lowest levels of thought and action. Few, however, think such a
contract would meet all essentials of child-development.
=What Is the Modern Ideal in Child-care?=--What is the ideal of those
most advanced in knowledge of childhood's needs and most sincere in
devotion to the welfare and happiness of the young? It is certainly
not one which ignores or minimizes the influence of the private home
or one which includes the belief that one parent, however wise or
good, can do as much for a child as two parents working in harmony
over a long period of years can accomplish.
Nor can the influence of such a proposed separation of mating and
parenthood upon the sex-relationship itself be ignored in any proposed
new ways of living together. Some of the critics of the family, as we
know it, may put "duty" in quotation marks when dealing with
sex-relationship in the effort to put "love" on the throne, but
experience shows that in all the intimate relationships of life some
stay from without the individual desire is needed to restrain from
impulsive change and lessen frictional expression of temperamental
weakness. On reason and a sense of obligation are based all successful
human arrangements, and these need social support.
=Modern Ideals in Sex-relationship.=--To so separate mating and
parenthood as to make it the business of no one but the two chiefly
concerned when or how often such mating became a personal experience,
and to make it a matter of social indifference whether one or two
parents contracted with society for the right upbringing of the child
or children involved (with no troublesome questions asked about either
parent not in evidence in the contract), would certainly blur the
social outline of the family, as we know it, to the point of legal
nullification. There might, indeed, grow up in such an imagined
condition a form of contract between two persons mating, as well as
one between parents and state, in respect to parenthood's social
responsibilities, and where such personal contract was broken redress
from the courts might be sought and obtained. The effect, however, of
such a plan as that proposed would inevitably be to leave the nobler,
the more loving and less selfish of the men and women involved, more
surely even than is now the case, the victims of the weaker, the more
grasping, and the more selfish of the twain.
=Ellen Key and Her Gospel.=--Indeed, the high priestess of the gospel
of freedom from legal bondage in sex-relation, Ellen Key, declares
that "a higher culture in love can be attained only by correlating
self-control with love and parental responsibility," a correlation she
believes would "follow as a consequence when love and parental
responsibility were made the sole conditions of sex-relations." She
also says that "in all cases where there is an affinity of souls and
the sympathy of friendship, love is what it always was and always will
be, the coöperation of the father with the mother in the education of
the children as well as the coöperation of the mother with the father
in all great social works." She thus links her ideal of true freedom
for the choices of love with social obligations and hence again with
what is best in inherited family life.
In addition, however, to the claim that love should be freed from
legal restraints in the interest of self-expression and
self-development (whether or not from Ellen Key's high standpoint of
parental responsibility) we have another attack upon the legal
autonomy of the family, as we know it, in the demand of some radical
feminists that "illegitimacy should be abolished."
=What is Meant by This Demand?=--A crusade against all sex-association
that may result in children born out of wedlock is understandable but
is surely not the counsel of perfection in sex-control intended by
those making this demand. What is meant seems rather that we should
take ground against any legal distinction between the status of
children born within and those born outside of legal marriage. What
would that be likely to mean in respect to the monogamic family? The
hard conditions attaching to both unmarried motherhood and unfathered
childhood, often in the past wholly cruel and unsocial, have been much
ameliorated during the last fifty years and largely through the
efforts of those who held firmly to the value of legal marriage and
the accepted family system in general. Laws have been passed and
firmly executed to find the shirking father and bring him to marriage
with the woman involved; or if such marriage is not possible or
feasible to compel him to make financial contribution toward the
support and education of the child.
=The Legitimation of Children Born Out of Wedlock.=--If marriage
occurs, then the child otherwise illegitimate may come within the
legal family through appropriate laws which the most conservative now
advocate. In such cases the belated acceptance within the family bond
does not count seriously against the child. If marriage does not
occur, and there are many cases of irregular sex-relationship where
that is not the right solution of the problems involved in
illegitimacy, then the unmarried mother is helped to establish herself
with her child where cruel stigma and useless curiosity may be best
avoided. To aid in her protection she is encouraged by many agencies
and persons to take the title of "Mrs.," since that is a conventional
term at best and may be given according to age (as in the older
custom) or come to attach itself to motherhood as justly as to
wifehood. More and more society is reaching out through law and wise
philanthropy to fasten mutual responsibility for child-care and
nurture upon both parents even where they are not legally married.
This movement must go on until the handicap of the child born out of
wedlock is reduced to its lowest possible terms.[1]
=Philanthropic Tendencies Respect Legal Marriage.=--These tendencies,
however, are not in the direction, intentionally at least, of making
legal condition and status in respect to name, inheritance of family
property from a father whose parental relationship is not legally
established, and public recognition of parenthood, identical in the
case of children born within and without the legal family circle. Is
such an identical status and condition desirable? If so, in what way
could this goal be accomplished?
If men and women become fathers and mothers without benefit of clergy
or state license and later marry, then the children born before and
those born after the wedding ceremony may, usually do, and always
should, become one flock. In many countries where legal marriage is
difficult because of expense involved or distance from officials, such
cases often occur and with no apparent social harm where there is real
affection and true loyalty between the men and women involved. Many
illegitimate conceptions are similarly taken care of by the enforced
or assisted marriage of the parties concerned just before the birth of
the child. In many cases, however, in our own country doubtless the
great majority, the father concerned has an illicit connection with
some girl quite outside his own social circle and later, as in the
famous "Kallikak" case, marries a woman of his own class and has a
family of recognized children. What would be advised in such a case by
those advocating the legal abolition of illegitimacy? Should a
searching investigation of the whole previous life of every
prospective bridegroom be made, and wherever a previous relationship
can be found which involves parenthood a legal prohibition work
automatically to prevent a second relationship? This seems to be the
plan proposed by Mrs. Edith Houghton Hooker in her recent book, _The
Laws of Sex_, as in her program of "measures designed to minimize
extra-marital sex relationships and to check the commercialization of
vice," she lays down the principle "the common parentage of an
illegitimate child to constitute marriage or if either of the parents
was previously married, bigamy." This would, of course, carry out her
next item of the social program, namely, "place the illegitimate child
on the same plane as the legitimate," but that plane would be a very
low one in the cases that would legally become those of bigamy. In the
case of very unequal partners in an illicit sex-relationship, a legal
union that was based on the fact of equal responsibility for a child
born out of wedlock, and made a legal necessity only because of that
mutual relationship, could surely be good neither for the men and
women involved nor for any child or children thus legitimatized by
force of arms, as it were.
=Illicit Unions of Men and Women in Divergent Social Position.=--On
the other hand, in cases where the illegitimate parenthood is the
fruit of a union between a man of a high and a woman or girl of a very
low grade of intelligence and of social position a legal prohibition
which would work automatically to prevent any later and legal marriage
with a woman of higher grade (because of the existence of a child by
the extra-marital relation) would not be wholly satisfactory.
Although such a regulation would prevent any legitimate children being
born of that father, it would not necessarily legitimatize the child
or children of the first relation. The social value of either of these
plans is extremely doubtful.
=Shall We Return to Polygamy?=--Again, in such cases as have been
indicated, should the first mother be ignored and the child or
children of the irregular union be adopted into the legal home of the
father and added to the registered children of the second mother? Some
such plan has been adopted in some countries and at certain periods of
family development. Such a course undertaken now, however, in modern
conditions would, in addition to the possible suffering of the adopted
children, be most unjust to the unmarried mother. Or, again, would it
be advised that the first mother with her child or children be
accepted as a legal part of the home in which the second mother is
legally installed? That would be a frank return to polygamy in cases
where there have been irregular pre-marital relations outside of the
monogamic bond. Or do all those who advocate the abolition of
illegitimacy take the ground, which some of them definitely do, that
the monogamic family is obsolete and that the state in its corporate
capacity should take full charge of all children? Or, when the demand
is sifted to its ultimate elements, is it merely that the unjust
conditions attending the lives of children born out of wedlock must be
ameliorated by a larger charity of feeling, a better understanding of
human weakness and the effect of bad social conditions, and the
constant effort to give all children as nearly equal chance at the
best things of life as can be made possible by social feeling and wise
social care?
=All Children Entitled to Best Development Possible.=--If the latter
is all that is meant, the phrase the "abolition of illegitimacy" is
unfortunate and the real agreement among philanthropists, educators
and all right-thinking people on the just claim of all children
(however they may chance to arrive on this troubled planet) to the
best development possible, should be emphasized in the slogan. It is
well to remember that only a minority of children in any country, and
in many countries a very small minority, are involved directly in this
problem of the right treatment of children born outside the legal
family. It would seem the part of social wisdom, therefore, in this,
as in all other matters of social control, to ask ourselves the
question, What rule on the whole gives the best condition for the
largest number of persons?--and on the answer to that question base
our law and custom, then add considerate treatment for the minority
who must in the nature of things have some handicap if the rule is
obeyed by the majority.
=The Work of the Children's Bureau.=--To lessen this handicap, the
Federal Children's Bureau in Washington, D.C., began in 1915 an
inquiry into illegitimacy as a child welfare problem, causing studies
to be made of laws in different States of the Union. The results of
this study were published in 1919 in Bureau Publication No. 42. In
1920 conferences were held under the auspices of the Bureau to
consider standards of protection which might be embodied in laws. A
Committee appointed to draft suggestions arrived at and to recommend
the same made a Report, which is published in Bureau Publication No.
77.
The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws on
request formed a Committee on Status and Protection of Illegitimate
Children which reported at length to the Thirty-first Annual Meeting
of that body in August, 1921. This report formed the basis of
discussion by legal experts, and in the meeting at San Francisco of
recent date a revised program for "Uniform State Legislation for
Children Born Out of Wedlock" was accepted and recommended. The title
used is itself an advance upon old ideas.
=The Suggested Uniform Law.=--It is less harsh to speak of "those born
out of wedlock" than of the "illegitimate." Moreover, the
recommendations include a suggestion that in future in all reference
in legal papers or official notices to a child born out of wedlock it
"shall be sufficient for all purposes to refer to the mother as the
parent having the sole custody of the child or to the child as being
in the sole custody of the mother, no explicit reference being made to
illegitimacy except in birth certificates or records of judicial
proceedings in which the question of birth out of wedlock is at
issue." The general law in the States of our Union legitimatizes a
child born out of wedlock by the subsequent inter-marriage of the
parents. This makes it easy for men and women to repair an injury if
they can marry after the birth of their child. In any case the
recommendations for uniform State laws make it clear that the tendency
is strong to bring legal pressure to bear upon the father of a child
by an unwedded mother to pay the expenses of her confinement, to
support the child under the laws requiring "support of poor relatives"
or under statutes specifically obligating recognition of parental
responsibility outside the marriage bond; and this obligation, it is
held, should continue in recognition and enforcement until the child
is sixteen years of age.
Although there is strong demand on the part of many to give the child
born out of wedlock the "right to inherit from the father's estate
even though not legitimated," the Committee of the Commissioners on
Uniform State Laws do not so recommend. Their statement concerning
Liability of the Father's Estate is as follows: "The obligation of the
father where his paternity has been judicially established in his
lifetime or has been acknowledged by him in writing or by the part
performance of his obligations is enforceable against his estate in
such an amount as the court may determine, having regard to the age of
the child, the ability of the mother to support it, the amount of
property left by the father, the number, age, and financial condition
of the lawful issue, if any, and the rights of the widow, if any."
To this writer this covers the just obligation if rightly administered
and by leaving still a distinction in law between the rights of
children born within and those born outside the marriage bond helps to
preserve the interests of the majority of children.
In any case the preservation of such distinctions as are left in the
milder and more humane laws advocated should help in making men and
women anxious to give all the children for which they may be
responsible a legal right to both parents by due process of marriage.
=Have Unmarried Women a Social Right to Motherhood?=--It is not alone
philanthropic interest in the welfare of a class of children now
handicapped by birth outside of legal family bonds, that has issued
the call to "abolish illegitimacy." The slogan is also an expression
of a new demand that women fit to bear and rear children and deeply
desiring that personal experience and the social obligation which it
implies, should be given a social right to become mothers whether or
not the fitting permanent mate be found for a life-union under the
law. This demand is reaching a critical poignancy in those countries
in which the Great War has added to a long-increasing "surplus of
women" an astounding total of millions of women fit to marry whose
rightful mates are buried on the fields of conflict. Shall these
women, it is asked, be denied motherhood as well as wifehood? Shall
the state lose the children these women, child-loving and noble and
wise, might bear to help make good the horrible losses that war has
entailed?
Moreover, women everywhere are discerning the shallow inconsistency
between the ideal so long preached of motherhood as woman's chief if
not her only contribution to normal life and genuine social usefulness
and the abnormal economic conditions and double ethical standards
which doom so many women to single life. Still deeper in the hearts of
women, now for the first time free to give voice to inner questionings
of the inherited organization of society which has bound them to
conventions written solely by men in statute and custom, rises the
query, Is the present fashion of courtship and wedding favorable for
installing fit women as mothers or keeping to single life those least
capable of that social function?
=Ellen Key's Estimate of Motherhood.=--Ellen Key expresses this
feeling that fitness for a task so tremendous as parenthood is more
important than any mechanism by which parenthood is secured when she
says, "It is solely from one moral point of view that motherhood
without marriage, as well as the right of free divorce, must be
judged. Irresponsible motherhood is always sin with or without
marriage; responsible motherhood is always sacred with or without
marriage." And again she says, "The one necessary thing is to make
ever greater demands upon the men and women who take to themselves the
right to give humanity new beings." Ellen Key has also much to say
about the superior value of what women can do in and through their
race-service as mothers to anything they can do outside of that
office, except perhaps as teachers helping mothers. Her feeling on
this matter is echoed by not a few women who ask for the social right
to motherhood even when denied or not desiring ordinary family life.
She declares that "It is an indisputable fact that if the majority of
women no longer had the calm and repose to abide at the source of life
but wanted to navigate all the seas with men, the sex contrasts would
resolve themselves not into harmony but into monotony. Until women
come to realize this it must still be insisted that the gain to
society is nothing if millions of women do the work that men could do
better and evade or fulfil poorly the greater tasks of life and
happiness, the creation of men and the creation of souls." To fulfil
these tasks properly she insists that women require the same human
rights as men but they should use their new power of choice "in the
field of life, in those provinces in which imponderable values are
created, values that cannot be reduced to figures and yet are the sole
values capable of transforming humanity; for it is not utilities but
complete human beings that elevate life." The same feeling that she
expresses animates many women who desire fit women to be mothers, even
if unmarried, at whatever cost to old forms of family autonomy.
=Monogamic Marriage Does Not Work Inerrantly.=--Certainly no one can
contend that monogamic marriage has worked inerrantly to give women
who are "born mothers" a chance for their natural career, or to keep
from physical motherhood within legal marriage all the women unfit for
the spiritual tasks of parenthood. It is certain that in present
conditions many women most needed for the transmission of both
physical and social inheritance in finest form are side-tracked from
the central roadway of life, and the race suffers thereby.
Any custom, however, which should make it a negligible matter whether
or not a permanent "houseband" were enlisted with a "housewife" in
building a home in which to place a child desired must tend toward a
reversion, not an advance, in social organization. Or so it seems to
many students of the evolution of the family.
The mother and child made the first social grouping in which love and
trust could work. The father, as we know him, is a later asset of
social progress. He has taken into the home many things we want now to
get rid of, as, for example, a social tendency toward masculine
monopolies. His genius for organization in political and economic
fields has in many ways worked against the right alignment of men and
women in family relations. But can we do without the father
altogether, save for a brief hour of service as a "biologic
necessity"? Still more, can we have for mothers that "calm and repose"
which Ellen Key bespeaks for them unless they have fathers of
efficiency and character to help them in their peculiar task of
life-creation? Is not the alternative to the father's partnership in
family life the creation of a class of "state mothers" or the social
endowment of all mothers by public grant?
=New Demand that Motherhood Have Social Support.=--In point of fact,
all the demands for new freedom in respect to motherhood rest
primarily upon the recognition by society-at-large of a claim upon it,
financial as well as spiritual, for the benefit of all who are allowed
to be mothers, in right of their own fitness for the function. And
this recognition of the social value of mothers is emphasized by many
who hold firmly to the monogamic family. It is not clear that any
sweeping changes away from the private family should be made to meet a
condition that may be changed by less drastic means.
=Local Discrepancies in Numbers of Men and of Women.=--Fit men and
women are not always together in the same place. To have more men in a
given locality than can possibly have wives or more women than can
possibly marry under the monogamic system is to derange its workings.
Is it conceivable that we shall always be so stupid and clumsy in
economic adjustment that such conditions shall continue, now that we
are able to be more easily mobile and flexible every decade? The mere
mechanical maladjustment caused by serious discrepancies in numbers of
the two sexes; in cities and in older countries more women, in
manufacture and pioneer agriculture more men; certainly creates
serious conditions. Social engineering is needed for remedy. We may
not, as so long ago was done in Virginia, transport hundreds of
"attractive damsels" from crowded towns, where women most do
congregate, to a new country, to be eagerly accepted wives on landing
from the ships. We are told, however, that many girls are being
assisted to emigrate from England to places where their service is
needed and where there are so many surplus men that they do marry in
short order. We shall find that nature and economic adjustments will
unite to more and more even up the two sides of life. It is a
sinister condition of modern life that forbids early marriage to so
many men and all chance of suitable marriage to so many women who
really desire that relationship with all their hearts. We must go
about its remedy with open eyes, and from frankly accepted reasons,
for the sake of better family conditions.
=The Increasing Tendency of Women Toward Celibate Life.=--There is,
however, another condition, many-sided and complex, often operating
upon the persons most involved unconsciously and seldom treated with
clarity or frankness, which works against the family as an
institution. This condition is the increasing tendency of many of the
ablest women to marry very late or to refuse to marry at all. These
are not the women who feel defrauded that they are not mothers in
their own person, still less that life has cheated them in not
furnishing a husband. They are usually those who in youth began some
specialized form of vocational service which holds their interest and
leads toward pecuniary profit and social recognition.
They are the modern spinsters, happy and busy, who often feed their
motherly instincts by caring for other people's children and feel a
sense of relief that it is a voluntary service, which they may rightly
indulge in vacations, and not a bond that never releases from duty.
They are the maiden aunts who spend affection and money upon the
families of their relatives; who help their younger brothers and
sisters through college; who take care of the aged and invalid in the
family connection, and act often as stay and prop to all the weaker
and more burdened of their kin. What many families would do without
this type of unmarried woman is hard to tell. They are often grateful
for their release from wearing domestic cares and enjoy their sense of
power in general serviceableness to those they love while at the same
time appreciating with keen satisfaction their own joy of
craftsmanship in some chosen profession. Except for a brief hour now
and then, when sister has a new baby or brother takes a new wife, they
feel anything but troubled over their condition of single blessedness
until, perhaps, a premonition of lonely old age stirs regret.
=The Demand of Eugenists.=--From the point of view of the eugenists,
who demand more fecundity on the higher and less on the lower levels
of life, one of the most sinister of all influences inimical to family
life is this large and increasing band of superior and happy single
women who are not even discontented and make no demand for any closer
touch with life than is now given them. If it is bad for the family
for a large number of women unable to find suitable permanent mates to
be so eager for motherhood that they claim social permission for that
public service whatever their marital position, it may be still worse
for the family for a large number of highly superior women to cease to
care greatly for intimate comradeship with men or for the actual
experience of motherhood. Many women working and living in solitary
fashion until too old to risk the chances of marriage, and able to
find highest comradeship and largest comfort in other women's
companionship, have been so held by family burdens in youth that this
result has been inevitable. Society has, therefore, a task to prevent
the weight of past generations, falling now so heavily upon some young
men and upon far more young women, from operating against the
well-being of the generations to come. We should make it our social
business to share more justly the burdens due to old age and chronic
invalidism.
=Women Can Not be Forced Back to Compulsory Marriage.=--It is too late
in the day to pass laws forbidding women from gaining economic freedom
and social power in professional careers so that all the best of them
shall again be obliged to marry as a "means of support." Few persons
would do this if they could. But we can and should make haste to bring
together, as the State Universities of our country do so helpfully,
those who should be the fathers and mothers of the future, in that
period of life when love will take chances for the future.
"Propinquity," the old adage declares, is the "best incentive to
courtship," and it should be made to work more effectively.
In our own country, eugenists may be comforted to learn, it is still
fashionable to marry, even in the best families. We are told by our
census that more people marry in the thousand and marry young in the
United States than in other countries.[2] And although it may be
claimed that the older Americans and the finest types do not reproduce
so freely as social well-being requires, there is much hope that
movements of population, so much freer here than elsewhere among the
educated and competent, will lead to better sex-adjustments and to the
absorbing of more first-class women in family life.
=A Few Believe in a "Third Sex."=--There are those, however, although
but a few, who do not view with alarm the modern increase of unmarried
women of types most needed for motherhood. These believe that in the
present time, and perhaps in a long future, our complex social needs
cannot be met by holding the best blood and breeding within the family
bond, but that there must be a reserve of celibates, a few men and
many women, to carry on the school and to work for social amelioration
and social progress. This point of view, which has been sometimes
characterized as "defense of a third sex," is based on two premises:
namely, first, that all of a married woman's time and strength
throughout her whole adult life must go into strictly family service
in order for the family to be maintained; and, second, that those men
and women who specialize in some vocation in such extreme degree that
they cannot marry and have children are thereby, by reason of that
celibate concentration, better able to function socially in their
chosen work. It is the object of this book to disprove both these
assumptions.
=Most Social Students Advocate Marriage.=--Celibate concentration upon
a specific task, however valuable that task may be, is open, we
contend, to serious social dangers, as history amply proves. And
family life has now such varied and efficient aids from commerce,
manufacture, educational provisions in school and recreation centres,
in summer camps and special organizations of youthful energy toward
social serviceableness, that men and women can marry and rear
families, if they really desire so to do, more easily than ever
before, provided they are willing to pay the price of simplicity in
the home and in individual mastery of the technic of new ways of
living. What is needed for the best development of the family under
modern conditions is not more celibates, men and women of high ability
and noble consecration to undertake wholesale service in its behalf,
but rather that more of the best and the best-balanced men and women
be absorbed, to necessary degree, and at the right period of life, in
the task of actual transmission of their quality and tendency through
the living tissues of the social organism in the vital process of
parenthood. What is needed to secure that result is not only a new
ideal of social obligation but also, and definitely, such skill in
economic and domestic adjustments as will more and more leave a margin
of strength and energy for a chosen vocation not wholly mortgaged to
family uses, in the case of women as of men. It is quite time that
some of the rightly honored "maiden aunts of society," as our leading
spinsters have been called, used some of their wisest thought and
their most self-sacrificing service toward securing such economic and
domestic adjustments as will work toward the diminution of their own
kind!
Again it must be insisted that what society-at-large now needs most is
not celibates, however wise and good, working along one line, without
close touch with the main experiences of birth and death and common
social relationship, but rather the deepening and broadening of common
human relations through the reaction of the wise and good upon all the
fundamental ties that bind the race and the generations together. The
loss to society of those who might have been fathers and mothers and
chose to be so devoted to religious orders as to stand apart from
their race-life is an admitted calamity in the view of most people who
study mediæval history.
=Dangers of Extreme Specialization.=--Moreover, the tendency now in
all departments of industry and professional service is toward a
specialization which often defeats its own end and lessens rather than
increases the usefulness of its own department. "We want not workers,"
says Emerson, "but men working." We want not specialists in the
extreme sense but all-round students devoting themselves to one sphere
of research or activity with a constant sense of its relation to all
other spheres of thought and action. Particularly in social service we
want not so much those who in early life specialize in one or another
form of social pathology or social therapeutics but rather those
mature and rounded in personal experience who elect some particular
service with full realization of its place in the network of common
human relationship. Especially is this true of all social work which
deals directly with individuals.
The higher development of the family and the wider range of social
service, therefore, alike, demand that a much greater proportion of
the moral and intellectual élite of the race pay their debt to the
generations through the family.
=Industrial Exploitation of Childhood and Youth.=--There is another
condition of modern life which must be noted as inimical to the
stability and the efficiency of the family, a condition which works
from the bottom upward through the lower levels of society as others
which have been noted work from the top down through the higher
levels. It is the condition which leads toward the misuse of young
girls in wage-earning tasks. There is a difference of opinion among
the wisest in regard to the social usefulness of forms of protective
labor legislation for adult women which are not shared by men. There
can be none in respect to the social harm of using the vitality, the
charm, the strength, the happiness of minors, especially of potential
mothers, to carry on the processes of machine-dominated systems of
manufacture and business. It takes so little physical strength or
mental power to become a cog in these rapidly revolving wheels. It
means such a waste to thus use the years of youth, meant for education
and development and meant to attract toward successful family life
rather than away from it.
The wrong and injustice of child-labor is equal for both sexes and no
law can be too stringent or too severely enforced against it. The
social waste of using youth exclusively in wage-earning pursuits can
easily be proved, in the case of girls, to extend to years older than
in the case of boys. The family cannot be maintained in stable
condition, and certainly can not progress in social value, unless the
majority of young girls are given the right attitude toward it and
time to prepare for its opportunities and responsibilities. If, as is
generally now believed, the legal majority and voting age for boys and
girls should be the same, namely, twenty-one years, then the girls, as
potential mothers, must have a distinct and specialized protection up
to that legal majority from all that harms health, prevents
safeguarded recreation, or turns life-currents away from the home to
the factory. The death-rate of babies when mothers work in factories
or shops with no provision for special rest is one testimony to the
social improvidence of our present industrial use of older women. The
life-long invalidism of many women, the childlessness of multitudes,
the statistics of home conditions revealed by Children's Courts
furnish testimony of like character. The unknown toll of loss of
personal aptitude for family life leading to broken homes, or to
hopeless struggles against invasions by poverty of the right of common
men and women to a home, are proof positive that a change in economic
conditions is demanded in the interest of family life.
=Social Measures Needed to Prevent These Evils.=--These social evils
connected with child-labor and the neglect in the industrial world of
youth and its needs are not to be mended by helps to individuals
alone. More radical measures are required for the protection of
society's most precious asset, the health, happiness and leisure of
all its children.
"Education," says the ancient sage, "is the ladder that every child
must climb in order to become all that he is meant to become; and
therefore children are made unfit for other employments in order that
they may have leisure to learn." To this may be added, the type of
education that fits the average girl for high usefulness as a
housemother is an absolute need if the average home life is to be made
a centre of freedom and of happiness. Those, therefore, who are
working against child-labor and against the unrestricted use of
mothers of young children and of potential mothers, in wage-earning
industry, are working directly, and with great power, for the
preservation and stability of the family. Those also who are working
through the formal education of the schools for the insertion of study
and practice along lines of home-making are making a complementary and
valuable contribution toward the inner unity and the outer success of
the family.
=The Attack upon the Family by Reactionaries.=--One more and most
important attack upon the family as it exists to-day must be noted in
this list of elements in modern society which work against this
inherited institution. It is an attack which, however mistaken, is
ostensibly, and often honestly in intent, a movement for the
protection and improvement of the family order. It is the effort to
turn the history of that institution back upon itself and make the
family again, as in the past, a legal unity with one representative,
the husband and father, through whom alone the wife and children have
distinct relationship to society-at-large. It is an effort to return
to mediæval thought and practice and to reaffirm in legal outline the
headship of the husband and father, the permanent minority of the wife
and mother, and the complete subordination of the children. It is even
an effort to rescind such laws as have given married women independent
contract-power and property rights, the equal guardianship of their
children, the full use of educational provisions, and individual
relationship to the state through the franchise. Voices are not
wanting to insist that only through a return to this old domestic
order of kingship of the man can the family be preserved.
A recent book claiming intellectual authority and endorsed by many men
in high positions states this opinion clearly, and seeks to strengthen
it by the use of scientific half-truths used not scientifically but as
a support for a metaphysical theory of masculine and feminine quality.
Every step that has been taken from the male despotism within marriage
and parenthood has met such appeals to stay the progress of democracy
toward the hearth-stone lest the family order be wholly destroyed.
Most people, however, believe that the steps which have been taken
away from that family despotism are too many to be retraced. Women
will not be put back into perpetual legal minority when once they have
become adults under the law. They will not consent to lose property
rights and the power of guardianship over their own children. They
will not consent to their own disfranchisement or to the loss of
opportunities of education and of economic independence. It is as
futile as it is stupid to expect that in this matter history will go
backward. To oppose measures already accomplished which are in the
direction of democratic adjustment of social relations, even by those
who think certain measures "a reform against nature," is not only idle
in effect but shows that the opposer is out of touch with "whatsoever
forces draw the ages on."
There are many elements in the restlessness of a period too rapidly
changing to be always sure of its ground that needlessly confuse the
issues of family obligation and personal loyalty to accepted tasks.
There are many tendencies toward extreme individualism which need
balancing by clearer ideals of social serviceableness. Especially is
this true in the case of women somewhat intoxicated by the belated
freedom and power which came to them after too prolonged a struggle
against inherited bonds. There are many economic and educational
requirements yet to be met in order to protect and maintain the
accepted ideal of monogamic marriage. But of all the ideas inimical to
the family in our modern life, the demand for its return to
aristocratic and outgrown forms is the most absurd and the most
harmful. All history shows that those who try to put a law, a
political system, an economic method, a rule of morality, or a
religious ideal back into a form discarded by the majority of those
who constitute the ethical and intellectual élite directly work toward
the chaos of revolution. To try to force the family ideal or its legal
bond or social outline back into the patriarchal form is to do the
utmost possible to bring on a catastrophic struggle between the new
and the old. The evil wrought by such reactionary teaching is in the
exact ratio of its power of influence. Whatever we may try to do, as
balance, through evolutionary methods at points where changes in form
have not been as yet made safe and sane by required adjustments of the
individual life to the new order, we should make haste to attempt. No
person, however, who is in actual touch with the movement of social
progress can hope to turn any great democratic tendency back upon
itself and "make that which hath been as if it were not." No truly
just person will wish to do so.
=The Prevalence of Divorce.=--Many urge reactionary attitudes toward
present family ideals and practice because of the divorce problem. The
omission of this from the list of causes for the modern instability of
the family and for its too frequent lack of success may have been
already noted and condemned by the reader of these pages. The fact of
divorces, however, whether they be many or few, is to the writer a
symptom, not a cause, the legal expression of a social disease, not
the disease itself. Bad diagnosis, or inadequate treatment on the
basis of a symptom, may increase the disease; and the facts concerning
divorce are of so serious a nature that a separate chapter has been
assigned to them under the heading: The Broken Family. The prevalence
of divorce, however, it must here be said, demonstrably proves two
things--one that men and women now feel themselves at moral and social
liberty to seek divorce when longer living together seems to them
intolerable, and that women are using their new freedom and economic
independence to make marriage conditions more to their liking. They
are setting a standard respecting desirable husbands, not always
wisely, often selfishly, but in the long run and large way to ends of
greater equality of demand in the marriage relation. The tendency on
the whole is toward a higher conception of what marriage should be and
what it should do for both parties in the bond. The statistics of
illegitimacy, of commercialized prostitution, of venereal disease, of
infant mortality, of early death or life-long invalidism of wives and
mothers, of marital unhappiness and parental neglect which are found
by honest investigation in states and nations in which no divorce is
allowed do not lead to the belief that legal permanence of the
marriage bond secures socially helpful family life. On the contrary,
such facts already show that divorce in the civilization we have
inherited comes as a result of bad conditions which worked infinite
harm before divorces could be obtained.
=Old Institutions Need New Sanctions.=--We must now ask of any laws
concerning any institution not what did ancient "folk-ways" ordain but
what do modern conditions require? No form of human association,
however old and whatever its contribution to the social inheritance,
but is on trial to-day before all free minds. That trial must be
openly conducted. No "secret diplomacy" to reinstate old ideals or
laws against the common belief; no "boring from within" to propagate
new schemes the object of which is to gratify personal wish without
regard to public good; but "open covenants" with the future "openly
arrived at" in an ethically consecrated present. What shall be our
guide in such a free and frank consideration of the present and the
future of the family?
=The Monogamic Family Justifies Itself by Social Usefulness.=--In the
first place, one must accept the fact that it is presumptive evidence
of the continued worth and value of any inherited institution if it
can be proved that it has served vital social needs which still
operate and that no other existing institution is able or ready to
take its place for the special social service which it was designed to
render. To the present writer it seems clear that the monogamic family
holds its title clear to social preservation on both these points. The
family preceded individualistic marriage as we know it and was
developed for the purpose of giving to oncoming generations a share in
the race-life, whatever the ideals concerning that race-life may have
been at any period of social order. Even in its present undeveloped
form, with its cramping limitations of past autocracy and with its
crude attempts at an as yet half-understood democracy, we may well
count the private monogamic family as a priceless inheritance and work
toward its better organization and larger service to social life. No
other institution yet developed has shown in history or now shows in
present life a worthy substitute for its functioning in child-care and
child-development. Many also believe that no form of sex-association
secures such possibilities of moral discipline and personal
satisfaction as does the guarded relationship of monogamic marriage.
=The Inherited Family Order Demands New Social Adjustments.=--There
are, therefore, no reasons for welcoming the decline of the private
family. There are many that demand imperatively some adjustments in
inner comradeship and in mechanical arrangements surrounding the
household, in order to hold firm its spiritual values during changes
in social conditions. How far these changes of detail may go or what
will be the end of some present clearly outlined tendencies no one can
prophesy. The duty of the hour is, however, to set this treasure of
social inheritance in a clear light; to show its actual and potential
social value as at present perceived; and to try by all simple
measures open to our intelligence to aid in its evolution toward a
more perfect expression of the love of man and woman each for the
other and of the protection and care of both for the children of that
love. The basic test of all proposed changes in any inherited
institution is from henceforward, we must believe, that which inheres
in the spiritual essence of democracy. What is that essence of
democracy which must be applied as test within the family, as within
the state and within the industrial order? It is the fundamental
belief in the worth and dignity of every human being and the equal
right of each and all to personality. No man, as in the older days,
must be obliged to be husband and father, but may choose, if he deems
it essential to his own being, to remain in a solitary path outside
the current of the generations. No woman must be obliged to live
solely to serve a family. She, too, has right to self-development in
some chosen way. No married couple must be forced to add to the
children already here; they may justly be protected in living and
working together in some comradeship that has no family limitations
save those of mutual loyalty and mutual service. No child is to be
justly held so much under family control as to have his nature stifled
or warped, and no child shall be made a pecuniary asset to the family
regardless of his own needs. No family autonomy is henceforth to be
secured by fiat of law enthroning one "head" as the legal despot or
economic ruler. The family must be democratized in that sense in which
each individual within its bond shall be sustained in seeking and in
maintaining the conditions of personality. No one human being to live
solely for others' service or to have his or her value estimated in
terms of contribution to other lives, but all to seek the utmost
perfection of individual life as a contribution to the common life;
this is the democratic ideal.
=The Family as an Aid to Spiritual Democracy.=--There seems to be no
other inherited institution in which this spiritual essence of
democracy can be so clearly and so well realized as it may be and
to-day often is in the private monogamic family. The permanent and
successful family offers a unique centre of personal development at
the heart of all other social groups. Founded as it is in selective
affection, and in aim at least permanently secure, it offers a refuge
in every distress and a help in every trouble of each of its members.
There was never a time when such a mutual resistance of a small and
intimate group to the complex pressure of the world upon each
individual life was more sorely needed. The confusing social currents
of this changing era set free from ancient moorings many who can find
no clear chart for newer voyaging in thought and action. These need
what the family more than any other inherited institution can still
give--something of the simplicity of the blood bond and something of
the strength of clan membership, and more of the partial affection
which sets each personality in its best light and gives each a chance
to better its own world achievement in the appreciation of its
dearest.
=The Family the Nursery of Personality.=--The family in this sense of
comforting and developing the individual nature has as yet no rival.
Says Browning, "Every man has two soul sides--one to face the world
with and one to show a woman when he loves her." There are those who
blame the family relationship for its exclusiveness and partiality,
and there are countless instances where the ego is so extended into
the blood group that selfish disregard of all others becomes a mark of
family affection. Yet is it profoundly true that just as the baby
needs some one to whom its little life is all-important in order to
gain strength of will to achieve its difficult beginnings of
consciousness, so all of us need a small group in which our well-being
and our happiness are of greater concern than those of any one person
can be to all the world of persons. No truly enlightened person
believes that he or she is as wise or as good as the best friend
thinks; and no truly enlightened person believes that the affection of
one's family is a just gauge of the value of one's life to the world.
We all need, however, and children particularly need, some inner
circle of love which comes to us by virtue simply of our being, to
help us when we make excursions of moral and affectional adventure in
the world outside, in a world in which we are valued only for what we
can achieve.
=Life, Not Theory About Life, Teaches Us.=--Let no one believe,
however, that any theory about or claim for the family really
indicates its value. We live before we can interpret our life, and
what is already achieved by those in the forward ranks shows what all
may yet become. We are not left to chance or imagination or to
argument or affirmation of principles to visualize the family as it is
or as it may be. We may look about us and see what it is and can do
for men and women. Few, perhaps, are standing on the heights of their
own being when they build the family altar. Yet in the love and
sacrifice of plain and unknown fathers who cheerfully toil for their
loved ones, in the patient endurance of simple-hearted mothers who
give so much of their lives in ready service to husband and family, in
the frolic-joy and eager activity of ordinary children whose only
dower is the free and happy service of their parents, is the fruit and
the promise of the human family.
=The Moral Elite in the Modern Family.=--Above all, we have to-day a
growing number who live in the spirit of a true marriage and a noble
cradle of infancy and show by actual example what the family is meant
to be. These prophesy a marriage that demands each of the other that
a perfect life shall perfect their love. These give a new pattern and
type of parenthood, woven of the tears and joy, the aspiration and the
service of those who call children from the storehouse of universal
life, not in response to careless passion but in the solemn joy of
creative purpose. These are the men and women who shall yet build from
the home as the heart's centre, a wiser school, a more righteous
state, a juster industry, and a purer worship of the ideal.
It is in the new comradeship of men and women on all the levels of
life that such auspicious promise of better social life is found. It
is on the new basis of reverence of each personality for every other,
not only for the person that other is but for the person he or she may
become if given fair chance for best achievement, that the new social
ethics rests. It is on that basis that we may build a faith assured
and strong that the family will not be lost in the time that needs it
most but will shape itself to finer issues and more useful service.
QUESTIONS ON THE FAMILY
1. What has been the general trend of development in Matrimonial
Institutions?
2. Has the monogamic family, as now outlined and legalized, any
elements inherently inimical to a democratic order of society?
If so, what are those elements? If not, what stand should be
taken in regard to proposals for fundamental changes in the
inherited family system?
3. If the inherited family system should be preserved and
maintained, what, if any, changes in form, or practical
adjustments to the new freedom of woman and new ideals of
education of youth, are demanded for its present stability and
future success?
4. In _Taboo and Genetics: A Study of the Biological,
Sociological, and Psychological Foundation of the Family_, by
M.M. Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Blanchard, it is
claimed that "The chief interest of society should be in the
eugenic value of the children born into it." Is that true, and
if so, how can this social interest be best excited and
maintained?
5. Dr. Edward T. Devine advocates social insurance for sickness
and widowhood, but not out-door relief or widow's pensions;
also advocates physical investigation and home visiting for
school children, but not school lunches, eye-glasses or
clothing as a free gift. His conclusion is that "the state
should enforce a minimum standard of child-care, but the
expense of providing it should fall on parents or on some
insurance fund to which parents have contributed." Is this
sound American doctrine? If so, should proposed legislation be
gauged by it?
6. Read chapter, "The Family," in _A Social Theory of Religious
Education_, by G.A. Coe. Is the emphasis laid upon equality in
this statement justified?
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See _Children Born Out of Wedlock_, by George B. Mangold, Ph.D.,
University of Missouri, 1921.
[2] See Chapter V, "The Home," in _The Normal Life_, by Edward T.
Devine.
CHAPTER II
THE MOTHER
"Strength and dignity are her clothing;
She openeth her mouth with wisdom;
And the law of kindness is on her tongue.
She looketh well to the ways of her household,
And eateth not the bread of idleness.
The heart of her husband trusteth in her;
Her children rise up and call her blessed;
Give her of the fruit of her hands;
And let her works praise her in the gates."
--PROVERBS.
"A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller betwixt life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly plann'd,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still and bright,
With something of an angel light."
--WORDSWORTH.
"Yet in herself she dwelleth not,
Although no home were half so fair;
No simplest duty is forgot;
Life hath no dim and lowly spot
That doth not in her sunshine share."
--LOWELL.
"I loved the woman; there was one through whom I loved her, one
Not learned, save in gracious household ways,
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants,
No angel, but a dearer being, interpreter between the gods and men.
"Happy he with such a mother! Faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall,
He shall not blind his soul with clay."
--TENNYSON.
=Antiquity of the Mother-instinct.=--The mother-instinct of protection
of offspring, of care of weakness and of sacrifice for the young, came
to high power before the human was reached in the scale of beings. It
must never be forgotten that humbler sisters set the fashion of
motherhood's devotion too long ago to reckon the time and in types of
organism too remote to be always recognized as kin to the human beings
we know to-day. This is the greatest and most racially useful of all
the biological assets stored up for us in the prehuman struggle toward
what we now call civilization. Nor should we fail to give full value
to the testimony of primitive human life that the mother and child
formed the first social group within the loose association of the
herd. It was the first group to develop, by virtue of its conscious
relationship, the sense of trust and the habit of service of the
stronger to the weaker, thus leading toward mutual aid within an area
of affection and good-will. These facts give basic assurance that
mother-love will last, no matter what changes in form of its
expression may be called for by changes in social order.
The reason why the relationship of mother and child was able thus to
lead the way toward social organization for the common good is
obvious. The intimate physical tie, the easily understood claim of the
child upon its mother, the prolongation of human infancy instituting a
habit of continuous service of the young and hence a tendency toward a
settled home and peaceful industries, all made it easy for woman to
become care-taker of children. These also made it easy for the early
social order to hold mothers to the task and, in growing measure,
protect them in it. What have been the recognized essentials in that
care-taking of motherhood? What are the permanent elements in the
mother's devotion to offspring which persist under all changes in
social conditions?
=The Recognized Essentials in Child-care.=--The more important items
in a program of child-care may be summed up as follows:
First--Protection of infancy and childhood from threatening
dangers.
Second--Providing food, clothing, and shelter for the young.
Third--Drilling children in physical habits and manner of
personal behavior demanded by the family rule of time and
place of birth.
Fourth--Teaching the child to talk, to walk, to obey, to
imitate.
Fifth--Interpreting to each newcomer the group morals which
govern the family and the educational process in the
period and locality into which he is born.
Sixth--For ages untold, the more formal education of all girls
and of all little boys in the folk-lore, the vocational
skill, the ways of living together and the methods of
social arrangement both within and without the tribe or
state or nation into which they were born.
Are any of these essential elements of motherhood's ancient devotion
to child-life lifted wholly from her obligation? Careful study of the
family needs and conditions, and the effect upon them of modern social
control and social organization, indicates that not one of these
ancient obligations is taken bodily from the modern mother's service.
=The Protective Function.=--The protective function has indeed been
considered for many centuries peculiarly the father's duty. Ever since
man was bound to family obligations he has been charged with repelling
enemy attacks upon the group of which his own family was a part and
with the task of standing guard over wife and child as against all
physical dangers. Man has developed under this social pressure a sense
of chivalry and a tendency to "save women and children first" which
give noble examples of courage and self-sacrifice to fire the
imagination of each new generation. Has the father-office developed
such many-sided and adequate protective service to childhood that
mothers have been able to "lay down their arms" and rest content in
the knowledge that their children are shielded from every danger? It
seems not. In the days when women were ignorant of all outside their
homes they may have felt so secure because not understanding the cause
of many family tragedies. In the days when they had no power to change
conditions affecting the home from without they may have felt excused
from the protective function of early motherhood, since men had taken
over physical defense and economic support and the relationship of the
family group to the social whole. No open-eyed woman in a country
giving women social, economic, and political power can so think
to-day.
It is a far cry from the savage mother, beating back some beast of the
jungle or the plain, to the modern mother whose physical protection
and that of her children is amply provided not alone by the husband
and father concerned but by organized society with its police power,
its courts and laws. The dangers that threaten child-life to-day in
the more civilized communities are not the same that threatened the
young of the herd-pack or the early lives of primitive men and women.
Then the mother had sometimes to defend her child against its own
father, especially her girl-babies against the social fiat of death
executed by the father's will. Ancient folk-lore and myth show us many
a struggle, intense and cruel, between mother-love and this
group-sentence of death upon some of its young. In case of war also
the ancient mother had to protect her virgin daughters against outrage
and capture, albeit so feebly and to so disastrous an end. And war,
since it is always and by its nature must be a return to savage
conditions, now leads to the sacrifice of women and children in much
the ancient manner; and faced by its horrors at close touch, the
mother-instinct essays the old task to the same bitter defeat.
In peaceful periods, however, in the long ages when the father-rule
was a despotism tempered only by natural affection and the skill of
women in securing advantages while simulating submission, mothers had
large use of their protective function in easing family discipline and
in gaining relief from harsh conditions affecting childhood. Theirs
was then no open fight for the well-being of their offspring, and
often not a wise effort to that end, but ancient song and story all
show that childhood and youth depended upon the mother-love in crises
of family experience and that without such refuge many young lives
would have been utterly sacrificed.
=Social Elements in Modern Protection of Children.=--To-day the
dangers to which babies and children are exposed are more subtle in
form and more complex in action. They are less within than without the
average home. They are those that give the high death-rate of infants,
the crippled limbs of children, the weakness of body and defectiveness
of mind and feebleness or perversion of moral nature that make so many
human beings unequal to life's demands. They are the dangers, personal
and social, summed up in the antitheses of "health" and "disease," of
"normal" and "abnormal." Not that the dangers so indicated are new but
rather that we are newly aware of them. Not that savage or early
civilized life had conditions more favorable to health and normality
but that the easier modern conditions save alive many who in harsher
times would have died in babyhood. Moreover, we are beginning at last
to set a standard, in ever-clearer outline, of what is health and of
what is normality in physical, mental, and moral human life. Moreover,
we are seeing as never before that the dangers that beset the child
to-day are not those from which the mother alone, or the individual
father and mother working together, can adequately protect. They are
dangers that only society can prevent and that society alone can
abolish.
=Women's Leadership in Social Protection.=--Why, then, do we say that
the protective function of individual motherhood is still demanded and
still a large part of the modern mother's obligation? Because she is
to-day the one most clearly required, in our own country at least, to
summon the social forces to lessen or abolish those dangers to which
children are exposed. The action of the solitary, primitive mother
fighting off the despoiler of her child does not much resemble the
banding together of modern women by the hundreds and by the thousands
to abolish typhoid fever in some city in which it has become endemic
through the greed of manufacturers who pollute the water supply. It
is, however, the same spirit in both; and in the modern instance it
wakes, first, the fathers to their protective duty, and then the
guardians of the public health, and then educates the public mind, and
at last accomplishes the desired result through appropriate laws,
well enforced. It is a long step from the indirect "influence," the
often deceitful cunning, the appeal to sex-attraction and the pleading
of weakness by which for ages women sought to protect their children
against harsh punishments, their daughters against marriage to those
whom they loathed, and their sons to apprenticeship to work they could
not choose, to the openly exercised power of the modern mother. In the
days when wives and mothers had no legal rights which society was
bound to respect, appeal was woman's only weapon; now the modern
mother has command of her protective function and exercises it
fearlessly. The same spirit is in all the long process of change,
however, and women to-day banding openly together and joining also
with men on equal terms, to secure laws protecting children from
cruelty even against their own parents; to raise the "age of consent"
in order to prevent the unwitting moral suicide of little girls; to
sweep the streets free from vicious allurements that young boys may be
preserved from debauchery and disease; to place trustees of society's
power of public protection as chaperones in every place of moral
danger; these modern women are near of kin to all motherhood of any
past. So also are those of the same spirit as the ancient mother who
band themselves together, again with men on equal terms, but oftenest,
perhaps, with men whom their own social interest has summoned to the
task, for the establishment of "Health Centres", of adequate and
efficient clinics and dispensaries; for securing necessary education
and care of mothers before the birth of their children, and for
mothers and babies alike needing good, fresh air, rest and comfort
after birth; for the raising of standards of physical well-being all
along the line of life from youth to age. The ancient mother was too
ignorant and had too little power to save her children and family from
physical ills, but she did her best. The modern mother is able to
learn about requirements and to act with power for the better health
and better training of every child. Is she always ready for and equal
to the task?
At least we can claim this for the mother devotion in modern times,
that it shows, and in exact proportion of its increasing social power,
an alertness and a moral earnestness in all that concerns the welfare
of children that have perpetuated and extended the protective
functions of society as no other agency has done. Much of the modern
legislation and social work directed toward the physical and moral
safeguarding of the young has been instituted and is carried out in
detail largely by women. The passage of the so-called Maternity Bill
by our National Congress, at the recognized instigation of women of
the United States, and the call it makes for a large staff of women
workers to carry out its provisions, is a case in point. This
protective work for mothers and babies is not always done by women who
are themselves mothers. Perhaps too often its details are in charge of
those lacking deep experience of life, and hence not able to interpret
new laws of social control to parents of ancient ideals and backward
social culture. But women in any case are called for in large numbers
to translate the ancient personal duty of protective care of the young
in terms of social obligations.
=The Provision of Food, Clothing, and Shelter.=--The second recognized
ancient duty of mothers is in respect to the provision of food,
clothing, and shelter for the young. This duty has undergone great
changes of method during the last century, and in the large centres of
population has altered almost past recognition. These changes seem to
many to minimize the individual mother's responsibility in these
matters to the vanishing point.
It is indeed an almost immeasurable distance from the primitive mother
scratching the soil with her sharpened stick, her baby bound to her
bended back, in order to plant a few seeds for a tiny harvest to save
the life of her child when the hunt should be poor, to the modern
mother whose food supply for her family comes to the table from all
parts of the earth at the call of her telephone. Is the modern mother,
then, released from all obligations as to that food supply? It is a
long step also from the primitive mother making slowly with her thorn
needle the only garment her child may wear, and even a long step from
the home spinning, weaving and dyeing of later handicraft, to the
modern use of the "ready-made" shop and the division of all
garment-making into innumerable specialties of labor. Is the modern
mother thereby released from care concerning the family clothing?
For the modern housing of families do we not all have to depend upon
the architect, the builder, the real estate broker, the speculator in
land, the laws concerning boundaries, taxes and title deeds, rent and
landlords' powers, and press all one upon another for a chance for a
home when we elect to live where many other people want also to live?
Is, then, the shelter of the family no longer the mother's care?
=The Woman in Rural Life.=--The country-woman, dealing at first hand
with rural conditions, has many of the same problems of personal
devotion in the provision of food, clothing, and shelter with which
her ancient ancestor struggled. She has, it is true, "scientific
farming" of men to raise the harvests that ancestor's heroic but
feeble efforts could not secure. She has mechanical and commercial
aids as housemother such as the primitive woman never imagined. She
has been released from much of the drudgery which burdened her
grandmother in the domestic stage of industry. She is under social
protection such as no previous woman enjoyed in the solitary household
of the past. And in the United States the Federal Government is
offering her aids.[3] It is, however, true that the housemother in
rural communities still feels many of the obligations of the ancient
woman. The three-meal-a-day routine, the actual preparation of raw
material of food for the table, the personal offices of housework,
washing, ironing, mending, making, sweeping, dusting, cleaning, in all
their varied details, keep her in active sympathy with the past. This
fact furnishes the main reason why "Women's Columns" and "Magazines
for Women" reach such large circulation in rural districts, where they
help toward lessening the domestic burden by showing how to carry it
more easily.
The farm woman, however, is moving, many thousand strong, with men as
many, to mitigate the isolation of the solitary household, to bring
the home nearer to the neighbors, the school, the church and the
store, by massing rural homes in villages and forming the habits of
the men-folk to go further afield for their own work. This movement,
which is of all social reforms most needed because affecting larger
classes than any other and also because affecting the basic industry
of all countries, that of agriculture, is working toward making
farm-life once more attractive to young men and capable of winning
young women to the life of the farmer's wife.
Meanwhile, the higher forms of social organization possible in cities
and in closely settled towns and villages are working to lessen
house-keeping burdens to an unprecedented degree. It is noticeable
that all schemes for so specializing woman's work and so easing the
domestic burden as to make, as one writer puts it, "the home a rest
place for women as for men," have their imaginary seat in great cities
or closely built suburbs. The farm-women we know can combine and
coöperate to a greater extent than they now do and the town and city
women may take far better advantage of the agencies of household
assistance now at their doors. How far this movement to relieve the
home of household work may go we do not know.
=Modern Demand for Standardization.=--Is there any plan yet proposed,
however, which can relieve the mother of her primary and ancient
obligation to see that her family is well nourished, suitably clothed
and healthfully sheltered? Some one must attend to the needs of each
family in these vital particulars which underlie all problems of
public and private health. Shall the state do it? So far the
experience of state institutions and even of private "homes" do not
encourage hope along that line. So far the physical and affectional
needs of children and youth, and of husbands and wives, and of fathers
and mothers have not been met by any substitute for the private home.
And in the private home, under any plan, there must go on certain
processes which have to cost some one member of the family a great
deal of thought, much personal effort and constant attention. For most
families in average condition that person is naturally the
housemother. If the husband and father is the chief or only
wage-earner in "gainful occupations," then his health and strength are
of primary concern to all the family and must be secured by adequate
and healthful provision of food and clothing, and the home must give
him what he vitally needs for maintaining power of economic service to
his family. If the mother, also, is a wage-or salary-earner we have
the dictum of economists that her inherited and usual place in the
family machinery must be filled, if at all successfully, by trained
and congenial helpers at a cost in present conditions prohibitive for
the average family income. The estimate of Mr. Taber, in his excellent
book, _The Business of the Household_, is that unless for causes of
illness or special emergency "no family having an income of less than
three thousand dollars has any right to maintain a maid." This
estimate seems not only economically correct but shows why so few
families have incomes that can release the housemother from housework.
It also shows why only the exceptionally trained and competent
vocational worker, if a married woman and mother of young children,
can earn enough to release herself from the miscellaneous tasks of the
private household without loss to the family treasury. The easing of
the burden of housework, almost unbearable as it has been and
responsible, as we have good reason to believe, for much ill-health of
women and much unhappiness in marriage, is coming fast and from quite
other directions than is often perceived. The commercial aids of
wholesale preparation of food and clothing, and the new fashions in
house-building and household management are alike working toward such
a reduction of private household service as may enable the average
woman to meet the family needs, even where there are several young
children, if she is strong in body and trained in efficient ways of
working, and yet have considerable time left for other activities.
The apartment house has set the fashion of simplification and
reduction of necessary personal service in the home. The apartment
house, with its continuous hot water, its ready heat and its relief
from care of sidewalks, halls and stairs, and with its hour-service at
command is obviously becoming a favorite place to live in. Especially
do women like it. The multiple house, however, does not seem the best
place for children after the earliest months of infancy, and in many
such houses they are openly "not wanted." The multiple house has also
many disadvantages from the social side in the lack of home
associations which support family affection. They are also for the
most part in localities where people are brought together without plan
or friendship and hence can not cultivate that neighborliness which,
so far in the history of the race, has been a nursery of the community
spirit.
=The Apartment House and the Family.=--The apartment house seems to be
the best place for those families in which all the adult members are
busy at some vocation, and in which the children are of age to profit
by educational opportunities usually found only in cities. In such
families the burdens of the person who is in command of the family
comfort as to food and raiment and house-keeping are reduced to the
lowest terms. If to the usual apartment house provisions for aids to
the housemother are added, what is now offered in some places, namely,
the "Auto-Service for Meals," whereby the principal meal, at least,
the dinner, is brought to the door ready to place on the table and all
cooking dishes hard to wash are returned to the centre of supply to be
prepared for another service, then, indeed, can all the members take
turns in rendering the small offices for family comfort still required
and each go about his or her special vocation at will. This seems to
be the goal of many progressive minds, although personal taste is
seldom satisfied by "coöperative" cooking.
It must be remembered by all, that the sort of family pictured above
has in it no children of ages requiring freedom of motion and constant
attention (unless, indeed, "the boarding-school in the country" for
all over four or five years is contemplated). It has in it no aged
whose needs in diet and in physical comfort vary from the usual. It
has in it no chronic invalids and no convalescents, no blind or lame
or specially weak requiring special help. It is for the particular
benefit, at least, of families of a particular type, of which the
cities, with their more varied facilities, contain an unusual
proportion. For the family of the ordinary type, with its many
differing needs and its variety of claim upon some one person for its
central direction and service, the various aids from without which
have been indicated serve rather to relieve from excessive burdens
than to remove altogether the special obligations of the woman-head of
the family.
Moreover, the time left to the average housemother from the old
housework by the new helps in that work is, in part at least,
mortgaged in advance to social effort to make the new commercial aids
to family service actual helps and not hindrances to family health and
comfort. The food supply drawn upon must be sharply investigated lest
it contain deleterious substances or be denuded of nourishing quality.
The ready-made clothing must be bought with knowledge and constant
vigilance against cheating in material or in construction or in sins
of fashion against health and beauty. The labor-saving devices of
every sort must be put to intelligent test and require specific
training for most efficient use. The family budget must be more
carefully planned and more heroically maintained at prudent levels.
The public service of markets, transportation facilities and functions
of "middlemen" must be understood and controlled as never before.
Above all, the pressure of uniformity must be resisted if the offered
supply of the essentials of life prove inadequate to the deepest
needs, or the scale of living be too ambitiously set by the housing
facilities adjusted to the ideas and claims of landlords rather than
to the needs of family life.
Hence we may say that the old forms of effort by which mothers fed and
clothed and sheltered their children led directly to absorption of
interest, energy and conscientious labor within the house. The new
forms of effort by which these essentials of healthful and comfortable
living are secured lead directly to all manner of coöperative social
adjustments of supply to demand. The standard of demand, however, let
it never be forgotten, is made and maintained within the intimate
family circle itself, and the personal intelligence and ethical
maturity of the housemothers, who form the major purchasing class of
every civilized community, determine that standard. For that great
enterprise of high standardization the same personal devotion to the
central demands of life is required in the average modern woman which
made the ancient mother so great a leader in primitive culture. The
new aids to the housemother's task may give her a better chance than
any women ever had before to see the real social significance of the
personal offices of home life. The poets have seen it all through the
centuries and have pictured the myth goddesses bringing the cup and
the bread and the fruit and weaving the web of ceremonial or of simple
garment in household poetry. All human need for sustenance and the
nurture of our physical being has made the wife the loaf-giver and the
mother a nourisher of the young, and as such artists have portrayed
her.
We may say "our father-land," but we always say "our mother-earth." To
those who see clearly the value of the ancient family rite of the
meal alone together, to which it may well be every member of the
family has made a distinct contribution; to those to whom the private
table still appeals and who still appreciate the taste and quality of
every purchase made for each individual member of the intimate group
(things taking time and thought most often of the mother), the
individual home has meanings that are not lost but rather are growing
in spiritual importance as the drudgery of the household is lessened.
=New Uses of Electric Power.=--To-day another great contribution to
the spiritual value of the private household ministrations is offered
in the new uses of electric power. Already the "servantless house" is
widely advertised. Already the grave difficulties in household
adjustment made by the growing unwillingness of competent girls and
women to do anything in the households of strangers, and thereby
giving rise to the serious "servant-girl problem" for people of
limited means, are being mitigated by the new devices of this modern
wizard of electricity. It seems to many of us that had this magician
been discovered before the invention of steam-power-driven machinery
the whole tendency of modern industry would have been turned not so
absolutely, if at all, toward the factory. Such modifications of
domestic manufacture and handicraft as right use of electricity could
have initiated, might have prevented some of the social and economic
evils of our present labor world. However that may be, it is clear
that now the modern housewife has at her hand the means of easy
control of her special family duties such as no ancient woman could
have conceived. The movement henceforward, therefore, we must believe,
is toward such lessening of household burdens by mechanical means, and
such simplification of household requirements by new family ideals as
will make every woman of ordinary strength and of even moderate
capacity and training so sure a master of essentials in that field
that she can dispense with the "help" that so often now hinders the
real family life and make the home more truly the private shrine of
affection and of mutual aid than it has ever been before.
=Certain Duties the Mother Cannot Delegate= if she would hand on the
torch of life the brighter for her handling. Doctor Devine has well
said that "the only satisfactory method of getting babies safely
through the first years of life is the strictly individualistic plan
of attention to each one by its own mother." The proof of this is in
the death-rate of infants in foundling asylums and in other forms of
communal care even where scientific knowledge has been invoked and
humane feeling exercised. To keep babies alive and well is a
prerequisite to all later development, and happiness seems to be a
necessary foundation for such preservation of their life and health.
So far in human experience babies have declined with one accord to be
happy unless some one person was constantly devoted to their welfare.
That person may be a "hired expert," it is true, but the successful
nurse must have the mother-feeling. Moreover, it is now agreed that
the best physical stamina is secured by mothers breast-feeding their
own babies, and all manner of incentives, even to state subsidies, are
being used to lead women to this personal office.
If mothers thus nurse their babies they must come close to them in
affectional contact, and it is through affectional contact more than
in any other way that babies seem to thrive. No one can claim that
ability to care for and bring up children "comes by nature." The
affectional tie does, however, give an added earnestness to the desire
to learn how to minister wisely and well to the needs of the child.
That same affectional tie on the part of the mother is shown in a
return of affection from the child. Such personal ministrations of the
mother to the child have also a great effect in forming the whole
character in later life. One may worship from a distance, and the
capacity to justly estimate excellence grows with maturity. But the
child knows best those who serve his needs most intimately and gives
his love to that person.
=The Mother's Compensation for Personal Service.=--There is much
compensation, therefore, for the woman who gives herself to her child
in old-fashioned ways of personal service. She gets the charm and the
allurement of the growing bud on life's tree. If she misses that she
loses something of her birthright and some "substitute-mother" gets
something of satisfaction from the child that she does not.
=Early Drill in Personal Habits.=--The third essential of the
inherited obligation of mothers to their children is the early drill
in personal habits that are required for health and decency and
propriety in any given time and place. For this it is an absolute
necessity that either the mother so serve herself or that she secure
some substitute-mother of refinement, knowledge, affection and
devotion which make her an equal in the family circle. How many nurses
fulfil that demand? Many, even of those least recognized by their
employers as entitled to special gratitude and appreciation. The point
to be noted is, however, that even if experts for "hour-service" as
nursery governess could be had in sufficient numbers and even if the
majority of families could financially meet the expense of those fully
competent, such service would not, as a rule, meet the needs of
children under three or four years. It is a constant task, not,
indeed, requiring every minute of time, but requiring constant
readiness to serve at need both day and night to start an infant along
the required rules of daily habit. And that task does not lend itself
to the conditions of group-teaching or to the schedule of shared
service of visiting experts. Some one must be on the job all the time
or it is not accomplished with success, although skilled personal
care-takers can get fine results in gradually lessened attention by
the time the baby becomes the child.
If there are several children in a family, however, the most competent
mother, or substitute-mother, has the process to repeat with each
newcomer, so that for every child we may reckon at least two years of
very constant attention if the bodily habits of health and propriety
and the first steps in social training for agreeable membership in the
family are to be well taken. The public school is full of children for
whom the teachers heroically try to make up for lacks in this intimate
home-training. It may be that some people view with pleasure a "movie
picture" in which large numbers of children go through a "toothbrush
drill," but to some of us it is a sorry exhibit. When Booker
Washington opened Tuskegee he required only a toothbrush as entrance
fee and equipment, and the use of that implement had to be explained
and almost all other agencies for personal neatness and physical care
of the body to be offered and their use enforced. This was the step of
a whole race toward civilization, a step which the slave condition had
not made possible before for the field-hands of the South. The people
coming to us from all the peasant classes of Europe and the East have
many of them lacked also the chance to be drilled in the things that
belong to private and personal habit demanded by our civilization. It
may be that for such the public school is the only medium for the
belated acquirement of such habits; but if publicity in drill and lack
of reserve and modesty be the price paid for wholesale instruction it
may injure those with good breeding at command in their own homes by
lowering their standards, even while it helps upward those who need
the school baths and the school treatment of heads and throats and
teeth and all manner of personal care. It is not easy to get what
children require in these particulars in the crowded tenement. It may
be impossible in the congested quarters of a great city. But the need
thus pathetically shown in the children of many social strata in the
United States indicates that not only should there be own mothers or
substitute-mothers for every little child to start each aright along
the way of life but every own mother or substitute-mother should have
a decent place to live in so that all needed drill may be conducted in
dignified privacy and in an atmosphere required for right results. The
housing problem reaches back to the primal need to have a suitable
living-place into which to put every home.
=Early Practice in Walking, Talking, Obedience, and Imitation.=--The
fourth obligation which the past has laid upon the modern mother is to
teach the little child to walk, to talk, to obey, and to imitate. All
these are a part of the habit-drill of the very earliest years. They
are bound up with the acquirement of those personal habits of health
and propriety before indicated. It is not for nothing that women from
the oldest time have been noted for their power of speech and habit of
talking. They have had to give every little child the start toward
that most indispensable key to all knowledge, the use and
understanding of language. And the mother, or the woman who acts for
the mother, knows what the child says before any one else can
understand his fumbling at speech. Later the mother and the father and
other devoted members of the family have to interpret the child's
language to all others until he gets accustomed to this difficult art.
In learning to walk it is the desire to get closer to those most
beloved that helps the child to balance on his feet and try the
fearful voyage across the room to where father or mother waits to
welcome his approach. And here in most families the mother has the
practice in hand far more hours in the day than any one else in the
family. Yet for talking and walking in families where there are
several children the most efficient instruction of the youngest is
often given by the older brothers and sisters. The first child has all
to do or to try to do alone; the only child has to pioneer all through
childhood and youth so far as his own family life is concerned, but
the child in a family of several children learns almost by unconscious
absorption from those just a step in advance of his own attempts.
Where there are children too near in age the inevitable jealousy or
unhappiness of the baby too soon pushed from his throne defeats this
end of easy accomplishment through imitation. Where there are too many
children in the family for the father to properly support, or the
mother to healthfully or happily care for, the nearness of age often
means friction and not comradeship. Where in such families the older
children act as "little fathers" or "little mothers" they may be
defrauded of a child's right to care-free leisure or develop a
tyrannous control of the younger ones far from helpful to the
development of either. The coming of new members to the family,
however, in right spacing and right conditions, means that each child
gets the benefit of all the teaching each other child receives and
makes it far easier for all to learn the ways of life. The art of
obedience which is learned in such conditions is a share in a family
public opinion, outlined, indeed, by the parents, but maintained by
all the younger members of the group. Not that the same elements enter
into the early character-drill of each child. There are as many
temperaments and as many capacities and as many differing reactions to
like conditions in any family, as a general thing, as there are
children to be considered. This difference, however, while it makes
family discipline more difficult, makes it also usually more
effective, for it insures that parents shall study reasons for rules
and try at least to reach an obvious basis for them in personal and
social well-being rather than in the parents' will. This leads the way
to later democracy by stimulating the sense of justice and the sense
of individualistic right, together with the sense of mutual tolerance
and mutual aid in the very beginnings of family living together.
=Special Responsibility of the Average Mother.=--The burden of this
preliminary training toward social order and social welfare rests
to-day more heavily upon the mother than upon any one else, even the
father. He often has pressing business down-town whenever hard
questions of family discipline must be faced. He is often so
overburdened with the financial support of the family that he cannot
give time or attention necessary to the constant helping of children
to escape from the savage to the civilized, from the selfish to the
helpful, from the ignorant to the ever-learning. At any rate, just as
many men "keep their religion in their wife's name," so, many fathers,
although successfully appealed to as final authority in larger
concerns of family order, leave the details of character-drill of all
their younger children in the hands of the mother.
What teachers can do in school comes later in life than the period of
which we now speak. Even the kindergarten, with its short hours and
its more artificial life, only shows each day a picture of what the
child may do later on in his own self-culture. The home nursery is the
real place of actual experience for the average child, with the family
table and the intimate association with father and mother and brother
and sister. These make a school of preëminent importance to the later
training.
=Women's Relation to More Formal Education.=--The fifth obligation
which the modern mother inherits from the ages is that relating to the
more formal education of all girls and of all little boys in the
folk-lore, the vocational skill, and the methods of social arrangement
which set moral fashions and demand personal obedience to the social
order into which one is born. This obligation is so largely shared
to-day that many see in it no special burden for the modern mother.
The school training once so largely within the home, or for the older
boys so definitely obtained in fraternities or war-groups of men, is
now a separate institution. The customs, tribal or national, that once
ruled the family-training are now solidified and definitely outlined
in laws written on statute books. The illiterate parent cannot, if he
would, disobey the compulsory school law. The poverty-stricken parent
must either starve himself to feed his children according to the
demands of the health board or he must accept public or private
charity for their sustenance according to modern demands. The ignorant
parent must submit to treatment of his children by public nurse or
doctor of whom he may be afraid. The parent not ignorant, but
differing from the majority as to what will prevent disease or cure
it, must accept the public rule.
The decay of domestic industry and the growth of the factory system
have given rise to so many and serious social dangers that laws are
now passed forbidding home manufacture on grounds of need to abolish
sweatshop conditions, although to many such prohibition seems, and to
some may be, the denial of parental moral protection to children and
youth in families of the very poor. The training for self-supporting
work, which came about so naturally from within the household in the
handicraft stage of industry, now requires many public agencies of
education. The new social "mores" accepted by the majority and
supported by law and court may be directly opposed to the inherited
ideal of right living of large numbers of people in any given
locality, especially in the United States with our large immigrant
population.
To have education so much a public concern seems to many to so
minimize the mother's share in it that she is placed in the same
general relation as the father to what was once her special duty.
Ideally, both parents are equally bound to decide all questions
concerning the formal education of their children within the limits of
personal choice made possible by the public provisions of which all
parents may now take advantage. In some favored families this really
occurs. Actually, however, in most families the mother has more
leisure to learn of possible opportunities, to influence possible
improvement, and, above all, to help to wise individual choice in the
use by the family of these socially provided educational facilities
than has the father. She is also now more likely to belong to
associations or clubs or classes for adult study in which educational
problems are discussed than is he, and often more intimately
acquainted with children's desires or needs in education.
=Women's Relation to Educational Agencies.=--A glance at the list of
national and local associations for the study and application of
educational science and art will show the vast majority of women over
men (in the United States at least) who are trying to find out what
real education in modern life should be and how to secure that best
training for their own children and for the children of all. The
educational obligation is, therefore, not taken from the average
mother's duty; it has changed its form only and often is the more
difficult to meet successfully because of the high specialization of
the teachers and the confusion of the school direction. No one would
claim that fathers, if loyal and worthy, are less anxious than mothers
for the trailing of their children toward successful living. The fact,
however, that most mothers stand nearest to the lives of the children
make them most often the necessary purveyors of educational
opportunities from the public provision to private use.
=The Social Value of Parental Affection.=--Below and within all other
gifts to humanity which have come by the way of motherhood's devotion
to child-life is that selective and partial affection which secures to
each child one adult person at least to whom he or she is supreme in
interest. Most normal women feel when they hear the cry of their own
new-born that all of life is justly tributary to that one priceless
creature who has come at their call out of the mystery of being to
travel the difficult road of the generations of mankind. Nor is this
inherited tendency toward partial affection a sign of undeveloped or
selfish quality in the woman of to-day. It is a provision of nature
still supremely useful in helping each tiny atom of the social whole
to find and keep its own place in a world of struggle and hardship.
The fear of defeat handicaps many a purpose before it is put to the
test. The sense of loneliness drives many to lower companionship when
higher is hard to attain. The lack of courage and the paralysis of
faith in one's self or in others makes invalid many a nature which
might otherwise achieve. To prevent such waste from inner weakness and
to "encourage excellence in each individual," to use Doctor Small's
fine phrase, we need a childhood saturated with the sense of personal
values on the plane of affection. Selfishness may indeed pollute this
mainspring of personal power, and selfishness sometimes reaches its
acme in motherhood's partiality for its own. The ideal of social
solidarity and the claim of all upon each one must never be absent
from the family influence if that influence is to be wholesome. The
family, however, exists to make a small spot in which there may be a
unity found nowhere else, and at the centre of the family life is
still the mother.
Says Schiller, "Knowledge and culture demand a blissful sky, much
careful nursing and a long number of springs." Who shall be able to
secure this for every son of man if no one stands at the door of young
life to make these the first demand upon time and strength and
devotion for every child in the interest of every child? "The
community" has been called "an endowment for human progress." Parental
love, so often supremely expressed by the mother, works still and in
any future in sight must work ever more devotedly and wisely to secure
for each child his rightful share in that endowment. The main business
of life is the carrying on of life, and in that business women were
drafted long ago for the heaviest end of service and with little
social permission to do their work by proxy. Many social helps in her
task now make possible leisure and opportunity for individual vocation
as never before. Her primal duty to the race remains, however, a debt
to be paid as a first obligation wherever and whenever a woman accepts
the august function of motherhood. And to-day the majority of most
successful families absorb in large measure the time and strength of
the housemother.
=What Women Need Most= is moral sanity and mental poise; the ability
to adjust themselves to radical and rapid changes in their
relationship to society without losing the finest and most useful
results of their past social discipline. Woman is acquiring a new
relationship to the home--that of mutual headship with man in the
social institution in which for ages she has been a legal subordinate.
Social welfare demands that she take into the new copartnership of
domestic life the old devotion to family interests. Woman is acquiring
a new relationship to the school--that of learner in the highest
educational opportunity and of teacher in an ever-widening area.
Social welfare demands that she take into the modern school her
ancient devotion to child-life.
The mass of women are acquiring a new relationship to the industrial
order--that of spenders instead of producers. Social welfare demands
that the modern woman put into her function of purchasing consumer of
staple products the same conscientious standardizing of those products
and the same sense of responsibility for the conditions surrounding
laborers which she displayed in the old handicraft days of domestic
industry. A minority of women are acquiring also a new relationship to
the industrial order in becoming the recipient of wages or salary,
instead of being paid for work as of old in "truck" or in "kind." The
feel of the pay envelope on her palm is an unaccustomed but a
delicious pleasure to the modern woman. Social welfare demands that
she be not beguiled thereby into complicity with industrial
exploitation of the weak and the poor, such as she would not have
tolerated in the old days of personal relationship in labor in
domestic handicraft.
Woman is acquiring a new relationship to recreation and the social
control of the customs ruling leisure hours. Social welfare demands
that gambling be not made fashionable in the drawing room as it is
being driven out of the business world; that dancing be not vulgarized
and the mother-tongue not corrupted, but that self-control, purity,
dignity, mark the "new woman" as it did her best ancestors. Woman is
acquiring a new relationship to the state--that of citizen with full
responsibility instead of her old perpetual minority under man's
control. Social welfare demands that she take into the body politic
the same devotion to the weak and undeveloped, the same patient, wise
dependence upon the spiritual elements of justice and wisdom which
have made her private motherhood so successful. She must not now, on
peril of a social setback, take up man's weapons of selfishness, of
violence, of impatient revolution--weapons the best of men have
already discarded.
Women should now be clear-sighted enough to see that the world needs
from them not the same but different contributions to the upreach and
onward march of the race from those elements in which man has
excelled. If society-at-large is to become truly a family of those who
love and serve each other, then human beings of the mother-sex must
take into public life and public service the best they have learned
and taught in the individual home. What women most need now is to
"retain all the good the past hath had" as they step forward to their
full liberty and responsibility in new relationships to life.
QUESTIONS ON THE MOTHER
1. What, in general, have been the social demands upon wives and
mothers, and how have these been met in the past?
2. What, if any, of these inherited social demands are now met by
social agencies outside of the private family?
3. What, in general, may be defined as the line of demarkation
between the private obligations resting still upon mothers for
personal service to family life and agencies of public
child-care and social standardization?
4. How far is a trend toward minimizing the demand for personal
service of the housemother in the private family to be
encouraged?
5. If a mother, in average financial condition, has the "three and
one-half children" eugenists demand of each family, and does
her duty by them in private family life, how much of her time
and strength must go into the housemother's service and for
what period of years?
6. What amount of time and strength might be left, in the case of
strong and competent women, for other vocational work?
7. Is the modern "nursery school" an adequate substitute for the
early home-training? (See report, "A Nursery School
Experiment," published by "Bureau of Educational Experiments,"
144 West Thirteenth Street, New York City.)
FOOTNOTES:
[3] (_a_) See, for example, "Conveniences for the Farm Home," Farmers'
Bulletin No. 270, and (_b_) "The Farm Kitchen as a Workshop," Farmers'
Bulletin No. 607.
CHAPTER III
THE FATHER
"Who plants his soul in stalwart sons and daughters keeps on giving
His life and vision to his fellow men;
His power grows like leaven.
"His children strive to take his spirit up and keep it living;
They share with all the love he gave his own, as he had shared,
And lives, his love has served, all call him father."
From the Tribute, _To My Father_,
by HORNELL HART.
"To dwell in the wide house of the world; to stand in true
attitude therein; in success to share one's principles with the
people; in failure to live them out alone; to be incorruptible by
riches or honor; unchangeable by poverty; unmoved by perils or
power--these I call the qualities of a great man."--MENCIUS.
"For the man who is such as no longer to delay being among the
number of the best is like a priest and minister of the gods,
using the deity that is planted within him, that which makes a man
uncontaminated by any pleasure, unharmed by any pain, untouched by
any insult, feeling no wrong, a fighter in the noblest fight, who
cannot be overpowered by passion, one dyed deep with justice,
understanding that only what belongs to himself is matter for his
activity, yet remembering also that every human being is his
kinsman, and that to care for all men is according to mans
nature."--MARCUS AURELIUS.
"'Tis not in battles that from youth we train
The governor who must be wise and good.
Wisdom doth live with children round her knees;
Books, leisure, perfect freedom, and the talk
Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk
Of the mind's business; this is the stalk
True power doth grow on."--WORDSWORTH.
=Historic Background of Fatherhood.=--The father seems to have had a
precarious attachment to the family in earlier forms of life. As Le
Tourneau well says, "The animal family is especially maternal;
although father birds often share parental duties, many mammals are
less developed in duration and strength of affection." Fathers,
mothers, and their offspring are not closely grouped in lower life.
The relation of the sexes, even when the human was reached, seems not
to have carried with it a sense of the double obligation of
parenthood. "Marriage was brittle in the early times," says Sir John
Lubbock. The obvious relationship of mother and child, the lack of
such irrefutable testimony to parenthood in the case of man, and other
elements of primitive experience lending confusion to the situation,
made it a process of time and a test of growing intelligence for men
to learn that babies take two parents to give them birth.
When the human male did learn that he was a father, as his mate was a
mother, it seems to have mentally intoxicated him, and led the way to
many social vagaries. The grotesque comedy of the couvade, which
proved a tragedy so often for the poor mother compelled by the custom
to rise in her weakness and even neglect her new-born baby, in order
to do double work and to tempt the appetite of her lord after his
make-believe pangs of childbirth, was one sign that primitive
consciousness found the new knowledge of double parentage very
exciting.
The varieties of phallic worship found in so many ages and among so
many peoples show how man plumed himself upon the generative function
and how he linked it with the god-idea. The "religious dedication of
women," which gratified at once the lust of priests and the demands of
ancient theology that the gods should have the best of everything
earthly, is another testimony to the preoccupation of early man with
sex in its relation to religion. This idea of the sacrifice of
sex-relationship to the gods passed down through the ages until actual
celibacy became the ideal of the holy life and the Divine was supposed
to be better served by monks and nuns than by fathers and mothers.
In the family relation the experience of fathers, after they knew
themselves to be such, has been widely varied and not along any single
line of development. To quote Le Tourneau again, "There has been no
strict relation between intellectual development and the form of
sexual union. Even among monkeys, as in men, we find both polygamy and
monogamy; and bees and other forms of lower life show a high degree of
social organization and division of labor without the institution of
the family at all." The relation of the sexes has always been a deep
concern of human society even in most primitive forms of social order,
but after men knew the connection between the gratification of
sex-instinct and the procreative function, they began to reason about
and to make more definite the customs that outlined permitted
marriage. The varieties of social expression in these ancient customs
is witness alike to economic pressure, the effect of climate and
immigration, political struggle and the institutions of war and of
private property.
=Purchase and Capture of Wives.=--Purchase and capture began early to
run a race in the supply of wives. Purchase, which kept the twain
together in nearness to one or the other side of the family line, was
usually best for women; especially when, as often happened, it gave
her the protection of her own blood relations. Capture, on the other
hand, made woman not only the possession of her husband in a peculiar
sense as separating her from all who might, through the working of
natural affection, act as her helpers in time of need, but made it
possible for the slavery of the wife to the husband to take on more
cruel forms. Although, it must be said, even capture gave a few women
of superlative charm a chance to take precedence of common wives
gained in the usual manner.
Two influences, one from the custom to allow marriages only within a
certain blood bond, and one to allow marriages only outside that
family relationship, have worked in the first instance to preserve
certain racial traits from extinction, and in the second place to mix
the common elements of human nature to the enrichment of the common
stock. This balancing regard for the known and allurement of the novel
has also worked to give manifold forms of family association, since
those customs were superseded.
It would seem that not only were "trial marriages" for individuals an
ancient, not at all a modern device, to see how the twain could get
along together, but varying trial forms of marriage for racial,
tribal, and national groups have made all manner of experiments to see
what on the whole would serve best the social need in the family
relationship.
That process of wide experimentation at last settled into the ideal
and practice of one father-head, at least, even if still allowing more
than one wife and mother within its bond. That father-head seems to
have found his place only on condition of grant from society of
complete authority over wife and children.
=The Patriarchal Family.=--The patriarchal family, which Sir Henry
Maine described so well, but which he mistakenly supposed to be the
first great type of familial association, placed firmly at the centres
of social order the power and responsibility of the man. Doubtless
that power and responsibility drew their chief sanction from the idea
of man as the real source of being. After man learned that he was as
much a parent in being father as woman was a parent in being mother,
nothing seemed to have contented him but spiritual supremacy in
parenthood. The classic picture and interpretation of this phase of
family development is contained in the great drama of the Greeks, the
trilogy of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Electra, Orestes, and the
Erinnyes. Here we see how the mother-side of life, once so powerful as
representative of tribal unity, was set aside and overborne by the
father-side, as Apollo proudly claims all generative power for man and
relegates the mother to the position of an underling nurse. It will be
remembered, however, that Athena, although, as Apollo said, "having a
father only," makes the mothers still invaluable as guardians of the
family altar and as those who can bless or blight both the fruitage of
the earth and of the marriage bed.
The Greeks, by virtue of their superior self-consciousness when
passing through radical social changes, and by virtue also of their
power of literary portrayal of experience, have set down for us, for
all time, the way by which man attained his unlimited power over woman
and over the family order.
We need not accept in full measure Dr. Lester Ward's picturesque story
of the manner in which women were made subject to men, _i.e._, that
female sex-selection so overdid the business of rewarding with favor
the strength, the fighting quality, and the cunning which grew to
mental power in the male, that when human men and women were reached,
woman found a master ready-made by her subhuman sisters. We may,
however, find a most suggestive indication of the real reasons for
that masculine supremacy in Doctor Ward's testimony to the way in
which the female sex, when it had the power of special selection of
the kind of mates it wanted, set a fashion in masculine attainment
which did work later against her own command of the sex-relation.
Women did not become subject to men because of physical weakness. The
savage woman does continuous work heavier and more strength-demanding
than that assigned to the savage man. It was not even that the
primitive woman had always to carry the child as she worked, and had
therefore a double burden, although that greatly helped men in gaining
supremacy. It was rather that the larger leisure of primitive man and
his consequent development of thought and imagination enabled him to
secure religion and statecraft as allies to his physical claims. The
intellectual side of the male development was doubtless greatly aided
by female selection, and when man was reached he already knew how to
outwit other men and most women in the race for power.
=The Three Chief Sources of Influence.=--It has been well said that
the "three great sources of influence in barbarous as in civilized
countries are religion, military power, and money." All these
influences became masculine monopolies ages ago.
The ancient woman was sometimes a priestess and often a healer in her
simple fashion and in all ages has acted as nurse in illness and
care-taker of the aged and the feeble when these have received care.
She has been mistress of the ceremonials of birth and death and
marriage when these have been parts of the family ritual, and
courtship has been largely in her charge. All the customs that relate
to intimate household experiences have been shared by women as ritual
and rule of life.
Men, however, took over the simple elements of religious feeling and
social requirement in which women bore so great a part and made of
them religious cults and theologies, and they then became a masculine
monopoly. Men also took over the simple healing of gifted women and
made it first the prerogative of the "medicine man" and at last of the
medical profession, from which women were barred until very lately.
The social customs which women once had power to enforce in so many
ways became the "law," made and executed solely by men. Art, science,
literature, grew to great proportions as man acquired the opportunity
and the skill to concentrate his intelligence upon specialties of
effort; and from all the walks of educational preparation and of
professional achievement women were debarred. Hence, in the family
order, in which the first and obvious place of women had been
relatively high, man took the position of mastery by right of
religious priesthood, by right of legal supremacy, and by right of
monopoly of the money power.
Back of all this lay the assumption of the superior relation of the
father to the spiritual life of the child.
Man gained his larger leisure first by the use of women as slaves when
individual women became the property of individual men, and later by
conquest over other men through which process he secured more slaves,
and finally by the military systems that in various forms gave some
men a chance to work at what they liked and from which they could gain
advantage in the growing complexity of increasing social organization.
Man's larger leisure, which gave him money power or its equivalent in
earlier forms of exchange, could not have been secured by him had not
woman been socially and by religious sanction set to the constant task
of the family service and the more peaceful occupations of primitive
agriculture.
=Ancient Military Training of Youth.=--Doubtless man's military
prestige and power gave him the greatest advantage over woman and was
the source, more than anything else, of her subjection in the family
order. This came about not only because military success gave the
women of conquered tribes into the absolute power of the conquerors,
and broke for such the social bond of remaining mother-right, but
because of the special training of boys and young men which the
military systems of all ages have initiated. "The ancient
fraternities," and the manner of education which separated those who
would be "braves" from the family life in early youth, the strong bond
of a common purpose made appealing to youthful imagination by mystic
ceremonials and burnt into the consciousness by painful "initiations,"
all combined to teach men how to work together for common ends and in
a way unknown to the training and opportunity of women.[4] This it was
which gave a consistency and a power to man's collective life which
woman could not gain in the past, and exclusion from which enabled man
to become her legal and economic master even within the home.
The economic power which man acquired through specialization of labor,
made possible for him by social excuse from exhausting personal
service within the family; the political power, made possible for him
by military achievement, from which women for the most part were
strictly barred by the "Trade Unionism" of war preparation; the
intellectual power, made a sex-monopoly in education and professional
use and opportunity; and the religious sanction of priesthood and
theology, which fastened all these to law and government, secured the
complete subjection of mothers to fathers and gave woman in the family
the status of her infant children.
=Ancestor-worship.=--This triple influence of money, military power,
and religion, gave the definite basis for ancestor-worship, which has
been so widespread and so influential in the setting of social
customs. Ancestor-worship, with its separate family ceremonials, for
which the wife must learn her husband's family ritual, led to
child-marriage, and that in turn to the slavery of the wife not only
to the husband but to the older women of his family. Child-marriage
led also to many tragedies of racial decay before it was seen to be
inimical to strength and power of achievement. When child-marriage was
not a part of marriage customs, however, and a suitable age was
demanded, for sex-unions, ancestor-worship made the position of the
father secure. He alone could pass on the name and inheritance, the
family worship and the dutiful service of his forefathers, to the
children yet to be. The Greek poem before referred to shows in the
pathetic attempt of Electra, the loyal daughter of the slain
Agamemnon, to offer the required sacrifices at her father's grave, and
her joy that the return of the son could make such sacrifices valid
for peace of the dead and the service of the living yet to be born,
shows vividly how religion made firm and binding the father's place in
the family.
So deeply did this religious sanction of ancestor-worship affect the
social "mores" that, as is shown so clearly in Spartan history, no man
could shirk his duty of marriage and of parenthood without social
opprobrium. The well-known anecdote related by Plutarch of the youth
who, educated rigorously to show respect to the aged fathers, is
praised for flouting a grey-haired bachelor and refusing to rise and
give him a seat in the open square because, as the youth scornfully
says, "No children of yours will ever make sacrifice for his
ancestors," pictures vividly the sense of responsibility to the family
life once almost universal.
This feeling, bred by ancestor-worship, has persisted long after the
church in its various forms has superseded the ancient family worship.
We find it as late as in Colonial times in Protestant New England,
where the bachelor was fined and subjected to humiliating community
supervision and the spinster, almost unknown above twenty years of
age, if persisting in her single life was treated as an exception to
be held in social tutelage.
=The Double Standard of Morals.=--The triple bond of money, military
power, and economic supremacy, which made men masters in the family
life, made them also able to free themselves from exclusive devotion
to one wife, whether under the law of polygamy or professed monogamy;
as it has been possible for men to divorce their wives for slight
causes, while wives often received the death penalty for even supposed
infidelity. It has also instituted and maintained for ages a double
standard of morals by which the same act mutually shared by men and
women has been for men a slight peccadillo and for women a deadly sin.
Chastity has been made almost the sole virtue of women, invasion of
which even by resisted force has destroyed her "honor," and voluntary
rejection of which has made her a creature of social ostracism. Man,
on the other hand, has been forgiven all manner of slips from the
straight and narrow way of marital fidelity, provided he could achieve
something of importance in the world of thought or action.
This double standard of morals has reacted upon the family not only in
preventing women from establishing social conditions suitable for
their own best development and that of their children but has thrown
over the home the dark shadow of commercialized prostitution with its
cloud of evil thought, physical degeneracy and defrauded childhood.
=Basic Needs for Equality of Human Rights.=--When women as mothers
have no power of guardianship of their own children; when they as
persons have no power of self-defense against cruelty and outrage of
their own fathers or husbands; when as members of society they have no
contract-power but must suffer all manner of injustice unless highly
fortunate in their male representative; when as citizens of a
so-called democratic state they have no voice in either law or its
enforcement, then they are indeed a subject class. Any subject class
dependent upon privilege or special favor for all the order and
circumstance of life is clearly not a fit part of modern democratic
society. It is, therefore, of tremendous social importance to the
family, as truly as to all other inherited institutions, that women
are now rapidly emerging from that subject condition of perpetual
minority under the law to the individual responsibility and
self-protective power of the legal adult. This passage "from status to
contract" was too long delayed (the position of women after the
affirmation of liberty and equality for men in modern forms of
government being so illogical as to cause much disturbance in the body
politic), but it has, after all, been rapid in its final steps. To-day
the ideal of equal rights between the sexes and in relationship of men
and women to society-at-large is fully accepted by a majority of the
enlightened. What is before us is the slow and in some respects
difficult task of working out that ideal in social adjustments. While
at work on this task it behooves us to go over the past experience
more carefully than many have yet done, to note what the patriarchal
family gave to society and through society to wife and children as
well as what of their just due it took from or refused to give to wife
and children.
=Special Protection of Women Needed in Ancient Times.=--It seems not
too much to say that in the time and place where men in general first
attained power of property rights, of military supremacy, and of
religious priesthood, most women needed some special protection from
particular men. In such period and condition the sex-relationship
itself had not attained its present spiritual quality. There was
apparently required the sense of ownership on the part of one man to
safeguard those women most generally desired from exploitation by all
men. Some legal order in the oppression of women by society had to
precede, apparently, the abolition of oppression of women itself; just
as to-day the effort is to "humanize war" before we can become wise
and strong enough to abolish it. No social device that the imagination
can conceive could be so well fitted to protect motherhood, in an age
before justice could give power of self-protection, as was that of the
patriarchal family. The religious aspect of ancestor-worship, the
political aspect of the building up of great families from which the
state could derive its power and the economic necessity of having the
industrial system develop more highly all vocations, combined in the
patriarchal system to make the family the main expression of social
order and the chief heir of social privilege. It seems apparent,
therefore, that a socially delegated power of absolute control by the
father was highly useful in the period when the state was growing, and
the school was separating itself from the hearth-stone, and the
economic system was changing from barter to the complicated exchange
of the present time, and religion itself was merging its ideals from
the innumerable private ceremonials of noble families into the worship
of one chief, emperor, or despot who must receive the homage of all,
and so on to the incarnation of divine power in one King and Lord of
Heaven.
"Order" is not only, as we were once told, "Heaven's first law," but
social order, human experience declares, comes before the recognition
of equality of personal rights within that order. The great lady of
the Middle Ages who begged of her King a "new Lord" within a month
after the death of her husband because her "lands were being taken and
her estate defrauded by hostile lords who surrounded her castle," and
only a husband for herself, a new father for her children and a new
owner for the inherited property could protect from this robbery,
realized the social advantages of the patriarchal system in
appropriate social conditions.
To-day, when so much of the community protection surrounds the family
and so much in education, law, and social custom aids the wife and
mother toward independent action, we are naturally horrified at the
thought of life and death power of the husband and father and shocked
at recital of the humiliations and privations of women's subject
condition in the past. We have to remember, however, that social
history seems to indicate that no system of human association has
grown up and persisted without great need for some, at least, of its
dominant features. The protection of wife and child, which rested for
so long upon man's conception of "property" to be defended from
outside attack, was a chief necessity in the rougher and coarser ages
of the world.
The main hindrance to social progress, however, is the tendency of
forms of institutional life and methods of social relationship to
persist after the need for them has ceased. This hindrance has been
shown perhaps most harmfully in the retention of the patriarchal power
of the father after his abdication from the throne was called for by
ethical and humane considerations. A form of family relationship
entrenched in institutions of age-long prestige and supported by the
triple influence of money, military power, and religion, lived on
after its work in securing social order had been accomplished and long
after its usefulness was entirely ended. After the father-headship
ceased to express the highest ideals of either sex-relationship or
parental devotion, its retention produced social evils and personal
wrongs which made a conscious and determined movement for "Woman's
Rights" necessary, and still makes necessary close and definite
attention to the equalizing of opportunities.
=The Social Value of the Patriarchal Family.=--It is well, however, to
consider not only the negative but the affirmative side of the social
inheritance of the patriarchal family, in which has grown up and
developed the ideal of monogamic marriage. What did the father gain,
intellectually and ethically, from that patriarchal order, and what
did he give, not only in protection of wife and children but toward
their moral development in social life?
The effect of unlimited power over another is generally worse for the
one who wields than for the one who is subjected to that power, and
the faults of men have their deepest origin in the family order that
gave all its members into his complete control. Man's faults of
dogmatism, of selfish domination, of sacrifice of personal life to
further desired political or economic ends, have roots in the
patriarchal family. Man's careless misuse of his own moral ideals for
purposes of ambition was certainly fostered by this sense of ownership
of women and children with legal power to use them for pleasure or
profit.
Something else, however, came to man in and through the patriarchal
system. Society, that gave him liberty to rule the family, rigidly
required of him that such rule should be in the social interest, as
that interest was then understood.
It was obviously for the interest of society that women should be
chaste, in order not only that a man might know his own children but
that the family line and inheritance should be preserved from
insecurity. A man's infidelity to the marriage vow might seem to do no
perceptible harm if practised outside the family circle, but woe to
him if he trespassed upon the family ownership of another man.
There might be more than one wife acknowledged as secondary in status
or a mere concubine slave to help in domestic duties while giving
pleasure to the head of the family, but there was early a social
demand for one chief wife whose offspring should inherit the family
power. Although even in this fixed demand there were loopholes of
"legal fiction of adoption" by which some favorite child not of the
actual line of inheritance might be given the place of honor and
control. Again, if the father under the patriarchal system was the
recognized economic master he was also legally held to the financial
support of wife and child. In the collective family life his
obligation extended far through the line of kinship and of alliance by
marriage, and to-day in many Oriental countries the father may be
bound to poverty as the responsible support of a large company of
dependent pensioners. It must also be remembered that if the ancient
father, as head of the family, held the permission of society to
discipline wife and child even to severity of corporal punishment he
was also charged with the task of insuring their obedience to whatever
social laws were in force and was himself legally liable to punishment
if he did not keep his family law-abiding. That moral responsibility
for the behavior of his family, early outlined in detail, was
increasingly eased by the growth of personal relationship of women and
youth to society. That was shown in the laws that defined the extent
of punishment allowed the father-head. Although he might be secure in
his legal right and duty to bestow on wife or apprentice "moderate
castigation," an old Welsh law limited him to "three blows only with
a broomstick on any part of the person except the head;" and another
ancient law allowed the use only of "a stick no longer than the
husband's arm and no thicker than his middle finger" in the case of
the wife; while Blackstone's well-remembered restriction was to "a
stick no bigger than his thumb."
The moral responsibility of the father for his children, carrying with
it as it did the liability of prison or even death for the misbehavior
of sons, was governed by various statutes which show in the Middle
Ages a growth toward freeing children from parental control and
placing upon them when "of age" a definite and personal legal bond and
penalty.
For example, we read that the Anglo-Saxon law held many children at
the age of ten responsible for some acts which were forbidden, but
that most youth were legally minors until the age of fifteen. Until
the early period of the eighteenth century it was still possible for a
parent to legally sell his children, "a girl up to fourteen, a boy
under seven." And after that period a wayward or troublesome son or
daughter, or any of the offspring, when the parents could be proved
financially incapable of their care, could be sent to convent or
monastery.
The ability to bear arms seems to have been the criterion for legal
coming of age. The Romans, with their heavy weapons, held the son in
tutelage until the age of fifteen. The Germans, with their use of
light darts, gave their sons power of self-control at the age of
twelve. In the heyday of feudalism "a knight's son became of age when
he could swing his father's sword" and "a yeoman's son when he could
swing his father's battle-axe," and by that process the fathers were
released from liability to punishment for their sons' misdemeanors.
On the other hand, after the tenth century, no child under ten could
be punished for his father's crimes unless it could be shown that he
was a party to them, and the custom of carrying family autonomy so far
as to wipe out innocent and guilty alike, when a treason or crime of
any sort angered the powers in command, was practically ended.
When the beginnings of the modern industrial order appeared and
burghers shared with knights and yeomen the social responsibility, "a
burgher's son acquired freedom and legal responsibility when he could
count and measure broadcloth." The wife gained a growing and perilous
freedom from laws which increased her direct relationship to the
state. She attained the power of being punished even by the death
penalty for broken laws far earlier than she attained the slightest
influence in the passage or enforcement of those laws. It was
generally thought, however, until very recently, that if a wife "did
not behave" it was the husband's fault and right that he should suffer
the consequences.
=The Responsibility of the Ancient Father Commensurate With His
Power.=--Again, it must be remembered that if the ancient father was
by virtue of his military training and activities separated from the
domestic interests which he so often and with full social permission
sacrificed to war and preparation for war, he was at the same time
under perpetual conscription by the community of which he was a part
to serve as protector of his own family and the families of those of
the same social group. The social pressure upon the father-head of the
family was therefore severe and unremitting, since he was in so many
ways responsible for, as truly as master of, his household. It was no
light task to be a worthy head of a patriarchal family in all the ages
when growing law was superseding custom and advancing civilization was
increasing the complexity of social life. This task when well achieved
gave to man a serious sense of his duty as well as a firm conviction
of his power.
We see the fruits of that ethical training in family responsibility in
many of man's noblest traits; preëminently in his recognition of the
duty of protection of the weak and young, and in his devotion to his
own, against the world if need be.
The vast outreach of man's intelligence toward the organization of the
state, of the industrial order, of the church, of the formal educative
process, of the means of transportation, of the systems of finance, of
the development and application of scientific knowledge, and even of
the arts and of literature, all reveal the effect of his early
schooling in the representative responsibility of fatherhood to
society.
We speak to-day of the "father of modern invention" in this or that
particular. We have not ceased to praise the "good provider" or to
esteem him highly who has a well-ordered home.
=Moral Qualities in Women Developed by Masculine
Selection.=--Moreover, we are all now recognizing the fact that we owe
to the ownership of woman by man a secondary sex-selection of
inestimable value. It may be an extreme statement to say, with at
least one sociologist, that the ages of woman's subjection to man was
not too great a price to pay for the gift to the race of feminine
beauty and charm. We can assert, however, that some moral values which
men insisted upon in the women they chose for wives gave the race what
at one time it needed most and still needs: namely, the habit of
service to others, and the power of adaptability to changing and often
difficult conditions.
Man's genius for organization institutionalizes every aspect of
thought and activity he takes under his control. The institution,
organized at first for the benefit of personal life and the
life-process, tends invariably toward a fixity of method and hardness
of substance that finally sacrifices life-growth to its iron pressure
until a new form of institution makes its way through struggle and
suffering.
The relation of women to men and of women to family life demanded of
most women easy and rapid adjustment to the requirements of others and
led to their mediation between every institution and the personal
life. The household mastership of men, and the fact that they could
choose for favor the sort of women most agreeable to them as masters,
placed at the centre of the family, and therefore at the centre of the
life-process itself, the type of womanhood that lent itself most
easily to social adjustment. And it placed that type at the centre of
the social order when the "cake of custom" most needed to be broken to
allow of a more democratic association. The type of womanhood which
masculine selection, working through long ages, has made the
essentially "womanly" type, is one in which physical beauty, charm of
manner, general rather than special ability, affectionate and
competent response to family, easy adaptability to whatever social
system her marriage might give entrance, and unswerving loyalty to the
ethical traditions and religious sanctions of her day and generation,
combine to attract the love of man and the devotion of children.
Some of these elements of character are especially needed to-day in
order to make democracy work, and to secure against dangers incident
to decay of autocratic control, and hence may later prove of great
social use in the modern state.
The idealization of womanhood by man, which seems never to have made
him uneasy in claiming control of her person or estate, has embodied
itself in the artist's pictures of Truth and Justice, and Knowledge
and Charity, in feminine forms. These bear witness to the fact that
even when men were most insistent upon father-rights they were moulded
by intimate companionship with women in the home to some appreciation
of the value of feminine personality.
While, therefore, the moral discipline which came to the mother in the
old order of the family, led her to understand the value of
personality, and the need of ever-increasing effort to make the
individual lives within the family circle comfortable, happy and good,
the moral discipline of the patriarchal father led toward an
increasing conquest of nature, of other men, and of all the social
forces, in the interest of his own family group. This led at last to
his impersonation of many ideals in the "eternal womanly that leads us
on."
=The Higher Ideal of Fatherhood.=--Throughout this many-sided
discipline of marriage and parenthood there has been growing an ideal
of fatherhood so noble and so tender that it has easily become the
central thought in many religions.
The "Heaven-father" is an old picture. The Father in Heaven persists
in the effort to bring the Supreme near to the human heart. A law of
obedience unquestioned, a rule of conduct making an actual Way of
Life, a power unlimited and yet a loving-kindness that marks the
sparrow's fall and has regard for the prodigal as for the upright
son--surely there must have been uncounted fathers of goodness and
wisdom passing praise to have made the name the easiest one by which
to call the Divine!
Meanwhile, the average life has been working, often unconsciously,
toward a condition in which the patriarchal father is out of drawing
with his own industry, his own political system, and his own theology.
To-day we give the wives and potential wives contract-power, private
ownership of property, opportunity for economic independence,
vocational training, entrance to all higher educational institutions,
adult responsibility under the law, and the franchise on equal terms
with men.
In the light of these accomplished facts vain is the effort of such
writers as Devoe, in his _Studies in Family Life_, to show that "the
Christian family" still makes women "subject" and holds "all goods in
common" in the husband's name.
=Incomplete Adjustment and Equality of Rights in the Family.=--There
is, however, great confusion of mind as to the extent of change in the
father-office which the new independence of wives and mothers should
effect. Take, for example, the matter of the financial responsibility
of the husband and father. 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. That in
itself would make some confusion in cases where international
marriages give separate national interest.
In respect to man's responsibility for national defense in the
interest of home and native land, he is alone conscripted to-day, as
of old, for fighting service on the battle-field, but all manner of
social demands, almost as imperative as a governmental draft, now call
women to special service in war time. In peace, the taxes know no sex,
and the rules of the business game are not amenable to chivalry.
In the matter of professional and vocational training and opportunity,
men and women are largely on an equal footing, in the United States,
at least. And apparently for the first time in human history a man and
a woman, both eminent in their line of work, may seriously ask which
of the two earns the larger salary, and hence it may be which of the
two can do more toward family support.
The full consequences of women's moral acts now fall wholly upon her
in the case of disobedience to law. There is still, it is true, in
some parts of the civilized world respect for "an unwritten law" that
excuses a man for killing a rival in his wife's affections, but for
the most part she stands on her own feet and he on his when there is
question of crime or misdemeanor.
=The Marriage Question To-day the "Husband-problem."=--The whole
situation is changing in so many ways as relates to the mutual
obligation of men and women in family life that Havelock Ellis is
right when he says "the marriage question to-day is much less the
wife-problem than the husband-problem." That is to say, the single
headship of the family is invaded and yet the methods of adjustment of
two heads are not yet clear in either law or custom. As the Bishop of
Hereford said at the meeting of his brother Bishops, in which the
resolution to omit the word "obey" from the marriage service of the
Church of England was withdrawn (on the ground that if presented it
would be successfully opposed), "It is obvious to every one that it
would not be convenient to have two heads to a family."[5] There are
already two heads in every up-to-date family in the United States! The
real difficulty now is to see how best to adjust mutual
responsibilities toward each other and toward the children involved,
and to write a consistent and uniform set of statutes into the law.
That law respecting marriage and the family, partly inherited without
change from the patriarchal order, partly altered in particulars in
obedience to some popular demand based on cramping conditions made by
the law whenever it was enforced, after it was already outgrown, needs
careful revision. Ignored so often by the moral and intellectual
élite, inconsistently set aside by new measures passed without regard
to what is already established as precedent, all laws respecting
marriage, the family, and the parental relation which have come down
from the past, need thorough overhauling and the best wisdom should be
exercised in full revision and codification.
The husband and father, meanwhile, many times holds firmly to his
old-time fine chivalry and adds justice without spoiling his
relationship to the family. The wife keeps her inherited aptitude for
loving care of husband and children, and adds a new independence of
thought and action without danger of confusion of ideal or function.
=Can Women Have All the New Freedom and Also All the Old
Privileges?=--Some women, however, are trying the absurd and dangerous
experiment of seeing how much they can take from men in the old lines
of "support" and how little they can give in the old lines of service;
how much they can gain in the new freedom and how little they can pay
for it in individual work. These are the women who are willing that
the family property shall be in their name for the purpose of cheating
creditors, and at the same time acknowledge no obligation to support
the children from a common family fund. These are the women who demand
their liberty to achieve and deny their duty to help. These are the
women who take "alimony" from a man with whom they will not live and
have married for their own convenience. They are the women who have
independent incomes from inheritance or from vocational success and
yet excuse themselves from any responsibility toward even invalid
husbands, and never see the parental bond as now binding both fathers
and mothers alike.
Many men are struggling in some confusion of mind as to the outcome of
this new tendency to equalize rights and opportunities, and to the
credit of most of them, be it spoken, they want to do the right thing.
It is now for women to preserve the father, the best of him, and for
men to still call for the mother, the noblest of her, in the new
adjustments that wait for full realization of the new democracy in the
family.
Here, again, we need not wait for perfect consistency in law, or full
understanding of social tendencies and their outcome, to find our way
in life. Love shows the way--love between intellectual and moral
equals, who, in trying to adjust their own lives to a higher law in
which "self-reverencing each and reverencing each," settle all
problems on the higher levels of thought and feeling.
=New Social Advantages for Fathers.=--Meanwhile, again, the
father-office stands out in actual living function as never before.
The fathers that now show what fatherhood was meant to be--they are
legion. Holding the wife and mother in her place of sacred honor, they
are to their children the Supreme Court of appeal in grave questions
of discipline, the highest functionary of the family in the
distribution of honors and rewards, the best comrade in fun, the most
delightful companion in games, the strongest challenger in effort, and
the symbol of knowledge and power of the community life.
With the new partnership of men and women in the family the father has
a chance to be a companion and friend as never before. He has an
opportunity to show his children that side which the ancient father
often failed to develop, the side of friendship and understanding. To
the boy a clear picture of what he would be, to the girl a declaration
of the kind of man she would marry, the modern father of the highest
type makes possible a modern mother who shall show her son what
womanhood may become in freedom, and who can lead her daughter to be,
like herself, the flower of all the best of the past.
QUESTIONS ON THE FATHER
1. What, in general, have been the social demands upon husbands
and fathers, and how have these been met in the past?
2. What effect has the new freedom of women had upon the autonomy
of the family and the legal obligations of the husband and
father?
3. Should the relation of men and women to family life be
identical? If not, why not? If so, what new agencies can or
should be developed to secure what husbands and fathers are now
legally obligated to provide?
4. What ideal of fatherhood should we now secure and maintain?
5. In Minnesota, recent bills presented to the Legislature
"relating to and regulating marriage" include among the items
"prohibition of marriage within six months after a divorce has
been granted from a former spouse; and forbidding of marriage
between persons either one of whom is epileptic, imbecile,
feeble-minded, insane, an habitual drunkard, affected with a
venereal disease, or addicted to the use of opium, morphine, or
cocaine." This indicates the trend of newer laws regulating
marriage. Is this trend justified? If so, how do the laws of
your own State compare with others in this particular?
6. Doctor Devine says, "Home is not a boarding-house, but a
complex of relations, physical and spiritual, which were never
more beautiful, more enduring or more ennobling than in the
modern family." Is that true? If so, what contribution must the
father continue to make to family success?
FOOTNOTES:
[4] See "Education of the Australian Boy," by A.W. Howitt, in his book,
_Native Tribes of Southeast Australia_, showing the Initiation
Ceremonies that separated the youth from family influence.
[5] Since that decision a General Convocation of the American
Protestant Episcopal Church has voted to eliminate the word "obey" from
its marriage service.
CHAPTER IV
THE GRANDPARENTS
"From my grandfather I learned good morals and the government of
temper. From my great-grandfather to know that on education one
should spend liberally. From the reputation and remembrance of my
father, modesty and a manly character. From my mother, piety and
beneficence, and abstinence not only from evil deeds but from evil
thoughts; and, further, simplicity in way of living. To the gods I
am indebted for having good grandparents, good parents, a good
sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and
friends."--MARCUS AURELIUS.
"Honorable age is not that which standeth in length of years, nor
that is measured by number of years; but wisdom is the grey hair
unto men and an unspotted life is old age. The multitude of the
wise is the welfare of the world; and the righteous live
forevermore."--THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON.
"Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind. It is not a
matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a temper
of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the
emotions; it is the freshness of the springs of life.
"Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over
timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. We
grow old only by deserting our ideals. In every heart there is a
wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope,
cheer, courage and power from other men and women, and from the
Infinite, so long is every one young."--SAMUEL ULMAN.
"Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made."
--BROWNING.
=Relative Increase of the Aged in Modern Life.=--The outstanding fact
concerning the aged is that they increase proportionately to
population as civilization increases. Easier conditions of living make
for longer life. Public sanitation, private hygiene, good heating
arrangements in each house, good water and plenty of it, sidewalks
and porches for easy airing, medical science and the art of nursing
made more widely available even for the poor, more physical comforts
of every sort, more widely distributed, all tend toward the
preservation of life after middle age is reached. They also tend to
keep alive many babies who would have died in harder conditions and
prolong the life of many invalids who would have succumbed to
hardships in early youth. Indeed, Doctor Holmes declared that "the
best insurance of a long life was to acquire an incurable disease when
young;" while the average of robust health in all modern communities
is certainly lowered by the modern methods of preservation of the
delicate and the aged.
=Savage Treatment of the Old.=--In the annals of savage life we find
many gruesome tales of intentional disposal of the aged. The use of
the old grandmother as a target for the training of young boys in the
art of slaying one's enemy is an extreme example. The pathetic couple
left behind when the tribe migrated, often with a small supply of food
saved for them by some pitiful member of the family from the scanty
hoard that must suffice until the next harvest or the next hunting,
the neglect and the actual abuse that often made the last days quickly
ended, all show that when life is too hard there is no room for the
old.
=The Relation of Ancestor-worship to Respect for Aged Men.=--Two
things, at least, helped to give the aged a better place in the social
esteem and in the provision for necessities as primitive life
developed toward civilization. One was ancestor-worship, which made
the father and the grandfather a link, indispensable and therefore
honored, in the chain of blood relationship which carried on the
generations. This type of religious belief and practice did not,
however, work to ease the lot of old women. If the young wife did not
have a child, especially a son, she could be repudiated often, and
lose her standing in the family relation and hence be subjected to
hardships that made her early old and often ended her life while still
in middle age. If she had a son and rose to be a grandmother she might
attain a most honorable position, having her son's wife to be her
servant and her son's son's wife to be her slave. Even with the best
intentions, the patriarchal father could not attend to all the details
of government within his usually extensive household, and no man has
yet lived who could manage unassisted a group of women, such as legal
polygamy and concubinage brings under one roof, each one determined to
get from him the best possible conditions for her own life and that of
her children.
=The Position of Chief-mother in Ancient Family.=--These facts often
made the position of the chief-mother in a family one of such
importance that they became her insurance against want and
ill-treatment. The position of the chief-mother in the collective
family is now one of the vital problems of Eastern nations trying to
adjust the family system to modern ideas. The father's power is so
much a delegated responsibility and the relationship between the
lesser wives and the younger wives so much closer to the chief-mother
than to the chief-father that the grandmother's position may be that
of a tyrant. A series of questions which a group of Chinese students
in an American university has drawn up include such as the following:
"Where a young girl is brought into the home to be reared as the
future bride of the boy in the family, is there any limit to the
authority of the mother-in-law?" The mother-in-law in such cases being
usually the older or chief-mother, she is really the
grandmother-in-law.
=Memory of the Aged Valued in Primitive Life.=--The position of aged
men in primitive life secured some advantages because of the
dependence upon memory for the carrying on of continued and conscious
social existence before literature was born. The aged man who had been
an important member of some military order or "fraternity" and
remembered the exact words and motions of a valued ritual could be
sure of having his continued life provided for by all those who
desired to learn and to retain the means of perpetuating the religious
cult thus expressed. Also those who remembered vital tribal
occurrences and dealings with other tribes and could rehearse the same
with exactness must have been considered of social use, and the older
they were the more their memory gathered and the more their recital
seemed sacred and hence the more the reciter was cherished.
Nothing corresponding to this social value of the aged man, who could
make permanent in ritual or in song or in story the experiences of the
group, can be traced in the valuation of the experience of the aged
woman in the periods before written literature. There were, however,
as we can clearly see, traditions and customs, taboos and permitted
familiarities so many and varied that old women with good memories and
a personality that commanded attention must have had some accepted
value within the inner circles of family experience. We get from
folk-lore some clear intimations of this prestige and power of the
ancient old woman in intimate social relationship.
The power of old men received a great accession when political and
religious orders and legal rules began to make social organization
more definite and precise. "Old men for council; young men for war"
had an early meaning. "The venerable Senate" is not a modern phrase.
The "reverend father of the church" is an ancient allusion to the
respect for and leadership of the aged in religious circles. The Popes
of to-day begin their high service at an age that is in many positions
a "dead line." The hardening of the social arteries in religion,
government, politics, and law, however, while making old men more sure
of their place in life, made old women less valued and worse treated.
The ages of mediæval experience and of the feudal order, until
chivalry began to affect the sex-relation, show almost unbelievable
cruelty toward many aged women. The idea of the church fathers that
women were, at best, a necessary evil and at worst the form most often
assumed by the Devil of temptation, made it seem that all divergence
from the purely domestic type was proof of collusion with evil powers.
And all nervous ailments were once deemed a sign of the witches
compact with Satan. Hence, since the unmitigated drudgery and the hard
conditions of the lives of most women made them not only prematurely
old but also given to nervous prostration (before that title appeared
in the medical lists), the numbers of old women tortured, burned,
drowned, beaten, and stoned to death, and otherwise destroyed, seems
almost incredible to modern ideas, although so well authenticated in
history.
=Old Women and the Witchcraft Delusion.=--The young woman, being
necessary for the bearing and rearing of children and the carrying on
of important, although despised, labors, might escape active ill
treatment. The old woman, old at thirty-five or forty, often, was not
only considered a useless burden but a positive nuisance if she were
at all "highstrung" or "meddling." Hence the natural conception, in a
time of superstitious fear of evil spirits, of her complicity with
those spirits made her seem a danger to society. The history of the
witchcraft delusion and the cruelties that were a part of that
delusion show that aged women almost alone suffered from that
nightmare of human ignorance.
Doubtless, however, there were even in those days grandmothers beloved
and protected, busy even to the last with caretaking of childhood and
the rites of hospitality; grandmothers whom their sons and even their
sons-in-law revered for some quality of gentleness and sympathy found
useful in family emergencies; grandmothers whose shrewd wisdom of
experience and fine gift of understanding made them invaluable members
of the family circle. Folk-lore and ancient song give hint of these.
The waste of old age in women, however, is, as has been indicated
elsewhere by the writer, the greatest of all social wastes since time
began. The idea that women were serviceable only for the procreative
function and the hardest drudgery of family service, and that they
lost all social value when they ceased to be attractive to the senses
of men or ended their personal ministrations to their own little
children, long obtained. This idea is responsible for the further
conception of old women as not only useless but a disagreeable burden.
Hence, while old men rose during many ages in social regard and
protection and care, old women became more and more miserable and
ill-treated where the collective family was superseded by the newer
type of individualistic bond between one man, one woman, and their
children. In the ancient patriarchal and collective family the oldest
mother might reign as queen. In the more modern type of family, made
the social fashion by what is called Christian civilization, the aged
woman, the grandmother, unless exceptionally attractive and
sweet-tempered and exceptionally able to help in the household tasks,
was the victim of the change from one system to the other. The fact
that women, if well-developed and well-treated, are younger at seventy
than are men and that more women than men live to be aged than when
the conditions of living were less favorable to the weak and delicate,
gave early in our civilization what must have seemed far too many old
women.
While women had the constant burden of a "steady job" within the home,
harder and more continuous than men had in their handicraft labor, yet
men were killed in battle in large numbers, and were physically able
to dangerously overdo in some labor "spurt" and hence more women than
men lived to be old. Hence, again, there were far more grandmothers
than grandfathers in the family in all mediæval life. This led to many
cruelties to old women who were deemed "superfluous." While, however,
the actual experience of common people made conditions so hard for
grandmothers, the idealism within the religious field was favorable to
the mother of any age. The same church fathers who shunned marriage as
a cowardly concession to the body, and who wrote flaming
animadversions upon women in general, gave the Virgin and Child their
adoration and made a place of honor and of comfort to those women who
chose the religious vocation outside the home.
=Older Women in Religious Vocations Honored in Middle Ages.=--These
women, the Ladies of the Abbeys and the special servitors of the
Church, reached the first independent places of distinction which
women in Christian civilization attained and to them, at least, age
added power and veneration. Hence, even while they ignored their
relationship to common womanhood, they often allayed superstitious
cruelty toward other old women.
Whenever any subject class develops within it a genius or a quality of
talent or a specialty of activity that gives personal prestige, that
class as a whole gains recognition. The Carlisle Indian who beats at
the game of football; the Afric-American artist whose works claim
admiration; the representative of the backward nation who shows power
of achievement formerly supposed to be the sole accomplishment of the
conquering peoples, not only makes a place for himself, he opens the
door to wider opportunity for his class. So the woman of the religious
orders, when of scholarly achievement and of commanding intellect,
showed these qualities in increasing example as she grew older and
more experienced, and so worked to make a place for the older woman in
every sphere of life.
Slowly it began to dawn upon the common consciousness that the
individualistic family of one young couple and their children needed
props from within if it had lost those from without--those ancient
props which sustained as well as controlled young fathers and mothers
in the collective family. Hence grandmothers, and grandfathers, as
well, became of recognized use in the care and upbringing of children.
The picture of the grandmother by the fireside holding the youngest
baby and the grandfather coming in with a gift for the young mother,
who is manifestly pleased, with the young father in the background
delighted at the family welcome for his offspring, is not only old but
the theme of many of the world's best-loved paintings and stories.
=To-day Comparatively Few Really Old at Seventy.=--To-day there has
come about a wholly new condition in the most advanced centres of
social life in respect to the aged. In the first place, there are few
"old" grandmothers left. There are grandmothers, but they are
sprightly and give little token of being passée or laid on the shelf.
There are few old men left. There are those who have passed the
allotted term of threescore years and ten, but they well know and make
all others understand that this was a mistaken limit to human powers.
They look forward to usefulness until eighty, at least, and now are
encouraged to feel that one hundred years is the natural span of life.
There are, it is true, few really important studies of how to keep
people from growing senile and really old before the time now set for
failure of powers. Such studies, however, are prophesied in a small
"endowment for the study of diseases of the aged" already given, and
more in the statement of appeals for increase of such endowment. The
tendency now is setting strongly not only toward the lengthening of
life but toward the lengthening of the mental and physical power that
alone makes long life desirable.
We shall see more and more of this interest as medical science reaches
out further and further toward lessening all the ills that flesh is
heir to.
Meanwhile, what is the actual condition in the various strata of life,
in our own country, for example, in respect to the protection, the
care, the comfort, the happiness, and the general welfare of the aged?
In the first place, the speeding up of machinery has made many manual
workers prematurely old. The worst thing, perhaps, about child-labor
has been that, owing to premature "laying off" of the fathers, the
children have been set to earn money for family needs, and have
acquired, with their pay envelope, a contempt or disrespect for the
father in ways that have reversed the natural relationship and given
society much use for the Children's Court. This disrespect shown the
father, even when he is only of middle age, passes on in increased
measure to the grandfather who has been pushed aside from self-support
and family support while still comparatively young and has never been
able to again catch on to the wheels of industry. The fact that he
eats and does not work; that he takes space in the crowded tenement
and does not aid in paying its rent; that he has no light employment
that can give his fading mental powers an impulse toward ambition and
energy, all make the position of the grandfather in many homes of
struggling poverty a most unhappy one. In such homes the grandmother
is often still seen to be really useful. She may make it possible for
the young mother to earn outside the home. She may, if skilled in
sewing, ease the expense of ready-made clothes. She may, at least, and
usually does, relieve the mother of much care of the babies. There are
several reasons why more aged men are sent to public institutions for
final care than aged women of the same general type of family, but the
most important reason is that most women have skill in domestic
matters; and domestic service is needed everywhere, no matter how many
unemployed walk the streets. Needed most in the poorest home, the help
of the grandmother is often appreciated in inverse ratio to the
income.
In the circles above the poverty line there is much variety in the
estimation and in the treatment of grandfathers and grandmothers. The
ideal picture of a family always has in its background, if not in the
very front, an old man and an old woman, benevolent and sweet-natured,
who can be depended upon to be more indulgent to the children than
even the father or mother and who appear always in family emergencies
to renew their youth of service in behalf of the younger generation.
What is thus ideally pictured is a fact in thousands of families. No
one can say that it is always best to have three generations under one
roof, but all who have had a happy family experience believe that the
grandparents should be "handy by," to use the Scotch phrase. The
grandparents' house in the country is best of all, where all family
and national holidays can be celebrated with due form and in
accordance with ancient tradition. The grandparents' house for the
city children is next best, if in a suburb near by where more space
and independence of movement are possible than in the city residence.
The grandparents' house or apartment in the same or a near-by city is,
however, not at all to be despised as a refuge when "Mother does not
understand," or "Father is so particular."
=Is Any House Large Enough for Two Families?=--Although the proverb
says, "No house was yet made large enough for two families," the
residence of one grandparent (oftener the mother than the father)
within the family circle has often proved highly successful if only a
few rules have been observed. One of these rules is that each adult
person shall have one place strictly his of her own. Another is a
rule, so difficult for some aged persons of both sexes to obey,
namely, that each person married is doubly entitled to individual
choices in action without interference even from parents, since each
such married person has to adjust his or her ideas to another person.
To work out full agreement between themselves is all that any married
couple should be expected to accomplish. Hence, in the nature of
things, the grandparents who are so near the new family that they know
and see everything have a far more difficult rôle to play than do the
grandparents who have their own home and simply visit and are visited.
It is, however, often a necessity of financial provision and often a
choice of ease in ministration to the needs of the aged, that brings
one grandparent or even two within the daughter's or son's household.
The time-worn jokes about the "mother-in-law" are based upon the fact
that it is more often the daughter than the son who is expected to or
needs to personally care within her own home for the mother. The son
is not so bound by social custom to take his mother in. Hence, more
husbands than wives have trials with their parents-in-law.
=Reasons Why Husbands Desert Their Families.=--The statistics of
deserting husbands, as compiled in a careful study made by Lillian
Brandt and Roger Baldwin, show that among the chief causes of "leaving
home" is "trouble with the wife's relations." In these cases it is not
only the grandmother, although she is often a member of the disturbed
family; it is also often other relatives--a sister, a brother, or a
first husband's people--who cause trouble. The wife's mother is,
however, often enough a member of the household the husband leaves
behind to give some point to the coarse and often unjust jokes
concerning the mother-in-law.
Where the feeling is right, and both generations reasonable and just,
there are still many problems of adjustment arising from an attempt to
bring either or both parents of the married couple into the same
household. The first problem is that of the financial support. It
ought not to be the case that any aged couple or any widowed father or
mother should be left wholly dependent upon their children. The demand
for better economic provision for the aged is one of the most vital
and pressing of social needs. The difficulty of taking care of the
father and mother when the children are coming on with pressing needs
of their own is felt acutely in cases of narrow income. The call is
almost universal to provide more adequately for grandparents. How can
we meet this call?
=The Financial Provision for Old Age.=--In the case of those whose
earning capacity is not equal to saving a sufficient old-age provision
while at work the claim for an Old-age Pension is growing. This may be
either a subsidy from the state, a joint pension from the state and
the employing business in which the man or woman has worked, or it may
be a threefold provision contributed to from the savings of the
laborer, the quota from the employer, and the state subsidy. Since no
insurance system that discourages thrift, or fails to encourage it, is
socially sound, the latter seems the best ideal. There may be, in
addition, or as a substitute, a family provision on the plan so well
suggested by Mr. Taber in his book, _The Business of the Household_, a
plan that calls for the definite setting apart of an "Old-age Fund,"
to which each child shall contribute in the years when he is earning
most, not as a gift but as a "deferred payment," as it were, for all
that the parents give in childhood. To this Old-age Fund any savings
of the father and mother may be added until a sufficient sum is
secured for comfortable care in old age. Mr. Taber indicates that at
least five dollars out of every twenty-five saved should be thus
assigned and invested only in the safest manner and held inviolate, no
matter what the temporary needs of the family may be, until the
work-time has passed. Whatever plan may be adopted, it is certain that
family well-being and the happiness of the aged alike call for a
better and more adequate old-age provision.
The laborers who earn less than the required sum for a decent standard
of life for father, mother, and children cannot, of course, make any
provision for their own old age or care for dependent parents. In such
families the public institutions or privately endowed and managed
"Homes for the Aged" offer the only and often a comfortable and
sometimes a happy place for the grandparents. The movement for this
social care of the aged has many phases. In some countries, as in _The
Danish Care of the Aged_, so well described by Edith Sellers in her
book of that name, there is a far more complete and generous use of
public funds than we have in the United States, a possibility of
careful grading of persons in appropriate groups, and a removal of the
crushing sense of public charity which those of English ancestry so
often feel when obliged "to go upon the town;" yet this leaves much to
be desired.[6]
In the grade of economic condition above that in which it is a dire
struggle to make both ends meet for the husband, wife, and their
little children, there are to be considered five ways in which the
care of the aged can be made adequate and not too great a burden upon
those of young and those of middle life.
=Needed Ways of Preparing for Old Age.=--First: There must be devised,
as indicated above, better and surer ways of insurance, savings, and
pensions, by which the grandparents can be made more or less
independent even in families of limited means.
Second: There must he measures established for the prevention of
premature old age, measures operating in health and in labor-power to
prolong self-dependence by means of individual earnings, to the
fullest extent possible.
Third: There must be for men, as for women, provision in vocational
training by which each person may have in reserve some light and
interesting form of activity, possibly of earning value, which may
serve as occupation when strenuous work is outgrown.
Fourth: There must be a clearer understanding of the mutual
obligations of parents and children so that the care of the aged may
seem more often, what it really is in most cases, not a charity from
within the family circle, to be passed around with jealous eye for
just distribution of family burdens within the group of children, but
a family debt, for the payment of which early and constant provision
must be made by all members of the family during the years of largest
earning power. If the grandparents have had a chance to save enough to
pay all their own share of the family expense to the end of life, well
and good. If, on the contrary, as is so often the case (now that the
social standard for child-care and child-education has risen to such
heights of parental requirement), the parents, now old, have spent so
lavishly on the schooling and marriage setting up of their sons and
daughters that they have not been able to save for themselves, then
the obligation of the children is clear and the grandparents should
never feel themselves pensioners.
Fifth: Actual old age, senility, failure of physical and mental power,
should be postponed in each case as long as possible by active
measures of mental and moral discipline consciously undertaken by
personal effort. "The making of mind" is not an art of youth alone. It
is an art of middle age and of the older years. Says William James:
"The man who daily inures himself to habits of concentrated attention,
energetic volition and self-denial in unnecessary things, will stand
like a tower when everything rocks around him and when his softer
fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast." Such a one also
will resist the decay of powers and be able to keep young when the
years tell of many birthdays.
To go over these points with greater detail: The first requirement,
namely, to make sure that all possible financial provision is made for
grandparents while they are yet young and capable enough in their work
to save, is one that is more and more recognized. Moreover, the
tendency in every country is increasingly toward state recognition of
the duty of society toward its aged members. The proposition of Victor
Berger, then the solitary socialistic member of the Congress of the
United States, to pension every person over the age of sixty is one
that will hardly be carried into effect. The objection, however, to
much existing pensioning by the state which this blanket proposition
was intended to offset is that its benefits are mostly for those near
the poverty line or below it and hence may be and often is a
discouragement to thrift and self-dependence rather than an aid to
individual effort.
=Pension Laws.=--For example, in Great Britain, the pension law made
all eligible to state aid who were over seventy years of age and whose
personal income did not exceed one hundred and five dollars per year.
Such were entitled to aid to the extent of $1.25 a week, and those
having incomes above that sum were entitled to receive a graduated
series of state benefits. This aid from the state has doubtless made
the condition of many aged persons far more tolerable and even happy
in families where, previous to the passage of that Act, the extra
expense involved in caring for the grandparents was the last straw
that broke the back of independency. In all cases where the addition
of a few dollars weekly to the family income is an actual and obvious
help to family comfort, state pensions for the aged have worked good
results in family feeling and good-will and affection. Where, however,
the state aid comes without any contributory savings from the
individual or his employer and where to qualify for its benefit all
must have an income of very small proportion, it is in effect a class
measure and obviously for the relief of the very poor.
The higher family interest demands that every system of insurance or
of subsidy, or of occasional aid to any member of the family, should
tend directly and powerfully toward and not away from thrift, work
capacity, and sound business principles. Society-at-large must now
make good in some makeshift fashion for many social failures of the
past, but its main currents of pressure upon the individual life
should be in the production of a line of normal and successful men and
women, rather than attempts to make all share alike, whatever their
personal quality, when old age comes on. This principle makes it
imperative that some larger and wiser plan than has as yet been
attempted shall make all systems of financial care of the aged a
positive aid toward self-dependence and social serviceability.
=Old-age Home Insurance.=--In this connection a radical suggestion is
offered, namely, a scheme for Old-age Home Insurance. It is a
well-known fact that the waiting list of most private Homes for the
Aged is long, and that men and women wait piteously for the death of
an "inmate" to give them entrance to the only place of comfort and
security life can offer them. It is also well known that there are
more aged persons who need the companionship of those of their own
generation, who need quiet and relief from the noise and excitement of
young children, than can now secure those requirements in the homes of
their daughters or their sons. It is again true, although not so well
recognized or understood, that most aged persons unable financially to
retain a personal home would prefer a choice between residence in a
child's family, however dutiful and generous that child might be, and
residence elsewhere. It is also true that the care of aged parents in
her own home is often too great a tax upon the time and strength of
the housemother when there are many young children. Again, it is true
that many aged people prefer a place they can call "home," even if it
is only one room, to which they can invite their friends and from
which they may pay visits to their relatives, even their nearest and
dearest, and return to their own small quarters at will. It is also
true that although most elderly persons live for years in quite good
health and need little actual nursing, they do profit by occasional
attentions which a nurse can give, and few such elderly people can
afford or obtain this occasional service in either a home of their own
or in one shared with a child.
These facts indicate a need for a larger and a more democratic
provision of homes for the aged, a provision that can be more easily
made by personal effort through the younger years of life, and one
that can receive social aid at less cost to personal dignity and with
less rigid rules of managing "Boards" than the present prevailing type
of Homes for the Aged supply. The boarding house sought by many aged
persons who prefer independence of life to living in the family of
their children, and sought also by many well-to-do elderly widows and
widowers who find that the personal home is too lonely or too
expensive to keep up for one alone--the average boarding house is a
sorry substitute for a home. For the young, who hope to escape it
soon, it is tolerable. For the aged, who need to feel settled, it is
often a most unhappy dwelling-place. Beside, any one who tries to find
a place for the elderly boarder will find that prices are often
prohibitive for all but the rich, and few boarding mistresses want old
people.
A state pension has often, as has been said, been proposed for all
aged people. Let us suppose that instead of this some scheme of State
Insurance for Old-age Homes be devised; a scheme in which after the
payment of a certain specified sum a share in a Boarding Home might be
secured. If the state or if any private Agency or Foundation could
provide the "plant," a suitable building and its repairs and
fundamental expenses of upkeep, with one salaried superintendent whose
character and ability could be guaranteed, the running expenses of a
Boarding Home could be met easily by the limited means of many who now
lack the security of an institutional provision and in consequence
lack also many essentials of old-age comfort.
A skilled budget-maker could determine the numbers required in each
household to make the board low and a sympathetic social worker could
suggest the coöperative features of management most likely to give
successful results in the composite home. The entrance age in such a
Boarding Home could be lower than that required in the usual type of
privately endowed Home for the Aged and thus a felt need be met for a
suitable home for those between the ages of fifty-five and sixty-five.
In these privately endowed Homes for the Aged the entrance fees range
from $100 to $1,000, and beneficiaries are required to give up all the
property of any kind of which they may be possessed when they enter
this permanent residence. This is not unjust, but it is often an added
trial to the independent nature. There is need of far larger provision
for the old in Homes for Aged Men, Aged Women, and Aged Couples. No
one can give anything but gratitude for the opportunities they now
offer or fail to hope for their increase. There is, however, a special
need for some social engineering which can initiate Boarding Homes for
the Elderly. Many of these are still strong and well, but need special
consideration in particular ways. Many others are not ill, but
delicate, and in need not of full-time nursing care but of occasional
good offices of trained helpers. One nurse, a "practical nurse" or a
trained nurse past in age and strength full service of her profession,
could easily give occasional service needed for twenty or more elderly
persons in usual health or for ten or more aged, in greater need of
care but not helpless, if all were under the same roof. The
coöperative plans that often fail in serving the family of father,
mother, and children, may be found exactly suited to special classes,
and among them the aged. The Social Settlements were started to serve
and have served the neighborhood needs of the poor and the immigrant.
They have also, incidentally, demonstrated the financial advantages of
coöperative housekeeping. A company of congenial people living
together in groups of twenty to forty can secure the essentials of
food, shelter, and necessary service at a cost per person far below
the average expense for boarding or private housekeeping. This does
not mean that families can combine easily in multiple households. The
personal equation counts for its greatest influence in the real family
group, of father, mother, and their children under eighteen years of
age. Few, if any, schemes of coöperative housekeeping have as yet
worked well for the combination of such groups.
The aged, especially the aged widow or widower, are not in the direct
family group. They belong to but they are not inside the inmost
circle. If one alone is left the life of the personal home is broken
for the elderly, however dear and kind the children may be. For such
there surely needs something easier than the attempt to maintain a
separate home with half its life gone. And also something more
independent and more secure than either enforced residence with
children or compulsory use of the ordinary commercialized boarding
house.
=To Prevent Premature Old Age.=--The second social demand, that
premature old age shall be more effectively prevented, is one that is
pressed upon this generation with new and imperative considerations. A
knowledge of health conditions shows that although infant mortality is
greatly lessened and infectious and epidemic diseases greatly brought
under control, the diseases of middle age, such as hardening of
arteries and kidney and digestive disorders, have increased
relatively, while insanity is much more frequent than of old. These
facts give us all deep concern. From the failure of health in middle
life comes the premature senility and the invalid weakness of old age.
The cause of the increase of middle-life diseases, relatively to those
of other periods of life, seems to be principally the pressure of
business and industrial life upon the worker. The high speed of
machinery, the extreme competition in business, the monotony of the
specialized manufacturing groups, the weight of great financial
enterprises and the struggle to make the family setting equal to the
family desires or even the family needs, all tend to make men in
middle life fail so often in health and so often leave behind their
better sheltered and more tenderly cared-for wives. There is a new
movement of great social importance, and one tending directly toward
the saving of one-half of the family circle, which is now taking a
front place in social interest; namely, the movement for annual
medical examinations. The work of the Life Extension Institute leads
toward this end and seeks the better adjustment of life and work in
the interest of simplicity and mutual service in the family and the
better health of all its members.
It is not, however, in the power of the wisest and most unselfish of
individuals to so manage the work-power as to insure against premature
old age from too great speeding and overstrain. There must be social
movement of the most thorough-going sort to prevent the waste of the
laborers in all fields. Social workers should remember that it is not
alone important to try to safeguard the health and strength of mothers
and of potential mothers by laws protecting women and girls in
industry. It is as vital a need to safeguard the health and strength
and perpetuate the work-power of fathers and potential fathers in
order that old age may be not a terror but a blessing to the family.
This is emphasized by recent indications that the increase of the
diseases of middle age is already checked and that we are gaining
ground in this particular.
A recent report of the Federal Department of Commerce through the
Bureau of Census shows that there has been a decline in the death-rate
for all age periods during the last decade. In the rate for infants
under one year of age a decline of twenty-six per cent., or from
13,804 per 100,000 in 1910 to 9,660 per 100,000 in 1920. The
death-rate for middle-aged and old people shows an encouraging
decrease, that of twelve per cent., in the period above seventy-five
years of age. This shows that we are gaining on disease and premature
death with every new advance in preventive medicine and the crusade
against bad living conditions. This, again, means that in the future
we shall have more aged persons in ratio of population than we have
had in the past, and indicates the great need of taking measures
betimes to make old age not only more mentally strong but more happy
and comfortable in condition.
=Check Extreme Requirements for Youth in Labor.=--There are many
requirements for youth in offered opportunities of training and of
work which are distinctly detrimental to respect for, and possibility
of continued service of, the old. Take, for example, the age limit in
many departments of business and manual labor. During the war we had
in the countries most denuded of young men a new sort of trial of the
middle-aged in positions where it had been thought youth was required.
What was the result? The trial made in Chicago by fifteen large
employers of labor under the leadership of Mr. Benjamin Rosenthal, was
distinctly, to use his words, "to upset the fallacious theory that men
between the ages of 45 and 65 are fit only for the scrap-heap." The
result of this experiment showed that in some phases of work the older
men did as much work in a given number of hours as the younger men; in
other departments they did as much in the week or month, from their
steadiness and devotion to their work, but not as much in any one day.
That is, the older men were less quick, but more steady and,
therefore, in the end accomplished as much. In some kinds of labor the
older men did better than the younger because usually more patient of
detail and less restive in monotonous toil. In the larger enterprises
older men are proverbially less speculative, more conservative, less
venturesome than the young. American business would, perhaps, not
suffer if a larger admixture of these qualities were found in all the
walks of commerce and business.
The fact that when a man is at the head of a concern, large or small,
he is valued usually more at sixty-five than at thirty-five, and the
further fact that thirty-five is often the dead-line for admission to
the lower ranks of the same industry or commercial position, is a
proof that this age-limit of the worker in lower position is not one
of definite knowledge of actual incapacity after forty years of age
but rather due to other conditions. Those conditions are, first and
foremost, the easier management of younger than of older subordinates.
It is hard for many men to "order about," in peremptory fashion, a man
older than themselves, and few men can command without abruptness or
sharp orders. It is still harder for most men to order about as office
assistant or clerk or secretary a woman older than themselves. And
fewer men can assume a respectful yet commanding attitude toward women
than can do so toward men in their employ. Some embarrassment has yet
to be worn off in business relations of the sexes. Moreover, the
tendency toward upspeeding of all mechanical manufacture is a part of
the rushing spirit of an age which has invented more fast-going things
than it has as yet mental power to use wisely or with social safety,
and it is true that fewer men over forty can rush in their work than
can do so below that age.
Youth is nimble; youth can be snubbed for errors of accomplishment
without hurt to a "gentleman's instincts;" youth, although so careless
as to often get injured by the swift-going machines, can yet exult in
their rapid swing; and, above all, youth is flexible and can be shaped
to any form of business requirement decided upon by those higher up.
Hence a fictitious value is assigned to youth in all departments of
work to-day. Hence, again, a special movement for actual trial of the
relative values of workers of different ages in special kinds of work
is necessary if we would know whether or not it is possible to prevent
that premature old age and tragical financial helplessness at
fifty-five or sixty, which makes the workless man or woman a burden
where many believe he or she might be still a help to the family
income.
We have been a nation of the young. We shall more and more balance the
different age-periods, as is already done in the older countries. We
should prepare, betimes, for this new aspect of the future's census,
by providing against preventable old age by the wiser use of all
laborers as long as work-power can be made available for
self-dependence.
=Need of Experience in Many Fields of Work.=--There are certain fields
of work on the higher side of social ministration in which the more
experienced are more needed than the young. Some one has said that "no
man is fit to be a pastor of a church until he has been something else
for several years and knows something of life." There is a very real
demand for any one, man or woman, who ventures to deal with the
spiritual life that he or she shall have more than youth can give of
sympathy and understanding. There is need also for larger experience
and greater breadth of view in professional social work of all sorts,
more than the young man or woman can give who has had college, plus
"School for Social Work," and nothing else; but who, because
"trained," feels expert. There could not be a greater social mistake
than is made by schools which attempt to train for child-care, family
visiting, rehabilitation of the dependent, aid to the "down-and-out,"
succor to the tempted and help to the weak, and yet deny the
opportunities of their classes to men and women over thirty-five. The
giving of "auditors' privileges," or "special courses for volunteers,"
or like makeshifts for regular student privileges is not what is
required; for such provisions carry with them the idea of less than
professional standing and usefulness. The initiation and maintenance
and increase of schools of training for social work is one of the
great educational and social achievements of the past quarter-century,
but the age-limit for entrance in many such schools is a huge mistake.
The very essence of true social service to individuals is experience
in life. The girl or boy who has had none or little may make a good
technician in many departments and may make a fine showing in work
that is not personal, and may collect material or knowledge about
groups of persons who need help. But the man or woman who is able to
be of great value as a "social doctor" is not only born to such
service but also is one who has not begun a specialty of social
technic too young to have learned something of the difficulty of
living. Young students? Yes. But many more who have come later in life
to a sense of their social responsibility and to a desire to learn how
best to serve society with all that they have gained in rich
experience. The psychology of social training must envisage a wider
range of years to be most effective.
=Prepare Vocationally for Old-age Needs.=--The third demand, that
every man and woman in early youth or in later youth shall be trained
in some light and agreeable occupation that can be pursued, perhaps to
economic return, in the days when strenuous labor can no longer be
carried on, is one that has as yet received little attention but which
should be a matter of deep concern. The fact that so many old women of
little physical strength and who require much personal care can yet
be useful and therefore actually wanted as helpers in many families is
indicative of the fundamental fact in industrial life that a general
training for general usefulness, such as the housewife has had through
the ages, has some advantages still.
Before Mrs. Perkins Gilman gets all women into some specialty,
alongside of the already highly specialized men workers, let us see to
it that men get a chance for a more general training! The restless
idleness of the man whose specialty of manual labor or definite type
of business interest is now beyond his strength or opportunity is a
sad thing to see. We have had to develop a special charity to furnish
a work-interest to aged men in public institutions. They were so
miserable and pathetic without that occupation. Women fare better in
this, as in many other elements of labor, for they can do so many
things, usually have to do so many things, most of them, in the
family, that some one sort of work, at least, is left to them for
special old age. "Mother's pies" or grandmother's cakes or needlework
or knack at dusting or baby-tending or what not keeps her young and
makes her actually a helper even when old. Grandfather's loss of his
job, of his specialty of effort, of his hold on the great industrial
machine, leaves him too often hopelessly at sea for the passing of
time still left to him.
Well-to-do women in the United States, moreover, have acquired through
the large leisure inherited wealth or their husband's means have
supplied, a social business that has not only delayed old age but
nearly obliterated its ancient signs and tokens. The Clubs, the
Leagues, the Alliances, the charitable agencies, the institutions of
care for the defective, the friendless, the infirm, the dependent
children, the countless societies and coöperative social organizations
for social serviceableness, in which women are leaders and chief
workers, bear witness that "grandmother" has found a place for her
energies after the children have grown and set up households of their
own.
If such a grandmother is a member of the daughter's family she is not
half so objectionable to daughter's husband as when mother-in-law had
a permanent place at the fireside, perhaps in the exact spot where he
wanted to put his easy chair, and had to be "taken out" if she ever
ventured into the great world. She now has her own interests, often so
many and vital that her day is more completely filled than when she
was younger. She has her own set of friends and her own use for the
energy and power of direction that often in the old days made her a
troublesome member of the family. If only she has a chance at her own
little cooking, and her own individual sitting room, and has her own
income, if ever so small, she may fit well into even a city apartment
and no other member of the family be the worse. The thing required for
old men and women alike is some work suited to slower motion and
lessened strength and greater need for quiet and independent thought.
This is a need which more women than men have met to-day, we repeat,
but it is one that must be understood and effectively satisfied for
men and women alike.
Edward Everett Hale said every man needed "both a vocation and an
avocation"--something by which he earned his living and something by
which he maintained his interest in activity. It is the avocation that
must be planned for. The vocation is often thrust upon one by
necessity or chance association. If every aged person had something to
do that made each day short and each night a welcome rest much of the
friction between the older and the younger members of families would
be avoided and life would piece the generations together more
perfectly.
=The Attitude of Mind Toward Old Age.=--Life calls upon us all to
prepare while yet young for the lessened power of old age. The removal
from the commanding place to the honorable but more difficult position
of the ex-leader and the chief-emeritus is a step that requires care.
The attitude of mind that can keep in harmonious touch with the
oncoming generation and yet not lose the value of its own day of
contribution to the social inheritance is an art to be acquired only
by effort and the exercise of moral and mental power. There was,
perhaps, never in the history of our civilization so great a gap
between the ideals and social practices of the grandparents and those
of the third generation. The parents even are feeling themselves too
far from the children; the grandparents often realize a vast distance
between themselves and the rising generation. The distance is not
always the measure of progress. It is not seldom the effect of rapid
changes in mechanical appliances, in material agencies and economic
conditions, in literary taste and in ideals of culture; an effect
which has unsettled youth in the inherited ways and not yet settled
them in well-considered new rules of living. The experience that might
aid in easing the process of readjustment is not always at hand and
not always used when it is attainable. The experience of age is too
often shown in dogmatic rules. The inexperience of youth is too often
the accompaniment of a childish conviction that everything that has
been is wrong and everything that promises to be is best.
There is, therefore, greater need, perhaps, than ever before for
wisdom and patience and sympathetic understanding of those from whom
one differs within the family life. It is for the grandparents to set
the fashion for these new adjustments. They have loved most because
they have given most. They have learned most, or could have learned
most, because longer in the school of life. And they have but a little
way to travel on the long road their children and their children's
children must go to meet their fate.
To the lasting credit of human nature be it said that the grandparents
of to-day measure as well for the most part as do the parents in these
difficult tasks of family adjustment to a rapidly changing social
order. It is often the grandparent who sees what the different life of
his or her children have meant to the still greater difference in the
condition of the grandchild, and can interpret to the latter the
reason for the restraint of the parent. It is often through the
tenderness and devotion to the aged called out by the grandparents
that the son and daughter learn the real depths of parental love. It
is often the partial affection of the grandparent for the grandchild
that makes a new tie in family love and enables that family love to
grow wiser as well as stronger. It may be, as quoted before, that no
house is large enough for two families. It surely is true that no
family living room is spacious enough for the continuous use of three
generations; but it is still more true that with new interests all
around the circle of family membership a more varied family life can
be managed without friction or loss of privacy for any member if only
there is the right attitude of mind. To-day the ideal of the
Heaven-father fastens itself as easily to the child's affection for
grandpa as on his dependence upon his father. To-day the ideal of
mother-love, never lessened even by wrong-doing of the child, is as
securely fibred upon the picture of grandma, ever ready to heal and
comfort, as upon that of the mother, whose daily ministrations make
the child comfortable.
=The Special Gifts of the Old to the Home and the World.=--In some
ways it is surely more easy to believe in goodness at the heart of
things because some aged man or woman, closely related by blood and
breeding, has been a living example of what must be revered. Moreover,
to the family, as to the world-at-large, old age brings a special
gift--if that old age is what it may be. Each period of life has its
own gift to make. Age should make a precious contribution, even the
central faith of life.
Youth, eager, responsive to all noble ambitions and touched by all
noble dissatisfactions with what is, makes its plan for what should be
on a strictly logical basis. His rejected Evil is wholly evil; his
chosen Good without a flaw. Children are all Calvinists; and youth,
for the most part, separates its ideas of good and bad as the sheep
and goats within its mind. Well that it is so. The law of growth in
life is so far from logical, so operative by inconsistent
fluctuations, that it is of the greatest social use for each fresh
generation of reformers to hew to the line and express that
intolerance of compromise which helps the struggling moral sense to
clarify the issues of each new day.
In middle life, if the individual worker for better things is not
merely a prophesier but has become an actual agent for the realization
of his ideal in practical achievement, he suffers many a disillusion,
not in respect to his ideal, but in respect to the ease of working it
into the body politic or into the compelling purpose of the social
mind. That is the time of danger; and how many lose heart and hope and
fall weakly by the way when they first learn that to state a truth
with power is not enough to insure its acceptance! That one should set
himself with courage and faith to the long, slow processes of actual
change of the social order after he has learned how difficult that is,
is to be indeed a hero--a hero of the actualization of the ideal, even
though he dies with the promised land hardly in sight.
In later life comes to many, and should to all, another gift. Not
alone the vision of youth, never lost and always dear; not only the
strength of open-eyed effort to achieve so much of the ideal, even its
very least atom, as the times and the conditions allow and not lose
heart that it is so little, but also the interpretative and
harmonizing spirit of those who see, beyond the personal ideal and
vision and far beyond the personal achievement, the upward march of
all mankind--not alone the leaders of that march; not alone those who
will and know the upward way, but all who feel the under-current
pressure "toward the better, ever onward toward the best," This
pressure even those feel who fondly imagine they are holding all life
to outgrown patterns, and they prove its power by their unconscious
response.
Another gift of insight they may have who grow old in the spirit of
youth. It is the gift of seeing in one picture those who have come a
long way up the path of progress and those who have but just entered
upon it. The harsh judgments of youth, so tonic and useful, that
measure moral actions by their exact position in ethical perception
(judgment so tonic and useful that youth without that element misses
its own gift to human progress) cease to serve in old age for purposes
of just discrimination. In later life may come the wisdom of
understanding those from whom one differs, the gift of seeing the
helpful interrelations of newer and older "mores" in normal human
development and the glad recognition that even defective moral vision,
though retarding needed changes, may be used by the powers that
balance our complex life to hold, its course steady in chaos of
change. These gifts may add patience and love, sweetness and light, to
the zeal of the reformer and yet not dull his ardor for the next
morning-hour of progress.
Not the old, then, because it is old, nor the new because it is new;
not the few who will hold no parley with that which to them is evil,
nor the many who cling to what they have inherited lest they lose
life's best treasures; not to those who call aloud in the market
place, "Behold the coming of the Lord!" nor to those who sit at the
fireside and cherish their own only; not on or to any one
manifestation of the life in which we have our being can the old, with
the spirit of youth, fibre their faith and trust.
In all the struggling, mistaken, weary, selfish, cowardly, alike as in
all the brave, heroic, unselfish and lovely, is manifestation that
makes "no good thing a failure, no evil thing success." This is the
testimony of a ripe and wise old age. In that they must trust who have
tested the real things of life in the real world of effort, nor lost
hope in the Onward Way for all.
QUESTIONS ON THE GRANDPARENTS
1. What have been the general tendencies in social treatment of
the aged?
2. What are some of the social needs in respect to public and
private health, vocational training, wages and standards of
living, family and personal insurance and educational
opportunities which must be met if old age is to be prolonged
as far as possible and made happy and comfortable to the end of
life?
3. What should be the aim of youth and middle life in respect to
preparation for old age?
4. Read _Old Age Support of Women Teachers_, by Dr. Lucille Eaves,
_A Study in Economic Relations of Women_, by the Department of
Research of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union of
Boston, Mass., and read "The Trade Union and the Old Man," by
John O'Grady, Catholic University of America, published in
_American Journal of Sociology_ of November, 1917. Are the
suggestions in these articles along needed lines?
FOOTNOTES:
[6] See _The State and Pensions in Old Age_, by J.A. Spender.
CHAPTER V
BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND NEXT OF KIN
"The members of the ancient family were united by something more
powerful than birth, affection, or physical strength; this was the
religion of the sacred fire and of dead ancestors. This caused the
ancient family to form a single body, both in this life and in the
next,"--DE COULANGES, in _The Ancient City_.
"Land belonged to the clan and the clan was settled upon the land.
A man was thus not a member of the clan because he lived upon or
even owned the land, but he lived upon the land and had interest
in it because he was a member of the clan."--HEARN, in _The Aryan
Household_.
"Three things if possessed by a man make him fit to be a chief of
kindred: that he should speak in behalf of his kin and be listened
to; that he should fight in behalf of his kin and be feared; that
he should be security on behalf of his kin and be
accepted."--WELSH TRIADS (cited by Seebohm).
"I cannot choose but think upon the time
When our two loves grew like two buds;
School parted us; we never found again
That childish world where our two spirits mingled
Like scents from varying roses that remain one sweetness.
Yet the twin habit of that earlier time
Lingered for long about the heart and tongue.
We had been natives of one happy clime
And its dear accent to our utterance clung.
And were another childhood world my share,
I would be born a little sister there."
--GEORGE ELIOT, in _Brother and Sister_.
"When love is strong it never tarries to take heed
Or know if its return exceed
Its gift; in its sweet haste no greed,
No strife belong.
It hardly asks if it be loved at all, to take
So barren seems, when it can make
Such bliss, for the beloved's sake,
Of bitter tasks."--H.H.
=Ancient Kinship Bond.=--The relation of brothers and sisters in the
family group has passed through many changes and must at times have
caused much confusion and difficulty in the home. For example, in that
state of familial association in which all the brothers of a certain
relationship were considered as husbands of all sisters within a
certain bond there must have been some heart-burnings and several
kinds of family unpleasantness. We have some hints of these from many
historical sources. In the era of complete subjection of the
individual to the community such unpleasantness may have counted only
for negligible unhappiness on the part of a few social rebels, but the
custom alluded to did not prove to work well enough to become
permanent.
Again, the form of family bond which demanded that a man take to wife
the widow of his dead brother and "raise up children to the name" of
the deceased had a long but not a permanent life. In the well-known
passage from Deuteronomy, the 25th chapter, the faithful are commanded
that "if brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no
son, the wife of the dead shall not be married without unto a
stranger: her husband's brother shall ... take her to him to wife, and
perform the duty of a husband's brother unto her. And the first-born
... shall succeed in the name of his brother that is dead, that his
name be not blotted out of Israel." The same passage shows that while
it was doubtless at first an imperative social law, there came a time
when the living brother had a choice as to whether or not he should
take to wife the widow of one who had died. Perhaps there might have
been an economic pressure that made it difficult to perform this
ancient duty. Perhaps there might have been objection from the wife or
wives already in command of the household matters. Perhaps the widow
was sometimes of a type to make the brotherly and family duty seem
very hard. At any rate, there came a time when, as the writer in
Deuteronomy says, "If the man like not to take his brother's wife" he
could refuse the family service. It cost him, however, in such cases a
severe ordeal. He could be haled before the elders on the complaint
that he "refused to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel." The
widow "could loose his shoe from his feet and spit in his face" and
say "so shall it be done unto the man that doth not build up his
brother's house."
The large requirement for the brother, thus indicated, passed outward
to the next of kin in certain circumstances. There are many deeply
interesting accounts of readjustment of family life through the taking
over by the living of duties once undertaken by the dead. The lovely
idyl of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz, shows this widely spreading
brother-duty. Here the mother-in-law, so sweet and so wise that her
sons' wives loved her deeply, shrewdly manages a contact between Ruth
and Boaz to the lasting service of her son's inheritance of name and
land. The whole story is redolent of the finer side of ancient forms
of familial duty, the man being rich and generous enough to take on
his more remote relative's responsibilities, the young widow being
sweet and charming enough to capture the interest of the rich man even
before he knows who she is, and the mother-in-law showing
statesmanship of the highest order in managing the affair, together
with such fine character of her own that all respect and love her.
To-day we have left in law and custom but the shadow of these ancient
demands upon brothers in the family. That shadow is limited to the
purely economic aspect of brotherly responsibilities. The old law of
inheritance made the sons the preferred heirs. Only when there was no
son could the daughter inherit if at all. The responsibility of that
heir, however, was often made commensurate with his inheritance. He
must financially care for the near relatives--the father and mother
first, the sister and brother next, the uncles and aunts and cousins
not to be forgotten.
=Present Demands of Kinship.=--The existing statutes make it incumbent
upon any man in receipt of income beyond his own immediate needs to do
what is possible to prevent his near relatives from requiring aid
from the general public. The custom of all charitable organizations
when appealed to for aid for individuals, or for a family, is to ask,
"What can your relatives do for you?" The pressure upon those
connected even by marriage to help relatives privately, and so reduce
public relief, is often very severe. In those of English ancestry the
disgrace of having a near relative, even so distant as a great-uncle
or great-aunt or sister-in-law, "come upon the town" is felt keenly.
The sacrifices of many people of limited means to prevent such a
catastrophe would make a long and heavy list of discomforts and
privations. The duty of brothers, sisters, and next of kin to help
provide for the poorer members of the family connection is thus still
held firmly by social ideals. That all people, however, pay this debt
of family responsibility or that as many struggle to do it as used to
do so cannot be affirmed. On the contrary, many charitable societies
make it a serious business to discover and hold to responsibility
shirking members of families in which there is great discrepancy in
financial condition.
There is now, however, no recognized social responsibility for giving
support to poorer members of the family within one household. There is
no pressure to bring those needing material relief tinder the roof of
the well-to-do of the family circle. Even parents cannot claim
residence with adult children, although they can claim by law some
support commensurate with their children's income. It is seen now that
the duty of aid does not carry with it the obligation for personal
association. That is, on the whole, a gain, especially in cases where
there is temperamental incompatibility.
The whole relationship of brothers, sisters, and next of kin is
simplified and placed more securely on bases of affection and ethical
ideal in modern life, and people are good brothers and sisters or good
family relatives in proportion as they are unselfish and useful in all
their other social relationships. There is a real family tie, however,
which still holds. We see it in the Family Reunions, in the listing of
relationships in those devoted to genealogy, and in the patriotic
societies that indicate by membership what ancestors fought in the
Revolution or held office in Colonial days. There is the permanent tie
of blood that makes a peculiar bond unlike that of friendship and
unlike that of marriage--a tie sometimes carried to extremes, as in
the case of the woman who, angry with her husband for a breach of
etiquette, declared she "was glad that he was no relation of hers!" On
the whole, in reasonable moderation, one of the best ways we have
to-day of helping a group is by means of the generosity of the more
successful members of that group.
=Special Burdens of Women in Family Obligations.=--Brothers, usually,
marry and have their own households to take care of. The unmarried
sisters, coming from a long line of women who were supposed to work
entirely for the family, with no commercial value placed upon their
household service, feel a call to duty from ancient times to carry
family burdens. The sons, however, do not escape the parental call for
help and have often in the immediate past (when women ceased to have a
large economic value in the home and had not yet acquired the capacity
or desire for self-support) borne a heavy burden of financial aid for
unmarried sisters. The tables are well-nigh turned now, however, and
the number of self-supporting women who have relatives of varied
nearness and ages dependent or partially dependent upon them, is much
larger than that of spinsters care-free and independent. In all cases,
however, whether of men or women, those who respond loyally to the
needs of those kin to them are the unselfish and capable. The slogan
of socialism, "To all in the measure of their need; from all in the
measure of their capacity," may never be accepted by society in
general, but it is now the rule in the family relation.
=Disadvantages of the Only Child.=--In the individualistic family of
the modern monogamic type the chief need is for every child to have
brothers and sisters or at least a brother or sister. The "one-child"
plan, which places a solitary little creature as sole recipient of
money, affection, and care of the household, is one that shows poverty
of condition for the child concerned, no matter how rich the parents.
Such a child lacks a chief aid in its development. Nature sometimes
sends, even in a large family, all boys or all girls and makes
coeducation at the start difficult. Usually, however, when there are
two, three, four, or more children they are mixed in due and helpful
proportion. When the family is too large, as it so often was in the
older days, it must subdivide according to ages and tastes, and in
many old-fashioned families some brothers and sisters were near in
sympathy and love and others wide apart. In the moderate-size modern
family, however, where there is enough companionship within the home
for family good times and not enough to cause breakage into groups
within the group, we have the ideal conditions for child development.
For the only child there are happily some substitutes for this home
companionship in the "residential school," or the school with long
days of group relationship of like age and condition, but it is not
the same and seldom as good as the home circle of the right size and
variety.
The modern conditions make the old ties seem less important to many.
In the United States, where people move about so freely across the
vast spaces of our continent, and where in the large cities so many
move each year to try vainly to better themselves in hired houses, the
ties of family outside of the immediate circle seem remote and to be
easily set aside. It is not, however, a sign of advanced social spirit
which makes a young girl declare "she has no use for her relations;
she cares only for her chosen friends," and it is often of the essence
of social danger that a young man wants to give up all connection with
his family. The fact is that one can understand better how one came to
be what one is by knowing something of one's forbears and one's living
relatives.
=Permanent Value of the Family Bond.=--The feeling that one belongs to
a blood group, the feeling so old and so wonder-working in the past,
gives at least one ideal of permanence in a world of affairs whirling
in such rapid change that the common mind becomes dizzy and the common
idealism confused. On the other hand, it is cause for gratitude
unspeakable that the old bondage of the family life is relaxed, never
to be tightened again to such oppression as once prevailed. The fact
that inheritance is now seen to be so varied and so unpredictable that
one child in a family may "take back" to one ancestor and another to a
different one to ends of complete divergence of character and
capacity, shows that the old attempt to keep them together, whether
they could love each other or not, was a social mistake. To-day we are
more reasonable. We even say that fathers and mothers may not be
taken into the home of their children if it best serves the mutual
happiness for them to have separate homes. We seldom now in
enlightened families make the mistake of holding to "living together"
when living apart is clearly the wiser thing.
The old sense of family responsibility is, however, happily not lost
and in its new ways of working often gives a finer representation of
mutual aid than was common of old. The will of one rich man which
included many gifts to sisters, cousins, and nieces, and left
directions to the principal heirs to find out if there were any
relatives of the same nearness left out and if so to make them equal
sharers, is but a type of many who, with or without large means, share
generously with all their name and kin.
On the other hand, we have examples of those who, in the effort to
leave a large fortune for some specific object of education or of
public charity, wholly neglect, often with cruel indifference, the
needs of some member or members of their own family. One man of
conspicuous gift to education left a sister and her two daughters
without means for comfortable living while piling up money for his pet
scheme. Many men skimp themselves and also their wives, children, and
still more their parents and more remote kin, to hoard a monster sum
for some charity to be forever called by their name. These, however,
are unusual examples of losing sight of the near in the remote. The
average man and woman has in mind a series of concentric circles,
those nearest to be helped first, those next beyond to share next, and
the world outside to have what is left when these inner claims upon
love and generosity are fully met.
If it were not for this general tendency society-at-large would have
far more responsibility for all sorts of care of the aged, of the
incapable, of the unsuccessful, of the invalid, of the defective, of
the insane, of the "cranky" and of the lonely. Finally, without this
innate tendency to feel a sense of responsibility for those nearest
related by family ties much of the discipline toward social usefulness
would be lacking in the lives of average people. We learn the larger
duty through faithful response to the nearer and closer obligation.
For this reason the family holidays and reunions, the family birthday
celebrations which include all the relatives within reach, the
pressure of the law and of custom upon those able to care for those
less strong and competent within the kinship bond, are all socializing
influences which it is well to keep warm and consciously active.
The lovely spirit of Mrs. Hodgson Burnett's "Tembarom" when he finds a
"real relative" is duplicated by many immigrants who after years of
loneliness greet one of the family on the shores of the new country;
and the member of the eastern family "gone west" is the most
hospitable of all relatives to the visitor from the old home who has
the same family tree.
The gratitude of the ancient poet that "God has set the solitary in
families" is not a sentiment to be outgrown. Those who feel that it
is, lose something precious from the basis of human affection. The
adjustment of this old bond to the new individualistic life is not yet
made even in the Western world, while in the Eastern the vital
problems of family adjustment press in supreme unrest. The one
principle that should guide us in this as in all inheritance from the
past is surely this, that while the sacredness of personality of any
one member of any group, even of the family, shall not be wholly
sacrificed to the needs and demands of any other member, yet "they
that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak" in the old
spirit of unselfish service.
QUESTIONS ON BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND NEXT OF KIN
1. In the monogamic system of the family what, in general, has
been the legal responsibility toward blood kin?
2. Is the inherited legal and social responsibility for the care
and well-being of relatives lessened at the present time? If
so, is that for good or for ill in the wider social fabric?
3. How far should accepted obligations toward near relatives be
met in ways to bring under one roof more than the fathers and
mothers and children of a given generation?
4. Should natural kinship weigh heavily in considering
arrangements for material relief in poverty? In the care of
orphans and half-orphans? And in provisions for aid to the
aged, the sick, and those out of work?
5. What special conditions make appeal to family feeling difficult
in a population like that of the United States with many
immigrants and great mobility in industrial relations?
6. Is there any way of strengthening family feeling without
attempting return to older forms of family autonomy?
CHAPTER VI
FRIENDS AND THE CHOSEN ONE
"The path by which we twain did go,
Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
Thro' four sweet years arose and fell,
From flower to flower, from snow to snow:
And we with singing cheer'd the way,
And, crown'd with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May.
And all we met was fair and good,
And all was good that Time could bring,
And all the secret of the Spring
Moved in the chambers of the blood."
--TENNYSON.
"There is no man that imparteth his joy to his friend but he
joyeth the more; and no man who imparteth his grief to his friend
but he grieveth the less."--BACON.
"True, active, productive friendship consists in equal pace in
life, in moving forward together, steadily, however much our way
of thought and life may vary."--GOETHE.
"Accept no person against thy soul."--ECCLESIASTICUS.
"Your love, vouchsafe it royal-hearted Few
And I will set no common price thereon;
But aught of inward faith must I forego,
Or miss one drop from truth's baptismal hand,
Think poorer thoughts, pray cheaper prayers, and grow
Less worthy trust, to meet your heart's demand.
Farewell! Your wish I for your sake deny;
Rebel to love, in truth to love, am I."
--D.A. WASSON.
=The Power of Friendship.=--The man who said, "Our relations are
thrust upon us; thank heaven we may choose our friends" expressed a
feeling shared by many, that fate may handicap us by giving us birth
in an uncongenial circle, but we may recoup ourselves by chosen
friends and enjoy companionship with them which our kin cannot
furnish.
Friendship has inspired many of the greatest deeds and many of the
noblest poems, and has given us examples of heroic devotion almost
passing the love of man for woman. It is not within our purpose to
recall these great friendships, but they are familiar and furnish the
unfailing stimulus of finer sentiment in youth as the classic examples
are recited to each generation. Real friendship is a sacred thing.
There are pinchbeck imitations which are neither sacred nor helpful.
The "mashes" and the "crushes" of school-life are not even good
imitations. The bargain-counter exchange of services--"you give me
society uplift, and I will give you under-current influence," as one
woman frankly stated it to another, although it may be called
friendship, has no element of real affection in it, as the first one
to fail in "value received" so clearly understands. The unwholesome
absorption of one woman with another, so that no minute apart can be
endured, may be long-lived or an ephemeral expression of a weakness on
one or the other side, but it is not the best type of friendship.
Among men the submergence of one personality in another, so that
although there are two people there is but one mind and one purpose,
may be friendship, but it is not that equal comradeship which the
healthy-minded seek. The friendship between a man and a woman which
does not lead to marriage or desire for marriage may be a life-long
experience of the greatest value to themselves and to all their circle
of acquaintance and of activity; but for this type of friendship both
a rare man and a rare woman are needed. Perhaps it should be added
that either the man or the woman thus deeply bound in life-long
friendship who seeks marriage must find a still rarer man or woman to
wed, to make such a three-cornered comradeship a permanent success.
Friendship at its best is a task as well as a gratification. Nothing
in this world can be had for nothing. "Earth gets its price for what
earth gives us." A really great friendship is a test and a challenge
and a "time-consumer," as Emerson says. It is, next to marriage and
parenthood, the most exacting of human relationships. For this reason
few men and women can have a great friendship that does not lead to
marriage, and at the same time have a complete marriage with another.
For this reason again, the great friendships are generally between two
unmarried men or two unmarried women.
=The Newly Wed and Old Friends.=--Much is written of the sad
disillusion experienced by the newly wedded man when he finds his
friends are not as welcome at his new fireside as he had expected.
These friends of his are not of the sort prophesied by the love of
David and Jonathan, but they are valued comrades and he has
anticipated sharing the delights of his new home with them. Many a
woman in her desire to be all in all to her husband and in the selfish
absorption of an undisciplined affection, starts married life the
wrong way by making no place in the home life for these old friends of
her husband's bachelor life. That reacts often in the worst possible
manner upon his affection for her. She forgets too often that she is
not called upon to give up her friends. They can come, and do come,
when her husband is away at his work, while his friends, if they come
at all, must come in his leisure hours which she often wishes to
preempt for herself alone. It is the most short-sighted of follies for
a woman to try to sweep clean of all former interests and friendships
the life of the man with whom she is to try the great adventure of
marriage.
The most a wife can accomplish by selfish denial to her husband of his
right to keep his friends and enjoy the old as well as the new
companionship is to make it impossible for him to enjoy his friends in
her company. She can thus send him off on hunting trips or other
outside enjoyments which leave her lonely at home. The fact that few
worth-while men or women have lived to the marriage day without deep
affection for some friend, or perhaps for many friends, is not a
testimony to need of change when a new relation is formed but to the
enlargement of both circles of comradeship and their amalgamation into
friends of the family. This may be a difficult achievement. Many men
and women have found, to their surprise, that although they are in
love with wife or husband they are not at all in love with the
respective families and still less inclined to accept each other's
chosen friends as their own. One angle alone of the many-sided
character may have "made the match;" quite other angles have already
attracted and still hold the friends. These often mutually incongruous
friends of both sides must somehow be made to attach themselves to the
marriage plan or they may work much harm to the new home.
The art of holding on to old associations and yet substituting, where
substitution is wise or necessary, a new for an established
relationship is a great art. In the case of the newly married whose
friends have been in widely different circles, it is often an
impossible one.
Here is where the social wisdom that in some manner essays to make the
twain to be later one a part of the same or a very similar social
group, shows its finest results. When marriage was arranged by the
elders of the respective families there was likely to be a similarity
in the social standards of the two circles from which the bride and
groom were drawn. Their friends were usually so inevitably of the same
financial standing and of similar cultural ideals and manners that
they would be likely to be congenial to each other and all to both
husband and wife. When the one chosen was selected by the fathers and
mothers there were some essentials for successful married life secured
in advance. We have now come to feel that each couple must choose for
themselves and that conscious, selective love is the very essence of
that choice. It is well, however, to name over the essentials secured
by the arranged marriages, to which such an enlightened country as
France still gives much heed and still holds to some extent in family
control.
=Some Advantages in Choices of Marriage by the Elders.=--The old
arranged choice for marriage, in the first place, secured, and still
secures in countries not yet changed in this particular, a similar
financial position. Often greed of family prestige made the money end
the chief one and sacrificed everything else to the bringing together
of two great fortunes. Yet the fact that family choices usually united
those of similar financial standing and power of gratification of
taste did lead toward an easy adjustment of the young couple to life
together. One of the chief causes of unhappiness in marriages wholly
from personal choice and in response to an impulse of passionate
attachment is that the taste and "style" of living of the two has been
so different that it is hard, after the first glamour wears away, to
settle down to agreeable compromises. As a rule, "the beggar maid and
King Cophetua" can get on better than the young woman heiress and the
ex-chauffeur in such compromises; for it is always easier to extend
one's income than to contract it, and women can still owe all to the
loved one with better grace than men can bear the position of one
"marrying above his lot." The tendency of the older custom, however,
to limit all marriage choices on the basis of money to be contributed
to the common fund was, and is when now in force, as destructive to
real happiness in marriage as any ill-considered leaping across social
barriers could well be. It is well, therefore, that it is outgrown.
The second condition believed essential to success in marriage from
the point of view of family stability, when the marriage choice of the
loved one was made by the elders, is far more important than that of
financial equality. It is the congeniality of the two families to be
united by the marriage. The custom of betrothing their children as a
means of carrying on the close friendship of a lifetime beyond its
natural limit into the generations yet to be, is an old and not a
wholly bad one. It insures for the young couple a genuine love from
both sides the family line. To be sure, that love may be an oppressive
and undesired gift which one or the other of the young people ardently
wishes to ignore or to be freed from, but it contains also some
elements of a good start for those same young people in a mutually
devoted double parentage. When, however, as in Eastern countries, it
leads to betrothal in infancy or very early childhood and sets the
girl who is to be the wife in the family of her betrothed when she is
too young to know her own real nature or to have a mind to make up
about what she would wish for herself, it may be and generally is an
evil thing. In the questions concerning the family set forth by the
Chinese inquiry, to which allusion has already been made, the first
set of problems relates to "Early Engagements," and it is asked, "Is
the practice of parents in arranging for the engagement of a girl
while still a mere child productive of happiness in the future home?"
And, again, "Can a woman refuse to marry a man whom her family decides
she should marry, after the formal engagement has taken place?" To our
Western ideas the answer is so plain to both these questions that one
may be impatient at their repetition here. Yet it is certainly true
that many people freely engage themselves to their later unhappiness
and there have been many family virtues bred on even the outgrown
fashion of family choice. Where unhappiness has been prevented in the
results of family choice doubtless the friendship of the two family
heads has had much to do with such mitigation of bad effects of
extreme parental control in marriage.
Social protection of the young has in a measure superseded the ancient
family arrangement, but where it has not, a young person may be found
to-day in as bad a position through personal choice as that of the
girl set in a home without her own consent to be the future wife of a
man she has not seen. The difference is, however, a vital one.
In the case of the Chinese girl the status is fixed. In the case of a
girl of the Western world, even of most unfortunate circumstance or
weakness of character, there is a possibility of escape from even the
worst conditions into a new relationship to life and to marriage. We
have suicides in the Western world, and some of them of young girls
who, free to choose their mates, loved not wisely but too well; but
the toll of suicides of wives in China is one that testifies that
polygamy and the power of fathers over their daughters in marriage and
even in their sale for immoral uses, and the legal right to hold girls
in domestic slavery, are evils not made tolerable even by the
high-minded who try to perpetuate the friendship as well as the power
of leading families by intermarriage.
An early Massachusetts law declared that "No female orphan could be
given in marriage during her minority except with the approbation of a
majority of the selectmen of the town." This was proof that in this
country from the first, the social power was used not to make girls
accept husbands that might be chosen for them but to protect girls
from exploitation of designing persons, and if they had not a family
protection they were held secure in that of the officers of the
community. The law of 1719, in New York, that no person under
twenty-one should be married without the written consent of parent or
guardian was a step in the direction of social control. This law aimed
not to make marriage choices for any young person but to safeguard
such choice from possible harm.
The ancient family choice in marriage tried in the third place to give
every one an equal chance to be married. The families concerned, when
the age thought to be marriageable had been reached, sought to give
the young persons a place in the family order. The idea of bachelors
and maids of mature years was not only repugnant, it was an indictment
of the vigilance and good offices of the elders. When a certain Doctor
Brickell practised medicine in North Carolina in about 1731, he
declared that "She that continues unmarried until twenty is reckoned a
stale maid, which is a very indifferent character in this country;"
and in New England the unmarried man, as elsewhere, was subjected to
special tax and social odium.
The family arrangement for marriage of the young did one thing, at
least, in a time when women and girls enjoyed little protection or
financial security outside of marriage--it set at work forces to
provide husbands for many girls who would not be the first choice in a
free competition for masculine favor.
=Some Ancient Spinsters, But Few.=--There were, however, some
distinguished women of the older time who never married. Margaret
Brent, of Maryland, for example, whose appeal for "voyce and vote with
men," in the making of laws to which she must owe allegiance, is
historic. And that Mary Carpenter, sister of Alice, wife of Governor
Bradford, who, at the beginning of her ninety-first year, was declared
a "godly old maid;" and, again, that "ancient maid of forty years,"
who is said to have founded the town of Taunton, Massachusetts. Others
of distinction might be mentioned. These show clearly that the right
not to marry at all, and the right not to marry a person whom she had
not seen or, having seen, did not want as husband, was well sustained
in the case of young girls in our own country from the first.
The lot of most women here in the United States, as elsewhere in the
world, includes marriage; and although no one wants to go back to
family arrangement of nuptials, the desirability of marriage within a
congenial and familiar circle--that which the family arrangement
distinctly set out to secure--is still obvious.
The fourth element of family stability and well-being which the
ancient parental arrangement of marriage was intended to secure is
deliberation and chance for learning all the facts on both sides, so
that there may be no marrying in haste to repent at leisure. The
reaction from this deliberation in tying the nuptial knot is seen in
"running away to be married" without the slightest knowledge on either
side of the qualities or capacities of the chosen partner and without
giving the parents any opportunity of safeguarding from disastrous
choice. This is the swing of the pendulum in a new freedom, often to
personal disaster. Social ideals and legal provisions are alike
engaged more and more to prevent too ignorant and too hasty marriages.
Such may turn out to have been made in heaven as nearly as the average
union, but the chances are against that happy consummation.
=New Demands for Social Control of Marriage Choices.=--Social wisdom
obliges more deliberation in the case of young people seeking a
marriage license on their own initiative and perhaps after a very
brief acquaintance. There is a strong demand that a certain period
shall elapse between the request for the license and its granting and
that sufficient publicity be secured to make it easy for interested
parties to ascertain any facts concerning both the man and the woman
involved, which might make the marriage either illegal, as bigamy, or
a catastrophe, as uniting one unfit for marriage with an unsuspecting
person blinded by sudden attraction. More than this, many States of
our Union are beginning processes of law to require certificates of
physical fitness, of freedom from infectious or dangerous disease, and
some statement of facts as to previous obedience to law and ability
for self-support such as alone would make marriage successful.
Ministers of religion of various sects are taking more and more a
stand against marriage of persons whom they know are of bad habits or
otherwise likely to give a married partner an unhappy life. Insanity
in the family is now considered in some States a disqualification for
marriage, and statutes requiring some family testimony to facts
concerning that inheritance are coming into enactment and enforcement.
The tragedy of marrying ignorantly into a certain and hopeless fate of
union with one who can never be of sound mind is so terrible that the
state itself is trying to safeguard carelessness on that point. The
medical profession is more and more acting a parental part in
requiring the registry of diseases that are most unsocial in their
effect--diseases incident to vice, and which make any man while
suffering from them unfit for marriage. It is proposed by many, and by
law required in some States, that no marriage license shall be given
without a certificate of both mental and physical fitness, to be
handed to the officer before registry of the application, in order
that there may be no public refusal on such grounds of unfitness after
it is known that a license to marry has been sought. This would be far
better than, as has been proposed by some persons, for clergymen to
take the initiative in requiring such physical and mental tests after
a request to marry two people and after a license has been secured.
After a matter has gone so far as to result in a request to a
clergyman to officiate at the marriage ceremony, the exaction of an
examination which the state has not previously required would
inevitably, as has been already shown in some instances, lead to
suspicion and bad feeling. The duty of the state, which alone in our
country gives power to marry (the clergyman performing the ceremony
pronouncing the couple married "by virtue of the power invested in him
by the state"), is clear. That duty is to take all initiative in all
previous inquiries aimed at preventing the marriage of unfit persons.
If the state does take such initiative and for all alike, no matter
what their social standing or reputation may be, then there is no
stigma for any individual and no suspicion aroused to injure any class
of persons. There seems as good reason why a compulsory physical and
mental examination, together with an inquiry into the main facts of a
person's life in order to prevent fraud and exploitation, should
always precede the giving of a marriage license as for the required
physical and mental examination of children when they enter the
tax-supported public school. It is, in both cases, a way by which
society secures itself, in the interest of the family and of social
life, against the fostering or continuance of evils that may be
prevented from poisoning the sources of moral and intellectual growth.
The fiat has gone forth in the Western world that no one shall be
compelled to marry against his or her will. The first revolt from
family control of marriage, that which made so many persons believe
that any one should be allowed to marry any one whom he or she might
choose, is now, however, waning. Elements of social control are
superseding the "marriage broker" and the parental office in deciding
what unions shall be allowed.
=The Young Should be Helped to Make Wise Choices.=--Wisdom and
consistency are not yet developed in this new way of helping the
young, even against their will, to avoid mistakes of ignorance and
folly, but they are developing. Meanwhile, many children still revere
their parents' wishes and ideals, even if the wild few do as they
please without regard to their elders. Most marriages in our country
are not only safely entered upon but happy in results because of
tendencies and tastes engendered in homes of love, truth, and
goodness. The increase of social control in the direction of knowledge
and caution even among the best people, and the safeguarding of the
less advantaged in family training, must go on until all the good
things parental choice gave to marriage arrangements are retained more
perfectly and all the bad things outgrown.
The fifth element in the ancient parental control of marriage choices
was the definite placing of youth under the leadership of age and thus
holding firm the inherited "mores" to make the family stable in ideal
as in practice. We have now a revolt of youth against the leadership
of age. We have now, even among those whose affection for their
parents is strong in feeling and generous in action, an idea that the
convictions and reverences of the older generation are outgrown and
for the better. There is a general impression, perhaps speeded unduly
by the war, that what is new must be good, and what is old must be, if
not bad, at least not the best. The decay of family religion lessens
respect for old sanctions. The fact that business and pleasure alike
take the different members of each family on different ways all the
week and Sunday, too, make each age represented in the household
influenced chiefly by its own set of friends. The way in which
mechanical invention gives unexampled speed in opposite directions to
the young and the old alike intensifies the segregation of each group
and minimizes the influence of the family bond. The fact, perhaps of
all most significant, that every form of art, from the lowest to the
highest, is changing before our eyes into something new and strange
tends toward the unconscious absorption by youth of new ideals of what
is desirable in life. These things all conspire to make youth
impatient of age.
=The Revolt of Youth.=--Many of the boys who went to torture and
cripplement in the war have returned to declare that the old life is
gone, and if there can be no better one devised and realized then the
old world should go too. Many of the girls who went overseas to a
vivid excitement and a stimulus of unwonted comradeship with men feel
that they have so much more insight into real things than do their
mothers that they know not only what is best for themselves but what
is best for all youth. Many women, for the first time earning
independent livelihood during the war-struggle, feel that now, at
last, they have arrived; and what have they to do with old-fashioned
behavior? More than all else, the modern economic independence of
women of good breeding and assured position, in social classes which
used to consider that only women in direst need could properly earn
money, gives a wholly different aspect to many social questions. The
tendency to individualism, so often seen in the modern woman,
unbalanced by study of the past or its lessons or by any real
grappling with present problems as they relate to possible future
adjustments, now begins its strongest revolt at the fireside and makes
the daughter often a stranger to her mother.
Only the older woman who has kept in touch not only with young life
outside her own family but with the problems that modern changes in
education, in industry, in art and literature, press upon the mind,
can understand why so many young people to-day distrust everything
that is old and welcome everything that seems new, however ancient it
may actually be. Many of the newest things proclaimed are old mistakes
of human nature revamped for a masquerade. A little study, for
example, would show many young people who think they are responding to
fresh revelation of the right relation of the sexes that they are
really coming under the spell of some ancient and discarded plan of
getting all satisfaction out of a relationship without assuming any
obligation in return.
=The Wisdom of the Ages Must be the Guide of Youth.=--There is no
chance of putting youth back into tutelage to age in any personal
relation and in the old sense. Wise older people do not wish that.
What is happening, and will be accelerated in action when the first
flush of youthful consciousness of power is a bit balanced by
knowledge of life's difficulties, is this; the wisdom of the ages, not
the wisdom of their own parents and family alone, will be available to
youth and used by youth in ever-increasing reverence. Not that some
one who has lived longer shall of right determine a young life, but
that young life shall learn more than in any past time it could do
what the experience of the race has to teach. Happy the child whose
parent can interpret this wisdom of life and happy the parent whose
child can even now see that there is wisdom from the past to
interpret.
Meanwhile, the fact that so many people marry and so many marriages
turn out happily speaks well for the wisdom of youth or else gives
testimony of the kindness of the fate that watches over lovers. We are
told that at the ages of twenty to twenty-five half of the women and
one-fourth of the men in the United States are married, and at the
period of life between thirty-five and forty-five years only seventeen
per cent. of the men are single and only eleven per cent. of the
women; while at sixty-five years and over only six per cent. of either
sex are listed as having never married. If out of this large
proportion who dare matrimony on their own motion, and often without
even the parental approbation, only one marriage out of ten to twelve
turns out so badly that the parties ask to be released from their
marriage vows, surely it argues well for independence in choosing
one's partner for one's self even if there are mishaps and disasters
for the few.
=Personal Choice in Marriage Has Now the Widest Range.=--One fact
which many overlook when making estimates of the mistakes in marriage
(and drawing therefrom dire prognostication for the future of the
family in our country) is that personal choice among a circle of
friends was not only never so free for young people but also never
able to cover so wide a range of divergent national and racial
backgrounds as in the United States. Marriages in this country often
bridge or try to bridge a chasm between centuries of social
development and continents of educational influence. It is estimated
that of the 3,424 languages and dialects spoken in the world, about
one-third, or 1,624, are spoken in some part of the American
continent. The English language is spoken by more people than use
either the German, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese,
but the 150,000,000 who thus preserve the "mother-tongue" of the early
American settlers have to come into intimate contact with those of far
different lingual background. This difference in language, which is
found so often a barrier to unity between the respective parents of
the young people who choose each other in marriage, is but a sign and
symbol of deep-seated and ineradicable divergence in family tradition,
in fashion of customary ways of living, in scale of moral values and
in personal habits. It is rather a matter for astonishment that so
many "mixed marriages" turn out well than that a minority prove
disastrous. Mixed marriages will continue and with wider range of
alignment in the future than in the past. That is inevitable with our
increased complexity of life, which brings together in school and in
labor, in social gatherings and in political association, all sorts
and conditions of men, and women. Love not only laughs at prison bars,
love scoffs at parental differences as well as at parental control.
Yet is it true that wide divergence in family background is
accountable for many of the tragedies of broken families after love
has cooled and the facts of sober obligations incurred have become
obvious.
The great social need in the United States is for means of
acquaintance and friendship for the young in lines of association in
which a safe and helpful marriage choice may be made. William Penn
said, "Never marry but for love, but see that thou lovest what is
lovely." The effort of all social arrangements for the young in
families where the elders do not try to reinstate parental control but
rather to give a chance for safeguarded independence of choice is to
bring together young people who should find, each one of them in that
group, a chosen one of the right sort. Financial capacity, mutually
congenial relatives, suitable age and similar tastes, after
acquaintance giving reasonable basis for hope for permanent agreement
in essentials, might insure suitable marriages. The many advantages of
close friendships within a group bound together by similar culture and
outlook is the real reason for "society." Often foolish in its ways
and defeating its own higher ends, it is yet a real effort to give a
new and more democratic guidance through favorable circumstances,
rather than through personal will or family rule, to the marriage
choice of youth.
The reason why one is chosen and another not is never clear to any but
the ones who make the choice. To them, indeed, it may be a mystery,
but one they are sure must have its source in the necessity of things.
To others it is often a puzzle past understanding because so many of
the friends of each of the twain "would have chosen so differently,
you know."
Something of racial need both for mixture and for persistency of type,
something of hidden demand of temperament for a complementary
personality, something of easy awakening of passion and easy holding
of attention, something of requirement for a larger sympathy than most
friends can give and the favored one seems able to supply--all these
enter into the selection of the chosen one from all the rest of one's
friends. The need is for as wide a range of personalities and for as
large a chance to make friends with the suitable and truly congenial
as can be given to youth in order that the choice may be really free
and the result happy.
=The Value of the Church in Social Life.=--In our day the best
opportunities for such a choice within social ranges most likely to
offer the right choice is found in the churches. Whatever they may
lack in power of leadership, the churches have a social activity
to-day which gives the very best opportunity to youth in its quest for
the perfect other half. It is not necessary or best to do as the
Friends have done, turn out of the communion those who "marry out of
meeting." It is not a wholesome sign when religion puts bars before
the marriage altar, for one's true mate may be found in another temple
than that in which one was consecrated in infancy. It is often the
very difference in family faith that unites two people whose religious
inheritance has slipped away from bondage and gives only a reminiscent
glow. It is, however, true that like beliefs, like forms of worship,
like use of the same tabernacle, Sunday after Sunday, which bring
parents and elders of families together, give chances for the young to
form wide and strong attachments of friendship within a circle of like
quality and tastes. In spite of the fact that many people bridge vast
social chasms with high success in a marriage venture, the majority
of happy marriages are of those who do not have to engage an outside
interpreter in order to understand each other in reaction to social
habit, ethics, and culture.
It is often made a reproach to the modern church that it is so much a
supplement of the home, so largely a social opportunity rather than a
controlling moral force. In some sense the reproach may be a just one,
but in a very real meaning of human service, the church that aids
young people to find themselves and each other in a friendly circle of
the like-minded, like-mannered, and like-spirited, within the circle
of whom a really good marriage choice may be made, can claim
recognition as of those functionaries that meet a need not met so well
by any other social agency. The straining of this point by advertised
"courting parlors" for the friendless and homeless may not be the
right thing, but what is needed is an opportunity providing the right
atmosphere and chaperonage for easier acquaintance among young people
away from home.
The sad fact that so many young men and young women never meet the
right mates in youth and marry perforce, if at all, any one that
"comes along," makes any organization that naturally and simply
enables those who need it to make acquaintance with those among whom a
congenial mate may easily be found socially useful.
Either as substitute for home surroundings or as supplement to unhappy
or inadequate family life, the church home may be a benefactor in this
direction of enabling young people to find what all need, friends and
possible chosen ones among those friends.
The prophetic mission of the church, laments an earnest reformer, is
now too much in eclipse. Perhaps so, but it may be truer to say that
the prophetic mission has now escaped all walls, even of grandest
cathedrals, and is now busy at organizing that mission into
specialties of social reform and social progress. However that may be,
the church as a home-extension meeting-place of the higher, broader,
and finer friendly association, in which all ages can come together,
in a friendly spirit and for worship of all that is lovely and of good
report;--the church as such a home-extension service has a noble place
to fill in modern life.
=Easy Divorce Does Not Lessen Marriage Responsibility.=--At any rate,
by whatever means of help, or however left to struggle alone with its
problems, the youth of to-day has taken all life's choices in its own
hands, especially the choice that puts one friend above all others and
takes the first step in the founding of a home. If any one thinks that
it is so slight a thing to do this now, since if one is not satisfied
one can get a divorce, he or she is not giving the choice a fair
chance. It must be held within the heart and purpose as a permanent
bond or the marriage will not be likely to realize its own
possibilities.
The real lover is sure that he will love forever the same. It is that
feeling that consecrates the marriage and gives most assurance of its
success. If we could get rid of romantic love we should have no good
start toward married happiness. If we got rid of the ideal of
life-long devotion we should not build the home on sure foundations.
The psychology of permanence is an essential of true marriage.
On the other hand, if we tried to put the family back into the bondage
of the old time, when youth was subject and could never exercise its
own power of choice, we should lose the one precious gift of freedom
to love, the power to find and keep one's own. If we fear the future
of the family because now the spiritual essence of marriage is
demanded, even if the form of its first enclosure prove too strait for
its growth, we cannot turn back to the harsh practice and coarse
ideals that once made all unions seem right that preserved a legal
bond and all men and women wrong-doers who sought freedom from
intolerable ills.
=New and Finer Marriage Unions.=--There is a way of life, full of
difficulties and not yet clear, a way of life that leads to such a
noble comradeship and such a type of loving union as the world could
rarely see in the older days.
Our children and our children's children will know how to use freedom
for service, and service for mutual growth, and mutual growth for
community betterment, in those "world's great bridals, chaste and
calm," which the future shall make the common glory of the home.
QUESTIONS ON FRIENDS AND THE CHOSEN ONE
1. Does youth now take its own way in choice of companionship as
never before? If so, does it mean better or worse choices in
marriage?
2. Should early marriages be encouraged? If so, how should the
social opportunity for wise choices be secured to youth? If
not, how can the social dangers of postponement of marriage be
minimized?
3. Should young people in shops and manufactories, in college, in
school, in recreation centres, and elsewhere, be guided into
social circles in which marriage choices are likely to be
wisely made? If so, how can this be done?
4. How can the disproportion in numbers of men and women in given
localities, which is an acknowledged cause of late marriages
and failure to marry at all, and which is largely due to
economic conditions, be mitigated?
5. Is the "revolt of youth," so called, a passing phase of rapid
social changes, or is it evidence that old institutions in
which the elders had superior power are becoming permanently
outgrown?
CHAPTER VII
HUSBANDS AND WIVES
"First, the love of wedded souls; next, neighbor loves and civic,
All reddened, sweetened from the central heart."
--E.B. BROWNING.
"Two shall be born the whole wide world apart
And speak in different tongues, and have no thought
Each of the other's being and no heed;
And those o'er unknown seas to unknown lands
Shall come, escaping wreck, defying death,
And all unconsciously shape every act
And bend each wandering step to this one end--That
one day, out of darkness, they shall stand
And read life's meaning in each other's eyes."
--SUSAN MARR SPAULDING.
"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light."
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
--ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
"A home is not an accidental or natural coming together of human
souls under the same roof in certain definite relationships; it is
a work of art, to be builded upon fixed principles of life and
action."--HENRY WARE, in _Home Life_.
"True love is but a humble, low-born thing,
And hath its food served up in earthenware;
It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,
Through the every-dayness of this work-day world,
Baring its tender feet to every roughness,
Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray
From Beauty's law of plainness and content;
A simple, fireside thing, whose quiet smile
Can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home."
--LOWELL.
=Not Fancied but Genuine Happiness in Marriage Now Demanded.=--The
fairy tales ended with the wedding and "they lived happily forever
after." The dramas and novels of to-day are often devoted to telling
how they did not live happily ever after and what or who caused the
unhappiness. Although no one need be alarmed that some people get
divorced when marital unhappiness becomes acute, every right-minded
person wishes that every marriage should turn out happily. We now,
however, demand that it shall be genuine, not make-believe happiness,
and that places a heavier strain upon all concerned. We have grown
wise enough to see that holding people together who should never have
been brought into close relationship does not really conduce to high
family morality or social well-being. That, however, only makes it
seem the more important that we should somehow learn how to prevent
the marriage of those who cannot make their union a success. The part
that social control can play in preventing the attempt to marry by the
wholly unfit in body, mind, or work-capacity has been already
suggested, and that pressure of the community upon the individual
choice will, without doubt, largely increase as the bad results of too
great individualism in the family relation are more clearly perceived.
=Social Restrictions on Marriage Choices.=--There will, in time, be a
narrowing of the circle within which personal choices can be made, so
that the markedly defective in mind, the victims of disease inimical
to family well-being, and the pauper strains of inheritance will be
ruled out before young people have a chance to marry according to
their own inclination.
With such helpful narrowing of choices there would still remain many
dangers to be avoided if the divorce statistics are to be held within
bounds of social safety.
The part that the family elders once played in settling vital
questions of adjustment within the marriage bond has now, for the most
part, to be undertaken for consideration and decision by the young
people themselves. To name these most important questions of
adjustment and discuss them in the light of modern ideals and desires
is to get a better impression of the difficulties they indicate.
=Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Name?=--In the first place, the
matter of the name for the married couple must be now considered.
Shall it be one or two? Shall the new sense of personal dignity, so
common to the modern woman, increase the already spreading fashion of
retention of the maiden name, her inherited family name, as
permanently her own, untouched by the fact of marriage union? No one
can be cognizant of the conviction and practice of many feminists
without understanding that this is a real problem to be settled surely
before the marriage ceremony. There is already in the field a "Lucy
Stone League" to give the support of the practice of a great and
beloved woman to the fashion of keeping one's own name. The question
of the desirability of having children bear the same name as both
parents is left for the most part in abeyance by those who thus
advocate two names for the married couple. It may be that each child
is expected to bear as a second name his mother's and as a last name
his father's family name, as, for example, John Jones Jackson, Jones
being the mother's and Jackson the father's personal signature; but
when the child marries, by what name shall the family line be carried
on?
To most of us who see in the family name adopted by both husband and
wife at marriage a sign of family unity not to be lost without serious
embarrassment to offspring, and some danger of easy drifting apart
without the knowledge of others, the name seems not to be of vital
importance. Why, then, it is asked, should the woman always give up
her family connection as indicated by inherited name, and the man
retain his? The fact that the custom has grown up by reason of the
legal absorption of the wife's life in that of the husband is obvious,
and gives much color to the claim that now, when a woman is a
recognized personality in the law whether married or single, she
should keep the name by which her personality has become known. That
is easily seen to be advantageous in the case of professional women of
wide influence. The great singer, the great writer, any creative
genius or artist, continues, as a rule, to be known by the name under
which greatness has been achieved. In such cases, however, women often
bear two names, the professional name either of family inheritance or
a chosen _nom de plume_, and the social name, which is their husband's
and engraved on calling cards. The tendency now is increasing to keep
the one designation to which one is born and make no concessions to
conventional nomenclature. It must be remembered that in such cases it
is the father's name by which the married daughter is called and the
mother's maiden name is lost with all the rest of the silent majority
of her sex. The fact that men have given the wedded name for ages, and
that men are most often senior partners in the marriage firm, and the
fact that any other suggested plan gives two names for one family
instead of one seems to make that a part of the old inheritance that
may not cause great uneasiness if one accepts it without revolt. There
is a compromise method which long has been a custom among Friends and
is growing even more rapidly than that of holding permanently to the
full maiden name. That is the plan of keeping the father's name, or
the "maiden name," as a middle one, and adding the husband's name; so
that Miss Mary Jane Wood shall, on marrying John Hartley Stone,
become, not Mrs. John Hartley Stone, but Mrs. Mary Wood Stone. That
keeps in memory her family designation and yet gives her children a
chance to call themselves by the one name which is a sign of the
family unity. However the settlement may be made, the point is that
such a vital question, entering into the legal signature for business
purposes as well as into all social relationship, shall reach
conclusion before the two enter upon the marriage bond.
=Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Nationality?=--In the second place,
there is now a question of nationality to be settled, a most important
one in all its political and legal bearings. The old law made a wife
the subject of her husband's national law and took her automatically
away from her own country if her husband was born and was citizen of
another country. The national allegiance of her birth and her family
was thus automatically transferred to that of the man she had married.
The suffering of many a woman in the late war when her husband's
national allegiance made her legally an "enemy alien" to her own
beloved land has sharpened the claim that now, when women have the
franchise, they should have complete choice of the body politic to
which they owe allegiance. If they wish to marry men of another
country they shall have the determination of whether or not they shall
become naturalized by his government or whether they shall keep
political relation with their own native country. The League of Women
Voters is now hard at work to make the national allegiance of women,
as of men, a personal matter whether women are married or single. The
Federal Bill that is called for by this body would make it incumbent
upon all women of foreign birth desiring to use the franchise in the
United States to become naturalized, and would protect any woman on
marrying from the loss of her own national allegiance, whatever her
husband's might be.[7] Surely such a protection of individual
citizenship is best for both men and women, whatever their marital
state. It is, however, a matter that often comes up for adjustment in
international marriages. It is matter of importance that women of
foreign birth as well as men coming to this country from other lands
should personally seek for full citizenship and not have it handed to
them with a marriage certificate. It is equally of importance that no
person should lose allegiance to the country of his or her birth and
affection simply by reason of marriage. This question of what country
shall one continue to belong to after marriage is one for settlement
on high grounds of patriotism and civic duty before the marriage is
consummated.
=Who Shall Choose the Domicile?=--In the third place, the matter of
chosen domicile is now up for discussion or may be in the near future.
The law from time immemorial has given the choice of residence of the
family, wife as well as children, into the complete control of the
husband and father. A woman may be "posted" in the public press as
"leaving her husband's bed and board," and thereby the husband may be
released from any responsibility for her debts or support. The
inference is that married women have no rights in marriage that can
survive independent choice on her part of a residence apart from the
husband. Now we have a movement that if successful would place the law
behind an equal choice by married men and married women, of domicile,
and of all that goes with that possible separation of residence. There
are those who declare that separate residence for husbands and wives
might keep the flame of romantic love burning longer and more
ardently, since "familiarity often breeds contempt" and the absence of
the loved one often kindles desire. This is not, however, the general
feeling, and the demand for independent choice of domicile has many
side-issues not at present fully met, if at all understood, by those
who make the demand noted above. The legal right of choice of domicile
goes consistently with the legal obligation to "support," The law
still makes it incumbent upon a husband to give financial support to
his wife commensurate with his earnings or income and still more
demands of the father the full support of minor children. Naturally,
if he has these obligations to meet, a man must go where he can earn
sufficient to meet them. He may be unwise or mistaken in his choice,
but, having the responsibility, he must try to meet it as best he can,
and among the necessary elements in that trial are free movement to
the place or places in which he can find work.
If, therefore, the family are all to be kept in one residence, father,
mother and children, this economic aspect of the father's
responsibility must be considered. If the father and mother each "gang
their ain gait," and decide for business reasons or from personal
preference to live in separate places, perhaps far apart from each
other, then which one is to have the child or children? The old idea
that men should have the power to hold women in wholly unsuitable
surroundings, and that no matter what home was offered her a wife must
submit and accept, is long outgrown in all the States of this Union.
The wife has now the right to help choose domicile, and in point of
fact, at least among the older Americans, has often more than an equal
share in such determination; but to pass a "blanket law" that at once
gave the suggestion of two choices for the family domicile without any
qualifying statement of release of men from "support" clauses in the
family legislation as those clauses relate to wives might be neither
just nor wise. The one in the family upon whom is placed the heavier
economic burden for support of children must have much freedom of
choice of residence. To restrict that freedom might be to add to
present family difficulties without really giving women better chances
in marriage. Now, any woman who feels herself oppressed in the matter
of domicile has the remedy in her own hands. She can make complaint to
a court or she can leave her husband and no one can prevent her, and
she can establish a separate establishment if she has the means and
make herself eligible thereby to a practical if not a legal divorce.
But if the twain stay together, and mean to do so, there are mutual
considerations that require an adjustment, and there is now little
danger of women having to submit to injustice in the matter of choice
of domicile, except in cases where no home together would seem
desirable to either or to both.
The matter of choice of domicile is now in the United States so much a
mutual question and to be decided upon economic grounds, that it is
one of the things that it is well to discuss from the bottom up if two
people wish to marry, provided there are any reasons why the relative
merits of two or more places of residence are involved in the issue.
The reasonableness and generosity of the average American man quite
equals the like qualities in the average American woman; hence the
domicile question may well be left in abeyance in any struggle for
"equality of rights between the sexes" and confined to personal debate
and decision; but in that personal debate and decision it should have
recognized place.
=Shall the Married Woman Earn Outside the Home?=--The fourth question,
now sometimes a burning one, and one most intimately related to that
of choice of domicile, is that concerning the continuance of
professional or business connection by the woman after marriage. Shall
I keep on with my work or not? This is the problem that besets many a
woman when the question of marriage with the chosen one is imminent.
For the woman who is a teacher, and already established in the
educational field in the city or town where both the man and the woman
concerned find it easy to choose to live after marriage, there is a
probability that she can continue her work after marriage with
comparative ease. The laws that used to penalize the woman teacher who
married are rapidly ceasing to operate, and although the common legal
requirement for a two years' vacation from public school employment
when a child is to be born may exert a strong influence upon the
birth-rate (either for or against) the fact that marriage does not
disqualify for teaching and that teaching is so near the home interest
may lead to much continuance of that type of professional work after
marriage. The question, however, is not one for the woman alone to
solve. Many women find that the ideal of "taking care of his wife,"
which long ages of law and custom have ingrained in man's nature, may
stand in the way of her earning outside the home after marriage. To be
settled right this question must be settled by full consent of both
parties and that consent may be hard to get from the man who fears
that he will be considered incapable if he "lets his wife earn." What
is to be done in such a case? That must be determined by the
possibility of compromise on both sides.
If the woman has attained a high position in some profession, law, or
medicine, as preacher, teacher, or nurse, as business manager or
welfare worker, the chances are that she feels she can best help in
the family life by hiring things done in the household, which she has
little skill, perhaps, to do herself, and keeping on with the vocation
for which she has been trained and in which she has already gained a
place. But she may have attained her vocational opportunity and to
keep it must continue to live in a locality remote from the man's home
and work. What then? To be near each other and to live together is the
chief desire of genuine lovers. That would be no home which had two
centres of vocational activity miles apart. Circumstances may compel
such separation for economic reasons long after marriage has bound two
lives together so closely that distance even cannot really separate
them. But at the outset, if two people are to belong to each other,
they must be able to combine their home life if that is to be a help
and not a hindrance to the joint affection that alone makes the two
one. The question of domicile, bound up with that of whether or not
the woman shall continue her vocational connection after marriage,
sometimes becomes acute in this manner:--the woman earns more than the
man and her place of earning is in a far-away location from his and
the transplanting of his life has no promise of economic readjustment.
Shall she give up her larger salary and go with him to a place in
which she is less likely than if single to gain a professional
foothold and they both make the smaller income do? Or shall she
insist, if he is willing, that the economic advantage of the married
firm requires his removal to the seat of her labors at any risk of his
getting another hold upon vocational opportunity?
Those who ask such a question should remember that the facts of life,
social and economic, all make the upsetting of the man in his work
seldom a safe or a happy solution. In the first place, the position of
a man who even temporarily depends upon his wife's vocational success
and relinquishes his own economic position, is far more difficult than
that of a woman who sacrifices her own professional standing to go
with her husband to a new centre. Any woman asks more of a man in the
way of sacrifice, both of his standing as a man and his chances as a
worker, if she demands that he take her income as the basic economic
element in the joint family treasury (when such demand entails a
change of residence and a giving up of assured income on his part)
than any man asks of a woman when the conditions proposed are the
reverse. No woman loses "caste" who depends upon her husband in an
economic sense. Perhaps the time will come when it will cost a woman
the loss of social prestige and of the best chance for work outside
the home (as it now does a man) when the choice is made to follow the
larger income from one locality to another. Now, however, it means
that a woman can adjust herself to such change far better than a man,
and hence that equal right to demand sacrifice and equal duty to
mutually help each other demand that where such acute problems arise
the woman shall give the man's relation to his work right of way.
Moreover, even those who, like Doctor Patten, believe that women
should continue vocational work after marriage place the chief
economic burden of the family permanently upon the husband and father.
The wife may earn outside the home if both agree and the opportunity
offers in the place where the man's work already is; but the
maintenance of the economic standing and the improvement of social
condition remain, as of old, with the man. And for the obvious reason
that if the woman has children they may take a large portion of her
interest and of her strength and energy and, in any case, the married
woman, if she really makes a home, must mix her vocational work with a
more or less extended devotion to that home-making. Also, although a
woman at marriage may be in receipt of a larger income from vocational
service than is the man she wishes to marry, he will be more likely,
if worth-while, to gain steadily toward a much larger compensation.
The positions which women fill are for the most part self-limited.
They are fast developing high qualities for routine work in the
professions, like school doctor and hospital clinician and workers for
legal aid and other like salaried employments. These are not highly
paid, but have manifest advantages for women in that they give a fixed
income, if small, and in that they allow for regulation of hours of
service that may easily be made half-time work in case of divided
effort. Hence, although at a given point in earlier life (when the
usual greater precocity of women give some women the advantage in
salary and position), a woman may have a higher salary at marriage, a
far greater rise in both income and leadership may be on the husband's
side as the years go on.
=Economic Considerations Involved.=--At any rate, the question of
whether or not the woman shall earn outside the home after her
marriage must wait upon the deeper question, shall she do anything
which will disturb or render more difficult the man's economic
adjustment? There are exceptions, a growing number of exceptions, but
as a general thing the question of domicile and the question of which
one shall give way when there is difficulty of both being well
situated in individual work in one place, must be settled on the basis
of the man's longer, larger, and more continuous responsibility for
the economic standing of the family.
The exceptions make their own excuse and shape their own defense. The
average married woman carries on two vocations if she keeps on with
her own work, one inside and one outside the home. The one in which
she earns outside the home must in the long run and the large way be
subordinated to the joint partnership of the household in which she
bears a larger share of the internal management and he the heavier
burden of the outside support.
Any thorough-going discussion of the questions involved in the
wage-earning of married women and mothers outside the home must
include study of actual expense of alternate plans. The fundamental
question may be one concerning the social value of the woman's
vocational work. The next must certainly be what would the family
treasury gain or lose by the housemother's continued vocational
service outside the home. In the suggestive and encouraging book by
Mrs. Mary Hinman Abel, entitled _Successful Family Life on the
Moderate Income_, this economic aspect of the problem is treated with
definiteness. In addition to the general conclusion reached by many
that a family income of from $2,500 to $3,000 must be reached before
continual hired help can be economically justified, Mrs. Abel shows by
tables at pre-war prices that unless a married woman has a high-grade
profession with a good independent income the duties performed by the
average housemother within the home cannot be hired without a distinct
economic loss to the family treasury. For example, reckoning
conservatively the cost of the full-time hired girl or working
housekeeper at $600 to $1,000 per year, and estimating the economic
value of the woman who does all her own housework except washing and
heavy cleaning at only fifteen cents an hour, the saving by the
average married woman who is competent and well and does all her own
work is a large one. There are the best of reasons, therefore, why,
for the woman who is in ordinary circumstances and not so averse to
household care and work as to insure her failure in it, the answer to
the question, Shall I keep on with my outside earning after
marriage?--should be in the negative. The old notion that all women
were domestic and would enjoy housework if only they could do it in
their own homes is indeed exploded. The natural differences among
women are now allowed. The advantages, social, economic, and in
matters of health and control of work-time and of leisure, which the
average housemother enjoys over the average woman who works at manual
labor under the factory system of industry, were, however, never
better known or more justly evaluated. The proof of this is in the
inclusion of training in household arts by the Smith-Hughes Bill,
under which the Federal Government makes large appropriations for
vocational training directly aimed at improving the efficiency of
women whose labor is confined to the private home.
It is a sign, among other things, of desired and needed flexibility in
domestic arrangements that there were listed in 1910 as married
twenty-five per cent. of the women at work in "gainful occupations."
Not all the conditions indicated by this count were socially helpful;
since in the textile industries, in which many married women are
employed, there are fewer children born and more die before the end of
the second year than in the average population. It does, however,
indicate that among those of higher opportunity in life there is a
growing disposition to treat the question of women's continuance in
vocational service outside the home after marriage as a real problem
and one to be settled in freedom, and with social approval of that
freedom, by the two persons most deeply concerned. Only, it must be
insisted, that all a married woman gains in salary or wages cannot be
reckoned as increase of the family income. The economic value of the
average housemother's contribution is now definitely computed and must
be reckoned hereafter as so much actually contributed to the family
income. And so far, if a woman is physically able, temperamentally
adjustable, and adequately trained for household tasks, she can in the
vast majority of cases serve her day and generation in no better
fashion than by assuming and carrying the multiple duties of the
private home.
Hence, although freedom means new choice, prudence and affection alike
oftenest point to the old paths of family service for the average
woman. As Mrs. Abel well says of the competent housemother who chooses
full and personal service to the home and the family, "At her best she
represents individual effort fully utilized. She fits her tasks
together; she utilizes bits of time; she invents short cuts in her
work," Of such it may be truly declared, in the new time as in the
old, that she translates every dollar of the family income into many
dollars' worth of comfort, of health, and of happiness.
=Is It Bad Form to Earn After Marriage?=--One more consideration,
quite new in its full significance, should be given place in any
discussion of the wife's relation to work outside the home. That
consideration is concerned with the use of her time not needed in
household tasks. The modern aids to those tasks, of which mention has
been made, give many women who assume full responsibility for the
housemother's work a considerable amount of strength and time which
may be used in some chosen way outside the strictly family service.
The general idea is that such time should be given in gratuitous
"social welfare work" or in some form of activity divorced from
regular vocations. An able President of the Federation of Women's
Clubs, the body most distinctly representing the interest and service
of women in volunteer social service in this country, has said, in
addressing her large constituency, "Sport is work we do without
pay--we are all sports." The sentiment was applauded and with evident
sense of superiority to the "paid worker." The feeling, so general in
many circles of society, that women lose "caste" if they work for
wages or salary, reaches its maximum of prejudice in the case of
married women. It is thought highly honorable to sell things in a
"Fair" for a good cause and come in contact with a crowd of strangers
in the process among people who would consider "keeping a shop,"
unless from dire necessity, a very questionable proceeding. It is
thought most virtuous and wifely for a woman married to a minister of
the church to give her time and strength gratuitously in multitudinous
religious helps to the organization which usually counts on getting
the service of two first-class people for a second-or third-class
salary for one. But for the wife of such a minister, realizing that
the income is generally insufficient for proper living, to work
outside her home, even for a few hours each day, for pay, is to lay
herself and her husband also open to harsh criticism; even if her
house is kept well and her children properly cared for. It is also
thought by many people that the only really justifiable use of time
that can be spared from household duties is in furthering the
husband's work, if he is struggling up; or, if he has "arrived," in
these miscellaneous gratuitous social services in which the club-women
so abound.
There is great need that this judgment be revised. Not only is this
true in the interest of women whose devotion to a chosen vocation has
right of way in justice when the debate is on as to the use of any
left-over time she may save from domestic duties. It is also true that
we can not have the democratic feeling and influence from women of
social position which our political life so sadly needs unless it is
understood that it is as honorable for a woman, married or unmarried,
to earn money for her work as it is for a man with or without an
inherited fortune. The class feeling that makes all married women
range themselves with those of their sex who have inherited fortunes,
and leads them to place those who serve the community in salaried
positions as less unselfish and less honorable social workers than
themselves, is one to outgrow. An interest divorced from professional
standards or professional compensation is not necessarily nobler or
more useful. This fact makes the choice of women before marriage as to
the use of time that may justly be spared, even when the home makes
its heaviest demands upon them, a choice of social as well as of
personal significance.
Every year social effort once strictly of private provision and
support becomes a public service, with organized supervision and
standardized compensation. When such volunteer social effort becomes a
public service it is highly desirable that the trained women it
demands for its staff should (some of them, at least) be married
women. Otherwise, the same loss of efficiency that the rapid turn-over
of the women teaching staff of our schools occasions will be
discovered in our social work as it changes its centre of gravity from
the private to the public organization.
There is a far greater need from this point of view for reorganization
of hours and details of work so as to give more half-time or
quarter-time employment to women of proved ability, than for any
wholesale condemnation of the woman who works outside her home for
pay, even when her husband is able and willing to "take care of her."
It is for society to say, indeed, that women marrying and having
children owe first duty to the home. It is for women themselves to say
whether they shall use any time at their disposal after that duty is
met in continuing such relation to their vocation as is now possible,
or in being "sports."
The fact that men are trying to see both sides of this vexed question
and that women, as a rule, are trying to make adjustment that will
hold an equitable and happy balance between the personal and the
family well-being means that this problem will work itself to a
democratic result without social loss.
=Shall Parenthood be Chosen?=--The fifth question that should come up
for serious discussion and some measure of agreement in advance of the
wedding ceremony is that of children. Shall there be any? If so, how
many, if we can afford them? If so, how soon shall we try to call
about us the new life? If not, why not, and how shall we live together
without hope of offspring? These are vital questions. For want of
agreement, or at least of understanding of disagreement before
marriage, many unions are shipwrecked.
In the old days there were no questions of this nature. Every woman
must have as many children as nature allowed, and when she could bear
no more must give way to a new wife and a step-mother to carry on the
family life; and if there were more children in a family than the
father and family friends could support, they had to be cared for by
the community. The modern condition is the same in the case of those
below a certain grade of intelligence and self-control. But as human
beings become more rational in other respects, they apply reason,
common sense, and prudence to the great function of parenthood.
Indeed, so much is this the case that the social danger of breeding
only from below the higher levels is felt to be an increasing one.
There are not wanting those who believe that rationalism in parenthood
is wrong and should be prevented, if possible, but those are the
people who decry the use of reason in all other matters, except it may
be in the strictly economic field. The fact is that whatever may be
said on the side of ancient religious sanction and inherited
sentiment, the tendency on all sides is irresistibly toward the
personal choice in parenthood as in marriage.
=Some People Have a Right to Marry and Remain Childless.=--There are
many, however, who believe that no one should marry unless wishing and
expecting to have children. That is a belief which will doubtless be
more and more outgrown. There are young people, children of dependent
parents and near relatives, who see no way of starting a family of
their own, who yet should not be denied the comfort and help of
married life. The tragedies of sons and daughters made to drag out a
lonely existence and either condemning the one they love to like
denial or else giving up the hope of union and seeing their chosen one
wedded to another--the sort of tragedy that forms the subject of many
novels--is a tragedy to be outgrown. It may be that social burdens in
behalf of parents or other dependents can not be lifted to the extent
of making a completed family life possible to some young people. All
the more, two people who truly love each other and are bound to one
great sacrifice, namely, that of children of their own, should be able
to escape another, that of denial of marriage.
There are other cases in which marriage is right and childbearing may
be wrong. There are tendencies to disease, in which, although there
may be a long and useful life for the one bearing a family taint, it
may be socially wrong to risk carrying on that taint. If all who need
to know are agreed, and there is a chance of living many years of real
union together, no law should step in to prevent, and no inherited
view of the limitation of marriage to those seeking parental relation
should refuse assent to the union. There are many conceivable
limitations to parental functioning, even for those who are keenly
aware of the social significance of parenthood, which do not apply to
marriage of those truly mated in thought and purpose. It is, however,
the height of irrationality, and will more and more be seen to be
such, for men and women to enter a relation the natural result of
which, in the vast majority of cases, is the bearing of children, with
no idea on either side as to what is the ideal and the wish and the
purpose of the other party in the marriage union.
The question, again, for those who are agreed that they want to start
a family as well as begin a mating is definitely to be considered,
namely, that of the right time to begin the family they wish to have.
It may be, as many believe, that too hasty adding of the strenuous
discipline of parenthood to the often difficult task of adjustment of
two mature and forceful natures, such as marriage so often brings
together, is likely to give an unnecessarily hard start in the new
life. Two people who have just got used to themselves, perhaps, have
at marriage to get used to each other. It may be that they could
succeed better in this great task if they had not so often to adjust
themselves during the first year to the needs and masterful claims of
a baby. There is no form of tyranny equal to that of the infant, who,
assured of his right to unlimited service from all in sight, makes his
demands at all times and in all ways. He pays for his subjection of
parents and grandparents and they are all usually willing slaves. But
it is often a great advantage if the parents, at least, have had a
chance to make full acquaintance with each other's pet weaknesses and
each other's best qualities before "the baldheaded tyrant from No
Man's Land" makes his appearance. It is, therefore, clearly a matter
of frank and full discussion and settlement before marriage not only
as to the fundamental question of whether or not there shall be
children, but also if, as is the case in the overwhelming majority of
cases, the young people hope for offspring, when they shall begin to
call them to the home.
The thing of all others to be avoided is the outgrown idea that
heavenly magic attends completely to these matters. It is earthly
wisdom and unselfishness and good intent that are needed in this as in
all the great decisions of life. Hence, there can be nothing more
absurdly out of drawing with a rationalized civilization than any law
which forbids the serious discussion of this most vital of social
questions or one that forbids the full dissemination of scientific
knowledge needed by those who would do the right thing in the parental
as in all other relations of life.
=What Is the Just Financial Basis of the Household?=--The sixth
question that has right of debate before the marriage ceremony is that
of the financial support of the household and of the distribution of
the joint income. The use of the words joint income prejudges the case
on this point. The old idea was of one purse, of right that of the
"head of the family," and whatever it held was his to disburse. He it
was who determined how the wife should be fed and clothed and
sheltered. If he were generous and kind she fared well; if the
opposite she fared ill. Her legal right was only the same as that of
her minor child. Now the case is wholly different. In spite of some
inconsistent left-over laws that can make a showing of belated tyranny
when culled from old statute books, the financial right of the wife in
the household is generally recognized. It is, however, still true that
no logical system of financial sharing has been worked out so clearly
as to be accepted by the common mind. We still have talk of a wife
being "supported" when, as housemother, she works harder and more
hours than her husband. We still have listing of those housemothers,
who are the majority of the women of every country, as "without
occupation." It is possible for men to speak of "giving" their wives
what they think is needed for the household and without reference to
any personal preference of the wives in expenditure, as if it were an
act of charity and not a debt owed the family life.
On the other hand, some women, having achieved partial or entire
financial independence of the husband and earning handsome sums in
work outside the home, look upon all that the man earns as "belonging
to the family," and all that they earn as wholly belonging to
themselves. "What's John's belongs to us all; what is mine belongs to
me," said one wife, without any idea of the absurd injustice of taking
all the advantage that new conditions had made possible for women and
at the same time hanging on to all that old-time privilege gave to
wives. There is need of the strictest and most balanced thinking along
the line of the economics of the household.
If, as seems in the vast majority of cases the best plan, the husband
and father can be and is depended upon for the entire financial
support of the family in the matter of earning and the housemother
gives an actual service of great economic value in saving and service
(as the competent housewife assuredly does give), then what is earned
and what is produced by housework and management makes in justice one
family treasury. If to that is added some special earning outside the
home which the housemother is able to mix in with her family service,
then that also is a part of the family treasury. After the marriage
there should be a real partnership. There may be a separate account on
either side of the gifts of inheritance or savings preceding the
marriage, but after the twain are one in home-building they may justly
be one in a common treasury. Two bank-books they may have, it is true,
and perhaps better so, although many find one in the name of both
husband and wife sufficiently convenient. The main thing is to get
firmly in mind on both sides before any actual adjustments are
necessary what, on the financial side, is the right attitude and plan
of married life. The best way seems to be, for some people, at least,
the division of the family treasury into three distinct parts. The
first, and alas, in most families the much larger share, to be
dedicated to common household expenses. The excellent work of
specialists in family budgets shows us how this fund should be
distributed in details of rent or dwelling, cost of food, clothing,
reading, church, recreation, etc. Any one can now make up with
prudence and wisdom such an estimate in proportion to the known income
and the ascertained cost of living in any given locality. After this
common expense is provided for, with due regard for the duty of saving
for future needs, the remaining portion, be it much or little, should
be equally divided as the personal fund of the husband and the wife.
Some of those who have written on the family budget think that the
contribution of the housewife in work, for which wages would have to
be paid if she did not give this personal labor in the home, should be
estimated in wages value, and should go into her part of a separate
fund, after the common household expenses are deducted. That, it
seems, would not be fair, for if the man puts in his labor value the
woman should put in hers for the first and indispensable expense of
the common life together. What is to be made right is the old custom
of reckoning the savings and common property acquired after marriage
as "his" estate. It is the estate of both, and should be so
considered, even if he has earned outside and she saved and earned and
helped him earn from within the household only.
=What Shall be the Accepted Standard of Living?=--The final question
that must be considered by the two who are to marry and set up
housekeeping is the scale of living they shall aim to attain. It has
been well said that "the standard of living is what we desire; the
scale of living what we can achieve." What is desired often, and what
seems to the young only reasonable for all to have, is the scale of
living the parents' households have attained after a life of hard
work. It is a matter for profound ethical thinking to decide what
measure of increase in expense of home upkeep should follow upon
increase of income where there are children to be affected by changes.
It may sometime be seen to be a social duty to keep much farther
within bounds the natural desire to expand expense as income
increases; both for the reason that income may decrease with advancing
years for the parents and retrenchment be necessary when it is
hardest, and also for the more important reason that children
naturally make standards at the height of parental expenditure and may
find it thereby the more difficult to "begin at the bottom" when they
marry. At any rate, the young couple starting out must keep within
their means or suffer from the worst of fortunes, the dread of
arriving bills and the shame of inability to pay them. That means some
agreement before housekeeping begins as to what is involved in that
adventure.
A witty woman said, "I love to travel with my friend Mary, for her
economies and mine are the same." Some uniformity of temperamental
reaction both to regular economies and to occasional extravagances is,
if not an essential, a valuable basis for happy marriage. That means
that the engaged couple might well start a game of "Must Haves" and
"Would Like to Haves" in the moments that can be spared from other
pursuits, a game in which without the other's knowledge each should
write the secret wishes and requirements to be later compared for
mutual enlightenment. The woman who would gladly go with two meals a
day for a fortnight in order to get a ticket for the opera or
symphony, and the man who would sacrifice a needed new suit of clothes
with pleasure for a fishing trip, may be able to compromise on
essentials, but will find it difficult in the matter of extras unless
warned beforehand. Affection bridges many chasms, and sensible people
learn that even in the best regulated families father, mother, and the
children may all get some of their best times apart. A basis of mutual
understanding is, however, essential. The necessity to get at a common
plan for the economic standards of the household is a vital one. How
many men have run in debt for what they believed essential to the
wife's happiness because she had such things in her father's house,
without letting the wife know that economy was necessary, only to find
out that if full confidence had been given a mutual effort would have
secured better results. How many women have gone without things they
might have had for want of knowledge of their husband's income and
suffered fears that need not have been in the mind. How many also,
alas, both of men and women, have lived beyond their means from
selfish demand one upon the other, a demand which might have been
chastened, at least, if full knowledge of economic resources had been
attained before the scale of living was fixed.
All these items of suggested conference and decision given above are
counsels of prudence and wisdom. Many, perhaps most, however, of the
young couples starting out in life "go it blind" in all or some of
these particulars. The wonder is that these who start on the most
serious of compacts and the one leading to the greatest extremes of
both happiness and unhappiness with so little knowledge of each
other's condition, capacity, or deepest wishes, get along, on the
whole, so well. We see them on every side starting on the sea of
married life with gaiety of heart because the chosen one is obtained
for company and with no conception of the difficulties that may make
the voyage tempestuous. But they often make safe harbor of comfortable
comradeship for middle life and old age, and if they have had a harder
time than they need have had at least prove that "love is the greatest
thing in the world."
=The Need for Full and Mutual Understanding Before Marriage.=--The
rising tide of divorce, however, gives point to the plea of this
chapter for a more careful charting of the sailing course in advance.
The fact that so many get their discipline of knowledge and direction
as they go along and do not make shipwreck even if matrimonial storms
grow frequent or heavy, is a very good testimony to the native
goodness of men and women and to their ability to make good their
mistakes and work out success even from failure provided the
indispensable north star of unselfish affection leads them on. It
would be well, however, to lessen the failures if that can be done.
When men and women show what marriage can become for the wise, the
idealistic, and the loving, it gives a picture of satisfaction and
mutual service that makes most other human associations seem trivial
and short-lived. Only parenthood is equal or superior to marriage in
its possibilities of moral discipline and personal development. To
make it successful is worth striving for.
Literature, science, and art have many great marriages to their
credit--men and women brought together by identical tastes and similar
capacities, working together in high pursuits through a long life of
achievement. They illumine the way of life with a peculiar glow.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning sang:
"Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
Our ministering two angels look surprise
On one another as they strike athwart
Their wings in passing."
but her union with Robert Browning showed that they were nearer alike
than in her sad humility she had fancied. Jonas Lie, the Norwegian
novelist, and his gifted wife, it is said, "knew the felicity of a
perfect union," and he himself has testified, "If I have ever written
anything of merit, my wife has as great a share in it as myself, and
her name should appear on the title-page as collaborator." The joint
discoveries of the Curies are well known, linking husband and wife
together in a great gift to humanity. In humbler circles of the gifted
and the talented the married couples are becoming more numerous each
decade whose work as well as whose affection binds them together.
=The Supreme Satisfactions of Successful Marriage.=--Take it all in
all, although no particular marriage may be "made in heaven," the sort
of union that monogamic marriage has worked out at its highest reaches
is without a rival in depth of feeling, in satisfaction of
association, in wealth of comradeship, and in social value as a
foundation for family life and for initial training toward social
serviceableness. No wise person can do aught to lessen its opportunity
for ethical drill, or for that due mingling of attraction and duty
which make all the vital associations of human beings helps toward the
higher life. No wise person will continue in the ancient error of
mistaking show for substance in these weighty matters.
All who believe that the family is an institution whose gift to the
social order is not yet outgrown and whose possibilities of social
value are not yet fully developed, must work to make the right
marriages easier to secure, and the wrong ones less easy to be
consummated, and to purge the ideals of home of selfishness and of
superficiality by constant portrayal of the best in the married life.
The stage and the moving picture should more often portray the world's
marriage successes rather than perpetual reproductions of the marriage
failures. The novel should more often show how many people save, so as
by fire, the dreams of youth in rescue of their married life from
threatening ills. Such portrayal would not be against a realistic
ideal of art, but a more perfect and balanced use of realism. The rise
of people on "stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things"
is quite as dramatic as the succession of falls that land them in the
pit of despair. The struggles that succeed are quite as capable of
exciting emotional response as are those that fail.
Real life shows a larger measure of successful achievement than of
bitter failure, else would life not go on. Marriage at its highest is
yet to be used in any adequate measure as the theme of the artist and
the stimulant of response to art.
The day will come when "Main Street" will reveal its best and not its
worst; its richest, and not its poorest products, for the satisfaction
of universal sentiment.
QUESTIONS ON HUSBANDS AND WIVES
1. Are there any subjects upon which husbands and wives must be
in substantial agreement in order to secure a successful
marriage? If so, what are some of them?
2. Are there any radical differences in belief, respecting
religion, politics, education of children, ways of living,
business relationship, etc., which marriage may successfully
bridge, provided there is genuine and faithful affection? If
so, name some of them.
3. How can "engaged" couples make sure that essentials of
agreement, and non-essentials of agreement to differ, are well
understood in advance?
4. Are there any new spiritual relationships of men and women in
marriage made possible by the modern tendency toward the
democratization of the family? If so, what are some of them?
FOOTNOTES:
[7] This bill, the so-called "Cable Act," was passed September 22,
1922.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CHILDREN OF THE FAMILY
The human being arrives:
"Immense have been the preparations for me,
Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me;
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen;
For room to me the stars kept aside in their own rings,
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me;
Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,
And forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me;
Now, on this spot I stand with my robust soul."
--WALT WHITMAN.
"The child grows up in a setting of social functions of a type
higher always than that of his private accomplishment. He must grow
by gradual absorption of copies, patterns and examples."--BALDWIN.
"He is happy who comes with healthy body into the world; much more
he who goes with healthy spirit out of it. Nature has implanted
within us the seeds of learning, of virtue, and of piety; to bring
these to maturity is the object of education. All men require
education, and God has made children unfit for other employments
in order that they may have leisure to learn."--COMENIUS.
"The most critical interval of human nature is that between the
hour of birth and twelve years of age; this is the time when vice
and error may take root without our being possessed of any
instrument to destroy them; the first art of education, then,
consists neither in teaching virtue nor truth but in guarding the
heart from evil and the mind from error."--ROUSSEAU.
"A ladder leading to heaven is let down to every child, but he
must be taught to climb it. Education should decide for every
child not only what is to be made of its life, but should seek an
answer to the question, what was it intended that child should
become?"--PESTALOZZI.
"An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy."--OLD PROVERB.
"Come, let us live with our children!"--FROEBEL.
=Conditions to be Secured for Every Child.=--There are several
conditions which must be secured for every child to insure that it may
be born and reared according to high standards.
These may be listed as follows:
I. Two parents, to secure in advance a favorable social position.
II. A competent mother, to insure his first two or three years of
life in health, happiness, and growing power.
III. A competent father, to stand back of the mother and help make
a home adequate at least to the minimum of normal life's
demands.
IV. Community surroundings that will make possible the successful
achievement of parental duty.
V. Census provisions for vital and social statistics that will
make it sure that every child is counted in the population
of his nation, state, and community, and that he is
accounted for in all social relationships.
VI. State protection against industrial exploitation, vicious
influences, harmful use of leisure time, and generally
unwholesome conditions.
VII. Health standards in the community, fixed by experts and
maintained in essentials by public provisions.
VIII. Education standards, fixed by experts and maintained, at
least in normal minimum, by community provision.
IX. Such vital relation between the family, the school, the
political system, and all cultural opportunities as shall
insure to each child his just share of the social
inheritance to which all are heir.
=The Need for Two Parents.=--The first point noted is the need of two
parents for every child. The illegitimate child is handicapped. It is
a sound social movement that aims to make every "slacker" father
accept his share of responsibility in the case of the unmarried mother
and either marry the woman or give financial aid for the child. It
does not thereby secure two actual parents for the child. The orphan
child, the half-orphan child is handicapped; more so if bereft of
mother than of father, but if the father dies or deserts after
marriage, all experience shows that even if the mother lives and is
capable and faithful, the child who lacks a father has many
difficulties to overcome. The child of parents who have come to
dislike each other is seriously handicapped. A forced tie between
those who no longer love each other creates an atmosphere often fatal
to comfort and happiness and one to which children, sensitive as they
are to the feeling of their elders, react most unfavorably. The child
of divorced parents is handicapped; perhaps not so often or so
seriously as when held for years in an atmosphere of mutual hatred,
suspicion, fault-finding, and distrust--handicapped, however, by many
social embarrassments, by shock to affection given, perhaps, to both
parents equally, and by the often great difficulty of finding a
suitable home for the child of the divorced couple. The child that is
not wanted and comes into a world hostile to his birth is handicapped
in proportion as the influence reaches him at the moment of conception
or lessens the power of the parents to give him what he needs before
or after he arrives.
There must, then, be two parents, in love, as in law, to start a child
right--two parents who live until he has reached age of independent
direction and support, two parents who pull together for themselves
and for him, two parents who are equally recognized in law as acting
for him in guardianship throughout his minority.
The recognition of some of these needs of every child has been more
general and intelligent than that of others. For example, the equal
guardianship of the father and mother, their mutual responsibility for
financial support when financially competent, their equal control over
the family life and their common pledge to the community of parental
care--this has not been recognized until recently, is not now in many
of the States of the Union and perhaps not perfectly in any one.
At an Annual Meeting of the Uniform Laws Commission, at Cleveland,
Ohio, Mrs. Catherine Waugh McCulloch, partner with her husband in the
firm of McCulloch and McCulloch, Chicago, Illinois, and representing
the League of Women Voters, secured an almost unanimous recommendation
for uniform laws giving equal guardianship to fathers and to mothers.
As Mrs. McCulloch is the successful mother of four children, besides
being Master in Chancery of the Supreme Court of Illinois in Cook
County, and has long represented the legal interests of women in the
largest organizations of progressive women in the United States, she
could, and did, speak with special authority in urging the right of
mothers to protect their children on equal terms with fathers, by a
"Uniform Joint Guardianship Law."
Some facts have given color to the claim of the extreme feminist that
if you can only get the right sort of mother the father is more or
less a negligible quantity. The history of the family, however,
proves, if it proves anything, that to actively engage two adults in
the business of rearing children is an immense asset to those
children.
The two parents insisted upon as foremost necessity for child-care
may, however, be of a poor sort, perhaps only furnished with good-will
toward their task. Even so, whatever the lacks may be, however small
the capacity, feeble the will and poor the purse, however
society-at-large has to make up for deficiencies in the parents, it is
at least one step toward a successful life to have two recognized
parents who mean to do the right thing by their offspring and never
fail in love toward each other and toward the children whom they call
their own.
=Every Child Should Have a Competent Mother.=--The second demand of
child-life is for a competent mother--competent in health, that the
baby may get really born alive, competent in nursing and household
skill, or in power to secure that skill from others, in order that the
baby may be sure of that first long start of two or three years toward
physical, mental, and moral sanity and strength. It is in those first
years that the child gains power to begin his own conquest of the
world at an advantageous point. That many women are not competent
physically for even the first test of childbirth we know from many
sources of inquiry. The facts brought out in legislative hearings by
those urging support for the so-called "Maternity Bill" amply prove
this. Taking the figures for New York State alone, in the year 1920 we
find a total of thirteen mothers out of every thousand dying in
childbirth, with an estimate from physicians that with proper care
two-thirds of these women could have been saved. A competent mother,
then, physically speaking, means not only one measurably strong but
one sufficiently cared for to prevent overstrain before the
birth-hour. Again, in New York State alone, we find that eighty-six
babies out of every thousand die before they reach the end of their
first year. This may be from ignorance on the mother's part, or it may
be from her physical weakness unequal to the care of the new baby. It
may be there are already too many children near that baby's age who
also make heavy demands upon time and energy. It may be that
discouragements from unhappy family conditions or worry over economic
disabilities sap the mother's vitality. It may be that taints of blood
doom the child and the mother. Whatever the cause, it is reason for
deep concern that a great state, like New York, for example, has a
rate of infant mortality nearly twice as high as that of New Zealand
and ranking eleventh in the twenty-three states of the registration
area in which the death of babies is set down with care. When we add
to this loss the death of at least 25,000 women each year in
childbirth, most of whom could have been saved under right conditions,
we are still more concerned. Of the 250,000 babies lost last year we
are safe in estimating at least one-half whose lives could have been
spared with even a minimum care. The effort now making all along the
line of social advance to give every child a decent start in life is
obviously necessary and wise.
If the mother is proved wholly incompetent in mind or character we
have acquired a social right to take her child from her and place it
where it can receive better nurture and training. We are beginning to
recognize the corollary duty of social aid to all women of good
character, motherly feeling, and any fair degree of intelligence in
their function of motherhood. There are those hopelessly incompetent
who should never be allowed to have children. There are far more with
power to bear and rear children successfully whom adverse
circumstances submerge to incompetency. These, we are now learning,
must be helped in some way, for society's sake even more than for
their own, if they are willing to undertake parental service to the
race.
The passage of the so-called Sheppard-Towner Bill is one answer in the
United States to the right of the child and its mother to life and
health. There are those who deplore the tendency to seek for such aid
to individuals through the Federal Government. The Governor of New
York State, for example, although a man of progressive ideas and
liberal point of view, opposed "starting aid to mothers and babies
from the Washington end," declaring that work for the "welfare of
citizens of any class should start at the locality to be benefited."
He would not have the people educated to depend upon the Federal
Government for benefits. He feared that the Sheppard-Towner Bill would
tend to "make the public expect to be nursed from the cradle to the
grave" and be a detriment to the public life rather than a benefit.
New York State made a good appropriation for its own aid to mothers
and babies, but did not apply for the Federal aid in addition. By the
middle of the second month of 1922, however, nearly thirty states had
accepted the Act as a welcome help in their welfare work, and few will
be left outside of its provisions by the end of the year. The fear
that such an Act would make the general government the active
controller and director of the lives of parents and their children in
most intimate ways seems not justified by the facts. The Bill, when
passed, simply provided money to be given to the states on the
fifty-fifty basis "for the purpose of coöperating with them in
promoting the welfare and hygiene of maternity and infancy." The
specific plans for each state are to be made by the state agency in
charge of the work and the only Federal supervision is that of
standardization, by which the Chief of the Children's Bureau, the
Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, and the Commissioner of
Education must approve those plans as "reasonably appropriate and
adequate to carry out the purposes of the Act" before the money of the
Federal Government is passed over to any state.
It is rather as a help to states desiring aid in this particular than
as a compulsory requirement that the Act is intended to operate. There
are those, however, who fear any extension of power of the National
Government even through influence acquired by subsidies for necessary
aids to the common life. It is a matter for thought and unprejudiced
study what form of public aid is, on the whole, the best for our
country. It cannot be denied, however, that different states have
differing burdens to carry for the immigrant, the ignorant, the
destitute, and the defective. It is at least desirable to press the
point that no state lives to itself and no one dies to itself. Disease
knows no boundary lines of political government and the death-toll of
mothers and babies does not halt at geographical limitations. We are
all one country insofar as bad social conditions are concerned. We are
all helped when any smallest country town most remote from the centres
of population is raised in its social standards and conditions. Hence,
perhaps, we may not fear national aid to each locality in need or feel
concerned as to what agency accomplishes a required social advance.
Ellen Key declared that every mother should be maintained by the state
during the first year of every child's life and that afterward each
child should have one-half its support from the state and one-half
from the father. That may not be the ideal. We may believe that to
thus reduce the father's responsibility would mean a dangerous
lessening of his energy and devotion to the family well-being. It is
true, however, that while there are so many in every community without
essentials for care in childbirth or for the early nurture of infants,
we must find some way of providing these essentials, or the state is
endangered at its vital centre.
=Every Child Should Have a Competent Father.=--The third demand of
childhood is for a competent father. That takes us at once into the
area of wages and economic conditions. When the Children's Bureau,
itself a testimony to the awakened social conscience in respect to
childhood, shows from careful investigation that in families where the
father earns only ten dollars or less a week more than twice as many
babies die before the age of two years than in families where the
fathers earn twenty-five dollars a week or more, we can see with
clearer vision than ever before that to give babies a fair chance in
life the father must be fairly paid for his work.
The following table shows this fact in graphic form:
[Illustration: INFANT MORTALITY RATES. ACCORDING TO FATHERS'
EARNINGS
COMBINED FIGURES FROM SEVEN CITIES STUDIED BY US CHILDREN'S BUREAU.
The baby death rate rises as the fathers' earnings fall.]
=Economic Aspects of the Father's Competency.=--The death-rate of
babies in families in which the mother has to earn outside the home
under factory conditions of labor in order to secure absolute
necessities is so high that it is seen to be not socially thrifty to
thus place a double burden upon mothers. The death-rate and
sickness-rate of families in which the children do not have sufficient
nourishing food, in which the mother is half starved and wholly
deprived of rest and pleasure, and the father is under terror night
and day lest the rent money will not be ready when the landlord's
agent comes, cannot give us ease of mind. The families in which
unemployment is frequent or overwork keeps the father as well as the
mother under the pressure of nervous exhaustion, are the families in
which the right of the child to two competent parents is grossly
denied. The aid given the mother, by even the best of "Maternity
Bills," insofar as it transcends the wider dissemination of knowledge
and gives actual financial aid in economic distress, seems only a
makeshift. The sick have a social claim for social care and the
ignorant of all ages have a special claim upon the community for
instruction, whether from separate Commonwealth or from the Federal
Government, it matters little. The financial aid given, however, the
"material relief" that must be rendered in family emergencies, should
not be needed by the healthy, law-abiding, thrifty, honest, skilled,
or even half-skilled workman. He should be able to earn a necessary
minimum for himself and for his family by his own labors. We cannot
here enter into the economic problems involved, but must register a
conviction that real social progress must include not only a competent
father for every child but also a fairer chance for every man to
become that competent father through fairer sharing in the profits of
industry. Widespread and careful inquiry as to reasons for dropping
below the self-supporting line list as one cause of "necessity for
material relief, having in the family more than three children under
the age of fourteen." This fact must give us thought. At fourteen in
many states the child may begin to earn something toward his own
support. The question may well be debated whether or not an average
man in ordinary economic general conditions should be unable to care
for more than three children below the earning period if his wife is a
competent housemother and thus earns her part. If such a condition of
restriction upon family increase is accepted as inevitable and
permanent in our industrial order, then surely the cost of rearing
children must be far more widely distributed. In such a condition
there would be needed social help for fathers and mothers far more
definite and inclusive than merely the aid to expectant mothers. If it
is true that it takes from three and one-half to four children from
each married pair to keep up the population considered necessary for
national well-being, and if there is an increasing number of men and
women deterred from furnishing even two of that quota by the expense
involved, then it is high time that we consider at least how the
family burden may be more equally distributed.
=The French Plan of Family Extra-wage.=--One plan of meeting this
unequal social burden of parenthood and the social danger involved in
too few children born, France has devised by the family extra-wage.[8]
This is simply a provision by which married workers with children are
preferred before married workers without children, and much preferred
before bachelors, in the matter of wages. French work-people with
families, irrespective of their station, rate of pay, premium or
bonus, receive:
1. An indemnity of 200 francs at the birth of a child.
2. A suckling indemnity, which is given to the wife, of 100 francs a
month during the first year.
3. An indemnity of 3 francs a day for each child under fourteen years
of age, which becomes a part of the family income. The Paris district
alone for the first four months of 1920 shows 39,266 families in
receipt of these allowances, with 62,176 children benefited, at an
expense of 4,115,014 francs. The money comes largely from a pooling of
funds by combines of manufacturers in many industries, so that
although business pays the extra charge it is distributed equally
among all engaged in the same industry. The trade unions have not been
wholly pleased with this discrimination in favor of fathers and
mothers. They work for the strict equalization of wages. The national
need for more children of strength and health, however, and the effect
of low wages upon mothers and upon infant life have led to this social
measure.
Surely, this is a way not wholly unreasonable by which a society can
help pay for the children it demands.
=The Endowment of Mothers.=--In England, a different plan has been
developed, although not yet applied. _A Proposal for the National
Endowment of Motherhood_, advocated by K.D. Courtney, H.N. Brailsford,
Eleanor F. Rathbone, A. Maude Royden, Mary Stocks, Elinor Burns, and
Emilie Burns, has been published. In this plan the ideal is "that
within each class of income the man with a family should not be in a
worse position economically because he has a family than the single
man in that class." They demand that "the standard of living be not
lowered by children." The authors of this plan declare that in the
present system "The mother is still the uncharted servant of the
future who receives from her husband at his discretion a share in his
wages." They want the mother to receive from society, through the
Government, "a weekly allowance sufficient in amount to cover the
primary cost of physical subsistence, paid to the mother for herself
and for each of her children, throughout the period when the care of
the children necessarily occupies her whole attention." They claim
that such a plan would, in the first place, make "equal pay for equal
work" for men and women really possible, since the argument that "men
should be paid more because they have families to keep" would be
outgrown. They claim also that such a plan would remove economic
restrictions on parenthood which now often work social harm. They also
claim that the health of children requires this public allowance for
their care.
The authors of this plan, although frankly stating objections to this
point, claim that the payment of this allowance should be directly to
mothers "as the first step toward raising the status of women and
blotting out, in what has been called the noblest of professions,
those conditions which compare only with the worst of sweated
employments." The whole discussion of this plan is worthy most serious
attention of all interested in preserving the family from injury
through economic inequalities.
=Does This Plan Make Too Little of Fathers?[9]=--There is one
question, however, among others, to be asked of the authors of this
plan, and that is, Can not some means be devised to make the father's
share in the care of the children more definite and better rewarded,
less often shirked or incompetent, in any scheme for state subsidy for
the care of young children? The difficulties that inhere in all
subsidies for children are chiefly those that make people of small
intelligence and little conscience trade with the state for larger
subsidies for larger families, begotten by the less fit for parentage
and with an eye on the public purse. This catastrophe, not unknown in
the past history of England, must be avoided. If there shall develop
any scheme for equal sharing by all the community in the expense of
raising the coming generation then there must surely be no special
honor paid to those that have very large families. Better, for social
purposes, that no children above a reasonable number should in any
family receive a special allowance, even if older brothers and sisters
did do so. It may be that in France large families are desperately
needed. Not so in the United States. The number of five or six should
certainly be the limit for which any just scheme of family subsidy
should mulct the taxpayer.
=Just Limits to Number of Children in Subsidized Families.=--The
difference between the three under fourteen years which in so many
cases can be cared for unassisted by the average workman, and the four
and more that bring the family down to the danger-point of financial
dependence, might be a subject for consideration in any scheme of
family subsidy, and some clear idea of social need in family fertility
should be a part of any proposition to make allowance from the public
funds for each child under the earning age. In any case, the father's
share in the self-sacrifice and burden of parenthood should have some
clear recognition in any law dealing with such state aid. In the last
analysis, unless some extreme form of socialism is better than the
present industrial order and to be sought, the best way to help the
family is to make fathers and mothers competent to take care of their
own children without too great effort for themselves and without
injurious consequences to the children. Those Trade Union leaders may
be right in principle when they hesitate to accept any public family
aid scheme lest it make wages less rather than more and bring on a
condition in which heroic struggle for one's own, the very pith and
marrow of manhood in its relation to the family, be less esteemed and
less practiced.
We are confronted, however, both in the movements for aid to maternity
in care before and after childbirth, and in all the many provisions
for child-saving that publicly supported Boards of Health are
everywhere inaugurating, with a tendency of the greatest strength and
social appeal, tendencies toward a sharing by all of the burdens
heretofore borne only by the heads of families. Some way must be
devised by which such sharing will not cheat society of any gains to
character and to sense of family responsibility which old systems of
economic support of children have given the race. Some way must be
devised to recognize as economic assets of society the special
sacrifice and service of the housemother in her function of life-giver
for the coming generations and yet not ignore the father but rather
bring him nearer to competent fatherhood as social conditions make it
easier for him to bear his part of the family load. The place for full
discussion of these important considerations is not here, but the need
for the child to have a father who can be the efficient partner of the
competent mother in the task of rearing him must be always insisted
upon, else reform measures that help the mother will only take us
backward instead of forward.
=The Right of a Child to be Officially Counted.=--The next right of
the child we must consider is the right to be listed as a member of
the population. A registry of facts concerning himself and his
condition that will enable the community to see where he is, what he
is doing, and how he, in general, fares, is essential. The fact that
only about one-half of the Commonwealths in our Union have full
registration of births, deaths, health conditions, school attendance,
and other vital matters concerning each individual, and of immense
importance to society as a whole, is a confession of social
incompetency too shameful for a nation that calls itself civilized.
Where there is no adequate registration babies may be easily lost
sight of altogether. Children may escape the call to school and child
labor be unchecked. When an investigation of conditions in almshouses
and remote country districts of a certain southern state was made the
numbers of defective and blind and crippled children brought to light
was appalling. Yet one political leader of that state, at least,
declared when the investigation began that "it was not only
unnecessary but an insult to an enlightened state." The enlightened
state simply did not know how many children were born dead, how many
died the first month or year of life, how many went to school later
on, how many were not able to profit by instruction because of
congenital defectiveness, how many needed special care and training by
reason of some special handicap, and how many ran away from such
public institutions as gave poor harbor to those without family
protection. One of the fundamental rights, surely, of every child is
to be counted, to have the community of which he is a part know
something about him, and have his record kept where those interested
in his protection and care, in his health, his schooling, his
vocational training, may find out what they need to know in order to
aid his progress or check his wrongdoing.
=Every Child Should Have Social Protection.=--In the next place, the
demand of every child must surely be for community protection against
those who for greed or evil purpose would exploit his life. The first
law passed for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which aimed even
at parents who did not act a parent's part, was the Magna Charta of
child rights. After that the door was opened for all manner of
protective legislation for the benefit of the young. Yet we still have
many men and some women whose business it is, and a very profitable
one, to debauch youth or despoil children.
Surely the time has come when all decent people should unite to
abolish such evils.
=Child-labor.=--In the field of child-labor we have model laws, not
always well enforced, laws that aim to keep inviolate for childhood at
least a few years of schooling.[10] We have health laws which aim more
and more at reducing the diseases of children and making it possible
for all to share in the power and joy of normal existence.
Yet, although something has been done for the child who would
otherwise be at work in factory, shop, or sweated trade at home, there
are, it is said, still "Two Million Overworked Farm Children." In the
South, in some sections, the little black children still pick cotton
for the little white children to weave in mills. In the North
undersized and mentally undeveloped youth still testify to industrial
exploitation even where laws against child-labor are on the statute
books. The agricultural workers, numbering more than any other class
and spread all over the United States, count too many little children
in their lists. It is estimated that in our country there are
38,000,000 living on farms, and of this number only 8,000,000 adult
men are listed as laborers; we hence can well believe that children
and youth are a disproportionate element in the working of those
farms. This makes the slogan proposed by Owen E. Lovejoy, the
Secretary of the National Child-labor Committee, "Keep the Farmer
Through His Children," a highly compelling one. In the tobacco fields
of Connecticut, boys and girls ten years of age and over; in the truck
gardens of Ohio among the onion beds; in the Michigan sugar-beet
fields; in the California asparagus beds; in the Southern cotton
fields, where children as young as three years of age have been
found--in all these and on lonely farmsteads doing general work we
find these children. Cut off from regular schooling, herded often in
the poorest substitutes for homes, moving about from place to place
with fathers and mothers unskilled or handicapped by weak character,
these children are defrauded of every right of a child at every turn.
It is not true, as some complacently assert, that all is done that
should be to prevent the sacrifice of young life to the industrial
demands for large returns for investment. It is not true that such
organizations as the Child-labor Committee can rest content with
accomplished tasks and disband.
The exemption of agricultural labor from the legal protection of
children given in many states in the field of manufacture, and the
total lack of realization by the general public of the newer
conditions which specialized and scientific farming make for the
tenant hands, make this particular form of child-protection in farming
a question of supreme importance.
As this book goes to press the Supreme Court decision which declares
the Federal Child-labor Law unconstitutional places upon those working
through state channels a still heavier burden of effort at
child-protection. This decision of the Supreme Court may well be
understood as indicating no indifference to child-welfare but rather
as a call to clear the method of child-labor reform from any
entanglements of taxation or doubtful alliance with Federal
officialism. The principle of child-protection, whether by national or
state laws, holds the moral devotion of our citizenship more firmly
than ever before.
=Children Must be Protected in Recreation.=--The need for the
protection of children from commercialized recreation with its centres
set near all manner of vicious influences has aroused the conscience
of the nation. The investigations of social conditions near the Camps
of Training for our army in the Great War and many forms of social
service carried on by men and women in connection with the Red Cross
have given impetus to the general movement to "clean up the cities" to
make the rural communities and village centres more helpful to moral
living, and to make the streets safer for "the spirit of youth."
Yet the rural schoolhouses are so many of them lacking in provisions
of decency and of playground supervision, and the village
lounging-places are so often the scenes of vicious association, and
the absence everywhere of sufficient provision for healthful and
safeguarded recreation is so obvious, that we know we have still a
long and heavy task before us to accord children their admitted right
to social protection from moral evils against which even the best of
parents can not adequately stand alone.
=Standards of and Aids to Health.=--Health standards in the community,
fixed by experts and maintained, at least in minimum essentials, by
public provision, is the seventh right of children which society
should insure to each one.
The difficulties and dangers which inhere in any form of financial
payment to parents, either fathers or mothers, in aid of their
parental tasks, are not so clearly present, if present at all, in
special aids given to all the population in matters of public
sanitation, personal hygiene and the care of the sick. If we make our
public aid topical rather than by classes, and to all citizens alike
in definite aid, we avoid much of the taint of charity. Few, if any,
propose, for example, to give maternity aid to the rich. Fewer still
advocate old-age pensions for those of independent incomes of moderate
size. Many see, however, that health aids should be so distributed
and so universally offered and used that the standard of health may be
equally raised thereby for all. The idea that there are no people
between the rich, who can pay anything asked, and those poor who can
pay nothing for hospital care, diagnosis, or general medical and
nursing service, is becoming an exploded one. There is general
agreement among those most intelligent in such matters that what is
needed more than anything else in the field of physical culture and
physical care is provision for the people of small incomes who desire
to be self-supporting. It is a common saying that no one but a
millionaire or a pauper can afford a surgical operation or a trained
nurse. We are moving, too slowly, but still moving, toward some form
of provision of doctors, nurses, hospital and convalescent care, to
which people of refinement, of independent feeling but of limited
purse, can resort when they need such aid without a sense of
humiliation or incurring the danger of wholly unsuitable
companionship. Whatever difficulties there may be in securing adequate
aid of this sort to adults, there can be none in the case of children.
When we started Boards of Health we definitely outlined a path from
the doctor's office and the nurse's service to the public school and
from the public school to the home. We saw more clearly as the years
went on that that path must be worn by many feet if we would have
adults strong and well and ready for the work of the world. We have in
many Boards of Health (as so efficiently working in New York City
under Dr. Josephine S. Baker) Children's Departments, officered by
those specially engaged in baby-saving, in child hygiene, in the
health of school attendants, and in the general instruction of mothers
in the care of children. This is an achievement which needs only to be
more widely understood, applied and supported to be of the greatest
social value. We have now the Federal backing in these matters in many
provisions outside that of the special Maternity Aid Bill with its
fifty-fifty financial plan to make the general government partner with
the states and with the various local communities in health aid to all
the people. What we need now is to make the care of the minor child
seem to all, as it now does to so many, a duty that can be isolated in
the mind from any doctrinaire socialistic plans, a duty to include all
the population in wholly free health-service from the state. There
are differences which may well be stressed between schemes for placing
medical service of every sort under state regulation and wholly
supporting it by public tax, and any plan for radically abolishing the
capitalistic regime.
We are fast coming to a united conception of social duty as requiring
help to all parents that they may bring up their children in health
and give those children the physical training which they need. Let us
all, then, push hardest first for the standardization of health in the
case of children and youth and the best possible arrangements of
tax-supported aids to the realization of that standard. That is surely
one of the ways in which the parental burden of child-care can be
socially shared without starting embarrassing questions of radical or
conservative theories of logical next steps.
=Health Boards Should Help All Alike.=--We can, however, thus divorce
health activities from economic disputes only by making the
investigation of children, the provisions for free examination and
treatment, and the establishment of hospital and clinic facilities
exactly the same for the children of the rich and of the poor. A
recent investigation of the diet of children deduced from reports of
undernourishment furnished by doctors specializing in children's
diseases, showed that in some cities, at least, the children of the
well-to-do were as often underfed or wrongly fed as were the children
of the poor. Sometimes the fact that a family is financially able to
employ a nurse, but not intelligent or conscientious enough to employ
a competent nurse, results in worse conditions, as to food and other
particulars, than are found where poor mothers do the best they can
with limited means.
=Items of Work in Child Hygiene.=--The standards of health and the
public provisions for their realization, which even now in the crowded
city of New York are so ably enforced by "The Division of Child
Hygiene," show that "the hazardous business of being a baby" is much
reduced in risks. The list of details of work undertaken by that
Division of Child Hygiene as so fully reported in the document of 1914
and in later publications may be of use if here repeated. They are as
follows:
I. Control and Supervision of Midwives.
II. Reduction of Infant Mortality.
III. Supervision of Foundlings Boarded in Private Homes.
IV. Inspection and Supervision of Day Nurseries.
V. Inspection of Institutions for Dependent Children.
VI. Medical Inspection and Examination of School Children.
VII. Vaccination of School Children.
VIII. Enforcing of Child-labor Law in Issuing Work Certificates.
For this many-sided work physicians, trained nurses, and various other
helpers are required. Could the public purse be drawn upon for a more
vital public necessity than this list indicates?
When it is remembered that from forty to fifty per cent, of births are
in charge of midwives in the foreign-born population and that the
condition of housing and of water, air and food supply are deplorably
inadequate in manufacturing centres, and that in rural communities
there are few doctors and nurses and little hospital service, it will
be seen that the idea of having Federal aid for this large health
requirement was not one of concentration of power in the Government
(as some have thought), but rather of a diffusion of standards and
better sharing in all parts of our country. The health crusade is not
bounded by state lines, diseases may cross those lines without
consciousness of any check. The help toward the abolition of all
preventable illness, the protection of child-life from all manner of
preventable weakness, abnormality and suffering, seems to be the
business of society in general, if anything can be so called. The
children must be saved if the nation is to prosper. It used to be
thought that a high birth-rate was a sufficient indication of national
well-being. It is now seen that a low death-rate and a high level of
strength and vitality, of health and mental power, are still more the
required national asset.
As Dr. Helen D. Putnam well says, "Democracy must finally depend on
its department of education for establishing the right: for mothers,
intelligence, health, economic opportunity to care for their babies;
for babies, either rich or poor, intelligent, physically competent
caretakers," If this be true, then the work of Health Boards and
kindred agencies is a part of general education as it has long been a
part of accepted charitable duty. The children stand first in line for
receipt of that health education because they are the promise of the
future.
We must take humane care of all the misfits, all the crippled, all the
weak, all the defective, all the abnormal and the insane. This is now
admitted. We must prevent, so far as we are able, such weight and
burden falling upon our children and our children's children, as
charity now presses upon us. In this matter, at least, "we must begin
with the grandfathers if we would reform the world."
=The Educational Rights of All Children.=--The right of every child to
a minimum of education, which was our eighth point, is also conceded,
and the duty of making public provision in tax-supported schools for
these essentials of reading, writing, fair knowledge of arithmetic and
the rest, is acknowledged. The idea, however, that some people have
that all the children in the United States have an elementary
schooling is erroneous. This is not a treatise on education, and
elsewhere the statistics of length of schooling per year for the
different parts of the country and of dearth of school seats in cities
and famine of teachers everywhere must be considered. From the side of
the family, however, the claim must be made that equal rights in some
accepted minimum of school training, and that determined in quantity
and quality of teaching by those who know what education means, should
be the demand of all fathers and mothers. In the older time young men
going through college on the way to one of the three learned
professions then listed, law, theology, and medicine, taught often in
the country school to earn an honest penny. Such teaching on the way
to some form of vocation deemed far more honorable was not of a sort
to make teaching a profession in itself. Later, some measure of higher
education was given young women in Normal Schools to fit them for
teaching little children, and the teacher of the elementary school
became, thereby, a professional. To-day few young men teach to help
themselves through college and only a few choose teaching as a
profession. To-day, also, the profession of teaching, which once was
almost the sole opening for higher vocational work for women, now
competes with a large number of professions or types of business or
applied art, and fewer women proportionally are headed for the
schoolroom when they leave college or normal school.
This tendency to take other lines of work increased to unprecedented
extent during the Great War, which opened new worlds of paid work to
women. This gives us the present teacher shortage, which all who know
conditions feel to be the most serious menace to universal education.
There are not only not enough teachers to go around, there are still
fewer teachers fit to teach. If it is the right of every child to have
a good education in essentials, to be well taught as far as he goes in
schooling, how shall that right be realized if the teacher famine
continues?
=The Use of Married Women as Teachers.=--The interest of the family is
specially concerned in one way to ease that shortage of teachers. That
way is the use of married women in the public schools. All women who
have "verified their credentials" as good teachers should be held on
to when they marry with all possible strength of appeal to fulfil a
social duty as a part of the teaching force of the locality where they
live. The old absurdity of making women resign from the teaching force
when they issued wedding cards, or conceal the fact of their marriage
if they were not scrupulous, so as to keep their positions, is fast
passing. Few communities hold on to this penalizing of the woman
teacher when she marries, but many school boards retain a sentiment
against urging the continuance of any married woman on the staff. This
must give way to an intelligent understanding of two things: one, that
experience in teaching is an immeasurable asset to the schools and
must not be lost in so great proportion of women as it has been; and,
in the second place, that teaching lends itself in unique manner to
half-time work, to vacations for maternity duties, to combining of two
or three married women in positions that might be filled by one
spinster, and to other social expedients favorable to married life;
and that all that is needed is good sense and some skill of
administrative adjustment to keep the larger majority of good teachers
in the field after they are wives and mothers.
Moreover, from the point of view of the family, it is injurious for
social practice to keep women who have the qualities of good teachers
from marrying lest they lose their beloved profession. It is one of
the best, although one of the least tried, ways of bringing the school
and the home together by giving a good many teachers a clearer idea
from personal experience of what the home needs from the school, and
giving mothers a clearer idea of the reasons for school rules by
having them serve in both capacities. The normal school education of
women was obtained by appeals based on the fact of the first half of
the nineteenth century that unless women teachers were secured and
trained for the task the elementary school could never be enabled to
fill the need of the public school system. The fact of the early part
of the twentieth century should be as deeply pressed, the fact that
there are not enough women teachers of education and character for
elementary school service unless we mix teaching and marriage for many
of them. This fact should make a social appeal to-day equal to that of
Horace Mann's great mission.
If we are to have enough elementary school teachers and continue to
increase the number from the most fit women for the task, we must also
institute a new social backing for the profession. In this connection
one is obliged to deal with the disrespect shown the average teacher
of little children and even of the high school and college instructor
as compared with leaders in other professions. The teacher of little
children is most often a woman, and if a woman away from home and
especially in some rural communities is very nearly a social outcast.
The "teacherage" is just beginning to be called for as the suitable
home for the teachers of a school; a "teacherage" which can become a
social centre if near the school building, and thus be uniquely
useful. The jointure of all the best homes in a community with all the
wisest teachers in that community, not alone for the occasional
discussion of "School Problems" or "Home Problems," but for some
common public work which will link both teachers and parents to the
larger life of the community--this is a necessity if we would have
enough teachers of the right sort.
The attention to the physical details of school housing, school
gardens, school playgrounds, school lighting and seating, all these
the family life which furnishes the children must be keen about in
the interest of each child. The curriculum must not be left to a
school board chiefly interested in other matters than text-books,
except it may be for a business interest in the latter. The supply and
testing of teachers must not be left to a body more concerned in
getting places for relatives and friends than for securing the best
available teaching staff.
In all the things that experts should direct, and in all the things
that mean health and comfort and happiness to individual children,
parents, even if not very learned, should have a voice and seek to
make their convictions work to actual progress.
=Individual Sharing in the Social Inheritance.=--For the last point of
our list, namely, the right of every child to be made a conscious heir
to the social inheritance of his time and place in the world, little
need be said. The tendencies in American life which give thoughtful
people the most satisfaction are the tendencies toward extension of
culture privileges in public libraries, lectures, tax-supported and
educationally supervised playgrounds, in young people's organizations
like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, in summer camps (not all for the
rich), in vacation houses full of the flavor of the best of life, in
the varied clubs and classes of the settlements, in the pageants and
other forms of pictured world-life--all these, and more that might be
named, show an exuberance of effort to share with utmost speed and
fullest generosity the things that seem to the privileged few the most
precious heritage of our race.
Yet, with all our effort so much more needs doing that multitudes live
and die wholly ignorant of the world they have come to or of the
race-life of which they are a part. Doctor Du Bois, in his classic
appeal for human comradeship for all, _The Soul of Black Folks_, has
shown what suffering comes to the cultured black man who finds all
cultured men and women of white races forcing him to be an alien
because of his skin. There is a sadder and more terrible, because
unconscious, deprivation; it is that of any one, white or black, rich
or poor, who loses the chance to partake of the culture of the past.
The man or woman, whether able to accomplish much or little on the
practical side of vocational service, whose outlook is bounded by the
narrow, the superficial, the personal, the ephemeral, is missing the
best part of his social inheritance, the capacity to "look before and
after and pine for what is not."
Such a little time we are here! Even a Methuselah might wish to have
in his mental furnishings the glory of the past and the prophetic hope
of the future. All children, not merely a fortunate few, should have
this sense of a group-life of which each is a part, should be able to
see life and see it whole in the social inheritance that belongs alike
to each one of us. Children make a large order upon each generation as
they come into a vast group of all that have been and reach
consciously toward the expanding life of the coming time.
The family must begin that culture by which the order shall be filled,
but no family can answer even the least of the social demands by
itself. "Culture," says Emerson, "shall yet absorb chaos itself,"
Every child has a rightful citizenship in that order-giving world of
thought, of history, of poetry, of art, of science, and of religion.
What a nation we might become if only every child had this, its right,
recognized and fulfilled!
QUESTIONS ON THE CHILDREN OF THE FAMILY
1. The eighteenth century was called the century of man, the
nineteenth century, of women, and the twentieth, that of the
child. What facts justify this statement?
2. What are the main elements in the modern standard of
child-care, child-protection, and child-nurture?
3. What of these elements can and should the private home supply,
and what must be the community provision and control?
4. In trying to effect both private and public conditions
favorable to the best development of child-life, what should be
the scale of values used, or what should be the order of
effort?
5. Dr. Alice Hamilton, in a Chicago study of I,500 families, found
that the infant death-rate in large families of six children
and over was two and one-half times greater than in small
families of four children or less. Was that an indication that
infant mortality rises with fecundity or was it one of many
indications that the better-to-do have smaller families? In any
case, should such statistics always include the statement of
the social standing and the income of the groups studied?
6. In _The Child_ of August, 1920, Miss Julia C. Lathrop
summarizes the Child-welfare Standards proposed by the
Children's Bureau as follows:
(1.) Minimum standards for children entering employment:
A. Minimum age, sixteen years in all employments;
eighteen years in mines and quarries; twenty-one
years for girls as telephone or telegraph messengers;
twenty-one years for special-delivery service of U.S.
Post Office; prohibition of minors in dangerous,
unhealthy, or hazardous occupations.
B. Minimum education, compulsory education for all between
seven and sixteen years for nine months of every year.
Between sixteen and eighteen years those legally
employed to attend Continuation Schools at least eight
hours a week.
C. Physical minimum, annual examination of all working
children under eighteen years of age; prohibition of
work unless found to be normal in physique and health.
D. Hours, minors not more than eight hours a day or
forty-four hours a week, and prohibition of
night-work. Continuation School attendance to count as
part of working-day.
E. Wages, minimum determined by wage commission or similar
agency.
F. Vocational guidance and employment supervision.
G. Employment certificate as needed protection against
industrial exploitation.
(2.) Minimum standards for public protection of health of
mothers and children:
A. Maternity aids; B. Infants; C. Pre-school children; D.
School children; E. Adolescent children.
(3.) Minimum standards in relation to children needing special
care:
A. Adequate income; B. Assistance to mothers; C. State
supervision; D. Removal of some children from their
homes; E. Home care; F. Principles governing
child-placing; G. Children in institutions; H. Care
of children born out of wedlock; I. Care of
physically defective children; J. Mental hygiene and
care of mentally defective children; K. Juvenile
courts; L. Rural social work; M. Scientific
information.
(4.) General minimum standards:
A. Economic and social; B. Recreation; C. Child-welfare
legislation.
Read the above and compare your local conditions with these
standards. Do you think all these demands necessary?
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Described briefly in _The Survey_ of November 12, 1921.
[9] In New Zealand, which has so many "modern improvements" in
government, the proposition has been made to fix a basic wage for a man
and wife without children, and make it the same as for a single man. In
addition to this sum, each employer would be required by law to pay
into a State Fund a sum slightly in advance of this wage for the single
man and the childless married man, and that excess sum would be
distributed in the form of a children's allowance to each parent
according to the number of children. It is estimated that under this
plan the total sum paid out in wages would not exceed that now
distributed, but the receipt by the workers would be proportioned to
responsibilities.
[10] See publications of the National Child-labor Committee.
CHAPTER IX
THE FLOWER OF THE FAMILY
"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in
faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in
action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the
beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!"
"Sure, He that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused."
--SHAKESPEARE.
"The apostolic of every age are ever calling for a higher
righteousness, a better development of the human race, a more
earnest effort to equalize the condition of men."--LUCRETIA MOTT.
"To every period its leaders: and the rise of every leader is
according to his watching for opportunity; and the chief quality
of leadership is the jewel of equity, by which alone the obedience
of men is justified."--ARAB SAYING.
"He presses on before the race,
And sings out of a silent place.
Like faint notes of a forest bird
On heights afar that voice is heard;
And the dim path he breaks to-day
Will some time be a trodden way.
But when the race comes toiling on
That voice of wonder will be gone--
Be heard on higher peaks afar,
Moved upward with the morning star.
O men of earth, that wandering voice
Still goes the upward way: rejoice!"
--EDWIN MARKHAM.
=The Proportions of Genius to the Mediocre.=--In Dr. T.S. Clouston's
suggestive book, _The Hygiene of Mind_, he estimates that at least
four-fifths of the human race are legally "sound" and of average
capacity. Of the remaining one-fifth who are "unusual" he and other
investigators name only one-tenth of one per cent, as entitled to the
distinction of "Genius." Clouston adds to this a class of "lesser
genius," often extremely useful to the race but often personally
unhappy from ungratified ambition or lack of temperamental balance. He
lists "reformers" for the most part in this class and "inventors who
do not succeed." He also specifically indicates a class of "all-round
talent" from which successful social and political leaders are drawn
and heads of big business and administrators of large enterprises in
educational fields. Dr. Lester F. Ward, on the contrary, believed that
we estimate the rate of genius and potential genius far too low and
that special talent is vastly more common than the usual observer
thinks. He says, "What the human race needs is not more brains but
more knowledge." In his clarion call for the better education of all
people of every race and condition, he affirms his faith in
environmental opportunity and a finer personal development as the
chief things needed to send the race onward. Professor Woods, of
Dartmouth College, writing on "The Social Cost of Unguided Ability,"
confirms this conviction of Doctor Ward.[11] He declares that "for ten
men who succeed there are probably fifty more who might succeed with
adequate development and specialization of effort." He shows how
"education as an agency in the selection of personal ability fails
because of undue abbreviation of the period of training for most
individuals and the omission of elements of training of real
significance for the purpose of adjusting individuals to the specific
task." When we note that before the fifth elementary grade is reached
there is a drop in attendance showing only 80 per cent. of those found
in the second grade, and in the sixth grade only 66 per cent., and in
the seventh grade only 50 per cent., and in the eighth grade less than
40 per cent. remain of those entering the first and second grades, we
see good reason for his statement. When the high school statistics are
added, with the drop year by year in attendance until at graduation
only one in fourteen pupils remains to the end, we feel that this
author is right when he says that "Society suffers less from the race
suicide of the capable than from the non-utilization of the
well-endowed."
[Illustration]
=Eugenics.=--When Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin and one of
the first to apply to human beings the ideas of "selection for better
breeds," published in 1873 his article on "Hereditary Improvement," he
used the word "Stirpiculture" as indicating the application of
evolution to the method of improving mankind by the selection of the
superior in the process of reproduction. He later changed the
designation to "Eugenics," which is now held as the term best applying
in this connection. In 1891 Dr. Lester Ward himself said, "Artificial
selection has given to man the most that he enjoys in the organic
products of earth. May not men and women be selected as well as sheep
and horses? From the great stirp of humanity with all its multiplied
ancestral plasms--some very poor, some mediocre, some merely
indifferent, a goodly number ranging from middling to fair, only a
comparatively few very good, with an occasional crystal of the first
water--why may we not learn to select on some broad and comprehensive
plan with a view to a general building up and rounding out of the race
of human beings?" So keen an observer and philosophic thinker as
Doctor Ward, however, could not long accept the first allurement of
this idea. He soon began to show with his convincing power that "the
control of heredity is possible only to a master creature. Man is the
master creature of the animal world. Society is the master of its
defectives. But normal people are their own masters. Any attempt on
the part of society to control the choice of partners in the marital
relation would be tyranny." Recognizing the need for "negative
eugenics" fully, and declaring in its name that "mental and physical
defectives of society should be kept from perpetuating their defects
through propagation," he insisted that "eugenists must recognize and
admit the enormous force of personal preference" in marriage.
Doctor Ward gives a figure--as above--which might be used to indicate
the conclusions of Galton, in his _Hereditary Genius_, and of Ribot
and others. Doctor Galton himself gave in his volume on the _Social
Order_ a chart somewhat more discriminating. In any case, however, the
eugenists must depend upon the mass of the mediocre for a supply of
geniuses and those of exceptional talent and depend upon the process
of reproduction for securing that supply. Doctor Ward, on the
contrary, looks to education, controlled and improved environment, and
the stimulus for all people to be gained from more scientific
knowledge more widely distributed. In his famous article, entitled
"Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics,"[12] Doctor Ward says that
"eugenists tend to emphasize unduly the intellectual qualities" and
"manifest more or less contempt for the affective faculties."
"Nature," he thinks, "is far wiser and seeks to prevent all extremes."
He also reminds us that "much that is called genius is pathologic and
linked to the abnormal and the insane." Perhaps few would agree with
Doctor Ward that "genius is scattered somewhat uniformly through the
whole mass of the population and needs only favoring circumstances to
bring it to conscious expression." But that thought challenges
attention. He would improve mankind, first, by getting rid of error
through the full use of demonstrated scientific knowledge and, second,
by a "nurture" in accord with the laws of progress.
=Euthenics and Eudemics.=--The pioneer treatment of "Euthenics," or
"The Science of Controllable Environment," with its "Plea for Better
Living Conditions as a First Step Toward Higher Human Efficiency,"
was given by Ellen H. Richards in 1910. Doctor Ward, in alluding to
this, reminds us that "there is a tendency for the avenues of progress
to become choked and normal upward movements checked" and that "we
must at all times take vigorous action and in the direction of the
betterment of the human race." In respect to "Eudemics," or the
doctrine of the welfare of the masses of the people-at-large, Doctor
Ward uses the term first suggested to Doctor Dealey, of Brown
University, by Doctor Koopman, Librarian of that University, with
approval, and gives it a meaning of the greatest social helpfulness.
In his view it is not a misfortune that society is being to so great
an extent recruited from the so-called "lower classes." If there are
signs of decadence anywhere, he thinks, they are not in the
"proletariat;" they are among the "pampered rich," not the "hampered
poor."
=New Types of Genius.=--Again, his plea is for universal education in
real knowledge and true inference from facts of life and a universal
sharing of the really best things to secure a just quota of genius and
talent from all classes. It seems clear that we are not obliged to
limit our hopes for "flowers of the family" to the few at the top of
the social pyramid. For the testimony of history agrees rather with
Doctor Ward than with the extreme eugenists, and we have often had
arising from the common life splendid examples of human capacity and
achievement. When the eugenists list their double columns of those
whom humanity takes pride in and those of whom humanity is ashamed it
is most often from the degenerative or defective members of society
that the second list is taken. From the great common life of average
condition, neither too rich nor too poor, too cultured nor too
ignorant, for "human nature's daily food," one rises now and then to
leave a mark high up on the list of great ones of the earth. Hence,
humble fathers and mothers can build magnificent hopes on the newborn
baby of their love. It is to be considered also that there is
difference of opinion as to what constitutes genius and what may be
called exceptional talent. One sociologist thinks that there are but
three really important classes of men, namely, "Mechanical Inventors,
Scientific Discoverers, and Philosophic Thinkers." Another type of
judgment may consider that genius shows itself almost exclusively in
those creative minds that give us great music, great pictures, great
sculptures, great temples, and great books of poetry, drama, and the
novel. Another type of mind, now growing fast among us in this
machine-dominated industrial era, may find genius the most appropriate
name for the master engineer or business-builder who rules a wide
realm of successfully administered economic order. There is, also,
although it is not often bold enough to claim loud voice, a small
section of those who look for supreme excellence in religious or
ethical attainment, a line of genius in mastery of the Way of Life.
Certainly serviceable goodness, that which does big things for others'
safety or help, may be given some place among the specially talented.
For example, the little French girl of nine years of age who, bereft
of her mother by the accidents of war, has brought up almost unaided
five little brothers and sisters, the youngest only seven months old
when her task began, and for two years, it is said, washed, cooked,
and dressed her charges, and "saw to it that those old enough went to
school where she went herself and took prizes for her scholarship,"
might well be called one of the "unusual." The prize of 500 francs
awarded this "little mother" after two years of such able family
engineering and personal care of those dependent upon her shows that
some people at least rank those with ability to do social services and
the high purpose to achieve the best possible for others' welfare as
having a place In the company of the specially talented.
In an inconspicuous book called _The New Party_, edited by Andrew Reid
and containing selections from many "labor" leaders, these words
occur: "We have had politics for politics' sake, religion for
religion's sake, science for science's sake, literature for
literature's sake, art for art's sake: we want politics for justice,
religion for right, science for happiness, literature for love of
humanity, and art for the social pleasure of all." Those who can thus
translate the separate achievements of mankind which taken at the top
have won the title of works of genius are beginning to be seen above
the human horizon as among the great of earth.
It is still, however, as of old, the man or woman who has a special
gift of voice or pen or brush or sculptor's tool or command of
instrument or ability to compose music or to write literature fit to
live forever, or build temples that command wonder and admiration, or
who in some form of creative activity makes his mark upon history, who
is most often spoken of as a genius. It is now only a little while
since we began to add to this list the scientific, the commercial and
the political genius. The military genius has held a place for ages,
but his specialty is losing standing as a social asset, and we can
foresee a time when he must learn constructive rather than destructive
methods of action in order to qualify for the "Hall of Fame."[13]
=Only Men in Lists of Geniuses.=--Genius along any line has for its
topmost reaches the names of men only. Few women have even attained
the secondary place of the talented. When we remember that higher
education for women is a child of less than a hundred years' growth,
and that all the higher walks of achievement in the intellectual, the
political, the scientific, and the industrial field have been
masculine monopolies in custom and even in law for ages after men had
opportunity of specialized development and work, this is not a sure
proof of the intellectual and vocational inferiority of women. Until
women have had several centuries of equal education and freedom of
activity with men no one can tell what they can do in any special
line. It is therefore idle at this date for any one to argue either
for or against the possibilities of a more balanced list of the sexes
in those at the top of human achievement.
What we are now beginning to be sure of is that all talent is
precious, all special power a social asset, all leadership to be
conserved, and all real genius a priceless treasure--hence, that all
children who are gifted, whether boys or girls, shall be developed to
the height of social power. This means that although every gifted
child is born in a private family, society must see to it that its
chance for right nurture and fitting education is not limited to the
resources of any private family, especially to those of the poorer in
economic power.
Galton estimates two hundred and fifty in a million as in the
"distinguished class," If, as Doctor Ward and others think, many more
might be able to qualify for that position if favorably situated, then
society, which is the loser by every undeveloped person, must learn to
know the possibilities of children as indicated by scientific study
and lessen the present waste of potential talent. Dr. Carl Kelsey says
"Heredity determines what a man may become, but environment determines
what he does become." This is not entirely true, perhaps, since many
noble and wise have risen from untoward surroundings, but it is
largely true.
=Social Need to Learn What Children Are.=--If society is to really set
about the business of getting from the mass of mankind all the
intellectual and moral power and all the real leadership that may be
available for social uses, then surely we must learn first to know
more about all the children in every family. How can this be done? In
many cases children are slow in development and may have powers quite
unsuspected until the time for most skilful cultivation has passed. In
many cases parents are so partial that "all their geese are swans." In
other cases the nervous excitability may be such that precocity leads
to overstimulation and later there is arrest of development, and the
promising bud does not develop into the flower of the family. In any
case, the parents alone can not, as a rule, attain full comparison and
due balance of judgment even between their own children and certainly
not as between their own and the children of other parents.
="Charting Parents."=--There is, to be sure, a new plan of "Charting
Parents" to find out what they are able to do and what they are
actually doing in the moral training and physical care of their
children. "The Parents' Score Card," prepared by Dr. Caroline Hedger,
of the Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund, and published in the
_Woman's Home Companion_ of March, 1922, aims to enable fathers and
mothers "to size themselves up as parents." The points to be noted and
on which parents have a rating as good, bad, or indifferent, comprise
those concerning "physical defects attended to," "adequate supervision
of athletics and recreation," "regulations concerning the below-weight
or nervous child," on "team-work in parents" (whether they pull
together or apart in the discipline of the child), and some very
drastic examination points on "fault-finding," "lying to child,"
"punishing when angry." The chart deals, in general, with the
character influence of the parent. It is said that only one child in
three hundred had a perfect "score card" in an investigation of a
large number of children, and hence only a small proportion of parents
could be supposed to measure up to all the requirements of the
parent's outline of duties.
This new device of putting parents to the test is being adopted in
many differing ways by health boards, by school boards, by children's
courts, by church committees of investigation, and by the
superintendents of charitable agencies. This all means that a standard
of child-life is being attained, a measure of the normal, divergence
from which is an indication of the abnormal, either in capacity or
condition. This is a wholesome movement, although sometimes carried
out in unwise and unsympathetic ways. This should enable parents to
find out if they have average children and what to do with defects
that are remediable. This is also one of the ways by which we measure
the social need to help parents who are themselves handicapped in any
way to do their duty by their children.
What we need, however, is more than this--we need some definite
knowledge of what sort of children we have in one generation with
which to build the next generation. We need to be able to take account
of our social stock as we go along. To do this the home must be
supplemented specifically and adequately by the school. In the school
we have opportunity of wide study of varying types, of comparison of
differing rates of progress, of getting at actual knowledge of actual
quality and capacity in a child as related to the like in other
children. This investigative function of the school has been used for
the most part to ascertain what children were defective. This is
useful. We need, also, to use it with far more ingenuity to ascertain
what children are most promising and most likely to dower the race
with special gifts.
=New Observation Records for Children.=--A very important "Observation
Record for the Selection of Gifted Children in the Elementary Schools"
has been drawn up by Julie A. Badanes, which has been published with
an introduction by Dr. Saul Badanes. In this introduction it is well
said that "the idea of establishing a norm for every school year" is a
new one. The measurement of intelligence by Binet dates only back to
1905. In the treatment of the "Intelligence of Pupils," Meumann
declares "that the problem of measuring the intelligence of school
children is the basic problem in education." Recently William Stern
has dealt at length with "The Selection of Gifted Children in Public
Schools" and with related elements of investigation of the
intelligence of children. William H. Allen, in his book, _Universal
Training for American Citizenship_, has, as Doctor Badanes notes,
given a chapter to the "Training of the Specially Gifted." We are all
concerned with growing earnestness in the problem of getting in
democracy the leadership which all social organization requires. It
is, therefore, of the most intense interest to all thoughtful people
how the flower of the family is nurtured and in what manner it is made
to bloom.
This "Psychological-pedagogical Observation Record," which has been
devised as an aid in finding out if a child is specially gifted, and
if so in what way its gifts should be developed and how it should find
its way to achievement, is very suggestive. Any parent might well
study its itemized outlines for help in effort to understand the child
that is unlike the average. The "Record" requires attention to the
"general condition of the senses and nerves," to "memory and power of
learning," to qualities of "imagination," to strength and expression
of "emotions," to facility in "language," to "manner of work," to
"relation to home and community life," and in respect to "adaptation
to new demands." These things are vital not only to know about and
understand as respects one personality but to compare on the same
basis a number of personalities in order to get a ranking that is just
and useful for guidance in education. Suppose a father and mother feel
sure that a child of theirs is one of the exceptional, the gifted,
perhaps of great talent, even possibly a genius in the making. They
may get much help in arriving at sober judgment by many books and
treatises now available. But far clearer would be their own approach
to the matter in hand if they could study some such chart as is here
alluded to and get a clear direction as to what to look for and how
to measure what they find. If such parents, however, would be really
assured in their first appreciation of their child they need the
coöperative observation and fuller opportunity of comparison which a
teacher of a school, who is herself or himself a good psychologist,
can place at their service. All of us can see our own children at
their best; few can justly estimate what the power of that best may be
in a competitive world.
=What to Do with the Specially Gifted Child.=--The child may be one of
the few elected to leadership in some field. All who watch and study
and understand may agree that it is the gift of its birthright. Then
what is there to do? The question often arises, Shall the other
children in the family be given less opportunity in order that this
gifted one may have the larger chance which genius and great talent
really demand for fulfilment of promise? There was no doubt of the
answer to this question in the minds of those who believed that a
special gift carried with it special privilege provided the special
gift discovered were of a sort understood by all. For many generations
a boy feeling a "call" to the ministry of religion as rabbi, priest,
or preacher would be sure to have, if necessary, all the resources of
his family at his command and all possible aid of friends even at the
sacrifice of the elementary education of his brothers and sisters. In
the same way in a more limited circle the child who could do any
creative work of imagination in art would be considered entitled to
any self-sacrificing devotion of other members of the family which
might be needed to carry forward his work. In a larger way many have
looked upon all higher education as solely for those who have shown a
power of potential leadership. Not long ago the old saying was
revived: "Colleges are for the exceptional individuals who may become
the world's intellectual élite." On the other hand, the growth of
State Universities and of many forms of adult education, and the
offering of college courses in the evening to those employed in
earning-work during the day, show that the opportunities of culture
are more and more made free to all and that the conviction is growing
that it is not alone leaders who should be educated but that the
common life must be raised in mental and moral power in order for true
leadership to work effectively for the advance of social well-being.
In the family the genius or near-genius is likely to get all that
should be its privilege and often more. And this not only from pride
in his talent and from desire to give that talent its proper chance of
expression but because genius and near-genius have often a
self-protecting and self-acquiring quality that make sure of much
unselfish care from others. If, as has been said, "The genius is
composed of a man, a woman, and a child," and there is much in life to
give color to that idea, then it is easy to see why the flower of the
family so often gets the larger share of every family advantage and
when the family resource fails is sure to find friends and helpers on
every side to help on his development. This is not unjust provided the
talented member can serve well in this specialty. The great trouble is
that many think themselves geniuses and find others, in youth at
least, to confirm their judgment of themselves, who are only a trifle
above the commonplace. This leads too often to selfish claims upon
others that tire even the family affection. It would be well on this
account, if no other, if every child could be wisely and adequately
diagnosed in respect to mental power so that fewer mistakes would be
made in confounding greatness with showiness or creative power with
mere discriminating taste.
If the family really cuts off the education and vocational
opportunities of the less gifted below the point required for average
success in life, in order to give greater advantages to the gifted
one, it is an injustice. The mediocre have their innings now, and it
is one of the great demands of democracy, both within and without the
family, that the commonplace shall not miss its chance for learning
how to serve and enjoy the best it can. The family life must be for
all, the one place in which no life is wholly sacrificed to another
life.
What, then, shall be done for the gifted whose talent, like that of
music, for example, means a high demand for expensive culture? The
answer we are beginning to give is that social agencies shall aid the
parents in securing that culture. Aristocracy had its "patrons" for
artists. Democracy must have its special educational aids for the
gifted. Already that demand is being met in countless ways that will
readily occur to all. Meanwhile, there is the public school organized
to meet the needs of the "average child." At first the grade-system
had a Procrustean bed that made it impossible to meet the needs of
those below the average and almost as difficult to meet the needs of
those above that average. We started special schools and special rooms
for those subnormal, retarded, slow, or specially difficult to manage.
Now we are beginning to consider how we can best make the
tax-supported public school serve the interests of the specially
gifted. The first thing we see clearly now is to find out which
children are exceptional on the upper side, and for that the newly
devised forms of scientific observation and measurement may be useful
if care is taken to mix every formula with common sense, patience, and
human sympathy. The next essential is to decide whether the children
who can go faster shall be passed along through the grades by special
arrangement more rapidly or whether they shall be kept on the regular
track of school promotions and be given extra lessons to "enrich their
curriculum." The part of wisdom, it would seem, is to find out what
kind of gift the exceptional child has and hasten his regular course,
or add to it, in accordance with his type of talent. If he is to be
one of those who are to mix with men and lead others in professions
that demand administrative and executive power, the chances are that
he should have the regular course in the usual order and add studies
that will early give him the facts of practical life and an
acquaintance with many phases of political, business, and scientific
activity that would serve in such work as he is likely to find to do.
If, on the other hand, the gift is creative, and the career nature has
seemingly marked out is one where the impulse will come from within,
and some special technical training can alone give that impulse
expression, then the chances are that the sooner such a child "gets
through with school," emerges from formal education into his own
atmosphere and his own free alignment with the masters in his own art,
the sooner he will really begin to be educated for his task. It seems
to be true that the more a human being is set apart by nature for a
specialty of art the less he gets from all teachers save those in his
own field of interest. It seems also true that the wider a human
being's range of dealing with other human beings in business, in
politics, in religious organizations, in educational work, the surer
it will be that "all is grist that comes to his mill" and there can be
no study that is at all worthy that fails to enrich his mind. Hence,
the new tendency to examination for the sake of finding out the
specially gifted children and giving them the special opportunity in
education which they need and will profit by, must be one guided
toward details of differing gifts as well as toward quantitative
power.
=Genius Universal in Nature.=--If any family has in it a real genius,
that family shines forever in the reflected light of its choicest
treasure. Yet a genius belongs to no family, even to no country. Such
belong to the world. Mary, we are told, "pondered the things in her
heart" which marked the boy Jesus out from all the other lads who
played about the carpenter shop of Joseph. And it is not alone poetic
imagination that shows her as troubled as well as humbly proud at the
testimonies of His coming greatness. Many other mothers of those
destined to high achievement have had misgivings as the shadow as
truly as the sunlight of that greatness passed across their vision.
For true greatness is solitary and often dedicated to tragedies of
experience. The family life may be the only refuge from a
misunderstanding world while the hero lives and only after death may
the high quality of his service be known to all.
=Genius Its Own School-master.=--The most comforting thought to
parents who have children "different" and perhaps different in ways
not yet appreciated by the world around them, is this: nature, which
takes care that we shall not have too many geniuses and doubtless will
still take such care when we grow wise enough to give all the children
a chance to prove whether or not they are geniuses--nature sees to it
that the most gifted among the children of men carry within themselves
their own school-master. If the regular lines of education do not suit
their needs they promptly emancipate themselves from the useless
pedagogy, and going after what they personally demand for inner
nourishment, get it at all hazards. Sometimes, not infrequently, all
the gifted child needs is a library and a chance to be free, or a
studio and the companionship of an artist and just his own sort of
training, at the time he can best appropriate it.
=Varieties of the Gifted.=--Happily all the flowers of the family are
not geniuses or specially talented. Some are just beautiful to look at
and yet unspoiled by flattery. It is a great gift of nature to be able
to give happiness just by allowing people to look at one! The contour
of the face, the turn of the head, the light in the eye, the freshness
of the complexion, the grace of the movement, and the sweetness of the
voice all go together, if the manner and the feeling only match the
coloring and the form, to make it well worth while just to be alive.
And some flowers of the family are not beautiful but charming, those
of tact and graciousness and understanding of others and consideration
and unselfish behavior. These are they of whom one has said, "The
charm of her presence was felt when she went, and men at her side grew
nobler, girls purer, as all through the town the children were gladder
who pulled at her gown."
Some flowers of the family bloom late and come to their beauty only
when some disaster threatens destruction of the home or some sorrow
wrecks its happiness. Simple, plain, unassuming, neither very wise nor
very strong in other matters, they have a heart that can love with
such intensity that it warms the coldest spot and is the refuge most
sought when misfortune appears.
And sometimes the flower of the family is but a memory of one who
early passes on. Emerson sang in his beautiful "Threnody":
"The gracious boy, who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favor of the loving Day,--
Has disappeared from the Day's eye;
Far and wide she cannot find him;
My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
......................................
Nature, who lost, cannot remake him;
Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him;
........................................
the feet
Of the most beautiful and sweet
Of human youth had left the hill
And garden,--they were bound and still."
It is of such that affection speaks most tenderly.
QUESTIONS ON THE FLOWER OF THE FAMILY
1. How far should the general family life be burdened for special
development of the genius, the near-genius, and the specially
talented member?
2. What added social provisions should we seek to secure to aid in
the self-training of the specially gifted?
3. What type of education may lead more surely to the discovery of
talent and special faculty in the mass of children?
4. Should the chief aim be to bring the subnormal or backward up
to grade or to give a free and helpful range of opportunity to
natural qualities of leadership? If both should be aimed at
equally, how can the public school aid in the double task?
5. A suggestive list of Books for Parents, issued by the
Federation for Child Study, headquarters at 2 West Sixty-fourth
Street, New York City, includes several of special value in
determining the mental powers and special requirements of
children diverging from the average quality and capacity. Read
at least one of the books indicated and compare local
provisions for examination of children with those advocated as
desirable.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] See _American Journal of Sociology_ for November, 1913.
[12] See _American Journal of Sociology_ for May, 1913.
[13] See chapter on "Democracy and Distinction," in _Social
Organization_, by C.H. Cooley.
CHAPTER X
THE CHILDREN THAT NEVER GROW UP
"It was perhaps an idle thought
But I imagined that if day by day
I watched him and seldom went away,
And studied all the beatings of his heart
With zeal (as men study some stubborn art
For their own good) and could by patience find
An entrance to the caverns of his mind--
I might reclaim him from his dark estate."
--SHELLEY.
"One man, at least, I know,
Who might wear the crest of Bayard
Or Sidney's plume of snow.
Behold him,
The Cadmus of the blind,
Giving the dumb lips language,
The idiot clay a mind.
Wherever outraged Nature
Asks word or action brave,
Wherever struggles labor,
Wherever groans a slave,--
Wherever rise the peoples,
Wherever sinks a throne,
The throbbing heart of Freedom finds
An answer in his own.
Knight of a better era,
Without reproach or fear!
Said I not well that Bayards
And Sidneys still are here?"
--WHITTIER'S tribute to Dr. Howe.
=The Defective Children.=--Not those who die young, full of promise,
to leave a memory of exquisite budding loveliness cut short by
untimely frosts, but those who live on from infancy to childhood and
from youth to physical maturity and even on to old age, yet never
become responsible adults--these are the children we must consider.
The demand of the eugenists that such, if obviously defective, should
be prevented from bringing forth after their kind is clearly the only
social wisdom. The statistics of social pathology all point to mental
defectiveness as the prolific cause of crime, immorality, vocational
incompetency, illegitimacy, family failure, and marital tragedy. In a
recent study of one hundred families in which feeble-mindedness was
obvious, a study carried on by the Massachusetts Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children, immorality was found in 58 per
cent. of them; extreme filth and bad home conditions were found in 30
per cent.; and in 47 per cent. one or more members of these families
were public charges. Where the mother is subnormal there is almost
certain to be a line of feeble-minded progeny, and in this study,
while there were only 7 per cent. of the fathers hopelessly deficient,
in 25 per cent. the mothers were notably defective in mind.
Thirty-seven of these families showed illegitimate children--a far
larger number than the average of normal population. Physical
deficiencies also figured largely in these family records.
This particular study takes us into the region where Doctor Fernald,
Doctor Goddard and many others have prepared material for convincing
the public mind that no one thing so increases social degeneracy and
so adds to the sum of human misery as the unprotected freedom of
defectives to procreate and pollute the family currents.[14] This is
not a treatise on social pathology and elsewhere must be found the
details of investigation and information that justify this statement.
What is here attempted is only a study of what should be the attitude
of fathers and mothers toward feeble-minded children if such should be
their tragic problem.
=Custodial Care of the Defective.=--In the first place, the attitude
of mind of the parents, if they are themselves normal, is to be
considered. What gives us feeble-minded children from feeble-minded
parents is clear. The social prevention for carrying on known
degeneracy cannot be too strongly stressed, and hence the first duty
of normal parents is to consider the social danger of leaving a
feeble-minded child, especially a feeble-minded girl, to any chance of
parenthood. This leads to the question of removal from home of
feeble-minded children to permanent custodial care in institutions
provided especially for their segregation, possible teaching and
thrifty use of small work-power. Alexander Johnson, who has done so
much in the United States to make all philanthropy wise and effective
and particularly has helped to form public opinion concerning right
methods of care and training of the feeble-minded, tells us that
"one-half of the mentally defective can become one-third of a normal
person," can be made happy and useful to the extent of considerable
aid toward self-support if under constant supervision and given the
trained care of special teachers.
There are few private homes in which any feeble-minded boy or girl can
attain such a condition. The children who are "different," if having
the sole devotion of father and mother, may be protected and made
happy in the measure of their power for happiness. But if there are
other children in the family neither they nor the afflicted one are
comfortable. The measure of feeble-mindedness is usually the measure
of unhappiness when the normal and abnormal are in close
companionship. In most families it is not possible for either or both
parents to give entire time, strength and devotion to one subnormal
child. Where it is, there is no security that death will not prevent
the permanency of that devoted care. Hence, it is generally safer and
better for all concerned to place the feeble-minded in collective
homes where their own kind are cared for exclusively and where
segregated control can be complete and permanent through life. There
is no horror of such places for those who have seen what flowers of
happiness and what miracles of devotion may be found in "Training
Schools for the Feeble-minded."
The affectional side of the nature of a mental defective may be of
unusual strength and may find special objects of love among those
still more handicapped than itself. Those visiting intimately in such
School-homes may see a higher-grade imbecile caring for a lower-grade
with patience and devotion; they may see the competitive element in
training, reduced in levels for the accommodation of the slender
stock of mentality, producing on that lower level the same good
results that normal children gain from trying to imitate and to excel.
Small attainments are sources of pride in a class of defectives which
if exhibited among the normal would give bitter experience of
contrast. By making the standard of behavior and of attainment suited
to their little power, the delight of conquest over difficulties need
not be denied to the feeble-minded.
Hence, again, it is far from wise and often far from most loving to
keep the child who can never grow up in the company of those who
follow the usual path from infancy to maturity. This means, of course,
if this idea of the more general use of special homes for the
subnormal is to be carried out, a large increase in provision of such
homes. Such large increase is often opposed by short-sighted economy.
The expense of establishing and maintaining such homes in adequate
number and of scientific and humane provisions is counted over and
taxpayers made alarmed at the sum total. What is lacking usually in
the count is the sum total of the enormous sums society now pays out
for the unregulated and socially dangerous neglect of this class of
unfortunates. Doctor Goddard's "Kallikak Family" and many other
accurate showings of what it costs to leave uncared for one
feeble-minded girl in unbefriended freedom should convince any sane
person that the most wasteful extravagance any community can commit is
such neglect of what Mr. Johnson has called "the divine fragments" of
humanity.
To make provision for the insane is seen to be a social necessity and
the family more than any other social institution profits by the
hospitals and asylums for the treatment and care of such. The relief
of having an insane relative taken away from the home, after months
and perhaps years of anxiety, fear, and suffering on the part of every
other member, cannot be too strongly pictured. The effort now making
to secure early treatment for the first symptoms of mental derangement
and to give even "border-line" cases and exceptionally "cranky" and
nervous people special treatment in mental hygiene marks the
beginning, we must believe, of effective preventive work in this line.
The feeble-minded, however, have a claim of perpetual childhood upon
the parental sympathy, and that, together with common ignorance
concerning their condition or numbers and the social dangers inherent
in their neglect, give us the alarming discrepancy in numbers between
the feeble-minded in suitable segregated care and those left to find
their way or lose it in the usual walks of life. Since Doctor Seguin
wrote his _Treatise on Idiocy_ in 1846 the verdict of science and of
philanthropy has been accumulating as to the need for the full and
complete protection of all who cannot manage successfully, even in the
simplest details, their own lives and the lives of those with whom
they are most closely related. Yet to-day, it is claimed by many
observers, we have only about fifteen per cent, of those requiring
special protection on this account adequately cared for by society.
The family must be relieved of personal care of its insane, its
lower-grade feeble-minded, and its moral idiots. It must be so
relieved for the sake of the normal members of the family. It must be
so relieved still more for the sake of lessening vice, crime,
degenerative tendencies, and actual waste of public money in public
court procedure and in other public institutional provisions.
To induce the state of mind in parents which will help on the better
and more adequate social care of these afflicted members of society,
the sense of shame and the keen suffering from social stigma in such
cases must be mitigated. It must be seen that although it may be the
fault of one or both parents that such a child has come into the
world, it is an added and deeper fault, even in many cases a social
crime, to leave that child in ordinary relations of life. It is true
that what Dr. Caleb W. Saleeby well calls "racial poisons" are often
the cause of the damaged germ plasm that starts the handicapped human
being along his devious course. Alcohol, syphilis, and other elements
of degenerative action may have doomed the child and in such cases the
father's or mother's sin or carelessness is the cause of the child's
tragical condition. In such cases the dullest conscience must feel
remorse. It is, however, not always the fault of the immediate
parents. It may be a far more remote inheritance that has started the
degenerative psychosis that results in either insanity,
feeble-mindedness, dipsomania, or "general debility of character."
=Heredity.=--Prof. E.G. Conklin says, "Heredity may be defined as the
appearance in offspring of characters whose differential causes are
found in germ cells." Doctor Galton says "the two parents between
them contribute on an average one-half of each inherited faculty, or
each parent one-quarter. The grandparents contribute between them
one-quarter, or each one-sixteenth." The responsibility for a poor
specimen of humanity, therefore, is not solely the parents'; they may
share it with a considerable group. Many a defective obviously owes
his condition to some remote ancestor, "to the third or fourth
generation," as the old Scripture said; and many a charming trait, for
which the immediate parents would like to take credit, is really a
gift from some great-grandparent.
This fact should make it easier for parents of defectives to bear the
burden and easier to make it seem less a shameful confession of
individual responsibility and more a sad confirmation of the fact that
we are all members one of another and no one lives to himself alone.
=Difficulties in Care of Morons.=--The case is clear as to treatment,
so all enlightened social workers and social students agree, in
respect to the obviously defective or insane. The difficulty is to
care protectively and yet justly for the higher-grade defective or
what is now called the "moron." Doubtless we should all see it best to
begin at the lower levels of defectiveness and abnormality for
pressure upon society to socially protect in segregated institutions
all the afflicted. The point at which compulsory methods should be
used might be placed at a widely differing level by many most
acquainted with the need for some form of social control of and for
this class. Parents in particular would resent any snap judgment and
should do so as to the mental condition of children not obviously
imbecile. It is certain that the high-grade moron makes much trouble
and gives social tragedies without number, but it is still more
certain that no social machinery has yet been devised ingenious enough
to really classify such persons and place them where they can do no
more harm. As Dr. Lightner Witmer well says in his warning against
careless diagnosis, "In training clinical examiners I advise them not
to diagnose a child as feeble-minded unless they feel sure they have
sufficient facts to convince a jury of twelve intelligent men that the
diagnosis of feeble-mindedness is the only logical conclusion to be
drawn from the facts." It is undoubtedly true that many high-grade
imbeciles or morons would be adjudged not feeble-minded by most
juries. It is also undoubtedly true that many youths who are
"peculiar" or "backward" or unusually susceptible to influence from
others or especially lacking in power of self-control are in social
danger and need some form of social protection more effectual than is
required in the case of the normal child and youth. Higher grades of
abnormality and those less understood must be approached, however,
both in matters of examination and of care, from different angles of
observation from those used in discovery and treatment of the
obviously imbecile.
In this connection mention must be made of the efforts to give
supervision of special sort and under official direction to those able
to earn their own living or partially so, at least, and who yet need
special protection and care. _The Proceedings and Addresses of the
Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Sessions of the American Association for
the Study of the Feeble-minded_ contain specially valuable articles on
"Extra-institutional Care" and on education of the higher-grade
defectives. Two articles published in _Mental Hygiene_ of April, 1921,
on the vocational elements in such extra-institutional care are most
enlightening as to possibilities in this difficult field. The first of
these, entitled "Experiments to Determine Possibilities of Subnormal
Girls in Factory Work," by Elizabeth B. Bigelow, shows that certain
kinds of routine work may be followed successfully by girls who are
mentally under the normal. The second article, "Vocational Probation
for Subnormal Youth," by Doctor Arnold Gesell, of Yale University,
shows how the courts may use probation power and agency in the
interest of self-support and a helpful industrial relationship. The
new Children's Code recently recommended to the Connecticut
Legislature by a special Commission advocates giving Juvenile Courts
power at discretion to establish the status of "Vocational Probation,"
under the supervision of officers of the Court, in place of commitment
to an institution, provided helpfully supervised employment may be
found for the boy or girl in which they may become self-supporting.
=The Colony Plan.=--The Report of Dr. Anne T. Bingham, Psychiatrist of
the New York Probation and Protective Association, based upon 839
mental examinations of girls and women coming under notice because of
breaking the laws or because manifestly in moral danger, is an
important study. Doctor Bingham highly recommends the "Colony Plan"
for the care of the higher-grade feeble-minded. In this plan small
groups of those who show mental deficiency or any special need of
social care are established under necessary supervision and control in
colonies, near their own homes if possible, and given suitable work in
the profit of which their families may share if destitute. The natural
homes of such girls and women are often lacking both in helpful
discipline or moral protection and to leave them in full charge of the
parents is often the worst possible neglect. This Colony Plan is
described in an article by Charles Bernstein, entitled "Colony and
Extra-institutional Care for the Feeble-minded," published in _Mental
Hygiene_ for January, 1920. The needed supervision, protection and
care for higher-grade morons is difficult to secure unless some form
of official control is initiated. That official control is often only
available for those who have already suffered some serious consequence
of their abnormal condition. What we need to work out is a better and
more effective means for helping the family to do what is needed for
the mentally handicapped child.
=Mental Hygiene.=--No adequate treatment of this vital movement can be
given here, but the family need for social provisions along this line
must be urged. Few families can afford the money, few parents have the
wisdom, to secure the right sort of special treatment for minds not so
diseased as to be legal subjects for insane hospital care or for
institutions for the feeble-minded, which yet make the family life
miserable and the family success difficult. There is growing a
conception of the need, especially in our complex modern life, that so
often unsettles or overburdens the mind, to have all manner of free
clinics and economical methods of care for those who can not well care
fully for themselves. This movement will go on until the mental
invalid of every sort will find as ready social sympathy and as
adequate social aid as does the physically weak, ill, or crippled.
Such a serviceable little pamphlet as that of Mr. Brady's on "Mental
Hygiene in Childhood" gives useful suggestions. Meanwhile, the family
interest is keen and must become more active and commanding in ridding
society of the inducing causes of diseased germ plasm. The whole
"social-hygiene" movement, so-called, is in the direction of cutting
off the supply of the defective and making every family less likely to
have children who never grow up.
The call during the War, and a call heeded by many who had been
ignorant of all the facts taught them in training camps, was "Keep Fit
to Fight," The call of peace, and may it be heeded as the facts of
inheritance are better known by all, is, Keep Fit for Parenthood. The
sins of youth, so often sins of ignorance, carelessness, and unbridled
passion, which doom childhood to blindness, to congenital deficiency
of all kinds, to permanent twist of mental powers, or to lack of
ability to meet life's demands--these sins of youth will be less in
evidence when education is fitted to life's full responsibilities of
choice instead of being side-tracked in narrow lines of scholarly
acquirement alone.
Meanwhile, for the parents whose children number one or more of the
handicapped there is the comfort of securing for such all that science
and special arts of teaching and institutional provision can give to
make the life of those who can never grow up at least comfortable and
free from exploitation by evil influences. That some of the noblest
and best of men and women are giving their lives in wise and loving
ministration to these least among the children of men is proof of the
overmastering power of human sympathy. Meanwhile, again, we are
finding out that the more discriminating observation of children and
their more truly scientific rating will take many children from the
lists of the "backward" and the "difficult" and even the supposed
feeble-minded into the ranks of the educable toward full normality.
=Special Rooms in Public Schools.=--The special rooms in the schools
and the special schools in the school system and the school nurses and
school doctors and the visiting teacher, with her power of making
connection between the home and the school and playground, all show
that we are coming to a point where every child will have a better
chance for having his mental and moral as well as his physical
diagnosis correctly made. And such a diagnosis we have already learned
often shows that no congenital doom marks the child labelled
"different," but rather some curable bad condition in his life that
needs only wisdom and economic power to correct. The "Observation
Cards" to which allusion has been made as helping toward discovery of
the specially gifted may also, if used with discriminating judgment,
show that many whom we thought lagged behind their mates from native
disability can be made to keep up with the procession if they are
rightly fed, have enough sleep, get a chance at fresh air, and are not
made the victims of industrial exploitation.
The new gospel of environmental change in the interest of better
physical, mental, and vocational opportunities for all, includes not
only the better care of all incompetent for self-control,
self-support, and self-direction, it also is coming to include a far
more searching investigation of the causes of degeneracy and
backwardness, and many children are thereby lifted from the hopeless
classes to the group of those requiring only special care and teaching
to be able to be classed as normal.
=Training the Nervous System.=--Professor James said, "The great thing
in education is to make the nervous system the ally, not the enemy.
For this we must make automatic and habitual as many useful actions as
we can and carefully guard against growing into ways which are likely
to be disadvantageous." His advice for self-discipline is to "seize
every first possible opportunity to act on any resolution made, and on
every emotional prompting in the direction of habits one aspires to
gain." Professor Thompson, in his book on _Brain and Personality_,
says, "We can make our own brains, so far as special functions or
aptitudes are concerned, if only we have wills strong enough to take
the trouble." These and many other admonitions in the direction of
more effective mental training show the trend of modern education. How
many a will has been weakened by bad methods of family influence! How
many nervous systems made the enemy of education rather than its ally
by bad family conditions!
The Parent-Teacher Associations are doing valiant service in bringing
to the home the best thought of the school and in bringing to the
school the best feeling of the home. It is not too much to hope that
when the jointure between real education and pure affection is made
more complete we may lessen the toll of incompetent personality and
raise the social standard of human powers. In this connection one
vital thought must not be over-looked, namely, the social advance we
may reasonably expect from the new power of women to select the
fathers of their children. Doctor Sumner said, "During the ages of the
man-family men could not make up their minds what they wanted woman to
become." If that be so, it is still more true that now, as the age of
the man-and-woman-family begins, women are undertaking to make up
their own minds as to what they want to be and to do and are attaining
a freedom of sex-selection such as they have not had before in the
civilization we call our own. Doctor Todd says truly, in his _Theories
of Social Progress_, that "from now onward the centre of selection is
shifted from without to within, from passive adaptation to active
self-determination;" and he adds, "To rationalize sexual selection and
make it serve progress will be to revise the 'mores' and inject into
them new principles." While women had no real power to select their
mates in marriage; while their economic helplessness led them almost
universally to marry as a means of support even when no real affection
softened and sanctified the process; while they had no power over laws
or customs, or knowledge of actual life outside the household, and
hence had to take wholly on trust the character and protestations of
the man they married; while women were in this subject condition they
could not contribute to family life either a high standard of choice
of parental quality or a forceful demand for previous purity and right
living in the husband. Hence, women have up to a recent time been more
sinned against than sinning if they passed on defective germ plasm or
doomed their children to suffering lives.
=Responsibility of Women in Marriage.=--Now the case is different. No
woman of usual physical strength or natural ability or average
vocational efficiency is necessarily tempted to make "marriage a
trade." If she has any strength of character she can make her own way
and find many good things in life for herself. She can, therefore,
exact such a standard of character and attainment from any man who
seeks her in marriage as he may well demand of her and can pass by as
incompetent to family demand all who do not measure up to the
requirements.
This may mean (in some circles of society, it is already coming to
mean) what Wallace indicated when he said, "Woman is to be the great
selective agent of the future." This cannot be, however, unless women
hold themselves to the best standards that men in the past have
exacted of their sex and so holding themselves (where the race needs
that they should stand) hold men also where the race needs that men
should find their place. The defrauded children of every generation
call with pathos of unique appeal upon men and women that the "racial
poisons" shall be abolished, and evil inheritance be checked, and that
every potential father and every potential mother shall hold sacred
the torch of life to pass it on the brighter for their handling.
Meanwhile, such agencies as "The Committee on Provision for the
Feeble-minded," with its central office in Philadelphia, and the
"National Committee for Mental Hygiene," with its headquarters in New
York City and its important quarterly publication, together with local
associations of similar type, are at work, as is well stated by one
national body, "to disseminate knowledge concerning the extent and
menace of feeble-mindedness and to suggest and initiate methods for
its control and ultimate eradication from the American people." On
such social effort afflicted parents of a defective child may depend
for aid and direction.
In Whittier's tribute to Samuel Gridley Howe, the pioneer in this
social care of defectives, one false hope is pictured, namely, that
"the idiot clay" could "be given a mind." That hope could not be
realized. The gates of destiny close at birth for many of the children
of men. What we can do and are now beginning to try earnestly to
accomplish is to prevent so many idiots from burdening the currents of
life, to wipe out the social disgrace of leaving neglected wanderers
on the highways of human effort who are unable to find the path of
safety and of success, and to make a protected place of guidance and
possible training for all the weak-minded and abnormal. We can, now we
increasingly understand, do more than this; we can help with ever more
ingenious and devoted care to give the merely slow and backward a
better chance at life's opportunities and help to make these least
able to adjust themselves easily to the common ways of the world more
amenable to life's discipline and happier in life's restrictions.
=The Call for Preventive Work.=--The new call for social service for
the children that never grow up is along new lines of preventive work
as truly as in demand for more tender care of all who cannot be helped
radically toward self-control and self-direction. The family, once
overwhelmed by tragedies of abnormality, can now be aided as never
before in lessening or in bearing the burden of such troubles. For the
less seriously handicapped yet specially in need of social
consideration--the blind, the deaf, the crippled, those of cardiac
weakness, and the children born tired who might become rested and
strong--the family has helps in education, medical treatment and work
opportunities suited to the particular need, such as no previous era
could furnish. Agencies for finding employment for the handicapped now
show ingenuity of the highest sort in fitting the work to special
needs, and the way in which the blind are taught to rise above their
misfortune in happy use of the faculties and powers they actually
possess is marvelous. The deaf have as yet been able to triumph over
their misfortune in less degree, but the art of reading from the lips
and other educational devices used in their behalf make their
condition so superior to that of the deaf-mutes of old that it is
cause for gratitude to every parent of a deaf child. The crippled
children now are seen not to be different from other children in their
educational rights and as needing only more consideration of physical
requirements to be fitted for useful work.
The significance of the removal of educational provisions for the
blind, the deaf, the crippled, and the invalid children from the
provisions of Boards of Charity and their assignment to departments of
state and local Boards of Education, is great. It shows that we are
becoming as capable in the community-at-large of understanding the
radical difference between those who are defective in mind and those
who are merely handicapped by loss of some special sense or some
physical power as loving and wise parents have been when either
defective or handicapped children have called upon them for special
care. The children that find it harder than most of their age and
station to grow up to full enjoyment and use of life's opportunities,
because of some weight of affliction, are, we now know, entitled to
all the training that the normal child receives and whatever else of
special education their condition requires. The children that can
never grow up to mental maturity, even with all that educational
ingenuity can offer, are the permanent members of Society's Infant
Class.
QUESTIONS ON THE CHILDREN THAT NEVER GROW UP
1. What is the modern social program in respect to the care and
training of the feeble-minded?
2. What should fathers and mothers of the feeble-minded do to help
realize that program?
3. How far should social control compel the segregation or
sterilization, or both, of those obviously unfit to become
parents?
4. What can be done by mental hygiene to lessen the numbers of the
insane, the "queer," the weak-willed, and the slow-minded?
5. The consensus of experts seems to indicate that the first need
is to segregate in suitable institutions under permanent
custodial care all the markedly inferior who cannot be
self-supporting and who lack power of self-protection against
the grossest forms of exploitation; the second need is to
introduce new methods of supervisory control and humane
protection and training in the care of those who are not normal
but who, under favorable conditions of vocational guidance and
direction and with a new home environment suited to their
peculiar needs, may become wage-earners and fairly useful
members of society. In the town for which you seek better
conditions, which of these efforts is most needed at the
present time? Is it to meet the needs for institutional care or
for supervision adequate and well applied for those left either
in their own homes or placed in colony-care?
FOOTNOTES:
[14] See "Mental Diseases in Twelve States," as reported in 1919 by
Horatio M. Pollock, Ph.D., Statistician New York State Hospital
Commission, and Edith M. Forbush, Statistician of National Committee
for Mental Hygiene, published in _Mental Hygiene_ of April, 1921.
CHAPTER XI
PRODIGAL SONS AND DAUGHTERS
"Because of fathers' sins the cost
Is counted in the children's blood;
They starve where once they might have stood
Content and strong as bird or bee."--H.H.
"The primary function of social science is to interpret men's
experience in passing from stage to stage in the evolution of
human values."--ALBION W. SMALL.
"Every wrong-doer should have his due. But what is his due? Can we
measure it by his past alone, or is it due any one to regard him
as a man having a future as well? As having possibilities for good
as well as achievements in bad?"--JOHN DEWEY.
"Judge not, that ye be not judged. He that is without sin among
you, let him first cast a stone."--JESUS.
"The Sage is ever the good Saviour of men; he rejects none. For
the good men are the instructors of other good men and the bad men
are the material for the good men to work upon. The good I would
meet with goodness, the not-good I would meet with goodness
also."--LAO-TSZE.
"The good man is apt to go right about pleasure and the bad man is
apt to go wrong. It is only to the good man that the good presents
itself as good, for vice perverts us and causes us to err about
the principle of action."--ARISTOTLE.
"I cannot but think that the extreme passion for getting rich,
absorbing all the energies of life, predisposes to mental
degeneracy, to moral defects, or to outbreaks of insanity in the
offspring."--MAUDESLEY.
"Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world or out of it which
can be called good without qualification except a Good
Will."--KANT.
"The object of moral principles is to supply standpoints and
methods which will enable the individual to make for himself an
analysis of the elements of good and evil in the particular
situation in which he finds himself,"--JOHN DEWEY.
"I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which
does not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to
precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new
and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself
forth in fresh and higher exertions."--CHANNING.
=Who Should Hear Sermons on the Prodigal Son?=--A young woman deeply
interested in social service was asked by the warden of a prison to
address its fifteen hundred inmates on a Sunday morning when they
should be all assembled in Chapel. Hesitating at undertaking such a
difficult task, she asked the warden what he would think she should
talk about. "Anything you like," he said, "except this: don't speak on
the prodigal son, for the last fourteen ministers and speakers have
read that parable and talked about it." "Indeed, no," answered the
young woman, "that parable is not for them. They should be taught what
is justice to the elder brother and preached to from the text, 'Work
out your own salvation.'" It is really a bit difficult to find just
the right audience for a preachment on that appealing parable. The
harsh-natured fathers who most need its lesson are not likely to be in
church when it is read and the tender fathers often need to be
stiffened up to work with all the rest of society to make the prodigal
behave better; and the elder brothers, the hard-working "sons of
Martha," who have to save in order to pay the taxes for the
institutions and agencies that take care of the prodigal, should not
have the fact that their sacrifice and service are usually taken as a
matter of course unduly emphasized when they meet their fellows.
The fact is that the prodigal, like the genius, is often one who takes
life's practical affairs so lightly that until he is really hungry in
the far land whither he has taken himself for pleasures denied at
home, he seldom considers how his behavior affects the rest of the
family. Moreover, the prodigal is often such a charming and engaging
creature that all is forgiven him many times more than is good for his
soul, and who, therefore, has many fatted calves set before him in
renewed festivals over his repeated home-comings.
Yet, when all is said in the way of caution against overindulgence of
the wayward, the one thing about parental love that marks it as the
supreme type of affection is the fact that it holds all its own in
permanent bond whatever the character of the child or his return for
devotion.
=Distinction Between the Mentally Competent and Defective in Criminal
Class.=--The parent who has a prodigal son or daughter to-day has the
benefit of much social wisdom and much educational treatment of the
wayward, unknown in the past. In the first place, we are learning to
sort out in the criminal and vicious classes those who are mentally
responsible and those who may be supposed to be the helpless victims
of their instincts and tendencies.[15] If it is true, as one has said,
that "the test of sound moral character is that it possesses coherence
under liberty and has learned those various arts of adaptation to
ever-varying circumstance which make it a working quality, constant,
rational, and automatic," we must perceive the intimate connection
between mental power and moral competency. In point of fact, we now
know that the overwhelming majority of criminals and constantly
vicious persons, in ordinary times when no social hysteria of recent
war gives a "crime wave," come from the mentally feeble or perverted
types.
The draft examinations in the Great War gave a shock to all students
of social conditions in their revelation of the widespread
deficiencies, physical and mental, of young men of our country. Mr.
Henry Wysham Lanier, writing on this topic, shows "that out of a total
of fifty-four millions of men twenty-six millions were either in the
Army or Navy or registered and ready for call," and that of these
"three millions out of thirteen were unfit to serve their country as
soldiers." Nearly three-quarters of a million had some mechanical
incapacity, defects in bones, joints, etc. About one-half million had
imperfections of sense organs and nearly as many serious troubles of
the circulatory system. A third of a million showed nervous and
mental incapacity for the soldier's work. About 300,000 had
tuberculosis or severe venereal disease. About the same number had
skin or teeth ailments. Altogether, the first severe examinations
weeded out as unfit for the service nearly one-third of those who were
drafted.
In addition to the revelation of physical and mental defects in the
average young manhood of our country, it was found by further
examination that five and a half millions of our young men were
illiterate. These facts show that in the mass of people from which
criminals and vicious people are recruited, large numbers have defects
of body, mind, or education, which handicap them in pursuit of an
honest living or in the search for helpful pleasures. The step to be
taken in order to help the family to deal justly and humanely, but
with due response to social duty, with the prodigal sons and
daughters, may be briefly outlined as follows:
First and foremost, the weeding out from every field of competitive
life those manifestly incapable of holding their own in
self-protection and self-support. The unemployable among the
unemployed, the hopelessly criminal and vicious who cannot be rescued
from their condition, the more permanently backward among the school
pupils, the incompetent among parents, and the dead weight of the
"born paupers," all these must somehow be socially carried with least
expenditure of social force and at least cost to family stability and
family well-being. We have not yet learned to do this, but in every
field of social effort the primary need is to see what is the right
thing to do. When the ideal is accepted we are already a long way
toward learning the lesson of the method to be pursued to carry out
the ideal.
=Moral Invalids.=--In the second place, when we have really
ascertained who among criminals and the habitually vicious, and who
among the recipients of "material relief" who are constantly returning
for more aid, and who among the unmarried mothers, and who among the
dependent children are really feeble-minded or morally imbecile, we
must segregate these as fast as we are able to supply the right
artificial environment for their weakness and treat them as incurable
moral and mental invalids. We must cease to deal with such as with
responsible human beings, who might do better if only they would. The
"indeterminate sentence" is a step toward such treatment, but it is
often rendered wholly futile by being mixed with "reward of shortening
term for good behavior in prison." Good behavior inside prison walls
gives no proof of ability to take good care of one's self outside
those walls; it may be only a proof that the moral weakling has to
have an external conscience and a strict watch in order to be amenable
to even simple rules. The parole system is also liable to great
misunderstanding and serious social dangers when it is used without
the most scientific knowledge of the mental power of the man or woman
concerned, and without utmost care in selection of work-place and
living conditions of the paroled prisoner. The essential thing in all
social effort to do justice to the wayward is to find out about them
and manage for them the essentials of environmental influence. If, as
many think, after careful study of large groups of wayward and
criminal, more than half, almost two-thirds of those who come before
the law for punishment are of less mental capacity than normal
children of twelve years of age, then we must take social care of them
as we would undertake to do if they were really under twelve. And the
parents of prodigal sons and daughters must help with all the might of
their parental affection in inspiring and supporting a public opinion
to that end.
=Rehabilitation of the Competent.=--In the third place, for the
one-half to one-third of criminal and habitually vicious left after
the mentally incompetent are given proper care, we must use all the
rehabilitation methods that society has devised and be more ingenious
than we have yet been in adding to them. When such methods as Thomas
Mott Osborne used fail, they generally fail because they are applied
to those whom we should put under perpetual care, those indicated
above as incompetent to life's demands. To try and make over a nature
too weak in fibre to have anything of will or determination to "stitch
to" is to have a response only when under constant supervision, and
inevitable backslidings follow as soon as self-control is called for.
It is true, however, that many who have gone far wrong make good and
reach to a high attainment of character. They are the "occasional
criminals," the "fallen" who met with extraordinary temptation, the
too hardly used by fate, the too early exposed to evil influences, the
wild natures too strictly curbed by mistaken methods of control, the
orphans without parental love and guidance, the victims of broken
family life, the "under-dogs" that could not make a way out to
successful vocation or to happy human companionship. These occasional
criminals among men, and the women or girls leading to sex
temptations, may be often saved if so as by fire, and live to help all
others to a stronger and better life than they have known. As this
book is written the news comes of the death of such a woman in
Chinatown of New York slums, a girl who had descended to the depths of
vice but who came up at the call of the Salvation Army and spent the
life left to her in helping others, such as she had once been, to hear
and obey that call. Some men show such power of moral recovery as to
put to shame those never tempted to a fall. These prove that mental
power and the raw material of character, even after many untoward
experiences, may take a fresh start and enable men and women to "rise
on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things."
=The Right Use of Leisure Time.=--In the fourth place, the agencies of
social protection of child-life must coöperate with all parents,
whether those parents are wise or foolish, strong or weak, in
preventing occasional criminality and preventable vice.
The helpful use of leisure time is a vital factor in the prevention of
vice and crime. The pioneer study of "Public Recreation Facilities" in
the _Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science_ of March,
1910, indicates lines of social service in this particular which have
been followed to great social advantage.
=The Moving Picture.=--The influence of the "movies" is the strongest,
the most all-compelling influence to which children have ever been
subjected. There has never been an agency that so appealed to all the
senses, especially to the eye with its supreme registry of
impressions, and we have so far let it play upon child-life with
little direction from the educative process. What it is right and
helpful to read is not always right and helpful to put upon the stage,
with the more vivid and popular appeal to eye and ear and with the
lessened opportunity of the drama to explain and soften and balance
the presentation of tragedy and evil. What the drama may safely give
to the smaller and generally older audiences which it draws may not be
suitable from any point of view, either of art or of moral influence,
for the coarser and more pronounced representation of the moving
picture. There is a place for film presentation that is unique and it
may easily become the greatest educational agency in all recreational
life. That place, however, seems self-limited to pictures of life that
can be imitated without social harm, insofar as very young children
are concerned.
=Needed Supervision.=--Although much will inevitably be given in the
moving pictures which contains incidents that any wise person would
not take part in for themselves, the main ideal and the outcome of the
situations must be such as to leave a tendency toward good and not
toward evil, if children and youth are safely to receive its strong
impressions. This is understood by those who are "trying to elevate
the moving picture," but too often the reformers and the educators are
so far removed from the main sources of control of any business or art
centre that they only brush the outskirts of the agencies that purvey
to public amusement and fail to reach any citadel of real control.
There is a general uneasiness, however, among many people of all
classes, even those usually very easy-going about any social
influence, as they read the tales of children testifying in the courts
as to their "hold-ups" and their burglaries that they did them "like
the movies" they had seen. It is surely true that the next thing we
must do is to tame these "movies" and make them work in social harness
for the better, and not the worse, in the lives of children and youth.
What line of cleavage may be drawn between what the elders may see and
what should not be allowed so vividly to impress the younger minds, no
one can predict. The recent public announcement of a determination to
cleanse and uplift the moving picture business from within its own
management is a most hopeful sign. But surely no parent can throw all
the blame of any evil influence of a film exhibit upon the managers of
a theatre! Where are the parents, and what are they about, that they
do not know what pictures their children see and how often they go to
any place of amusement?
=The Automobile and Its Influence.=--The same thing is true of the
automobile, that now so often takes the youth of the well-to-do
classes too swiftly away from necessary social safeguarding. The
inventors and makers of these machines are not responsible that
criminals use them for unprecedented escape from arrest, and boys and
girls go to destruction of honor and purity in a whirl of wind and
dust. As in all the new inventions and discoveries, we have gained
more control over material things than we have yet learned how to use
for either our physical or moral good. We shall sober down, no doubt,
and learn to wholly profit by the new wonders of motion and of
recreation.
=Parents Need Social Help in Moral Training of Children.=--Meanwhile,
the parents who are trying to make the right atmosphere and secure the
right influences for their children have a more difficult task than in
any previous time; for the young can so much more easily take on all
the new appliances as a part of their daily life and can so swiftly
change from old ways to the unaccustomed. Some of the most selfish and
cruel of the prodigal sons and daughters of our time find it easy to
escape from any parental appeal in the air or by the whirling wheels
of the machine or in any of the various ways by which space and time
are now annihilated. And "out of sight, out of mind" is true of their
psychology. All of which makes it clear that to-day, as in no previous
time, we must all stand or fall together. The old home privacy is for
the most part gone, the old home isolation wholly departed. All
recreation is more and more in the open and appeals at one and the
same time to all youth. The standards have to be raised for all or
they cannot be held firm for the favored few. Democracy, which aims to
make all better, may work to make all cheaper in taste, more vulgar in
language, less capable of fine expression of noble ideals, unless a
social conscience and a social intelligence take command of the common
life.
It is, therefore, to-day, not enough to call upon parents to try and
keep their own sons and daughters from the prodigal life, it is a
necessity, stronger than ever before, to make the influences which all
must share what all careful and wise parents wish for their own
children.
This is a mighty task, one that in the United States of America, with
its cosmopolitan population, and its multitude of people with a
smattering only of education or culture but with economic ability to
gratify their undeveloped tastes, is more vast and more pressing than
any nation has yet tried to accomplish. While we are working at it we
may well comfort ourselves by remembering that each generation has to
meet new problems, and that somehow, even when the young start wrong
or meet with overwhelming temptations or fail to get at the right time
the impulse toward the best which they need, life has them in hand and
teaches by experience much which helps them onward. The tendency of
life is toward strength and health and goodness and idealistic aims
and choice of the best each person knows. It is true, and the best
thing in human experience, that what parents cannot do for those they
love, life itself does for them, perhaps with needless suffering that
the wise and loving parent would have saved them had they but heeded,
but with a thoroughness which experience alone can give.
=Parental Love for the Black Sheep.=--The attitude of parents toward
the black sheep who does not change his ways of evil and does not
become a comfort but remains always a burden and sorrow, is one of the
saddest and one of the noblest of human exhibits in sympathy and
affection. A woman of the finest nature who as a girl was captured in
imagination by a man of brilliant quality but of peculiar cruelty and
wickedness of nature, and guilty, after their marriage, of many
crimes, had two sons. One was like herself and became a man honored by
all, and of the greatest help to his mother. The other seemed the
image of his father in all ways, personal beauty, brilliant talent,
and a naturally depraved character. He landed in prison, sentenced for
many years for forgery and long-sustained robbery of a bank. His
mother said with truth that she never had had a moment's relief from
the most wearing anxiety until he was safely behind prison bars, where
he could no longer torture his young wife or hurt anyone else by his
wrong actions. Yet that mother, when he was breaking her heart by his
actions and most willing to do it, never failed in love, in patience,
in deep understanding of his moral twist and incapacity.
A girl born of ordinarily intelligent and moral parents became a
prodigy of sex perversion and the accomplice of thieves and murderers.
She gave untold misery to all her family, but the father never gave up
his search for her when she left the home and never failed to give her
succor and the most tender care when she came back worn and ill, and
at last left all other interests in life to snatch her away from bad
companions and try to establish her in a new place and a better
surrounding.
The story of the prodigal son was taken from life itself; it is the
moving story of the one greatest affection of the family bond, that
for the bone of bone and the flesh of flesh, the child that needs most
the tenderness of the parent, the child that has worn out all other
patience and lost all other consideration and has only the claim of
its deep need to insure its parent's service.
=Children's Courts.=--Society has lately become wise and humane enough
to establish Children's Courts for Juvenile Delinquents. These,
beginning merely in "Separate Hearings" in Boston Courts, and assuming
definite and autonomous form in Chicago, have become more widespread
and more inclusive in character. Now we are securing, as by a recent
State Law in New York, the County Courts for children, in which the
limitations of local sentiment and neighborhood reluctance to testify
of family conditions are surmounted and yet the near-at-hand interest
in the children is preserved.
All modern philanthropy tends toward dealing with wayward boys and
girls as those who need and should have not punishment but education,
necessary but kindly restraint, protection from bad surroundings and
training toward self-support. To this we are adding Domestic Relations
Courts dealing with juvenile delinquents not, as some one has said,
"so as to punish parents for the wrong-doing of their children," but
rather as indicating the recognition of the fact that one member of
the family cannot be "saved" without an effort to save all the other
members, and that in the family relationship there are permanent bonds
that courts should recognize and seek to enforce and make more helpful
to every individual concerned.
=Domestic Relations Courts.=--When the history of cases coming before
either Children's Courts or Domestic Relations Courts is studied,
certain facts of social condition stand out prominently as causes for
juvenile delinquency. First of all, the broken family, one in which
there has been separation of father and mother, is a cause of
child-neglect and consequent wrong-doing. The death of either parent,
also, is often the cause of such unhappiness or privation in the home
as to induce disobedience to law and bring the child before a court.
The lack of employment by the father or his too low wages, which
reduces the family income dangerously and makes the mother attempt to
be both breadwinner and care-taker of the home, and hence lessens
family comfort and sends the children on the streets for amusement, is
also a cause often appearing as a reason for delinquency. The evils of
housing congestion, too many families living in one building or in one
neighborhood without chance for privacy, choice of companionship or
household arrangements conservative of domestic virtue or happiness,
these evils constitute a heavy indictment of society in the returns of
Children's Courts. The complex problems which the immigrant faces,
with his children early learning the language of the country to which
he has come, while it is to him a sealed book, are responsible for
much juvenile delinquency. Jacob Riis has told us, in compelling
description, the story of the evolution of the "gang" and of the
"tough" from the children of parents who, well-meaning and in their
own ancestral land capable of parental control, here lose command of
the family life because the children have to become the interpreters
and representatives of the family in the new country to a degree that
reverses the natural order of dependence and direction in the family
life, and gives the children undue power of leadership in family
affairs. As Professor Cooley wisely says, "It is freedom to be
disciplined in as rational a manner as you are tit for." We might give
the converse of this truth in the statement that it is not freedom but
dangerous tendency toward anarchy and disaster to be called upon for
rational decisions in advance of our intelligence and will-power, and
a tragedy to lose the habit-drill of parental control in the period of
life when that is a necessary foundation for wisdom in independent
choice. The child of the immigrant often lands in the Children's Court
not because he is bad or stupid or even mischievous by nature, but
because he is too early forced by circumstances into a position of
command and of unrestricted choice in action, due to the ease with
which the young can learn new ways and the difficulty of the old in
mastering strange language and manners.
=Dangerous Rebound from Ancient Family Discipline.=--Again, the
Children's and the Domestic Relations Courts bear testimony to the
fact that to-day we are in a rebound from inherited forms of
discipline of children and youth which have given to all, immigrant
and native-born alike, a feeling that society exists for their benefit
and that they owe nothing to society in return. The very
standardization of child-care by public demand, in matters of health
and education, of free books and free recreation and free music and
free parks and playgrounds and even free lunches in schools, and free
baths and medical and nursing care--all that is increasingly called
for and provided out of the public purse for the nurture and
development of child-life--tend toward giving children and youth the
idea that the world belongs to them.
The old crushing and often cruel pressure of older life upon the young
is happily gone. The new ideals of education, within the school and
the home, which emphasize the right of each human being to its own
development into a unique, a free and a happy personality, are ideals
that must grow in realization more and more if we are to have fit
people for making democracy work toward the rule of the best. It is,
however, profoundly true that we have gone farther in demand for and
effort toward individual freedom than we have in any translation of
the old social pressure upon the individual conscience and life to
assume social obligations and bear them worthily and usefully. There
is a dry rot at the core of any class or any nation which turns its
inmost psychology toward what it can get from life without regard to
what it should give back to life. Too many children and youth in
conditions in which, happily, the old despotism of age is outgrown,
have unhappily missed the old sense of obligation and old call to
service which the earlier forms of family and school discipline
implanted in all responsive natures.
=Do Modern Youth Need New Community Disciplines?=--There is abundant
evidence that William James was profoundly right when he suggested a
need in youth for some required devotion to "the collectivity that
owns us," some "moral equivalent for war" and the military drill of
older forms of civic order. When the Athenian youth took his oath of
devotion to the city of his birth, he signalized his coming of age and
expressed the ideal of service of each to all and all to each. This is
not the place for detailed discussion of what is lacking in modern
training of American Youth analogous in spirit and effect to this
classic custom. It must be insisted, however, as we discuss the
conditions that make for juvenile delinquency, among the children and
youth otherwise normal and capable of useful life, that we have not
done all that democracy demands when we have made children healthy,
sent them to tax-supported schools, prevented them from too early
earning at "gainful occupations," and instituted all manner of
recreative and stimulating provisions for their free use. We must also
give them some sense of what Seneca meant when he said, "We are all
members of one great body; remember that each was born for the good of
all." We must also burn deep into the consciousness of youth in some
fashion that shall be through our modern mechanisms as effective as
were the old "Fraternities" of primitive life, and as are still the
outworn but persistent forms of military discipline, that idea of
subordination of private whim to public well-being which lies at the
base of all true and ordered social advance. The Children's Courts are
a response to the effort of society to give each child a fair chance
in life. There are needed, also, devices of education and of
compulsory social service and social obedience which may tend to give
society a fair deal from every adult.
Prodigal sons and daughters, therefore, who are abnormal, weak,
morally invalid, must be cared for in the way easiest and best for the
social whole. Parents must help and not hinder in that task.
Prodigal sons and daughters who are normal save for some accidental
divergence from legal or actual right-doing must be helped to come
back into the line of social usefulness. And, above all, the facts of
juvenile delinquency should give us impetus, strong and intelligent,
toward a social and family discipline that shall make freedom and
happiness of childhood a way to social order and never a pathway
toward social degeneracy or personal wrong-doing.
QUESTIONS ON PRODIGAL SONS AND DAUGHTERS
1. What has been the general trend of social ideal and practice
in the treatment of the criminal and the vicious?
2. What part has the family played in restraint of evil tendency
or in responsibility before the law for offences against social
order?
3. What part should the family now play in these vital social
matters?
4. What is "sentimentality" and what is "justice" in dealing with
the prodigal?
5. What can be done through physical and mental examinations, by
experts, of all children, to prevent development of
criminality, vice, and waywardness?
6. In 1724 the English law held any one legally responsible for
action subversive of law and order unless he was "totally
deprived of his understanding and memory and doth not know what
he is doing, no more than an infant, than a brute or a wild
beast." Since 1843, the criterion of responsibility under the
law is "knowledge of what is right or wrong in the particular
case." Following the same line of change, our statutes now ask,
in addition, if the person on trial is generally competent to
understand and to obey social rules of conduct. Is this trend
toward the lessening or toward the increase of crime and vice?
7. What does social well-being require shall be done for and with
those proved incapable of social habits?
8. Head "The Socially Inadequate; How Shall We Designate and Sort
Them?" by Harry H. Laughlin, Carnegie Institution, Cold Spring
Harbor, Long Island, in _American Journal of Sociology_, July,
1921. This is an attempt to introduce a blanket term under
which feeble-minded; insane; criminalistic, including
delinquent and wayward; epileptic; inebriate, including drug
habitues; diseased, including tuberculous, lepers, and others
with chronic infectious diseases; blind, including all of
seriously impaired vision; deaf, including those with seriously
impaired hearing; deformed, including the crippled; and
dependent, including orphans, old folks, soldiers and sailors
in "homes," chronic charity-aided folk, paupers, and
ne'er-do-wells, may be listed. This article attempts to make a
classification inclusive, yet subject to minute subheading,
which may make reports more definite in listing human beings.
Is such an attempt wise, and if so, how would each member of this
group classify the "socially inadequate?"
FOOTNOTES:
[15] See a valuable study by Dr. Bernard Glueck, Director Psychiatric
Clinic at Sing Sing Prison, entitled, "Concerning Prisoners," and
published in _Mental Hygiene_ for April, 1918, showing the need for
mental examination of all convicted persons as an indispensable basis
for right understanding and treatment of prisoners.
CHAPTER XII
THE BROKEN FAMILY
"Every social ill involves the enslavement of individuals. Freedom
is that phase of the social ideal which emphasizes
individuality.--All mankind acknowledges kindness as the law of
right intercourse within a social group.--The ideal of service
goes with the sense of unity.--A likeness of spirit and principle
is essential to moral unity. The creation of a moral order on an
ever-growing scale is the great historical task of mankind, and
the magnitude of it explains all shortcomings."--CHARLES H.
COOLEY, in _Social Organization_.
"The sanctity of oaths
Lies not in lightning that avenges them,
But in the injury wrought by broken bonds
And in the garnered good of human trust.
'Tis a compulsion of the higher sort,
Whose fetters are the net invisible
That holds all life together.
'Tis faithfulness that makes the life we choose
Breathe high and see a full-arched firmament.
We may see ill
But over all belief is faithfulness
Which fulfils vision with obedience.
No good is certain, but the steadfast mind,
The undivided will to seek the good;
'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings
A human music from the indifferent air."
--GEORGE ELIOT.
"Genuine government is but the expression of a nation
Good or less good; even as all society
Is but the expression of men's single lives--
The loud sum of the silent units."--E.B. BROWNING.
"There is no other genuine enthusiasm than one which has travelled
the common highway--the life of the good man and woman, the good
neighbor, the good citizen."--THOMAS GREEN HILL.
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom."
--SHAKESPEARE.
=The Problems of Divorce.=--Having treated in some detail the subject
of "Problems of Marriage and Divorce" in a former book, _Woman's Share
in Social Culture_, and also in articles published in _The
International Journal of Ethics_, _The Harvard Theological Review_,
_Harper's Weekly_, and other magazines, this chapter, to avoid
repetition, will simply rehearse in brief outline the points of view
previously expressed.
In the valuable and suggestive treatment of the family by Professor
Ellwood in his book, _Sociology and Modern Social Problems_, he says
that "divorce is but a symptom of more serious evils that in certain
classes of American society have apparently undermined the very
virtues upon which the family life subsists." If that be so, then no
tinkering with the laws which aim at preventing divorces will reach
the seat of the difficulty. The treatment must be more radical, and
the character of individuals be made more noble and strong, if the
family is to be made more stable and marriage more successful.
=Frequency of Divorce in the United States.=--The first point to be
noted in any discussion of the broken family is the frequency of that
social tragedy in the United States. The pioneer study by Professor
W.P. Willcox, made in 1885 and reported in his volume entitled _The
Divorce Problem_, showed the fact that we had in this country at that
time more divorces per year than were recorded in all the other
so-called Christian countries put together. For 1905, statistics show
nearly 68,000 divorces in the United States as against the highest
number from Germany, which is only a trifle above 11,000, and from
France, 10,860, and running down rapidly to the number of 33 in
Canada. In England, in 1905, there was but one divorce to 400
marriages. In the United States, in the same year, one divorce to
every 12 marriages. Since that count was taken, there has been no
evidence of a halt in the tendency of the United States to lead the
rest of the Christian world in this matter of separation of those once
joined together by marriage vows. In some of the States, the showing
is more pronounced on the side of free divorce than in other States,
since in Washington, Oregon, and Montana one divorce to every five
marriages is reported, in Colorado and Indiana one to every six, and
in Oklahoma, California, and Maine one to every seven marriages. We
need not accept the doleful suggestion of Professor Willcox that if we
go on this way, "by 1950 one-fourth of all marriages will be
terminated by divorce, and by 1990 one-half so terminated," for it is
not necessary or likely that we shall "go on" in this particular.
Already, movements toward the strengthening of family ties and the
better training of youth to responsibility, movements that tend to
make marriage less brittle, are inaugurated.
=Cannot Now Make Family an Autocracy.=--There are several points that
all must agree upon if we are to stay the rush to the divorce courts
and yet not attempt the futile task of turning the family order back
to the patriarchal or the monarchical types. In those types there was
little or no legal divorce, it is true, but in them inhered social
evils that often killed the spirit of marriage, and doomed the
children of enforced unions to physical weakness, mental
defectiveness, moral taint, and affectional suffering.
First of all, it should be noted that, although the divorce statistics
are serious indictments of American life and bode ill to American
society, they are not wholly a testimony to bad conditions. They are
also a testimony that he who runs may read, to the determination of
men, and especially of women, to exact a higher reality of mutual
love, mutual respect, mutual service, and mutual coöperation within
the marriage bond.
=New Standards of Marriage Success.=--When it was decided to
investigate the causes for the backwardness of school children, why so
many "failed to pass" and were "retarded" in the march from grade to
grade in the elementary classes, the first inquiry took no note of the
exactions of the grade standards. All who failed to move on at the
scheduled moment for "promotion," in any school examined, were listed
as "backward." Later, it occurred to the investigators, that the first
thing to find out was whether or not a given grade standard was one
that true pedagogy would approve, and second, whether there was a
serious discrepancy in that grade standard between the different
schools from which the children came for examination.
In much the same way the first inquiries as to the evil of frequent
divorce seemed to take for granted that all who sought divorce were in
circumstances that might have been socially and usefully continued
within the marriage bond. We know better now. We know that the first
question to ask about a broken family is: What was its condition
before the break? Did justice, and a fair estimate of the quality of
the union and its effects upon the man and the woman involved, and
their children, demand that the family hold or be held together, or
was there a condition that made society more interested in the ending
than in the continuance of that union?
If, as is beginning to be understood, it is not for the interest of
society that men and women should marry who are so physically
diseased, or mentally defective, or morally perverted as to make them
injurious members of a family circle, is it not as clear that in many
cases such persons when married are not helpful members of any family;
and if so, again, is it not clear that there is justification in
social need itself for the removal of such persons from the family
circle they have already polluted or injured in vital ways, to prevent
their doing more harm to family life?
Whatever may be thought by many who view all divorce with horror,
there is a tendency within that movement toward free divorce, toward
the freeing of the currents of generative life from evil influence,
from despotism, from degenerative tendencies, and from the worst forms
of social wrong-doing. There is, also, of course, in that movement, a
testimony which should make all earnest lovers of their kind learn
how to urge socially therapeutic treatment, a testimony to human
weakness, to a lack of the sense of responsibility, to a love of
personal pleasure at any cost to moral obligation, and to a need for
social control of the whole family relation.
The causes, in our country, for which more than 90 per cent, of the
divorces are granted, are the serious ones of adultery, cruelty,
imprisonment for crime, habitual drunkenness, desertion, and neglect
to provide for the family. This indicates that in most cases there has
been a failure on the score of basic family requirements from husbands
and wives, and from fathers and mothers, before the court was called
in to break the legal bond. Does this also indicate that such failure
of character has increased among our people to the extent of its
increased legal recognition in divorce? We can not think so. There are
special reasons why all bonds of intimate association are strained in
modern life, with its separate industrial, social, and educational
affiliations for each individual. But that all of us are going
downward, or most of us, is not a provable contention and should not
be an undemonstrated inference.
=Dangers of Extreme Individualism in Marriage.=--The primary fact is
that we have allowed individualism in marriage to go beyond limits
which are socially safe, just as in the economic order and in the
administration of political affairs, we have supposed that the
"let-alone-policy" would work social good. No other civilization has
been able to secure successful family life without some support,
supervision, control, and aid to the married couple and their
children, from without. We cannot return to the collective family of
other days. We must learn how to make society in general work toward
the ends of stability and social order in the family, as in other
social institutions, and by methods that reverence and secure personal
freedom and fit well into a democratic state.
=Free Love Not Admissible.=--Professor Ellwood says that "while
material civilization is mainly a control of the food process, moral
civilization involves a control of the reproductive process, that is,
over the birth and rearing of children." He argues from this that
social organization "precludes anything like the toleration of
promiscuity or even of free love." Most students of social history
will agree with this statement. We may, therefore, say that the
attitude of law, of custom, and of social standards, must be that of
demanding legalization of permitted sex-relationship, and the effort
to make legal sex-relationship permanent where possible without
sacrifice of the substance of family life to its outward form.
=Must Work Toward Desired Permanency in Marriage.=--This means a quite
new approach to the problems of marriage and divorce. It means the
inauguration of legal and educational mechanisms in the interest of
making people want to stay married, rather than toward an effort to
make people stay wedded when they wish to separate. In this, more,
even than in any other field of social effort, we should take heed to
and obey the advice of Dr. Lester Ward "to use attractive rather than
compulsory methods of reform."
=Needed Changes in Legal and Social Approach to Divorce.=--What are
the main points of change in our legal and social approach to the
divorce situation, which the modern need for social control through
democratic measures demands most clearly and strongly? They are,
first, a longer period of delay between reception and granting of the
request of a man and a woman for a license to marry. Several State
legislatures are now considering statutes which require an "interval
of three days" between the application for and the granting of
marriage licenses. This is certainly a short enough time in which to
find out if either of the parties is likely to commit bigamy if the
license is granted, if both of the parties are really of adult age
claimed, if either of the parties is afflicted with an infectious
disease that would make marriage dangerous to the other party, if
either of the parties has been a resident of a criminal or pauper
institution, if either or both of the parties are competent to
financial support of the twain, if there is any "just cause or
impediment" against the legal union. We may find it wise to return to
the old "three weeks publishing of the banns" in order to know what
the state is about in granting and what two people are about in
demanding a marriage license. In the second place, there are limits
outside of which society should not allow legal marriage to receive
its sanction. During the legal interval required there may develop
knowledge of facts that make it a social crime for one or the other or
both parties to be allowed to start a new family. This is matter for
serious and long-continued study, and the experimentation of our
different Commonwealths in determining the useful or necessary
restrictions upon legal marriage is not without value. The main thing,
however, is for society to recognize that there are just restrictions
upon marriage and that this is proved by the actual social burden
which unfit persons place upon their fellows when marrying and
bringing forth after their kind. The third point, which must be
emphasized more strongly than has been the case heretofore, is the
need of making the state, through its courts, the ally, not the enemy,
of marriage permanency. As it is now, the Divorce Court exists to
secure divorces. Its very existence invites to its use. The court
procedure in all cases of marital unhappiness which has become acute
enough for legal freedom to be sought should be a court procedure that
aims at arbitration, at "trying again," at winning harmony by just
concessions from either or both the parties, a court procedure
consciously and definitely set to the task of making more marriages
successful even when they have developed difficulty of adjustment,
rather than one allowed to act as a means of easy separation of even
fickle, selfish, and childish people on grounds of superficial
difference.
=Prohibition of Paid Attorneys in Divorce.=--_The absolute abolition
of any paid service of any attorney in the interest of getting anyone
a divorce, is a primary social demand._ The establishment of a
"Divorce Proctor" service in a Domestic Relations Court, with sole
jurisdiction over applications for divorce, is a second vital social
demand. Some form of legal provision which would make judges of a
special and honored class the paid representatives of society's demand
for marriage to be as permanent as individual justice will allow is
essential to any genuine divorce reform. The often highly-feed
advocate of personal wish of two dissatisfied people, the agent that
deals with divorce problems as a lucrative trade, is one cause of the
prevalence of divorce among the idle and pampered rich. Those who have
greater social opportunity than they have brains or conscience to use
them aright, and who can pay lawyers so extravagantly, give us a heavy
total of marital separations and of remarriage of divorced persons in
the United States.
Judges, the best and the wisest, must sit on all cases where the
breaking up of a family is the issue, and all privately paid attorneys
(in other kinds of social arrangement and difficulty also a hindrance
rather than an aid to justice) must be banished from every divorce
court and from every divorce proceeding, both of the richer and of the
poorer classes.
=Divorce Proceedings Should be Heard in Secret.=--Newspapers should
not be tempted or allowed to gain advantage from the weakness, the
folly, or the vice of any member of any family which may be revealed
in such divorce proceedings. The fact of whether or not a divorce
applied for is granted, the fact of whether one or the other party or
both have received freedom, the fact of whether one or another was
pronounced guilty of treason to the marriage bond--these are all
subjects for news. The reasons for these decisions of wise and good
judges should not be given to the public in detail. The main
objections to the present publicity of divorce proceedings is, first,
that publicity is generally in proportion to the wealth of the
parties, as is also the prolongation of the proceedings; and second,
that such reports are generally of a demoralizing nature for the
public to read; and third, and not least, that few if any couples
seeking a divorce are without fathers or mothers or relatives,
children, or near friends, to whom the public revelation of the
marital unhappiness or the personal wrong-doing of the parties
involved is a pain and a shame.
=Earlier and Better Use of Domestic Relations Court.=--Another way by
which society should undertake to supply in newer and more democratic
forms the supervision, the control, and the support to the individual
married couple and their children, which the older collective family
organization sought to supply, is an earlier and a better use of the
Domestic Relations Court, or of some advisory agency to prevent the
breaking up of families. There should be something analogous to the
old "family council," some body of advisers well known and well
equipped for actual service, to help the bewildered and the unhappy.
The religious ministry should be able to supply such help. It often
does do so. The circle of friends may sometimes contain those of
wisdom and understanding who give needed aid toward a resumption of
broken relations on a higher and more enduring plane. There is
needed, however, something between the court to which people go for
relief from bonds, and the solitary struggle with difficulties before
that relief is sought, something which, if related officially to the
Domestic Relations Court, would be of a more flexible and private
nature than most of its proceedings. We need more an aid to avoidance
of marital rocks than a rescue, as from a life-boat, after the
shipwreck.
There are many forms of advice and help which the teachers and medical
practitioners in mental hygiene are now developing and offering which
may be used later on, when we are wiser, in this work of preventing
families from breaking up. Regularly constituted "social doctoring"
for the prevention, even more than for the treatment of social disease
as it manifests itself in family life, is surely called for.
=The Children to be Affected Society's Chief Care.=--Above all, we
must place the children affected by any decision that gives society a
broken family in the front rank of interest and of protective care. If
the paid attorney were eliminated, divorces would certainly be
lessened in number. If publicity were avoided in all divorce
proceedings, much of the harm to children arising from separation of
married couples would be avoided. If, in addition, there were advisory
aid to the confused and unhappy, many now drifting to complete
division of interest and affection would be enabled to start on again
toward better realization of married opportunity. If, in further
addition, the Domestic Relations Courts were changed with the
supervisory care of all children whose parents were legally separated,
and the well-being of those children made the chief legal concern even
if it required the complete separation from both father and mother,
more fathers and mothers would hesitate to place themselves where
their parental control and their parental influence would be so
minimized. Yet who doubts that among the rich as well as among the
poor such judicial protection and care of the children, whom the
broken family leaves without true parental care, is needed? To give
children into the hands of either parent alone is in many such cases
no fitting substitute for the normal home influence. In any case,
there should be an external conscience and an external solicitude
enlisted in the interest of every child whose parents have made such a
failure of marriage and the home that the divorce court is the only
refuge.
This does not ignore the fact that many couples separate to the
advantage of the children, that many parents are quite innocent of any
cause for the broken family, that many times there is a rehabilitation
of the family life on other lines that means full nurture and
development for the children. The fact remains, however, that the
average child of divorced parents has to meet difficulties and face
disadvantages in life which the child of permanently united fathers
and mothers does not suffer, and, for such, some exterior protection
and supervision should be provided.
=A Uniform or Federal Divorce Law.=--Many persons deeply interested in
lessening the number of divorces in the United States place much
dependence upon a "Uniform Divorce Law" for the whole country, as
giving a basis for wise legislation. Recently, Senator Jones, of the
State of Washington, introduced in the Senate a resolution proposing a
new amendment to the Federal Constitution by which, if it passed,
Congress would have power "to establish and enforce by appropriate
legislation uniform laws as to marriage and divorce." The fact that a
couple may be legally married in one state of our Union and illegally
practicing bigamy or adultery in another state gives a plausible
reason for such a Constitutional Amendment. And perhaps the searching
investigation and discussion which would precede such a definite
change in our national law, if such change were made, would be of
great use in clarifying the public mind, and securing a consensus of
opinion as to what should and what should not be allowed in this
matter. Yet it is doubtful if such a law would, in itself, bring down
the number of divorces, now estimated by those advocating the law as
"one in every eight to ten marriages," or prevent the ratio of
increase in divorces to increase in population (now estimated "as
increase in population in a given period, 60 per cent., and increase
in divorces in the same period, 160 per cent."), or really mend our
family ills. The dependency upon Constitutional amendments and upon
legislation of every kind has, many believe, reached the utmost limit
of social serviceability in this country. The deeper question in all
such propositions is this: What, under the Constitution as first
affirmed and later amended, is proper subject for Federal legislation,
and what should be left to state and local action? We have not reached
a political unity as to the basic elements of just and effective
political method in the division of social control between the nation
and the various states. The habit of rushing to the National Congress
for Federal legislation with no plan or logical aim in relation to
such division, is one that may well be curbed.
=Education Our Chief Reliance.=--Meanwhile, all must insist that
education, character-training for strong, unselfish, noble
personalities, is our main dependence, and must ever be in the effort
to make family life more stable, and more socially helpful. Men and
women must be made competent to self-control, and steadied with a
sense of obligation to others, and animated by an ideal of
faithfulness to contract, and of devotion to securing mutual rights in
a mutual plan of life together. Such education for character, must be
our chief dependence in efforts to lessen divorces, as in the effort
to do away with all social evils. There is no magic in marriage, there
is no magic even in parenthood, to make weak, and selfish and
superficial and ignorant and stupid and despotic people into guardians
of the best interests of home. A man or a woman is successful in the
family order, only on the same basis as is demanded in all other
relations of life, the basis of justice, good sense, right feeling,
and an honest effort to realize high ideals.
=Helps Toward Family Unity.=--What remains for society to do, after
general moral training has worked its full service of individual
preparation for good intent and wise choices and competent mastery of
family arrangements, must be done or attempted on the basis rather of
helps toward permanence, than of prohibition of release from marriage
mistakes and wrongs.
We have left undone much we should have done to make it easier for
young people to find their true mates, to start right in married life,
and to bear the burdens of parenthood without stumbling on the way.
Let us not add mistakenly to the duties left undone the attempt to do
things we should not, namely, to overbear instead of aiding the
personal life.
There is nothing that works more tragedy of suffering than broken vows
in marriage, whether the fact of the actual separation be publicly
acknowledged or not. How many a disillusioned man or woman has felt
with the poet:
"To look upon the face of a dead friend
Is hard; but there is deeper woe--
To look upon our friendship lying dead
While we live on, and eat, and sleep--
Mere bodies from which all the soul has fled,
And that dead thing year after year to keep
Locked in cold silence on its dreamless bed."
=Shall Society Favor the Remarriage of Divorced Persons?=--Now that
the moral sense of most people allows another trial on Love's Rialto,
there are many individuals who can leave "that dead thing" to find its
own grave, and in the light of some new and dearer affection go on to
a renewed promise and joy of life. Can we think that wrong? Who shall
dare to say that alone of all mistakes of youth, a mistaken choice in
marriage shall be for all life a sentence of doom? Who shall dare to
limit the power of rehabilitation of the family order, even when what
has failed is the central heart of married love? Our gospel of hope
and courage, and renewal of opportunity, and rebirth of affection must
know no limits if we would rightly trust the spirit within our being.
But for the shallow, and the selfish, and the pleasure-seeker without
reverence for the right way of life, and for the scoffer at all high
moods of feeling and of ideal aim, there can be little to justify his
flitting about on the very outmost limits of true love. For such, some
check must be had in ordered rules and legal bonds, in order that the
race-life shall go on in safety and in social health. Meanwhile,
although there is much to give us pause and to demand serious study
and earnest and wise social work in the situation revealed by the
divorce court statistics, there is nothing that need give hysterical
alarm lest the home is being destroyed and the family abolished. On
the contrary, there probably was never a time when so many people were
really happy, each and every member of the family, in the home
relation; and hence never a time when it was clearer that to keep the
home stable and permanent, and make marriage successful in the vast
majority of cases, we have only to get better and wiser people in
larger proportion.
To understand the real reason for marital unhappiness and for family
instability, to know that such reason inheres primarily in personal
character and not in any statute, is to begin work for the real cure
and prevention of such unhappiness and instability. The broken family
may be a sad necessity, alike for individuals concerned, and for the
well-being of society. To prevent that tragedy is a social duty than
which none is more pressing or more open to social effort.
=Turning From Compulsory to Attractive Methods of Reform.=--To
undertake that social task, the psychology of social effort must be
turned from compulsive methods of prevention of legal divorce, when
such divorce is sought, to ways of making marriage choices wiser,
marriage experience more sane and better balanced by sense of
obligation to the nearer and more remote of social relations, and by
putting at the command of all, the helpful sympathy and the social
guidance that can alone hold to firm and noble lines the wavering and
the weak.
QUESTIONS ON THE BROKEN FAMILY
1. Is the admitted increase in divorce wholly a testimony to
moral degeneracy? If so, what can be done about it? If not,
what else does it indicate?
2. What are the main points to work for in order to reduce the
number of divorces, and to remove the social evils of which
divorces are only the symptom?
3. Should the social psychology be directed principally toward
preventing people from getting divorce or from remarrying after
divorce, or toward making marriage so generally successful that
fewer people want to separate?
4. What is specially needed in education both of youth and the
adult in the United States in the interest of family stability
and family success?
5. Make a list of causes that in your opinion justify legal
separation or divorce and find out whether or not these causes
are named in the statutes of your State. If they are not, what
should be done about it?
6. What is done for and with the children of legally separated and
divorced persons in your State?
CHAPTER XIII
THE FAMILY AND THE WORKERS
"It is all work, and forgotten work, this peopled, clothed,
articulate-speaking, high-towered, wide-acred world. For the
thistle a blade of grass, later a drop of nourishing milk, later a
nobler man. Man perfects himself as well as the world by
working."--CARLYLE.
"Every man's task is his life preserver."--EMERSON.
"What was his name? I do not know his name.
No form of bronze and no memorial stones
Show me the place where lie his mouldering bones.
Only a cheerful city stands,
Builded by his hardened hands;
Only ten thousand homes,
Where every day
The cheerful play
Of love and hope and courage comes;
These are his monuments, and these alone,--
There is no form of bronze and no memorial stone."
--EDWARD EVERETT HALE.
"Let us now praise the artificer and the workmaster
Who is wakeful to finish his work.
These put their trust in their hands
And each becometh wise in his own work.
Though they sit not in the seat of the judge,
Nor understand the covenant of judgment;
Though they declare not instruction nor utter dark sayings
Yet without these shall not a city be inhabited
Nor shall men sojourn therein.
For these maintain the fabric of the world
And in the handiwork of their craft is their prayer."
--ECCLESIASTICUS.
=Changes from Ancient to Modern Forms of Labor.=--The change from the
domestic and handicraft stage in industry to the capitalized,
power-driven, machine-dominated, and highly specialized work-system of
the present day has been often described and is a part of all the
economic problems of modern times. We do not need here to rehearse the
details of that change or to speak of its effect upon workers in
general. What we must do, however, is to trace specifically some of
the results of that industrial change in the constitution and in the
development of family life.
In the old order the worker owned his tool, selected his material,
controlled the process of his task, and often was master of the sale
of the finished product. Hence, as has so often been shown, the
character of a man was so obviously a part of the stock-in-trade of
the worker, his judgment, probity and skill were so clearly causes of
his success in handicraft, that the ethical training of life came
definitely through the exercise of work-power. Now, as we are often
reminded, the worker is divorced from the management and control of
his work-process and is a "hand," merely attached to a machine that
others must choose, buy and install, the product of which is in only
an infinitesimal part his responsibility and of the profit from which
another takes the lion's share. This has made many feel that ethical
training in life must come to the worker from his leisure hours only,
and that his task must be always merely a routine one, to be got
through with as soon as possible each day in order that he may "live"
in the hours left from work. This idea cannot be accepted by anyone
who realizes the character-drill that may inhere in any form of useful
labor. The need is to permeate the methods of modern industry with the
creative spirit, to mix the management of all business and
manufacturing with the brains of workmen as well as of directors and
to make a new connection, strong, obvious, and thought-compelling,
between the worker and the control and responsibility of his work.
While this is being accomplished the results of the change from
handicraft to machine work in the family order must be understood and
unsocial elements in that change minimized. It must be remembered that
among the opportunities of character-training in work lost by the man,
the woman and the child and youth, by the change in industrial
methods, is the constant influence of the home life while at work. The
old industries clustered about the fireside. It made the household a
work-place, and some feel that this was a detriment to home life and
that we have a better chance to make real centres of love and
happiness now that we have taken out of the domestic field almost all
the elements of manufacture and of trade. However that may be, this
much is sure, that when father and mother worked together, and
children learned how to work while still within the family influence,
it was easier than it is now to make the daily task one of mutual
coöperation and mutual service within the family circle.
=The Old Household a Work-place.=--We have passed laws now, forbidding
"home industries" because so many "sweated trades" find their last and
often impregnable fortress in the crowded rooms of the tenement
living-places. This may be necessary and may be well to do, but the
fact remains that something inhered in the old domestic training of
children and youth in useful work within the home which was lost when
the factory was built and the young workers had to seek their jobs
outside the family circle. And that something of work-drill and
habit-forming in the interest of self-support and family usefulness we
are now trying to reintroduce into the education of children and youth
by elaborate and costly "manual training," "Pre-vocational and
Vocational courses" and similar departments in the schools.
=Welfare Managers in Modern Times.=--The fact that hours of work and
conditions affecting the workers can be standardized more easily when
those workers are massed in large numbers under one recognized owner
and manager of a great industry has sometimes blinded us to the need
of each young person to have constantly near at hand a personal
representative of society's interest in the development of his
character; some interpreter of social customs and ideals to follow
which will make for his advantage. We are trying now to get "Welfare
Managers," paid chaperons, nurses and teachers, into business concerns
to take the place of older forms of social direction and care for
youthful workers. These functionaries often do much good and are
recognized expressions of the social interest of employers. Since they
are installed avowedly for the purpose of making conditions better for
the younger, weaker, less trained and more needy of the workers,
"Welfare Managers" often find a hostile or at least indifferent
attitude toward their efforts on the part of the higher paid, the
better established, and more competent women workers, especially those
organized in Trade Unions with the slogan of "Not Charity, but
Justice." They do, however, reach with light and leading some of the
darker sides of modern industry as related to the younger workers.
=Child-labor.=--The student of industrial history knows that
child-labor is not a new evil. Children were often overworked and
cruelly driven when parents, guardians, and those to whom they were
"bound out" as apprentices were the only taskmasters and their labor
was wholly within the household. Indeed, Hutchins and Harrison, in
their _History of Factory Legislation_, declare that "it is not easy
to say whether children were really worked harder in the early
factories than under the domestic system which they replaced." Edith
Abbott, in her excellent summary of _The Early History of Child Labor
in America_, shows clearly that at the bottom of the ancient desire to
use very young persons in industry was a conviction that work,
constant and hard work, is the only safeguard against evil. "Satan
finds some mischief still for idle hands to do" was not a figure of
speech to our ancestors, it was statement of a sober fact. This
feeling led naturally to the conditions that gave Samuel Slater, the
pioneer in textile manufacture in New England, a collection of child
workers in his first mill as his only laborers and at ages between
seven and twelve years.
We are now able to see and remedy some evils of child-labor in the
factory system which passed unnoticed and for which no prohibitive law
was in existence in the handicraft stage. It is true, however, as all
must recognize, that the modern specialization of labor and modern use
of machines allows a wholesale exploitation of youth and of physical
weakness impossible in older forms of industry. Hence the facts of
modern industry justify and make necessary the "Child Labor Movement."
Yet vital and strong as that movement is, we have to-day, as has been
stated in another connection, a misuse of children by millions in
industry. We have also a dangerous overuse of youth in industry, and
we have a reckless waste of mothers and of potential mothers in
unsuitable work. We have also certain dangers to family life in the
turning of attention and of ambition of young people away from family
interests into fields of industrial activity which are inimical to
family success. This makes the problem of the family and the workers
one of great difficulty and one to be given the most serious attention
on the part of those who are themselves above the economic conditions
which operate to complicate that problem among the poor and
struggling.
=Increase in Women Wage-earners.=--In the first place, we must note
the tendency toward rapid increase of the numbers of women listed by
the census as in "gainful occupations." Without noting in this
connection the conditions just before and during the Great War,
conditions not at all indicative of normal increase in the numbers of
working-women, we trace in the period from 1880 to 1910 a rise from
2,647,157 to 8,075,772 of the number of women in receipt of salary or
wages for work outside their own homes. The estimate of 1920, now
given, of nearly 41,609,192 "persons of both sexes and of ten years
old and over engaged in gainful occupations" shows us 8,549,399
"females." Of these, over a million are engaged in "Professional
service" (a larger proportion than of men so listed and, of course,
indicating the great majority of women in the teaching profession).
More than two millions are listed in "Domestic and Personal service."
That leaves over three millions working in "agriculture, forestry,
animal industry, manufacture and mechanical industries," and nearly a
million and a half in "clerical occupations." The use of ten years of
age in such lists is now obsolete as an indication of custom in
employment of youth. Fourteen years of age is the norm in the listing
of youthful workers and the age limits should be revised to suit that
rise in the legal age of the child wage-earner as generally practised
now in the United States. With that understanding, the statistics for
"Child Labor Certificates" issued by the large manufacturing cities of
our country show an army of young workers, more than twenty thousand
in New York City alone, annually entering the competitive industrial
field with full consent of society. This all means that millions of
women and very young persons who under the earlier forms of industrial
life would have been employed (however steadily or with whatever
handicaps or even cruelty) within some family circle, are now under
the full control of mass-direction, mass-standardization, and
mass-influence in their daily work.
=Social Pressure on the Individual Worker.=--This pressure is in
itself almost a sufficient reason for the family instability now seen.
To divorce all the working-time, and all the work-tendency, and most
of the work-training from home life is to weaken the hold of the
family upon the average worker. Members of a family in which each has
definite and firm relation to some different requirement and control
connected with a daily task are likely to acquire an independent
relation to society in general. In such eases it requires a far more
vital and enduring affection, a distinctly superior mutual
understanding and sense of justice, and a far larger natural equipment
of tact and power of adjustment than was required in other economic
conditions, in order to make the family life enduring and happy. The
economic self-interest of each member of the family in the domestic
circle was obviously that of every other member when the household was
a workshop. Even, the land and all which it implied was a family
possession in primitive days. And the worker's equipment, owned
privately, was limited in the early days. We read that "tools,
weapons, slaves and captured women and the products of some special
skill were generally private possession, but products of group-work,
such as the capture and killing of buffalo, salmon, and all larger
game among the North American Indians, and the maize which individual
women tended but which belonged to the household or the tribe in
common, were all shared as community property." When to this communal
possession of products of group-activity were added control over
marriage portions, however those might be appropriated, and the
management of all property thought to be of group-value, we can see
that all of economic weight of influence now so individualized once
went into the family asset.
In the mediæval times, when laborers were gaining slowly a class
consciousness outlined by Guilds and Unions of special groups of
workers, the family was still the main centre of work-direction and of
united profit from work, and hence it was evident to the dullest mind
and the coldest heart that members of a family should work and save
together. Now the whole trend of industrial relationship is toward
making independent and individualistic connection between the worker
and his job outside of family unity. Even movements for legal
protection of the worker against exploitation by masters in industry
often take little account of family relationship or the varying
inherited family ideals. Setting the well-being of one member of the
family against what is supposed to be the well-being of other members
of the family, as in the case of some child-labor laws, may be
necessary and socially wise, but it surely does not lead to family
stability.
=Demands of Family Life Upon Industry and Labor Legislation.=--The
demands of family life should at least be stated and have some weight
in any further attempts to make the lot of the individual worker
better, and should be considered in any drastic attempts to enforce
labor legislation which sets the parent and the child against each
other in the courts, or which hampers a mother in what she deems of
vital necessity in the carrying out of her parental duty.
"The Code for Women in Industry," issued by the division of Women in
Industry of the Department of Labor, in coöperation with the "War
Labor Board" and the "War Labor Policies Board," when the questions
concerning standards for employment of women in war plants were acute,
as published in the _Survey_ of January 4, 1919, is in brief summary
as follows: No woman employed or permitted to work more than eight
hours a day or forty-eight hours a week. One day of rest a week
demanded for all and no night work for minors or women. The basis of
the wage-scale to be form of occupation, not sex; and no lesser wage
for women permitted unless it can be proved that their employment
lessens the output of work. A legal minimum wage for all women, which
should include cost of living of dependents as well as of individuals.
All work conditions to be good and safety adequately secured. Women to
be prohibited from working in occupations where exposure to heat or
cold or to poisonous substances, or where bad position or too great
muscular strain, endanger health. Home work prohibited.
=Should Adult Women and Children be Listed Together in Labor
Laws?=--There is grave question whether some of these items listed as
essentials in the protection of women in industry, and certainly
useful in the peculiar conditions of munition manufacture into which
women rushed in such vast numbers in answer to the call of war, should
form a permanent outline of the relation of law to women workers.
Some of them have, and clearly, a place in any future code in peace
time. The requirement for one day of rest in seven; the demand that
quality and power of labor, not sex, shall set the wage-scale; and the
legal requirement for sanitary, safe, and moral conditions in
workshops and factories, all are vital to sound social demand in the
interest of women workers. Are these not also demands for just labor
conditions of men? The eight-hour day is now fixed as a standard for
men and women alike, with the forty-eight hour a week definition. A
minimum wage, including cost of living for dependents as well as for
individuals involved, has justice at its base, but requires for its
application less a blanket sum indicated by law than a wages-board or
other form of discriminating commission with power to adjust flexibly,
with due consideration of place and of quality of work, the wages to
the task. Conditions of labor should be "good" in all cases, and what
is good should be fixed by disinterested persons. Physical safety and
moral protection must be secured at all hazards, and in the case of
women special protection, particularly for those under twenty-one
years of age, is needed. Any work which is peculiarly a menace to
health and to the race-life for mothers or potential mothers may well
be forbidden by law. The absolute prohibition of night work and of
home work to adult women may well be left in the background, however,
until the industrial situation is clearer for all women workers. The
evils of night work for the "sweated" woman, untrained for any
lucrative labor and who has to catch on to the labor wheels at any
point open to her effort at middle age, must not blind us to the fact
that one of the most precious things in the inheritance of brave and
loyal natures is the determination to earn for one's own support and
for that of one's dearest. The tenement labor, which is such an evil
in many of our cities and one so impossible to deal with adequately by
ordinary inspectorship provision, is not all there is to "home work."
It may well be that, as has been before indicated, the new uses of
electrical power may return to the home, and in ways to the advantage
of the family, some of the processes now wholly under factory control
and provision. The point is that while there cannot be too much
protective legislation for children and youth, the place of adult
women in the labor world must not be too firmly and exclusively held
by the side of children lest we add to the difficulties women still
experience in finding and keeping a place in the world of modern
industry.
=Women in War Work.=--In England, we are told, there were one million
women employed in war plants during the great struggle with Germany.
In every variety of munitions manufacture women were found in great
numbers, often furnishing eighty per cent, or more of the total number
employed. It is a fact that they "made good." It is also a fact that
the average of health among the working women of England rose in many
localities where women were employed at these unwonted tasks. The
reason given for this by one keen observer being that the higher wages
earned enabled many thousands of women, before undernourished because
of their poverty, to have "three square meals a day." When we remember
that in England there are nearly two million more women than men, and
that the men who served in the army and have returned physically and
mentally able to take back the jobs they left for army service are
clamoring for them, and when we remember that the struggle for a
standard of living never goes backward and that women workers once
used to good wages will not willingly take poor ones again, we can see
what difficulties the war has made in our sister country for both men
and women in industry.
In our own country the one and a quarter million women engaged in
industrial work directly or indirectly connected with the war service
when the first investigation was made in fifteen states, under the
auspices of the National League of Women's Service, were but a section
of the army of women who were enlisted in war work, paid or unpaid and
of various kinds. Now we have an unemployment problem of our own with
something of the same complaint of the men of England that the
returned soldier finds a woman in his place, a woman who is still
wanted, perhaps, by the employer and who does not wish to relinquish
her job.
When Mrs. Muhlhauser Richards took charge of the Woman's Division of
the Department of Labor in the effort to make a clearing house of
women's work in the interest of help to the government it was not
simply a measure for temporary use or of temporary value. The idea
still persists in peace as well as in war, and justly, that the
interests of women in industry require a special division of the Labor
Department in order that we shall be able to know what is needed for
their protection in the interest of family life as well as understand
what individual women require in justice when they are wage-earners. A
minimum wage is demanded and in several states made a legal
requirement, but to name a definite sum per week puts a stated figure
where a movable and changeable condition inheres in the situation.
Experts in labor reform, therefore, urge the passage of legislative
bills providing for "wage commissions to determine living wages for
women and minors," and such have been secured in several states.
The linking of women of all ages with minors may be necessary for
protection of individual women from exploitation, but again, it must
be insisted that such a blanket cover for women workers of all ages
may not be for the ultimate good of the adult, competent yet
struggling women, who are trying to compete with men for a place in
the world of labor. The fact is that we often approach the problems of
work and wages and general labor conditions from the angle of the most
needy, the most exploited, the least trained, and the poorest in
opportunity. This may be the highway of philanthropy and to be
travelled in the interest of social helpfulness, but it is not all the
roads labor reform must use.
=Minimum Wage for Fathers of Families Real Need.=--When we study
questions of labor as related to family well-being we must begin with
an ideal of what the normal family requires of its members, men,
women, and older children, and place in the first position of economic
requirement the family demand upon the husband and father. He must, we
have said, be in position to be a "good provider" for his group. That
means he must be trained to be a worker, faithful, efficient,
intelligent, who does something which society needs to have done and
for which employers can and will pay adequate wages. That means
vocational training, guidance, and opportunity. That means, also, an
economic system not easily convulsed by bad times and ups and downs in
the industrial world. That means, again, ease and cheapness of
transportation in order that families may live in decent homes and yet
the chief wage-earner go back and forth to his work without too great
strain of strength or purse. That means some social control of housing
facilities, food supply, public sanitation, and educational facilities
which will secure the essential of human living to all workers and
their families. To work harder to secure these vital elements of
family well-being is the task of all. If we were as anxious as
citizens to secure opportunity for the men and women who make up the
great army of average workers, self-supporting but at cost of struggle
often too severe, as we are anxious as philanthropists to ease the
burden and protect the weakness of the more backward members of the
industrial army, the current of upward movement of all in gainful
occupations would be stronger and more socially helpful. The family is
most of all concerned with the minimum wage of adult men who marry and
have children.
=The Attitude of Women Toward Labor Problems.=--The family is
concerned next with the attitude of women who are wives and mothers,
or daughters partially supported from the family purse, toward the
whole area of industrial problems. It may be always right, as it is
often necessary, for married women, even when mothers of young
children, to earn in the outside labor world. It is, however, always a
social crime for women who try simply to piece out an insufficient
family income to do it in ways to bring down or to keep down wages in
the specialty of work they take part in, especially to bring down or
keep down the wages of men in that specialty of work. It may be best
(it usually is) for young daughters to earn wages even if they do
kinds of work which in the labor market will not secure a return
adequate for full self-support. The work may be educational in its
quality; much that young girls do in department stores is of that
character; but wages too low for full self-support must be reckoned as
part pay for a work-opportunity mixed of training and service, not one
that lists the worker in full competitive position.
=Necessary Protection for Children and Youth in Labor.=--Where young
boys or young girls enter into the industrial world they should step
from either a Trade School, and if so, with the guidance and care of
some representatives of that school to aid them in making physically,
morally, and vocationally helpful alignment, or else should be given
half-time employment in the factory or shop that takes them on as
helpers and find in some "Continuation School" a right use of the rest
of the work-day. The right sort of protective aid to boys and girls
between the ages of fourteen, when the law allows some form of
wage-earning, and that of sixteen to eighteen years, when they may
safely shift for themselves, should halve the wage-earning hours (four
instead of eight each day or twenty-four instead of forty-eight a week
or alternate weeks at work or study); should double the numbers set to
each stated task in shop or factory; should treble the supervisory
control of society, in a union of Health Board, School Board, and
Employers' and Employees' Council; and should quadruple the fitly
trained teachers, the school sittings, the adequately equipped
recreation centres and all incitements to higher uses of leisure time.
The early years of every child should be held sacredly apart from the
whir of wheels and the din of machinery; he should then rehearse in
some degree, as will be later shown, the handicraft age of industry
and its personalizing influence. His entrance into the world of modern
labor should be not a plunge or a tumble but along a regulated highway
of well-outlined endeavor, with social influences on either side to
make his passage into wage-earning safe for himself and useful to
others.
Social protection should be less a club marked, "Thou shalt not," and
more an opportunity inscribed, "Chances to rise, win them!" For the
woman, married and a mother, there must be not so many new ways of
enforcing prohibitions of what are deemed for her harmful forms of
labor, as more ingenuity in providing half-time work, better
adjustments of earning facilities to domestic duties, far more
coöperative machinery for reducing the cost of living and for securing
the family against economic exploitation in food, clothing, and
shelter.
=Women and the Cost of Living.=--There is a field of family
conservation which has been until lately almost wholly neglected by
women; a field which must be mastered by them, the field of
combination of all family interests in behalf of each family need. The
attitude of the new voters among women who have organized into a
League to enable them to become better and more efficient citizens is
eminently encouraging. When the League of Women Voters takes hold
definitely, consciously, and with intelligent devotion of the problems
of cost of living, market supply, distribution of essentials of life
and the whole range of economic interests which lie next to family
well-being, it means that women are taking into the electorate a new
and vitally needed form of social control and social service. That in
itself, alone, would justify the struggle of women to obtain the
franchise. More and more men in political life will come to understand
what a League of women, for the most part "home-women" and
family-serving-women, will demand of officials in the area of basic
essentials of comfort and security in the home.
=The Family Demand upon Unmarried Women.=--The social demand upon
women who are at work in any field of personal endeavor, whether that
be professional, clerical, manual or artistic, has been outlined
before in this treatment of the relation of the home to society in
general as involving sortie special consideration of family needs.
This may seem a negligible quantity to many women, unmarried, with
relatives all self-supporting or well-to-do. There is no reason why a
daughter should be called "undutiful" or "selfish" who is absorbed in
her own work than why a son should be so esteemed when there is no
special reason why other members of the family should hold that
daughter's time and effort at their disposal. The selfishness may be
on the other side, and often is where parents or near relatives within
the family bond try to burden the young woman with odds and ends of
family service, which others might as well assume, and leave her with
no ambition or opportunity for personal achievement. There are,
however, in this complicated life of ours many contingencies of family
experience which still demand from daughters a share in time and
strength which sons may more easily concentrate upon their own work.
This fact, often operating unconsciously, leads many young women to
choices of types of work which have fixed hours and easy adjustment to
frequent absences from work. These give little chance for rising in
wage or position and often give low wages from the start. This
tendency keeps many women from success in work and is often a reason
why men distrust and oppose their entrance into a new field of
industry.
The first essential of character, it must be insisted, is the power of
self-support, of self-direction, of self-achievement. This is, now
seen to be an essential for women as for men. The only adequate
solution of problems of commercialized prostitution includes for each
girl capable of that attainment the power of easy and complete
self-support. Hence, the family has no right to take from its members
some present advantage which will handicap potential workers, either
boys or girls, in their struggle to meet adult responsibilities of
economic life. Hence, again, the whole question of vocational
preparation for girls, as well as for boys, has right-of-way as
against any temporary or easily dispensed-with helping in family
emergencies which may seriously hamper the future wage-earner. This is
now being seen clearly; and the consequence is that parents do without
for themselves both luxuries and often comforts, in order that their
children shall have a chance in general education and in vocational
training to fit them for later economic success. This fact, so
honorable to parents, often leads away from family unity by increasing
a chasm of culture and of condition between parents and children.
This, again, indicates that the modern standardization of child-care
and of parental duty has in it elements that demand far more developed
character in all the members of a family in order to hold together by
affection, justice, and higher compulsions of tenderness those who
have by virtue of the self-sacrifice of the older ones lost touch on
many of the common fields of effort.
=Farming and the Farmer's Wife.=--There is one great area both of
man's work and of woman's work which supremely needs better
understanding and more efficient organization in the interest of
family life. That is the basic industry of all civilized life,
farming, and woman's service in the farm home. We now generally place
our farm houses far apart from each other, and we have usually but one
house on the place and that for the owner and his family. We have no
adequate provisions by which the seasonal nature of agricultural work
can be so arranged by ingenious dovetailing with other forms of labor
as to furnish an all-the-year employment to men who wish to marry and
bring up families and yet do not own but work upon farms. We have few
means for easing the burdens of household labor for the farmer's wife,
and hence the larger the farm, the more property it represents, the
more men laborers it demands for the owner's successful conduct of the
business, the more unbearable the pressure upon health, strength,
time, and energy of the woman who is the farmer's helpmate. These are
some of the fundamental reasons for the drift away from farm life to
the cities and the towns, a drift seen to be ominous and if not
checked socially destructive of national prosperity when the Great War
forced us to take account of social conditions in the United States
more seriously than ever before.
The girls of the farms want to go away from home to find easier work
than their mother's kitchens afford quite as much as do the boys who
wish to get away from the summer drudgery and the winter dulness of
the isolated farmstead; and now the girls can get away easily and
often do. It is the lack of workers to adequately aid those in command
of agricultural life which is more than all things else the difficulty
that must be faced, wrestled with, and overcome if we would keep
adequate numbers on the farms. The effect of the drift away from the
country upon general family life is too evidently bad to need any
intensive statement here. The congestion of cities, the street life of
children which makes legal offenses of acts natural and necessary to
free play, the walking of city streets by armies of unemployed fathers
and those who might be fathers while harvests are lost for want of
laborers, the lack of food in one stratum of society while in another
there are no people to eat what nature provides so abundantly--all
this and more rises in the mind of everyone who understands that in
the right adjustment of agriculture to the people's needs lies the
best interests of all. The sorry picture of the haggard woman, widow,
deserted, or divorced, scrubbing on her knees all night long the
marble floors of a vast office-building, to hurry back to her
locked-in children in the early morning hours, to fall exhausted on
the bed until the call of the alarm clock to get breakfast and send
the little ones to school--this picture has been portrayed often to
Consumer's League and Women's Club audiences and has made many women
of position and of influence call for drastic prohibition of such
overwork of mothers. It has also made women work diligently until they
secured forms of help from the public purse to subsidize such mothers
and give them state aid until the children were able to earn something
for themselves. There are many who can visualize that scrubwoman, and
who can place beside her as needing social aid the sewing-machine
operator, the garment-finisher or the flower-maker in the tenement
sweatshop, who can not see that the farm-house mother is often
subjected to labor conditions that sap life and health and doom her
children to weakness. These opposite poles of woman's work both call
for better social understanding and more intelligent and devoted
social work. The scrubwoman, or the poverty-bound tenement worker may
be proper subjects for public or private philanthropy; the farm-house
mother is or should be the prime object of social justice and social
engineering for ends of social well-being. Upon the farmer and his
wife and also upon the miner and his wife and the forest worker and
his wife rest the very foundations of economic stability and
industrial security. Those who procure at first hand the raw material
of manufacture and of commerce are too precious to social order for
any neglect of conditions in their work. In many foreign countries the
land seems to shrink dangerously as population grows. In our vast
country and in the stretches of Canada, North America seems, as Lowell
said, to have "room beside her hearth for all mankind." And yet, in
New York City and in other centres of population, there are swarms of
people, many of them of foreign birth, of varying races and of
different nationalities, crowding each other to suffocation and many
of them holding out hands for charity, who might, if rightly aided
toward a different environment, work to full support of themselves and
their families in the fresh air and healthful surroundings of the
country. The need is to transfer city advantages to the country in far
greater extent, and to transfer the people who cannot find or make a
human chance in the city to the wide spaces and work needs of the
country. Rural life must be urbanized, city life must be relieved of
those who hinder the making of a beautiful and noble civic life, not
because they are incapable but because there are too many of them who
have not yet arrived at full capacity for vocational achievement and
cannot do so in the crowd with which they have to contend.
=Domestic Help and Family Life.=--For the relief of family life in the
matter of domestic help there must be an intelligent and an earnest
attack of educated women upon the problems involved. The admirable
suggestions of Professor Lucy Salmon in her _Democracy in the
Household_[16] indicate the chief difficulty in getting and keeping
the right sort of domestic worker. The personal relation is not that
of equals but of superior to inferior, and the helper in the home is
isolated socially from the group he or she serves. This is felt
peculiarly in cases where but one helper is employed within the
household. The petition of many housewives recently sent to Washington
to beg that "the restriction upon immigration now in force may be
lifted in the case of women who seek to enter the United States to
engage in domestic labor" on the ground of a household need, dire and
widespread, is an indication that many women, perhaps most, look
forward to a continuance of the present conditions of domestic work
but with ever-new sets of domestic workers from other lands. Their
attitude in this particular is wholly mistaken. Even if the races from
all the ends of the earth should one by one troop through the kitchens
of American housewives, most of them would not stay long enough to
even learn how to do good work in those kitchens. The first chance
they got the factory or shop or even the canning shed or the open
field of harvest would take them away. And this is not because the
work in the home is too hard, or the room and food not so good as
elsewhere, but because domestic service is the last stronghold of
aristocracy and no one brought in touch with democratic ideas will
long accept it. Miss Salmon's ideas, if carried out, would stay the
rapidity of the current away from domestic service. But a quite new
approach to the whole problem must be defined and realized by women of
light and leading if we would have adequate and efficient help In
household work. The fact that most professional or business women find
it far easier to get good help where but one domestic worker is kept,
than do most women who have no outside duties, gives one key to the
situation. As one woman of character and education far above that of
most household workers said, "I do housework for Mrs. So and So, for
she teaches and there is a reason why she needs help. I would not take
a place where there were women in the family who could do the
housework themselves perfectly well and wait upon them."
The absurd hypocrisy that in one breath praises all work done for the
comfort of the family as the highest form of service and in the next
demands that the family "servant" accept all manner of inherited
insignia of social inferiority must be outgrown. In the city and
suburban towns the hour-service and the various forms of commercial
aids to household tasks may work, as has been before indicated, to
gradually do away with the servant class, in the old sense of those
words and without much social consciousness of the change. In the
small towns and in the rural districts, where is now the most acute
suffering and need of housemothers, there must be a conscious and a
wholesale movement to reinstate domestic service on a plane compatible
with democracy and amenable to high standards of intelligence and
efficiency. When one thinks of the rural need for teachers, for
nurses, for doctors, for kindergartners, for recreation managers, for
community leaders, one is tempted to call for a social conscription
that shall make all graduates from normal and teacher-training
schools, from all schools for social work, and all hospitals, from all
playground classes and settlements, serve for a period of one year or
two in the country districts as their part in social organization.
Surely if a government has the moral right to force youth to serve in
war for purposes of destruction of enemies, it has a right to compel
youth to serve in peace for purposes of human conservation and for the
just sharing of social advantages by all the people of a common
country!
=The Application of Democratic Principles to Life.=--Finally, the
problems which inhere in work as related to the family have at their
base the same great demand for equality of educational and economic
opportunities which inhere in all that relates to the application of
democratic principles to actual living. This is not an essay on
economic theory or a statement of the results of special studies of
economic condition. Still less is it an attempt to make an appeal for
one or another type of economic reform. It is simply a partial view of
certain work conditions as they come closest to family life. There is
to this writer no more merit or demerit in any form of economic
dogmatism than in any special theologic creed. We may all differ, and
with reasons sufficient to our thought and without blame, on questions
of how we can best attain a true democratization of the industrial
order. We cannot now be of two minus as to the righteousness of such
democratization. We must all believe in giving all human beings a fair
chance at the best things of life; security against want, homes that
offer conditions for family well-being, educational entrance into our
common social inheritance, and leisure to enjoy the things that make
for happiness. The baptism of religious idealism by the social spirit
is now accomplished. As Dr. Walter Rauschenbusch, that great prophet
of a new social order, well says in his last thought-compelling book,
"The social gospel has become orthodox."
=Women Must be More Democratic.=--Women have been so long held within
family interests that they, less than men, have had the discipline of
democratic life within the labor world. They are often the vicarious
expressions of man's remaining aristocratic feeling, as Veblen has
acutely outlined in his _Theory of the Leisure Class_. Husbands still
wish their wives to be more "select" than they find it wise longer to
be themselves and more tenacious of inherited conventional forms than
business or inclination longer allow for themselves. Hence, women have
not, as a rule, organized their households on as democratic principles
and methods as men have organized their own work. Women, now that they
have attained the democratic position in the state which they have
long worked for must apply the principles they have preached in that
crusade for political equality in the very stronghold of social caste
and rigid class-feeling, the family life itself. And even if they have
to educate their husbands in the process.
Woman may do this, first, by wiping out and forever the stigma that
attaches or has attached to any woman who earns money outside her own
home. They may do it, second, by so relating themselves to
professional, clerical, manual workers among their own sex as to show
that they really believe in equality of rights and mutuality of duties
among all classes. They may do it, third, by taking hold of the
household service problem radically and from the basis of actual
knowledge of its importance to personal and family well-being. They
may show actual regard for the dignity of the functions implied, by
the treatment accorded the competent, faithful, and often
indispensable domestic helper. There is a big social job waiting for
women in matters concerning the work of their own sex both within and
without the family circle; and the social power of women will be best
shown, perhaps, in settling the worst problems of domestic service by
the wiser and more efficient use of better educated, more socially
respected, and more definitely standardized workers within the home.
=The Social Effect of Trade Unions.=--No study of the relation of
modern industry to family life, however brief and inadequate, can
ignore the question, "How has the Trade Union organization of
wage-earners affected the home?" The immediate and direct effect has
often been disastrous when strikes and lockouts marked the course of
industrial warfare. All war is bad for family life and especially
injurious to the development of children. And economic war lacks the
appeal to the imagination and the ceremonial prestige of war between
nations or of civil war in one country. We have had in our
race-experience for untold ages the linking of military training with
military defence of political ideas and of the fatherland. To fight
for one's country seems highly honorable. This lift of the sense of
community unity into the area of supreme struggle gives to men often
what no other experience so far accomplishes, namely, a feeling of
spiritual union with all other men who also struggle for what they
believe to be right. In labor wars; in the strife between employer and
employed, that sense of race unity even when struggling against a
national enemy, that which gives what Professor James well called the
"mystic element in militarism," is lacking. It is a fight between men
who have and those who have not and feel themselves defrauded of just
due. Hence, although the fight may be bitter even unto death, and the
sacrifices of immediate comfort for ultimate ends beyond measure
heroic and even wise, there can be little of the pomp and circumstance
that accompany national and international warfare. The Decoration Days
when heroes of past conflicts are praised and receive from all the
reverence which patriotism pays to those believed to have saved some
precious inheritance from harm do not yet, perhaps will never, include
heroes of labor struggles for equal right and mutual justice. Yet the
history of industrial changes shows beyond cavil or doubt that in this
field, as in others, he who would be free himself must win his
freedom. The basic principle of the Trade Union, the right and
usefulness of collective bargaining, inheres in the conditions of
machine-dominated and capitalized industry. In this form of labor
organization the individual worker cannot bargain individually; his
place in the factory is too infinitesimal and his power measured by
that of his employer too invisible for such personal alignment. This
fact is now not questioned by any but those so enamoured of old
methods of control of the worker by those who hire him that they
cannot see what has really happened both to the employer and the
employed. The labor struggle had to come. The right of workers to
combine and to work together for what seems to them their best
interests is as inherent a part of modern democratic ideals as is the
right of all citizens to vote. And since modern industry has given
enormous power to a few master leaders and requires so many
wage-earners to carry out its enterprises the struggle has necessarily
been hard and long. No one can justly place all good behavior on one
or the other side in this conflict. No one can fail to see that power
attained by the Trade Unions has at times been used as selfishly as
the power of the employers has been. But when we remember that until
the first quarter of the nineteenth century combinations of workmen,
even to respectfully ask an increase of wages or a bettering of work
conditions in lessening of hours and in sanitary and moral provisions
in work-places, was legally a "conspiracy," and liable to harsh
punishments, we must be glad that at any temporary cost the main army
of laborers has been organized from a mob of oppressed individual
workers. But what a cost to the family has been often paid! Mothers
already overworked and under-nourished still further starved by the
"strike relief" that only serves to maintain wretchedness, not to
abolish it. The sufferings of children who miss even the meagre family
comfort which the too small pay of the father when at work was able to
supply. The greater suffering of children shunned and ill-treated by
school mates when the father is called a "scab." The deeper tragedy of
experience of men who take work that their labor comrades have refused
because of the claim of wife and children, and are abused, both in
body and in denial of sympathy and respect, because they are thought
to be traitors to their striking fellows. What is hinted at in these
few words could be made into one of the great dramas of the ages if
only the social imagination could take into understanding and show
without partiality both sides of the picture. The time may come when
it will be seen that in all wars some heroes fall on the side that is
called wrong and have right to meed of deferred praise. When that time
comes, the history of labor conflicts will show that in the struggle
between the father's duty to his children and the wife who shares his
service to them, and his duty toward the democratizing of labor by
force of battle for justice and a fair chance for all his class,
heroes and martyrs have fallen on both sides of the line. Meanwhile,
the encouraging thing is that Labor Commissions and permanent Boards
of Investigation and Arbitration and many government devices for
securing a more even justice all around the circle of wage-earning
activity are increasing in evidence as a sign that we are on the way
to bring the common need for peace and order in industry to bear upon
its warring elements. It only needs that the great consuming public,
the final and the worst sufferer when labor wars are waged, shall
understand and use its overmastering social power to bring order out
of the chaos of opposing interests.
=Women's Trade Unions.=--The entrance of women into the Trade Union
field is a significant feature of modern industry. Denied in many
men's Unions the right of membership and in many fields of work
competing only with those of their own sex, yet obviously in need of
the same declaration of rights and the same class support of each
other in securing better conditions of labor that men realized before
them, the Women's Trade Union members have much the same spirit and
many of the same methods that men have used in similar bodies. They,
as a rule, stand, however, for more protective legislation for women
than men demand for themselves and have one element unique in such
bodies. That element is the membership within Women's Trade Unions of
women of social position, of financial security and even of wealth and
of broadest culture. These women who join the Trade Union League not
to benefit their own class, which is usually the professional or the
employing class, but to help wage-earning women to better conditions,
have often been the laboring oar in the organization and maintenance
of such Unions. Nothing analogous to this is found in the Men's Trade
Union movement in the United States. It bears witness to two elements,
one that women of the so-called privileged classes are growing very
sensitive to the claims of social justice as these are related to
wage-earning women, and the other that the average age of wage-earning
women is so much younger than that of men employed in similar work
that the need for help from without in any effective effort for relief
from bad conditions is more apparent. The transitory character of much
of women's work makes the permanent personnel of any Trade Union
League of women a smaller minority of its membership than in the case
of men. It is said that in any trade where both the men and the women
are well organized the membership of the men's Union will be fairly
stable for twenty years, that of the women's Union will show a radical
change each five years, making almost a complete turn-over in the
twenty years' count. That is, of course, due to the fact that most
women use for wage-earning only the period between leaving school and
marrying, usually about four and a half years. That makes the term
"working-girls" most appropriate and is a contrast to the working
man's longer hold upon his trade.
=The New Solidarity of Women.=--The fact that women of all types of
social advantage and disadvantage are already linked together in the
Women's Trade Union movement, has, however, deep social significance,
especially as wage-earners' organizations relate themselves to family
life. No woman who has had right opportunities for education and
family life in her own experience can work in intimate comradeship
with those who have been denied such advantages without aiming
directly for social arrangements in labor which will no longer cheat
any young life of its joy, its culture, or chance for its possibility
of right relation in the home. The signs are full of hope that more
and more members of each class will feel that society as a whole has
claims upon them above all that any group may attain by working only
for its own advantage. No law of justice will stand the test of time
save that which ordains an order in which "Each for All, and All for
Each" will be the rule in industry as in the nobler state!
QUESTIONS ON THE FAMILY AND THE WORKERS
1. What is most important to the success of the modern family, a
minimum wage for working women or a minimum wage for men which
can supply decent living for a man, his wife, and at least
three children?
2. What effect has the wage-earning of married women and mothers
in gainful employments outside the home had upon the stability
and happiness of the family?
3. What effect have the laws protecting women and children in
industry had upon family life?
4. What effect would the proposed increase of legislation placing
men and women, married and single women, and unionized and
non-unionized labor upon an identical legal plane be likely to
have upon family life? As, for example, in the case of
"deserting husbands," or in work especially inimical to women's
health?
5. How can the admitted evil of industrial exploitation of
children be best and most surely prevented?
FOOTNOTES:
[16] See _American Journal of Sociology_ for January, 1912.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FAMILY AND THE SCHOOL
"To prepare us for complete living is the function which education
has to discharge, and we judge the value of any training solely by
reference to this end. For complete living we must know in what
way to treat the body, in what way to treat the mind, in what way
to manage our affairs, in what way to bring up a family, in what
way to behave as a citizen, in what way to utilize those sources
of happiness which Nature supplies, and how to use all our
faculties to the greatest advantage of ourselves and of
others."--HERBERT SPENCER.
"The final value of all institutions is their educational
influence; they are measured morally by the occasions they afford
and the guidance they supply for the exercise of foresight,
judgment, seriousness of consideration, and depth of
regard."--JOHN DEWEY.
"Socialized education has four aims:
First. That the pupil shall acquire control of tools and methods
of social intercourse,--language, number, social forms and
conventions.
Second. That the pupil shall be favorably introduced to society
through acquaintance with science, arts, literature, and
through participation in present social life.
Third. That the pupil shall be trained for an occupation.
Fourth. That the motives of his conduct, his own individually
appreciated and chosen ends, shall be intelligently
socialized."--GEORGE ALBERT COE.
"The unbeliever says, 'You can never construct a true society out
of foolish, sick, selfish men and women as we know them to be.'
But the believer sees already a better state beginning to exist in
men transfigured by the power of education. And there is nothing
that man will not overcome, amend, and convert until at last
culture shall absorb, chaos itself."--EMERSON.
"At the present time it may be that only the least effort is
needed in order that truths already revealed to us should spread
among hundreds, thousands, millions of men and women and a public
opinion become established in conformity with the existing
conscience and the entire social organization become transformed.
It depends upon us to make the effort."--TOLSTOI.
=New Forms of Education Demanded by Modern Industry.=--When the
power-driven machine ushered in the new era in industry it lessened
both the prestige and the dignity of the individual worker in three
particulars. First, it destroyed the apprentice system and hence
reduced all workers to a level in the eyes of the employer of labor
and the general public. The apprentice system had used for educational
purposes the important period of adolescence between childhood and
youth. It had served with its ceremonial of entrance into the
journeyman's right and public recognition to give distinction to the
skilled workman, and it had made a nexus of social relationship, built
upon craftsmanship, between those of the same and those of varying
trades and occupations. In the second place, the handicraft system had
given a distinct political right and power to skilled workmen. The
craftsmen, and the burghers of cities who represented them, had to be
called upon by kings and nobles to give assent to wars and to furnish
the sinews of war after the Guilds had gained money-power. And there
has as yet developed in modern government no substitute for this older
and more direct political appeal to individuals, through their work,
to make the vote alluring to the imagination of modern laborers. In
the third place, the transition from the feudal law of personal
service from each class to each class above to the tax system of
modern times, whereby a citizen pays his dues to society in cash
instead of in such personal service, took place in the era of
handicraft and was so bound up with the apprentice system and the
Guild organization that the connection between labor and public right
and duty was obvious and definite. We feel that it is an advance in
political development when a man, and now a woman, also, gains the
franchise directly as a human being without regard to social station
or vocational approach to life. But when in any country the franchise
is on simply human grounds and the economic life is founded on class
distinctions, and class distinctions as wide and deep as those which
modern industry makes between employer and employed in the great
divisions of manufacture and the provision of raw material for that
manufacture, the human basis of the body politic is blurred.
When the socially bad effects of the decay of the apprentice system
were recognized, and the need for some new forms of distinction
between the skilled and the unskilled in labor was understood, there
was a movement to introduce into the school system a substitute for
that older form of craft-training. The first Manual Training High
School marked that movement. The starting of Trade Schools in
connection with certain large industrial plants or groups of plants
signally demonstrated an effort to reinstate skill as a distinction of
those who had acquired it. The pioneer work of such educators as Dr.
Felix Adler in the Ethical Culture School of New York, at first called
the Workingman's School, to introduce manual training and some
definite use of handicraft processes for educational purposes in the
grade schools, and thus make a logical connection with the
Kindergarten, was a striking example of the new sense of need for a
new education to fit the new industrial situation. The Kindergarten
itself, with its response to the natural desire of childhood to make
things and to do things and to act together in the play rehearsal of
activities of later life, was a testimony that the school was to be
called upon from henceforth to do what in the older time was done
within the home and to do it better than the home had succeeded in
doing.
The connection between these movements in education and the family
well-being must be clear to all. Anything that lessens the dignity and
power of the worker lessens the ability of the average man to be a
competent and successful father; just as anything that lessens the
dignity and power of the worker or makes him seem but a machine for
others to use in building up industrial organization lessens his
influence in the political order. The importance to the family and to
the state of the elements of education which are aimed at reinstating
standards of skill and recognition of superior ability in the
industrial field, by the school, can not, therefore, be overestimated.
=Education a Social Process.=--These elements are attempts to
socialize education. We say that education is a process in the
development of human personality. So it is, but it is also a process
by which individuals are fitted for serviceableness to the group life.
Education is not now for the first time "socialized" because we now
theorize upon its social function in a new way. Each group of people,
in each phase of social relationship, aims to express and to
perpetuate, through the training of the oncoming generations, the
ideals, the customs, and the institutional forms deemed by them
necessary and desirable. The educative process is indeed a personal
one, teacher acting upon pupil directly to secure individualized
results; but it has always been socially determined, both in purpose
and in method, by the group "mores" and the group needs.[17] The
family has been called "the first and primitive school," but hardly
with accuracy; since, although the family is the first agency to begin
the educative process, what each family has demanded in loyalty and in
activity from each child has been determined, since the beginning of
social organization, by what the group of which that family was a part
had accepted as the right and useful end of child-training. The
limitations of the family, therefore, in early as in later education,
have been as marked as its powers, as has been well shown by Doctor
Todd in his book, _The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency_.
=The Three Learned Professions.=--When there were but three learned
professions, law, medicine, and theology, and the man of action,
soldier or ruler, thought lightly of them all in comparison with his
own field of activity, the higher education could be limited to those
of selected classes. Now the social need is for trained talent in a
far broader area, and the consequence is that not only is the
grade-school being made over but the professional goal of college and
university is being extended beyond the dreams of old pedagogues. When
physical, economic, and social sciences were born they gradually
demanded a place in the educational system from top to bottom of the
line. The study disciplines they introduced, at first by apology of
the cultured, and later by open response to a social demand for
leadership in a vastly wider range of activity than was known when
colleges first came to be, have attained a higher and higher position
until now the various degrees which aim to differentiate the type of
social usefulness for which the student is prepared are for the most
part on a par with each other.
=New Calls for Trained Leadership.=--This pressure of the new
subject-matter of education from the top down, and the pressure from
the bottom up of the new ideals in methods of training of the
child-mind, have made an educational ferment which has often given
confusion of aim and ineffectiveness of accomplishment, but both mean
educational advance and educational advance in obedience to new
conceptions of common social need. All this movement in the
educational world has a direct and immediate influence upon family
life. What was good in the old domestic training for individual
life-work we are trying to put into the school, and what is needed for
skill and leadership in the modern industrial order we are trying to
put into the college and university. This means not only that the
family rule is less deferred to in the education of even the youngest
child, it also means that if we would save the family influence in
education we must bring the parents and teachers together in council
and in united control as never before. This is being attempted; the
Mothers' Club and the Parent-Teacher Associations now in evidence
being impressive symbols of a larger social movement through books,
pamphlets, magazines, reports, and "Foundations," together with clubs
of more general social type. The value of the Trade Unions and of
other special forms of organization of workers in the matter of
securing rights and opportunities in the labor world has been alluded
to, but the definite educational value of such class organizations
must not be ignored. It is true that there is a loss of emphasis upon
skill and good workmanship in much of the modern Trade Union influence
as compared with the Guild ranking of older craft-unions, but there
is a type of education for citizenship which, with all its crudity and
coarseness of ideal, inheres in the Trade Union as in few other
organizations. To emphasize class feeling, it is said, is to work
against democracy. True, but to have a political system in which one
class is ignored, as "hands," not heads, is still more detrimental to
democratic government. The class consciousness of the worker was
strong in the days when the Guilds had political power, and it was a
wholesome check upon the claim of divine right of kings and nobles to
rule. The class consciousness of wage-earners is needed in modern
times and should have its due representation in halls of legislation
where it could meet naturally, in healthful competition and debate,
the class consciousness already there in the persons of employers of
labor and managers of legal interests of great corporations. The
education that will finally unite in better understood coöperation all
class interests in public well-being is to be found in such use of the
school as will show how we are all bound together in industry, as in
the political body; in work as in voting power. That education which,
with more or less intelligence and with deeper or more shallow
understanding, society is now working toward will make the home life
more secure as well as the state more united.
=The Special Education of Girls.=--The application of new educational
ideals and methods to the training of girls and young women is of
first-rate importance in the matter of home relationship to the
school. And this is the case not only because there are far more women
than men at work in carrying out those ideals and methods in the
schools but because if there is to be made valid and useful, conscious
and definite, union of school and home in one educational approach to
childhood it must be largely through the mothers and women-teachers
that such union can be effected. The reasons for this are too obvious
to require explanation.
There are those who believe that there is no question of
sex-differences in education, that all that is needed is to open all
educational opportunities to boys and girls alike and give both
precisely the same instruction. There are also those who still believe
that some varying elements of child-training and the instruction of
youth should be retained and further developed in the case of boys
and girls. Some basic facts must be in mind when we attempt to answer
the question, Shall we try for somewhat divergent schooling for the
two sexes?
First of all, we must remember that we have inherited the fruits of a
long race-experience in which men and women were for the most part so
separated from, each other in functioning that the education of boys
and girls was made wholly unlike after sex-differentiation began, and
sometimes, as in Sparta, before that period. The difference in ideal
and in method of training was not, as some have said, that "boys were
trained for human and socialized work" and "girls were fitted for
personal and generally menial service alone." Both were trained for
personal character and for social ends. The men were tied to the land,
and the political order, and the family responsibility for parenthood,
and some distinct personal service in behalf of the group life, as
were the women. The difference, the tremendous difference, was this:
that the service demanded of men, whatever their part or lot might be,
was early seen to require a definite schooling for some particular
vocation, demanding some measure of intellectual concentration and
technical skill; while the service demanded of women was supposed to
be of a nature requiring only general apprenticeship within the family
life. The specialization of labor, as is often shown, took from that
family apprenticeship of women, one by one, its vocational elements of
manual work until the housemother seemed to need only that general
ability which can quickly and wisely use the fruits of others' expert
knowledge and technical training. It as surely added for men, in every
division of vocational alignment, an increasing differentiation of
training and of labor. The reaction upon the educative process of this
specialization and organization of industrial and institutional life
has been distinct and far-reaching. The girls were left to the
experiential apprenticeship of the family, since they were not counted
as citizens. Even the ancient education of boys was in comparison
formal and definite, having at its core the group loyalties which
united them in patriotic devotion to "the collectivity that owned them
all." When, again, the peaceful industries which women had started in
their primitive Jack-at-all-trades economic service to the family and
clan life needed organization into separate callings of agriculture
manufacture and commerce, and primitive means of transportation had to
be perfected for interchange of products between nation and nation,
women were again left out of control of the processes which man's
organizing genius set in motion. Hence, neither political nor
industrial changes in the social order gave to popular thought any
conception of the need for sending girls to school. In point of fact,
as we need often to be reminded, the fine talk about an educated
common people referred for the most part to boys alone until near the
middle of the nineteenth century. All that women needed to know it was
believed "came by nature." Much of it did come by imitation and
unconscious absorption, aided by the occasional better training of
exceptionally able and fortunate women; but the general illiteracy of
women was both a personal handicap and a social poverty. It is not
true, however, as some have said, that women have been "left out of
the human race" and have had to "break in" to man's more highly
organized life in order to taste civilization. Men and women have
stood too close in affection, girls too often "took after their
fathers," the family, even under the despotic rule of men, bound all
other social institutions to itself too vitally for the sexes to be
wholly separated in thought and activity. Even when most women had to
make a cross instead of signing their names on official documents and
could not have passed the fourth-grade examinations of a modern
school, they often became truly cultured and by reason of the very
demands of family and group life upon them. The reason most women were
denied formal school training so long after such denial became
actively injurious to the family and group life was because the
popular conviction still held that the most useful service which women
could render the state did not require, would even find inimical to
its best exercise, the kind of schooling which had been developed to
fit boys for "a man's part in the world."
=Formal School Training of Women New.=--When the principle of
democracy began to work in women's natures with an irrepressible yeast
of revolt against longer denial of opportunity for individual
achievement, and the vitally necessary and too-long-delayed "woman's
rights movement" was born, its first pressure was against the closed
doors of the "man-made" school. Enlightened women now demanded equal
chance with men for preparation for vocations. The school they sought
to enter was inherited from a past in which not only sex lines but
class lines held the opportunities of higher education for a small
clique. The ancient college and university did indeed lead towards
vocations, but only the three "learned professions" and general
training for commanding leadership in state and industrial affairs.
When physical, economic, and social sciences were born the study
disciplines they introduced into higher education appeared in answer
to an imperious social demand that leadership should be provided in a
vastly more varied range than the older civilization required. At
first the leaders in the higher education of women, like all _nouveaux
riche_, showed determination to prove themselves adept in the
traditions of the scholastic world into which they had so recently
entered. Classic curricula were strictly adhered to and all
"practical" courses viewed with open distrust except those leading to
the inherited professions, and to teaching, as these were pushed
upward toward college professorships. Happily, however, almost
coincident with the entrance of women into larger educational
opportunity came the broadening of that educational opportunity itself
to which reference has been made; and the marvelous growth of the
State Universities in the United States rapidly increased both the
more varied vocational stimuli and the wider preparation for
leadership now opening in our country for women as for men.
=New Training for Social Service.=--Two movements have resulted from
the widening of the field of higher education, movements not yet
recognized at their full social value, but already showing immense
influence both upon the vocational alignment of trained women and upon
the courses of study in colleges and universities. These two movements
are, first, so to improve the social environment as to make average
normal life more easily and generally accessible to the requirements
for human well-being; and, secondly, the movement to put the social
treatment, ameliorative and preventive, of abnormal or undeveloped
life, under scientific direction. When it was discovered that to lose
in death one baby out of every three born, to prematurely age or kill
mothers in a hopeless endeavor to make good that waste, to leave the
majority of the human race the helpless prey of preventable disease,
poverty, feeble-mindedness, vice, and crime, was to show lack of
rational social consciousness and effective social control, then it
speedily became a recognized social duty to provide schools, both
higher and lower in grade, which might do something to lessen
ignorance and increase knowledge in the practical arts of race culture
and of social organization for common human welfare. This conviction
led on one side to the introduction of courses of study in
universities, colleges, normal, high, and even some elementary
schools, which had bearing upon management of sanitation, food supply,
housing, street control, recreation, economic reform, social
engineering in politics, and kindred agencies for social betterment.
It led on the other side to the attempt to make the office of the
philanthropist a vocation, for which definite training and
standardized compensation must be provided. So rapidly have these two
elements of applied social science invaded the vocational field that
to-day, outside of general and special teaching, they draw the
majority of women seeking professional careers into work directly
leading to social and personal betterment. A few women became lawyers,
doctors, ministers, and now aspire to political leadership; but for
the most part women are true to their sex-heritage now that they have
a chance to choose and fit for their work. The nurture of child-life,
the moral safeguarding of youth, the care of the aged, the weak, the
wayward, and the undeveloped--these, which have been their special
tasks since society began to be rational and humane, are still their
main business in the more complex situations of modern life.
=Departments of Household Economics in Colleges.=--When the
departments of household economics were added to college courses they
were hailed on one side as a needed attempt to "make the higher
education fit women for wifehood and motherhood;" and on the other
side they were opposed as a base concession to conservative views of
woman's position, and as leading toward a lowering of standards in
women's higher education. They were, and are, neither of these. The
college courses in subjects related to the scientific improvement of
human beings and their environment are courses leading toward new
vocational specialties, which the newly outlined science of
race-culture demands. Women who excel in these specialties do so as
paid functionaries and are oftener unmarried than married. Nor are
these studies limited to feminine students, although far more women
than men choose them. The interrelation of the present social order by
which a milk or a water supply has to do with "big business" and with
law, and "a garbage can is a metal utensil entirely surrounded by
politics," requires some knowledge of these things on the part of men;
especially if they are to be "heckled" in political campaigns by women
voters. There are, to be sure, now outlined school training
"departments of homemaking" intended to help individual women in their
work in private homes, but such departments are generally of the
nature of "extension courses." Regular college courses, especially
those of four years and leading to a special degree, in household
economics, as in other groups of studies, lead directly toward a
vocational career, standardized and salaried, related to general
social organization, and subject to the "factory" tendencies of the
modern industrial order. Students in such courses, generally speaking,
graduate either to teach household arts in schools and extension work,
or to take positions as expert dietitians, managers of hospitals and
other public institutions, directors of laundries and restaurants, as
trained nurses, assistants or directors in chemical laboratories,
architects, interior decorators, landscape gardeners, and what not.
All these specialties are essential to social progress, and all are
linked to family life in general, but none of them is particularly
related to any one family group of one father, one mother, and their
children. They, therefore, while tending to make family life in
general far more successful than of old, fit no woman surely for
wifehood and motherhood; and they cannot do so unless omniscient
social wisdom can tell in advance what girls will marry and have
children and social control becomes despotic enough to oblige such
girls to take these courses in preference to any others; or unless
society returns to its old drastic compulsion for all to marry and
bear active part in the race-life as parents.
=Society Now Based upon Man's Economic Leadership.=--Any study of the
needs of the family in relation to the school, especially in relation
to the tax-supported, free, and compulsory educational system, must
take account of two outstanding facts: namely, first, that the whole
arrangement of society as we have inherited its condition is based
upon the economic leadership of the husband and father in the home
partnership. This continues to be the rule even in social strata
where the sense of justice gives both parties a common purse and where
finest quality of affection and of comradeship makes it a negligible
matter which one makes the larger contribution to the united treasury.
=Women Socially Drafted for Motherhood.=--The second fact which must
have its recognition in any study of education in relation to the
family, is that no married woman is exempt from all demands of
motherhood unless some "selective draft," more delicate in its
evaluation than any we have yet evolved, shall indicate her right to
exemption, and that if marriage is to continue on anything like its
present basis commonplace women cannot have all its advantages without
paying some adequate price.
=Father-office and Mother-office Still Differ.=--We are now in the
midst of a social order in which the father-office and the
mother-office do differ essentially in their requirements in the vast
majority of families. The father-office leads directly toward
specialization and achievement in some one calling. To be a good
father is, in ordinary family conditions, not so much to give constant
personal attention to his children as to do something well which the
world wants done and will pay for and by which he may maintain and
improve the economic and social standing of his family. To "give
hostages to fortune in wife and child" may, indeed often does, hamper
a man's idealistic relation to his vocation and oblige him to work for
money when he wants to work for fame or for higher usefulness, but it
serves almost always to keep him steady to his job. For the average
mother this is not the case. Where there is a family of children more
than large enough to make good the parent's share in life's ongoing
stream, or where physical, mental, or moral peculiarities demand
special attention to one child or more, or where aged, delicate, or
incompetent members of the family circle call for special
consideration, or where the environment does not provide, or the
income cannot pay for elaborate aids to domestic comfort from without,
the average conscientious housemother must give the best of strength
and the most of time in the service of the private family for many
years of life. That is to say, getting a group of children up to adult
independence and saving the community most of the intimate duties of
care of the aged and of the weak, while it calls upon the man-head of
the family for greater activity in his special line, calls upon the
woman-head of the family for a general and personal service as a
primary duty. This puts any vocational specialty she has chosen in a
secondary place while the family obligation is most pressing. The
result of this obvious fact is that the average woman does still have
a double choice to make when marriage offers; a choice for or against
the man, and a choice for or against her vocation. In proportion as
women are highly educated or industrially trained they have been
pressed toward some one calling for which they can be definitely
prepared and in which they may hope to rise in personal achievement
and in financial compensation. On the other hand, marriage and
motherhood appeal to the deepest instincts of human nature; and if the
man seems worth it a woman will generally risk vocational impediment
and awkwardness of economic adjustment for the sake of a congenial
mate and children of her own.
=Should the Education of Girls Include Special Attention to Family
Claims?=--These facts indicate that social prudence must at least ask
the question, Should not the education of girls include some distinct
recognition of special problems to be met, often in acute experience
of contrary currents of personal desire and social pressure, in the
lives of young women? As has been shown in other connection what we
are witnessing now in domestic life is the passing of the servant
caste, of the ordinary "hired girl" and of the unpaid family drudge;
not the eclipse of the housemother or the waning of the homemaker's
power or charm. In this household change and in the demand that goes
with it upon any woman who would have or make a home, and with clear
understanding of the new responsibilities which the new freedom of
women place upon them, certain fundamental principles should be held
firmly in mind as we deal with special problems of adjustment created
by new social situations. First of all, let us admit, and never cease
to emphasize the fact, that the social education of women demands from
now on the most scrupulous regard for the training of every normal
girl for self-support. This cannot be too much emphasized. This is the
only sure foundation for socially helpful sex-relationship and for
that democratization of the family without which social progress is
now impossible. The social education of women in general demands,
also, the cultivation of domestic tastes and of some measure of
household technic, not as a concession to the past, but as a safeguard
of the future, in such fashion that the call to personal service of
the family life may recall familiar and pleasant educational
activities. These educational activities should precede those which
tend directly toward vocational preparation for self-support. This
point, too, is vital. The age when almost all little girls like to do
things which concern the family comfort is from the eighth to the
fourteenth year, a period too young for proper vocational drill. Then,
when they are most likely to be ordered out of the kitchen if there is
a paid cook to give the order, and most likely to be thought "in the
way" if trying to help in domestic process of any sort, is the period
of all others when to "learn by doing" what they are interested in
will give them a background capable of easy adjustment to the later
demands of family life. The training of boys of the same ages has an
analogue in farming and handy use of common tools; and in the "work,
play, and study school" boys and girls learn much together which fit
both for mutual aid in the private family. The new education of the
grade schools, therefore, is coming to the rescue of the housemother's
task, as the high school and college have come to the aid of those who
would provide vocational careers for women. They may meet in helpful
alliance just as soon as a few social principles, which can make a
bridge between them, are outlined and accepted.
=Adjustment of Family Service and Vocational Work.=--First, most women
should allow for marriage and maternity first place for the years
socially required. Second, women cannot afford to lose entirely out of
their married lives vocational discipline, by the use of leisure time
left them by new easing of household service, even in odd jobs of
unpaid "social work," as is now so much the custom. The very
multiplicity and variety of ancient crafts practised in the home make
some one activity, held to rules of specialization, essential to the
housemother's development. The chosen vocation retained as an
avocation, during the housemother's active service, must not, however,
be a chief dependence for either her own or the family support lest
the family or herself suffer. It must be in the nature of a leasehold
upon her chosen career to be retaken for full occupancy as soon as the
children are out of hand and she has begun to feel the call of empty
hours to the old familiar task. This is not an impractical plan, as
many women are proving by experience. And as has been previously
demonstrated, society in the past has wasted the work-power of women
past the childbearing age in more ruthless and stupid prodigality than
any other of its treasures. Third, as has been before indicated,
married women with young children must learn to combine in "team
work," as they have never yet done, and to make engagements by two's
or three's for the work one unmarried woman may take alone. This is
especially called for in the great social task of teaching, "woman's
organic office in the world," as Emerson called it. The evils charged
against a "feminized school," where they really exist, are those due
not so much to the sex of the grade-teachers as to the celibate
condition in the "permanent supply" and to the too rapidly changing
personnel of those who marry. The same suggested team work would
operate well in all the higher professions; and the success of
"continuation schools" proves that half-time and third-time labor
schedules are perfectly feasible in manual work. The fourth social
principle to be accepted in the interest of women and the family is
one little perceived at the present time: namely, that which marks the
limitations of social usefulness in the specialization of labor
itself.
=Dangers of Specialization in Professional Work.=--We are beginning to
see that this process may be carried so far that a shallow and a cheap
person may so fill the exacting and narrow routine of a specialty of
manual work or professional service as to check ambition and power to
achieve a full and rich personality. Last of all, the social
principle, by which the claims of personality and the demands of
social solidarity (now so entangled in friction) may work smoothly to
individual and social well-being, the principle yet to be clearly
outlined and helpfully applied, should receive interpretation and
guidance through the race-experience of women. For that service the
social education of women must be lifted to a far higher plane of
intellectual and ethical culture. Deeper than all the problems which
the booming of the guns of this world war has forced upon the dullest
social consciousness is the question, How may the individual
conscience and personal ideal of the spiritual élite be harmonized
with, not destroyed by, the levelling process of democracy? Saints
and sages have always marked out the pathway of the future. How can
they still dower a common life pressed insistently toward uniformity
of action? May it not be that human beings of the mother-sex who have
paid and still must pay a price, one by one, for each single life, and
who have at the same time always been held and still must be held as
supreme upbuilders of the social fabric, shall lead the race toward
the solution of this most spiritual problem of democracy? It is not,
however, solely to make women better fitted for a dual rôle in social
order and social progress that we are socializing education: men also
must be better fitted to the tasks of social serviceableness within as
truly as without the family. No one has doubted the claim of society
upon man to be a useful worker and a competent manager of affairs in
the world. Until lately, however, few have seen that, as the
"Declaration of Eights and Duties" set forth in 1795 by those who
willed the freedom of France, "No one is a good citizen if he is not a
good son, a good father, a good brother, a good friend, a good
husband." It has been enough for a man to be able to achieve something
of value; his personal character has not been, held of such great
moment throughout the ages of the past.
Now we are beginning to demand that men be good in the sense they have
long demanded that women shall be, and that women shall be strong in
what they do as well as in what they are. This new demand strikes at
the roots of what has been called the "social evil," but which is the
most unsocial of all the pathological conditions of modern society.
=The New Training in Sex-education.=--The need to have the right sort
of fathers as well as fit mothers requires a new training in lines of
sex-education. One of the most perplexing of all educational problems
is how to give the needed training in this line in the best and most
effective way. In the admirable volume on _Sex-Education_ written by
Professor Maurice A. Bigelow, of Teachers College, Columbia
University, a list of eight reasons for sex-instruction is given which
are here quoted by permission:
1. Many people, especially in youth, need hygienic knowledge
concerning sexual processes as they affect personal health.
2. There is an alarming amount of the dangerous social diseases
which are distributed chiefly by the sexual promiscuity or
immorality of men.
3. The uncontrolled sexual passions of men have led to enormous
development of organized and commercialized prostitution.
4. There are living to-day tens of thousands of unmarried mothers
and illegitimate children, the result of the common
irresponsibility of men and the ignorance of women.
5. There is need of more general following of a definite moral
standard regarding sex-relationships.
6. There is a prevailing unwholesome attitude of mind concerning
all sexual processes.
7. There is very general misunderstanding of sexual life as
related to healthy and happy marriage.
8. There is need of eugenic responsibility for sexual actions that
concern future generations.
To the propositions thus clearly stated all thoughtful students of
family needs in education will give assent. This is not the place for
specific treatment of prostitution and its effect upon the home, nor
is it the place for a detailed statement of methods of sex-education
and of social hygiene now advocated and beginning to show encouraging
results in use. The simple statement must be made that if, as Spencer
has said, one test of education is its ability to make men good
husbands and fathers, the element of sex-education must not be omitted
from the educative process. How or where the necessary information and
stimulus to truly social conduct may or should be given is matter for
another statement.
=Heroes Held Up for Admiration.=--One point, usually wholly ignored,
must have some mention here, and that is the effect upon the minds of
children and youth of types of social order that are taken for granted
as proper and right in the setting of heroes and even of heroines
commended to their example. We have taken our heroes from the past.
That is natural. It requires an atmosphere of distance to render clear
in outline the lives of the great and good. It may be that some
prophets are held at just value by those with whom they live; it is
almost never that great prophets are seen at their full stature, by
the common apprehension, in the time of which they are a part. This
makes us offer as stimulant to the ethical imagination, and sometimes
as definite incitements to imitation, men and women whose social
surroundings were quite other than those we are now striving to
secure. How seldom is the teacher able to make the distinctions in
social judgment required for full understanding of the character
without spoiling the personal influence of the hero extolled. This is
particularly true in the use of much Biblical material in Sunday
School and in the unexplained classic references to the great and
good. One wonders what children are thinking about, children who read
in the daily papers long and spectacular accounts of trials for bigamy
or adultery, when the worthies of the Old Testament are spoken of and
their two or several wives taken as a matter of course in the lesson!
One wonders what is the meaning of justness or kindness to the
"servant" conveyed to the child in commandments which link together a
man's ox and his ass, his laborer and his wife! The fact is that
education has a narrow and perilous path to travel in moral lessons of
every sort, a path between a dull and critical analysis of differences
in moral standards and moral practice in the ages from which we have
come and a wholesale commendation of people who would be haled before
our modern courts for disobedience to laws were they to reappear upon
our streets. The need for stimulation of the ethical imagination is so
great, however, that we must dare this perilous path and master its
difficulties. Perhaps no one has been able to do this more effectively
than Mr. Gould, of the Moral Education Committee of England, who has
used the story method with consummate tact in building up from the
lower motive and the more ancient condition a series of pictures of
human greatness, which end always on some summit of personal devotion
in universal conditions to universal laws of right.[18] His method
leaves the pupil in a glow of admiration of excellence without dulling
his perception of realities of every-day life in his own time and
place.
However difficult, we must try by some method to make youth realize
what is excellent in those who have lived far enough in the past to
inspire reverence and yet keep some connection between those heroes
and sages of the older times and the march of human life upward and
onward. Especially is this the case in all treatment of the family
relation. We need not banish Chaucer's "Griselda" from the collections
of poems worthy to live and to be read, but at least we should insert
some companion pieces which show wifely fidelity in a more modern
form. We may well ask the child's admiration of the craftsman's
passion for achievement in "Palissey the Potter," but there might be
ethical significance in pointing out that nowadays we sometimes
question the right of a man to sacrifice to his art not only himself
but his wife, his children, and all related to him. The fact is that
although we cannot make use of any cumbersome scheme of historic
outlines of social progress nor of any learned history of matrimonial
institutions, we must somehow learn to permeate our teaching of
history and of literature and our exaltation of examples of human
greatness of character with the spirit of those who believe that
humanity is learning, and can know how to manage social affairs better
and better as the years of life-experience go on.[19]
=Moral Training at the Heart of Education.=--The right and helpful
relation of the school to the family, then, is one that must first of
all place moral character, the power to live a good and useful life in
all social relations, at the centre. And it is one also that takes
account particularly of the development of the family order and of
what we must save and of what we may throw away in that order, if we
would have a stable inner circle of human rights and duties as a
pattern for all relationship in the industrial order and in the state.
=Drill to Avert Economic Tragedies.=--In view also of the danger of
economic tragedies that affect the family,--dangers of unemployment of
the father by reason of bad times beyond his control, of his
disablement by industrial accident, of his too-early impairment of
strength by reason of industrial misuse of his powers in ways he can
not prevent,--it may be that education for every boy should include,
while he is still under the legal wage-earning age, efficient drill in
the simpler arts of agriculture. He who can get from the land the raw
material for family comfort is alone, it would seem, able to meet all
industrial catastrophes without alarm. In this country, at least, such
a man, whatever his failure or misfortune in professional, in
clerical, or in manual labor, may make good his father-office in basic
essentials of family support. All that has been said about the need of
mixing vocational training with preparation for home-making in the
case of girls may be said with almost as much, force about the need of
giving the average man an economic refuge in case of vocational
disaster in the ability to work the land to meet essential family
need. This is beginning to be understood as never before. The newest
education of all, as has been said, is intent upon providing for girls
and boys alike this training for economic safety in some expert use of
land for self-support as well as for retranslation of older work
interests. In these "schools of tomorrow" the boys as well as the
girls, while still very young, are being trained to cook and to do
necessary things for household comfort. This is not subversive of
inherited divisions of labor in the home. This teaching only adds to
the economic security of both sexes and may make the men of the future
able to exist comfortably without so much personal service from their
womenfolk, and, above all, may make the home a more perfectly
coöperative centre of our social order.
=A Graduated Scale of Virtues.=--In the French _Categories_ of "Moral
and Civil Instructions," first outlined in 1882 and perfected and
applied in 1900, the children of the Public Schools of that country
have their attention called first to the duties related to "Home and
Family," going on from that topic to "Companionship, The School,
Social Life, Animal Life, Self-respect, Work, Leisure and Pleasure,
Nature, Art, Citizenship and Nationality," and ending with a study of
the "Past and Future." The latter topic indicates an intent to give in
some fashion the idea of human progress and something of its
outstanding points of interest and value. Other moral codes aim at
some sublimation of history and literature as a finish to courses in
ethical instruction. It is for the student of social progress to
insist that such study of the past, linked to the study of the present
and to some hopeful outline of the future, be not used merely as a
capstone but shall be woven in, as warp and woof of all education, as
it touches every side of life.
=Types of Education.=--Dr. Lester Ward, in his _Dynamic Sociology_,
lists the various types of education we must cherish and realize in
the common life as follows:
"The Education of Experience;
The Education of Discipline;
The Education of Culture;
The Education of Research;
The Education of Information."
To this list, with which most educators would be in agreement, the
believers in the "New Education" might add the Education of
Development of Personality.
Experience, discipline, culture, research, and information are,
however, the great means by which the personality absorbs the social
inheritance and thus finds its own place in the social whole. The
early initiation by the family to all these means of personal
development is not yet exhausted either in function or in social
usefulness. The family still begins the socializing process.
QUESTIONS ON THE FAMILY AND THE SCHOOL
1. In child-training, should the general aim be to give as much
as possible of that training in the home or as much as
possible in the school? or what is a wise and efficient
balance between family and society influence in education?
2. Given a necessity in character-development for drill in
obedience, stimulus toward self-development, capacity for
self-control and for helpful association with others in the
interest of the commonweal, what part, if any, can the home
play which the school cannot?
3. What is the duty of citizens in respect to tax-supported and
compulsory education and how can that duty be effectively done
in city and country life?
4. How can educational systems be made to work for the better
coördination of family life among the newly arrived immigrants?
5. Outline, in general suggestion, an educational program for boys
and for girls which would be likely to directly aid the family
in attaining stability and success among all classes, having
regard to aim, subject-matter, methods of character-development
and form of social provision and control in the school.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] See _Democracy and Education_, by John Dewey: "Because of death of
individuals, life has to perpetuate itself by transmission, by
communication; must be social in character."
[18] See _The Children's Book of Moral Lessons_, published by Watts and
Co., London.
[19] See _Principles of Sociology with Educational Applications_, by
Frederick R. Clow, a valuable and suggestive book for the general
reader.
CHAPTER XV
THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER STATE
"I should like to point out by what principles of action we rose
to power and under what institutions and through what manner of
life we became great. We are called a democracy, for the
administration is in the hands of the many, not the few; but while
the law secures equal justice to all, the claim of excellence is
always recognized. When a citizen is in any way distinguished he
is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege
but as a reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may
benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his position.
"We are unrestrained in private intercourse, while a spirit of
reverence pervades our public acts. We are prevented from doing
wrong by respect for authority and for the laws, having an
especial regard for those ordained for the protection of the
injured, as well as to those unwritten laws which bring upon the
transgressor the reprobation of general sentiment.
"We are lovers of the beautiful, though simple in our tastes, and
we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. An Athenian
citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his
own household, and even those engaged in business have a fair idea
of politics.
"The great impediment to right action is, in our opinion, not
discussion, but the want of that knowledge which may be gained by
discussion.
"We do good to our neighbors not upon a calculation of interest
but in the confidence of freedom and in a frank and fearless
spirit."
From the oration of Pericles, 450 B.C.,
as reported by Thucydides.
"Statesmen work in the dark until the idea of right towers above
expediency or wealth. The Spirit of Society, not any outward
institution, is the mighty power by which the hard lot of man is
to be ameliorated.
"Every line of history inspires a confidence that things mend.
This is the moral of all we learn; it warrants Hope, the prolific
mother of all reforms. Our part is plainly not to block
improvement or to sit until we are stone but to watch the uprise
of progressive mornings and to conspire with the new work of new
days."--EMERSON.
"Nations are the citizens of humanity as individuals are the
citizens of the nation. As any individual should strive to promote
the power and prosperity of his nation through the exercise of his
special function, so should every nation in performing its special
mission perform its part in promoting the prosperity and
progressive advance of humanity."--MAZZINI.
"Our country hath a gospel of her own
To preach and practise before all the world,--
The freedom and divinity of man,
The glorious claims of human brotherhood."
--LOWELL.
=The Socialization of the Modern State.=--In a previous book before
mentioned[20] and in many special articles published elsewhere, the
idea has been stressed that society is now witnessing a remarkable
coalescence of two ethical movements which are of special significance
in the new political equality of men and women. These two movements
are, first, the call for the application to women of the principles
embodied in our national Bill of Rights; and, second, the introduction
of what is called social welfare work into governmental provisions and
administration. The first marked the reaction of women, belated but
strong, and at last successful in realization of purpose, to the
eighteenth Century demand for the recognition of human rights
regardless of color, sex, or previous condition of servitude. The
second was a reaction of social sympathy and a growing sense of social
responsibility for the better development of the common life. These
two movements so worked together that as women marched toward the
citadel of political power and responsibility, political action became
more and more permeated by forms of social interest in which women
were already alert, and by forms of social activity in which women
were already proficient. This is particularly noticeable in the United
States. For example, in our country we have changed the common point
of view and the general governmental approach to individual and
private life in the following important particulars:
1. Health--public and private, in matters of prevention of
disease and in care of the sick and the convalescent.
2. Education--in respect to all ages and to all peculiar needs of
special training.
3. Philanthropy, or the social care of the dependent, the
poverty-bound, the defective, and the juvenile delinquent.
4. Penology, or the laws and their administration which deal with
crime and criminals and with both the victims of and the
panderers to vice.
5. Recreation and all manner of publicly provided opportunity for
helpful use of leisure time.
6. Conservation of natural resources in the interest of common
wealth.
7. Checks upon economic exploitation by the greedy and strong of
the young, the weak, and the ignorant.
8. Checks upon those commercialized forms of recreation which tend
to despoil childhood and youth of innocence and refinement.
9. Official standardizing of ways of living found to be conducive
to physical, mental, and moral well-being, and social aids
toward vocational training and guidance.
10. The union of Federal with State and Local efforts for the
general welfare.
=The Interest and Work of Women in This Process of Political
Change.=--In every one of these new forms of approach to individual
life by the general public through law, tax-supported opportunity, or
special grant of official aid, women have played a distinct and a
large part. When, therefore, women entered formally into the body
politic of these United States, they entered into a place of power
already familiar to them in many of its activities. Indeed, they had
helped to outline and to make effective many of those activities and
came into a new relation to them only by virtue of a recognized
access of control over their administration. When government was
merely a restraining or a military power over individual life, there
might be to many minds an incongruity in women assuming voter's
privileges and duties. When government became a means for conserving
and nurturing and developing individual life, mothers, at least, could
be easily seen to have proper part in its functions.
=Health a Social Enterprise.=--To briefly rehearse this list of
political activities is to show marked changes in social ideals. We
have entered upon a crusade against preventable disease and for the
better physical development of all citizens and potential citizens.
This crusade now makes the official Boards of Health, the hospital and
medical service, the nurse's vocation, and the lay volunteer support
of all these, the outstanding features of our community life.
Epidemics used to be considered visitations of an avenging Providence
for the people's sins. So they are in essence and in modern
translation of old ideas, a punishment by Nature for broken laws;
experiences to be ashamed of now that we know how to prevent them.
Deaths of babies, once mysterious dispensations of Infinite power,
have come to mean indictments of community and family for failure to
furnish right conditions for infant life. Deaths of mothers in
childbirth, leaving older children without suitable protection and
care, once thought events to which to be resigned, however sad and
pitiable, are now seen to be preventable calamities for which society
is to blame. Avoidable cripplement and invalidism of workmen, once
considered either their own fault or unexplained misfortune, are now
listed as cause for receipt of sickness and accident benefits under
Workmen's Compensation Laws. Premature old age, due to overwork and
undernourishment, is on its way to be proceeded against as a record of
social neglect. All waste of life's vigor and happiness which is
indicated by lower levels of health and strength in any class or age
than can be secured by the more favored is from now on recorded as
social failure and social fault. Hence, the state and all manner of
private agencies are at work to make physical standards higher and
physical conditions better for all. When we remember that the pioneer
worker in organization of Boards of Public Health and the founder of
the American Public Health Association, Dr. Stephen Smith, has just
passed away after reaching the hundred year mark of life's usefulness,
we can readily see how rapid has been the growth in scientific
attention to health and social agencies for its advance.
=General and Vocational Training for All.=--In education we have not
accomplished all that the leaders in that field outlined for us two
generations ago, but there is a movement all along the line to make it
possible for every person to have at least a fair start toward
education in the compulsory free school; and for adults, younger or
older, to make up for early deficiencies by constantly increasing
later opportunities of special and of general training in the things
every citizen should know. Allusion to new specialties of varied
educational facilities has before been made.
No one can doubt that as teachers and helpers to teachers, as members
of educational societies, and as acting on official boards by
appointment, women have been long serving in the ranks and needed the
ballot only to make their function more inclusive and more commanding
in directive power. When we remember that it is only since 1837, when
Horace Mann published the first Report of a State Board of Education
and began his great work for the Common School of his country, that we
have had even a distinct social goal in this great field of endeavor
we cannot be pessimistic about future accomplishment. When that
educational leader declared in response to those who remonstrated with
him for turning aside from the usual and, for him, brilliant
opportunities of the law, "The next generation is to be my client," he
started a new profession, and the present effort in education is but
the widening of that social furrow. When we recall that Mary Lyon, in
opening Mt. Holyoke Seminary for Girls in that same year of 1837,
offered the first opportunity to girls of limited means of what could
be called higher education, we can better realize how rapid has been
the movement to fit women for educational service. We, at least, now
have a clearer aim in education and are at liberty to use fit men and
fit women alike for its realization. The one great contribution of
later times is the determination to share with all the opportunities
once held sacred to a select few.
=Women's Work in Philanthropy.=--In philanthropy there has been so
great a transformation both in ideal and in method that it amounts to
a change in the centre of gravity. Charity once had for its aim the
easing of unbearable misery, the giving of alms to relieve the
starving, and personal aid of all sorts to those who were not expected
to be lifted out of the category of the poor, those who must be always
helped, but should be helped in a spirit of kindness. Now we have the
command for permanent care for the helpless where they will not
handicap the normal. We have the varied agencies for preventing
delinquency in youth and many a new type of moral rehabilitation for
all who have stepped but a short distance out of the ordered path of
life. We have the ideal of every defective child in permanent
custodial homes, every insane person cared for with humanity and
trained intelligence, every dependent child readjusted to family life
by adoption or trained happily and usefully in residential school,
every aged person protected from want and misery in public or private
homes, every widowed mother helped to take care of her own children,
and every sick person aided by hospital and clinic and visiting nurse
and convalescent home in readjustment to normal activity. Finally, we
have boldly replaced the motto, "Relieve Poverty," by the new slogan,
"Abolish Poverty," and we are impatient with ourselves and with social
arrangements if any considerable number of our fellow-beings are
obliged without fault of theirs to receive material relief. In all
this, what a part has been played by women! Dorothea Dix
revolutionized the care of the insane in the United States. Louisa Lee
Schuyler organized and for fifty years energized and directed the work
of the New York State Charities Aid Association which made over into
humane and intelligent social care-taking the inherited institutions
of a more ignorant and indifferent time. The first woman to serve on
the State Board of Charities in New York, Josephine Shaw Lowell, whose
motherhood in the family and the state knew no bounds and whose
statesmanship comprehended every social relation, is not the last to
so serve. "The lady with the lamp," Florence Nightingale, who
pioneered in trained nursing has had many a follower in this as in
other countries. The annals of all charitable agencies show that at
every step, whether recognized as responsible members of the body
politic or not, women have done the work in large and efficient
measure when the state took over a new job of life-saving and of
life-nourishment.
In the realm of penology we have moved far from the old private prison
into which the noble could cast his enemy and no one question his
acts. We have moved far from the early prison which was easily
neglected in all sanitary as in all moral conditions, since it was
then only a stopping place, often for a short time only, on the way
from court condemnation to hanging or mutilation, flogging or exile.
When the prison became a place for longer sojourn, and sentence to it
became in itself a legal punishment, humane men and women began to
feel the importance of knowing what went on in the places set aside
for offenders against the law, and Howard and others set the tendency
toward a more humane and reasonable treatment of criminals. We now are
at work finding out who are real criminals and who are accidentally
caught in the meshes of hurtful circumstances, who among the offenders
against the law are mentally responsible, and who are but children of
adult bodily size, and what to do for and with the intentional enemy
of social order. We have not yet learned to apply the ideals we have
gained in wise and effective treatment of the small minority of men,
and far smaller minority of women, who cannot or will not walk the
safe and well-outlined road of the law-abiding, but we have some
concepts that promise to guide us in this particular and the new
Penology is born. Men and women alike are working out details of
direction and shouldering the heavy social work demanded. The thing
that is most conspicuous in Penology is the new attitude of courts of
law, of judges and even of juries. This is an attitude of humane
inquiry into causes of moral breakdown, and humane dealing with
criminals as of right entitled to a fair chance. Surely this is a
fatherly attitude taking the place of old punitive ideas.
=Culture Aids to the Common Life.=--When we come to the new work of
making the streets safer for the spirit of youth, and the life of all
more protected and happy by recreative measures standardized for
personal uplift, we are distinctly in the area of parental functions
of the modern state. It takes fatherly men and motherly women to run
the public playground, and to make the parks, the museums, the
settlement clubs and classes, and the children's rooms in public
libraries what we now will that they shall be,--the centres of eager
interest and the nursery of character development. The mention of the
free public library suggests what is probably the most potent of all
the higher social influences in our American life. In the large city
and in the small town alike, and even in remote rural districts served
by the Loan Libraries, the opportunity to find what will feed the mind
and lead toward the delight of the printed page is one that has meant
more to more people who were aspiring and able to become leaders in
any sphere of life than has any other opportunity; perhaps than even
the public school after the main essentials of early grade teaching
have been gained.
To sit in a public library and watch the eager interest of each
newcomer, to see the patience, the understanding, the sympathetic
attitude and the earnest effort to be of utmost service which the
librarian almost invariably shows, and to see the absorbed attention
of the readers in what they have been assisted in selecting, is to
bless the generosity and public spirit of every one who has made the
public library so common a blessing. Not all books are equally
helpful, not all give equal pleasure, it is true, but when one gets a
book with a message in it for him, what a joy!
One often thinks of the lovely song of Emily Dickinson when sitting
thus in a public library:
"He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor
Or that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy ways
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!"
=Many Languages in One Country.=--In this connection must be noted the
effort of many to limit this "bequest" to the language of the country.
In another connection we have noted the difficulty that inheres in
having many differing tongues in one community, the difficulty of
reaching a common ideal and method of living when language is a barrier
and not an aid to companionship. This barrier of language to the
foreign-born is often cited as a reason why the immigrant is
handicapped. It is also a reason why social efforts and religious
influences often fail of success and why so many native-born Americans
fail to understand the newer Americans. If, as many prophesy, the
English language becomes the standard tongue for business and diplomacy
and literature, all the best products of every nation being made
available by translation, at least, for those speaking English, it can
become that ruling tongue only by slow degrees. Meanwhile, the chasm
between citizens of a common country made by differing languages may be
bridged by far greater effort on the part of older Americans gifted in
the use of foreign tongues. We see women by the hundreds flocking to
Europe and the East to "get local color" and perfect themselves in
foreign languages, who might find at their own doors, among those
illiterate in English, but with a wealth of knowledge of their own
native literature and speech, men and women who would be able, if
rightly approached, to exchange national values both in literature and
history to mutual advantage. The need of adult education on the part of
the foreign-born is not always a need to be met by condescending from
above to those of low intellectual estate. It is often a mere
requirement to master another form of speech by those, already
linguists, or at least in possession of a broader use of language than
is the average citizen of the United States. The ways of social helping
in this line are many and of the highest political importance. The
variety of languages spoken in the United States, however, is not so
serious an obstacle to the intercommunication of our population for
political information and in organization for common ends of the public
good as is the shameful condition of illiteracy among the electorate.
The foreign-language publications in the United States numbered, in
1914, 1404, of which 160 were dailies, with total circulation per issue
of 2,598,827, and 868 weeklies with a total circulation per issue of
4,239,426, and other publications to the number of 376 with a total
circulation per issue of 3,609,735. These foreign-language journals are
not all or many of them devoted to "stirring up strife" and do not
prevent absorption of the foreign-born in the body politic. They are,
on the contrary, necessary means of making those who speak foreign
tongues acquainted with facts and conditions which newcomers need to
know and understand. During the Great War our government used these
foreign-language publications to spread broadcast appeals for
financial and personal support. The excellent "Foreign Language
Information Service," still existing and having Federal backing, has in
hand the introduction into the principal foreign-language publications
of information and appeal calculated to make good American citizens.
The demand that has been made in moments of excitement for the
abolition of the foreign-language press is therefore as stupid as it is
unfriendly. Only by the use of his native tongue can a man who does not
yet understand English be made to feel and act as a genuine part of the
citizenship of his adopted country. It is for those who cherish real
Americanism to try to get into these publications, which are the
strategic point of contact between older and newer Americans, all that
is deemed vital to the welfare of our common country. Through a wise
use of this material in every free public library and in the multiplied
Loan Libraries in remote districts, the newcomers in our country who
read intelligently their own language and are eager to learn, may gain
all that a good citizen needs to know. And if in parallel columns the
English with the foreign language should be used to convey the same
thought, the progress will be doubly fast in true Americanization.
=Personal Conservation.=--In the conservation of natural resources for
the benefit of all the people we have been slow to understand either
our social danger, or our social opportunity, but our Federal
Government is setting us notable lessons and local communities are
trying to learn and follow them, and Women's Clubs all over the
country are staying up the hands of officials and trying to help save
the people's inheritance for the people's wealth; surely a fatherly
and a motherly office if any state function can be. When we enter the
area of protection of the young and weak and ignorant against the
exploitation of vice and greed and selfishness, we are in the very
centre of that parental care which the modern state now seeks to give
to its citizens. When the Great War turned into training camps the
flower of our youth, these agencies for moral protection and social
watch-care which had been so largely developed as volunteer and
private social work, became the resource of a government bent on
keeping men "fit to fight," and on preserving young women in the
vicinity of the camps both from giving and receiving harmful
influences. Since then, more than ever, such agencies for moral
protection have become official in civic life and have the endorsement
and the aid of government. It is one new feature of all modern
protective work that women are employed as members of the police, as
matrons in public places supported by tax, and indeed in places of
commercial recreation, as judges of special courts where parole and
methods of suspended sentence are used, and in all places where boys
and girls are exposed to danger and to temptation. Thus the home
influence is spreading out toward the work-place and the
play-centre--truly a retranslation of family service in terms of the
public life.
=The Children's Bureau.=--Our government at Washington used to be
limited in its function to those political services which no state
organization could accomplish by itself, but now the Federal
departments are busily at work setting standards, if only through
authentic information and suggestion, which aim to raise the average
life in all directions, economic and social. The Children's Bureau is
preëminently a standardizing body, although with no power to issue or
enforce decrees. The Bureaus which have to do with foods and animal
life and farm management are setting higher and higher levels of
attainment for the common people in their home life and in their
vocational work. There is a strong movement to enlarge the educational
influence at the very heart of our national government with a Cabinet
Head to set a high standard of attainment in both the art, the
science, and the administration of education as well as to aid in
equalizing educational opportunity. Moreover, there is a strong
tendency, seen most recently and vividly in the provisions of the
Maternity Aid Bill, for all social efforts to ask and to be granted
Federal financial aid on the fifty-fifty plan. There is not a
consensus of opinion among the thoughtful as to the wisdom of thus
placing upon the general government the burden of social schemes upon
which a minority of the people, be that minority large or small, are
alone agreed. The force of persuasion may secure national legislation
in advance of that which many local communities already have or are
seeking to secure. The increase of national power through the work of
national officials is not deemed politically sound by some persons who
favor specific action by the states alone in such matters as maternity
aid. The tendency is, however, a proof of two things, one that we are
as a people becoming a nation; that is more a centralized and united
governmental force--and the other that more and more people are trying
in every way to secure a more uniform as well as a higher standard of
living for all our citizens.
=A Women's Lobby at the National Capitol.=--It is said that the most
powerful lobby in Washington is "the Public Welfare Lobby backed by
seven million organized American women." This lobby is composed of
representatives of the following organizations of women with number of
members estimated as indicated:
National League of Women Voters 2,000,000
General Federation of Women's Clubs 2,000,000
Women's Christian Temperance Union 500,000
National Congress of Mothers and
Parent-Teacher Associations 310,000
National Women's Trade Union League 600,000
Daughters of the American Revolution 200,000
American Home Economics Association 1,800
National Consumers' League (No number given)
American Association of University Women 16,000
National Council of Jewish Women 50,000
Girls' Friendly Society 52,000
Young Women's Christian Association 560,000
National Federation of Business and
Professional Women 40,000
Women's League for Peace and Freedom 2,500
This represents a formidable influence upon public affairs, one that
may do some harm along with much good, unless it goes to school to
social facts and balances its social sympathy (already shown in such
alert attention to the needs of the weaker and younger portion of the
nation) with sober and sane understanding of the difficulty of getting
progress in any line unless a majority of the people are unitedly in
favor of it and willing to sacrifice something in order to secure it.
There are signs already that among the leaders of women in the new
organization of Women Voters there is a feeling that the pendulum may
swing too far toward philanthropic measures, for some of which the
general public is as yet unprepared. The call is already made for
more concentration upon the better enforcement of existing laws,
rather than upon constant demand for new legislation in the interest
of social welfare.
=Women's Interest in Public Life a Social Asset.=--The fact, however,
that so many women are actively engaged not only in watching
legislation and in learning the character and ability of political
leaders in the national Congress, but also in trying to raise the
average life of the people of the country by and through better laws
and more efficient enforcement, is cause for great encouragement. It
shows that women came into their kingdom of political power just as
the state was ready to take on the functions no longer fully expressed
within the family circle. If we must be shocked by learning that a
baby a day is being given away in New York City through advertisements
in the daily papers, and with a haste and carelessness that proves
lack of responsibility in parents and guardians, we may be relieved of
fear that love of children is dying out when we see what are the
things that millions of women are now banded together to secure for
the betterment of all child-life. Largely owing to such efforts, fewer
babies die during the first year of life now in any listed one hundred
thousand, than ever before in our American history. If we find that
many people are living without the comforts they need and in
conditions inimical to health and morality, we can at least take
comfort in the fact that fewer go to the "poorhouse" than used to be
found there when all sorts of dependents were sent to that one
institution. With the state's new discrimination and graded assorting
of young and old and sick and well and sane and insane and normal and
subnormal, the state care is on lines at once more humane to the
individual and more helpful to social organization.
The state is indeed turning father and mother in its newer agencies
for social conservation and social aid to the distressed and
miserable. And as the state thus does the work that once was attempted
and poorly done by the collective family, it must more and more call
to its service the men and women of parental quality and of fit and
devoted expression of the protective and the nurturing elements of
human nature.
=Social Service in Peace.=--The state has always called for
sacrificial service from its members. It has called most of all for
such sacrificial service when danger seemed to threaten the national
existence, or enemies of the government lifted treasonable intent
against the peace and order to which the majority of citizens were
devoted. Now we are called upon, if only we can realize the new claims
upon the higher patriotism, to make the country we love what all
countries should be, a home of freedom, of mutual helpfulness, of
economic well-being and of incorrupt and progressive political order.
It has been said and truly, "The ideas of great men are apprehended
slowly, and a free and rational society must in part exist before the
dream of such a society can be interpreted." We have a dream of a
free, a noble, a competent, a happy people in our America. We must be
careful at every point lest by carelessness of political forms or lack
of understanding of what those forms should be, we hinder the
development of that free and rational society in which the noblest
thoughts and highest ideals of the best and finest of our leaders can
alone find root and grow.
=Problems Voters Must Solve.=--Three special problems are before the
voters of our country, problems commanding in importance and not easy
of solution. They are, first, the problem which inheres in our union
of States, with their wide divergence of climate, soil, industries,
population, standards of action and ideals of national and local
action. The problem is this: what shall we decide is the measure of
wise and useful division between the laws and conditions we shall make
national in extent of social control and in practical functioning of
political administration, and those of smaller autonomous units? What
shall belong to the Federal Government and make field for its
activity? What shall belong to the various States and make up their
separate systems of law and administration? And what shall be left to
each locality, or each county of each State, for its own political
activity? These are not easy questions to answer, and the constant
movement toward centralization of power, not only of standardization
but of control in the National Government (a movement which received
such an immense impetus during the war), is likely to make this a
movable problem of differing answers as our nation grows older. The
division of States may give a geographical symbol of deep inherent
differences of background of culture and even of race, or that
division may mean only a superficial mark of geographic outline
between two sets of communities alike in all their inheritance and
tendency. In any case, how much weight shall still be attached to
"States Rights," and how much shall we press for a uniform life
throughout all the land? What shall be the special duties of each
local community toward its common needs of education, of recreation,
of moral protection, and social order? How much in any given place
shall the tendency of neighbors to be unwilling to testify against
each other when wrong-doing is practised, and unable to withstand any
evil influence when near the centre of its working, lead us to unite
in demanding a larger unit for the Juvenile Court or the enforcement
of laws against commercialized vice or any other social concern where
justice demands a free hand and no favor to any group? These are
questions with which some of our volunteer agencies of social work
have wrestled. The answers that wise and good people have made to them
should have weight in any decision we may make as to the right and
effective divisions of law and its enforcement in our American system.
This problem of division of authority has within it a puzzling
counter-interpretation of our original Constitution and of our history
up to date. The doctrine of "States Rights," it is said, received its
death blow in the Civil War, but the equal political and civil rights
of the negro, which that war was supposed to establish as a national
concern, vary with the varying attitudes of people of the different
states toward the enforcement of the Constitutional Amendments which
were intended to secure those rights. The Southern States, it is said,
still stand for the dignity and autonomy of each Commonwealth in
matters of restriction upon labor and of provision for tax-supported
education, but the inner stronghold of the Federal Prohibition
Amendment is the section of the country south of Mason and Dixon's
line. The new States, again it is said, are more tenacious of national
centralization of government because more evidently drawing their
powers from the federal centre, but in the valley of the Mississippi
from north to south,--that section which promises to have the
determination of the course of American history in its hands for the
next hundred years,--there are signs that the state autonomy and the
state jealousy of invasion of local authority in the interest of
national conformity to federal law are not by any means unknown.
There should be some more carefully outlined and more commonly
understood principles of judgment to lead us to decisions, when a
thing we believe it good to do or a law we desire to set in place and
in operation call upon us for support, as to the best way of using
that support. Whether to try for a federal amendment or a national
statute, whether to work wholly within each State, or whether it is
matter which so depends upon local sentiment and local coöperation
that each smallest community centre must work out its own salvation,
or secure its own advance in independent work,--this is the problem.
=Comparison Between National and Local Effort.=--One reason why some
elements of social progress lag behind others which are not more
firmly believed in is that confusion of effort has followed the
contrary forms of attack upon the national, the state, or the local
governments for the furtherance of the object in which all parties
believe. Instances are not needed in this connection for every person
who has worked or who desires to work for social betterment finds this
question at the gateway of organized effort. Shall one turn to the
centralizing tendency in political life of our country for support of
a given measure, or shall one make a breakwater in that tendency and
concentrate attention upon the smaller political units?
=Preferential Voting.=--The second problem of political science and
art which presses upon the attention of our electorate is one which is
bound up in methods of selection and election of our legislators and
executives. The ever-recurring question of, "For whom shall we
vote?"--rests back upon the deeper question, "For whom shall we have a
chance to vote?" The primary was supposed to end the acknowledged
corruption and inadequacy of the caucus system. The primary is an
advance on the secret caucus with its choice of men for the highest
office by a few partisan politicians only, whose business it is to
keep party lines strong and to make them carry their candidate into
office. The primary, however, we see, is a very expensive method and
open to many dangers, and progressive students of political methods
are not satisfied with it. Why can we not move, and strongly, for
preferential voting? For some plan by which it shall be the public
purse only which secures the necessary printing and circularizing for
required information, and no personal differences in wealth shall have
any weight in the listing of names on the ballot? To have a law by
which any legally named number of voters (a sufficient number to keep
out lonely cranks, but not a sufficient number to suppress
considerable minorities) should indicate by petition desire for a
chance to vote for a specific representative of their political
ideals? The legal requirement that such persons so named should have a
place on the official ballot and that all voting citizens should be
able to indicate their graded preference for all candidates thus
officially listed, would give the people of a democracy a chance to
really choose the kind of legislators they want and the kind of
executives they think they need. In the present situation the
independent mind and conscientious purpose often has a choice only
between "necessary evils" or the refuge of the political "woods."
=Proportional Representation.=--The adoption of some form of
preferential voting can alone give the voters a chance for
proportional representation of their ideals and aims in legislative
bodies. We are seeing that the limits of useful partisanship in
politics are narrower than was once thought. No sane and sensible
person really believes that all of goodness and of wisdom is contained
in his party and that its success is a valid reason for "turning out
the rascals" of the other party. No sane and sensible person believes
that there is such a thing as "Democratic" economy, or "Republican"
justice, or "Socialistic" efficiency, or "Labor Party" good
government. There are only economy, efficiency, justice, and good
government. Each party may have a different ideal of the best method
of attaining these political necessities, and, therefore, since truth
is not gained by dogmatic assumptions of any one set of persons but by
approach to problems of mind and character from different angles of
experience and of study, each party should have its representatives in
the legislative bodies of nation, state, and community. And every new
idea of political reform and social progress that by dint of hard work
among the intellectual and moral élite has gained a substantial
following in public opinion of even a relatively small minority, has,
in justice, and in demand for constant advance in human affairs, a
right to a place in the high debate of political leadership. It is,
therefore, for those who believe in the worth and use of freedom and
of mutual tolerance and respect, in political discussion and action,
to work for some method of selection of political representatives of
the people which will make our legislative bodies more truly official
sections of the thought and moral ideal of the whole life of the body
politic. This is, perhaps, the greatest of the political calls for
increased wisdom and practical sense in our country.
The third problem which presses for attention, study and possible
solution upon the voters of the United States, and one in which the
new voters, the women, are peculiarly concerned and in a position of
past experience and of present activity to add much weight and value
to the debate it occasions, is this:
=What Shall Public and What Shall Private Social Service
Attempt?=--How far and by what ways shall the varied philanthropic and
educational activities which are named in mass "social work," and
which have been developed and are now so largely operated by private
and volunteer agencies and organizations, be made a part of the
official service of the father and the mother state? In this social
work, so far, the few have set a pattern of aid to individuals, which
public agencies have tended to take over without much serious study of
whether in any particular case the transfer was necessary or wise.
This change has often been made, also, without determining whether or
not further supervisory work by the private citizen was needed to keep
the social enterprise true to its original and tested principles of
action. The time has come when in all such changes from private and
volunteer work of a few to the demand for support and the dependence
upon guidance of the many, through public officials, we should have
some clear guiding principle. What that principle may be it is not the
purpose here to discuss, but the state that is now doing so much that
only families were formerly expected to do, and is attempting to do so
much that only trained and devoted service of experts chosen by
acknowledged leaders in social service has previously tried to
accomplish, must be tutored and must be supervised by a more
intelligent electorate if it is to do its more ambitious tasks well.
No private agency should allow its finest fruits of longest study and
effort to be absorbed by official provision and control, unless it can
gain assurance that those fruits will be secure in the transfer.
This all indicates that women voters who have, happily, no past
bondage to partisanship to overcome, who entered upon their political
power with no pledges to any one party to hamper their free action,
and who, being indebted to progressive party leaders in every one of
the political divisions, have friends in every one, may and should do
much to help progressive and independent men voters to solve the
deeper problems of our political situation with clarity of judgment
and true patriotic devotion.[21]
=Difficulty in Being a Good American Citizen.=--We have the most mixed
of populations. We have the greatest variety of inherited national and
racial backgrounds in the electorate. We have the widest stretches of
country, and therefore the most difficult adjustments to any
centralized system of government. We have the most mobile common life,
our people moving from State to State, and from one sectional interest
to another with bewildering frequency. We have as yet no universal
schooling even in the rudiments of reading and writing of the English
language to serve as common basis for common knowledge. We have a lack
of ethical unity in many basic problems of the family, the industrial
order, the type of tax-supported schooling, and the ideals of
patriotism. These conditions seem to make it more difficult to become
a first-class American citizen than to achieve political competency in
any other government on earth. Even with the confusion in countries
abroad, even in the European tangles of feuds and suspicions and the
horrible weight of starvation and physical weakness of the Old World,
we may yet, if serious in our judgment of American life, soberly
acknowledge the greatest difficulties of all political adjustment
which lie within our own political life. Such acknowledgment is not to
any true American of the older stock and the more noble patriotism a
confession of discouragement or an apology for social failures in our
common life. It is rather, for all nobler and wiser citizens, a
stimulant to constant vigilance in defence of inherited liberties and
a call to deeper consecration and more devoted service in our
political relationship. Finally, the father and the mother state does
not try or want to live to itself alone. We have learned that
selfishness in the private family leads to social ills and weakness
which society in general, which surrounds all private families, must
correct and amend. Are we not learning in the awful light of the
recent world conflagration that selfishness in nations leads to social
ills and weakness which can be corrected only by world organization
for world well-being?
=Our Country a Member of the Family of Nations.=--That America we love
and would serve with a higher patriotism and a wiser political method
is a part of the great family of nations, and if it has learned any
lessons of fatherly and motherly function of state care and
development of the individual life, it has learned those lessons not
for isolated national culture, but as a part of the universal
schooling in the gospel of human brotherhood.
Rightly to understand and rightly to apply that teaching of
race-experience in all the complicated life of international
relationship is more truly to serve the best interests of every
smallest community within our own nation. As Immanuel Kant declared so
long ago, "The constantly progressive operation of the good principle
works toward erecting in the human race, as a community under moral
laws, a kingdom which shall maintain the victory over evil and secure
under its domination an eternal peace."
It has been urged that patriotism is the piety of the school, and
brotherhood is the gospel of the church, and justice is the righteous
law of industry, and mutual reverence and mutual affection are the
heart of the family life. If this be true, then patriotism itself is
the working-out in ever-widening circles of that ideal of coöperation
for the common good, which shall at last make every Father and Mother
State a worthy member of the Family of Nations.
=Vows of Civic Consecration.=--The Athenian youth took a solemn pledge
when he arrived at the age when his relation to the City became
consciously one of loyal service. This vow may be translated as
follows: "We will never bring disgrace to this our City by any act of
dishonesty or cowardice nor ever desert our comrades. We will fight
for the ideals and sacred things of the City both alone and with many.
We will revere and obey the City laws and do our best to incite a like
respect and reverence in others. We will strive unceasingly to quicken
in all the sense of civic duty, that thus in all ways we may transmit
this City, greater, better and more beautiful to all who shall come
after us." Should not some such solemn act of consecration mark the
advent of each youth into the actual citizenship of his town and his
country? A modern writer, Thomas L. Hinckley, has summed up a
"Municipal Creed" as the utterance of the "Spirit of the Modern City,"
as follows:
"I believe in myself--in my mission as defender of the liberties
of the people and guardian of the light of civic idealism.
I believe in my people--in the sincerity of their hearts and the
sanity of their minds--in their ability to rule themselves and to
meet civic emergencies--in their ultimate triumph over the forces
of injustice, oppression, exploitation and iniquity.
I believe that good food, pure water, clean milk, abundant light
and fresh air, cheap transportation, equitable rents, decent
living conditions and protection from fire, from thieves and
cut-throats and from unscrupulous exploiters of human life and
happiness, are the birth-right of every citizen within my gates;
and that insofar as I fail to provide these things, even to the
least of my people, in just this degree is my fair name tarnished
and my mission unfulfilled.
I believe in planning for the future, for the centuries which are
to come and for the many thousands of men, women and children who
will reside within my gates and who will suffer in body, in mind
and in worldly goods unless proper provision is made for their
coming.
I believe in good government and in the ability of every city to
get good government; and I believe that among the greatest
hindrances to good government are obsolete laws--which create
injustice; out-grown customs--which are unsocial; and antiquated
methods--which increase the cost of government and destroy its
efficiency.
I believe that graft, favoritism, waste or inefficiency in the
conduct of my affairs is a crime against my fair name; and I
demand of my people that they wage unceasing war against these
municipal diseases, wherever they are found and whomsoever they
happen to touch.
I believe that those of my people who, by virtue of their
strength, cleverness or thrift, or by virtue of other
circumstances, are enabled to lead cleaner lives, perform more
agreeable work or think more beautiful thoughts than those less
fortunate, should make recompense to me, in public service, for
the advantages which I make it possible for them to enjoy.
I believe that my people should educate their children in the
belief that the service of their city is an honorable calling and
a civic duty, and that it offers just as many opportunities for
the display of skill, the exercise of judgment or the development
of initiative as do the counting houses and markets of the
commercial world.
Finally, I believe in the Modern City as a place to live in, to
work in, and to dream dreams in--as a giant workshop where is
being fabricated the stuff of which the nation is made--as a
glorious enterprise upon whose achievements rests, in large
measure, the future of the race."[22]
We may think that these utterances stress too much the city life and
fail to visualize the wide stretches of rural communities and the
small towns where a few people only make the atmosphere and administer
the laws. The spirit, however, must be the same, whether one dwells
with the crowd or on some lonely farm. The spirit of that genuine
patriotism which is not satisfied to have one's country less noble and
less unselfish than its own ideal of what a country should be.
=The Children's Code of Morals.=--It is in the spirit of such a
patriotism that _The Children's Code of Morals_ has been prepared by
William J. Hutchins, and is sent broadcast by the "National Institute
for Moral Instruction," In this code, boys and girls are enjoined and
pledge themselves to be good Americans by obeying the following laws:
"The Law of Health; The Law of Self-control; The Law of Self-reliance;
The Law of Reliability; The Law of Clean Play; The Law of Duty; The
Law of Good Workmanship; The Law of Friendly Coöperation in Good
Team-work; The Law of Kindness; The Law of Loyalty."
Though children and youth may learn these laws by heart and understand
and agree to the fine statements by which they are expounded and make
through them a detailed promise to obey the laws of "right living" by
which alone the citizenship of our country may serve its best
interests--that in itself could not make all citizens what they should
be. It is, however, a lesson of the past that youth needs some outward
and visible sign of its "coming of age." Now, as in the past, youth
needs some form of consecration to high ideals. It needs some ceremony
that shall fix the lessons of patriotism, of social responsibility and
of community service, and stir to noble purpose. The education that
begins in the home is not finished by any college graduation or even
by vocational training for a useful career. Its great "Commencement"
is that which ushers the young man, and now also the young woman, into
conscious and responsible relationship to the body politic. This
Commencement should have its solemn and beautiful ritual and should be
made the great event of all young life.
QUESTIONS ON THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER STATE
1. What changes in legislation and in law enforcement is the
entrance of women into the electorate likely to effect?
2. Should the State be more and more charged with responsibility
for care of the weak, the defective, the delinquent, dependent,
and sick, the out-of-work, the aged, and those heavily burdened
by parentage of young children, and if so, how can society
escape a tendency to remove from individuals and from the
family that sense of personal responsibility upon which the
best things in our inherited social order have been built?
3. Should women voters particularly address themselves to
increasing public welfare provisions or should they try to
solve difficult problems of adjustment between public and
private effort for the common good? If both, how can they
adjust effort to party politics on the one side, and to
independent use of the power of the vote on the other side?
4. When volunteer organizations of charity, correction, and
education transfer their work to official boards and legal
provisions, that work, experience shows, sometimes is lowered
in standards and loses in efficiency. How can voting women
prevent this? How can a new class of voters, hitherto specially
interested in getting things desired done by others, best help
others to do things through their own political action?
5. The army intelligence tests showed that our white drafted army
contained 12 per cent. superior men, 66 per cent. average men,
and 22 per cent. inferior men. This statement, made by Cornelia
J. Cannon in _The Atlantic Monthly_ of February, 1922, leads
the author of the article to the conclusion that "our political
experiments, such as representation, recall, direct election of
senators, etc., are endangered by the presence of so many
irresponsible and unintelligent voters." Is there a remedy for
this, other than waiting for the slow process of education? If
so, what is it?
6. _The Neighborhood: A Study of Social Life in the City of
Columbus, Ohio_, by R.D. McKenzie, of the University of
Washington, gives a good example of what such a study of one's
own locality should be. Is it not the duty of those having the
leisure and the ability to inaugurate such a study in the
locality in which their political relation is most immediate?
If so, how can a Women's Club, or a League of Women Voters,
start such a study?
FOOTNOTES:
[20] _Woman's Share in Social Culture._
[21] See _A Course in Citizenship_, by Ella Lyman Cabot, and others.
[22] Printed in _The Survey_ of October 31, 1914.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS AND ARTICLES MENTIONED IN THE TEXT
INTRODUCTORY NOTE AND CHAPTER I Page 5, 19
Man and Woman, by Havelock Ellis.
The Evolution of Marriage, by Le Tourneau.
Woman's Share in Primitive Culture, by Otis T. Mason.
The Evolution of Sex, by Geddes and Thompson.
The History of Matrimonial Institutions, by George Elliott
Howard, University of Chicago Press.
Sex and Society, by W.I. Thomas.
Descriptive and Historical Sociology, by Franklin H.
Giddings.
The Family as a Social and Educational Institution, by
Willystine Goodsell.
Social History of the American Family, by Arthur W.
Calhoun.
Sociology and Modern Social Problems, by Charles A.
Ellwood.
The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, by Arthur
J. Todd.
Woman and Labor, by Olive Schreiner.
The Family, by Elsie Clews Parsons.
The Family, by Helen Bosanquet.
Women and Economics, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Love and Marriage, by Ellen Key.
The Family in Its Sociological Aspects, by J.Q. Dealey.
The New Basis of Civilization, by Simon Patten.
Social Control and Social Psychology, by Edward A. Ross.
Children Born Out of Wedlock, by George B. Mangold,
University of Missouri.
The Federal Children's Bureau, Publications 42 and 77.
Report of the Committee on Status and Protection of
Illegitimate Children of the National Conference of
Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, 1921.
Normal Life, Chapter V, The Home, by Edward T. Devine.
Taboo and Genetics, by Knight, Peters, and Blanchard.
A Social Theory of Religious Education, Part IV, Chapter,
The Family, by George Albert Coe.
CHAPTER II Page 46
Conveniences for the Farm-home, Farmers' Bulletin No.
270.
The Farm Kitchen as a Workshop, Farmers' Bulletin No. 607.
The Business of the Household, by C.W. Taber.
CHAPTER III Page 69
Agamemnon, The Choephori and The Furies, The Tragedies of
Aeschylus.
Native Tribes of Southeast Australia, Chapter on The
Education of the Australian Boy, by A.W. Howitt.
The Patriarchal Family, by Sir Henry Maine.
Pure Sociology, Chapter XIV, The Androcentric Theory, by
Dr. Lester F. Ward.
Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income, by Mary
Hinman Abel.
CHAPTER IV Page 90
Danish Care for the Aged, by Edith Sellers.
The State and Pensions for Old Age, by J.A. Spender.
Report of Bureau of Census, Department of Commerce.
Old-age Support of Women Teachers, by Lucille Eaves,
Department of Research of Educational and Industrial
Union of Boston, Mass.
The Trade Union and the Old Man, by John O'Grady,
_American Journal of Sociology_, November, 1917.
CHAPTER V Page 116
Deuteronomy, The Bible.
Tembarom, F.H. Burnett.
CHAPTER VI Page 124
Early Massachusetts Laws, quoted by Howard in Matrimonial
Institutions.
CHAPTER VII Page 141
Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income, by M.H.
Abel.
CHAPTER VIII Page 164
A Uniform Joint Guardianship Law, Conference of
Commissioners for Uniform State Laws.
The Sheppard-Towner Act for Maternity Benefits, U.S.
Children's Bureau.
Infant Mortality Rates, U.S. Children's Bureau.
Extra Family Wage, _The Survey_, November 12. 1921.
National Endowment of Motherhood, English Authors.
Reports of the National Child Labor Committee.
Report of Division of Child Hygiene, New York City, Dr.
Josephine Baker.
The Soul of Black Folks, by Doctor Dubois.
Chicago Study of 1,500 Families, Dr. Alice Hamilton.
Summary of Child Welfare Demands, by Julia C. Lathrop, in
_The Child_, August, 1920.
CHAPTER IX Page 189
The Hygiene of Mind, by Dr. T.S. Clouston.
The Social Cost of Unguided Ability, by Professor Woods.
Hereditary Improvement, by Francis Galton.
Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics, by Dr. Lester F. Ward,
_American Journal of Sociology_.
Hereditary Genius, by Francis Galton.
Euthenics, A Plea for Better Living Conditions as a First
Step Toward Higher Human Efficiency, by Ellen H.
Richards.
The New Party, by Andrew Reid.
Charting Parents, by Caroline Hedger, Elizabeth McCormick
Memorial Fund Publications.
Observation Record for the Selection of Gifted Children in
the Elementary Schools, by Julia A. Badenes.
Universal Training for American Citizenship, by William H.
Allen.
Books for Parents Listed by Federation for Child Study, 2
West Sixty-fourth Street, New York.
Social Organization, Chapter on Democracy and Distinction,
by C.H. Cooley.
CHAPTER X Page 205
Mental Diseases in Twelve States, by Horatio M. Pollock
and Edith M. Forbush, _Mental Hygiene_, April, 1921.
The Kallikak Family, Dr. F.H. Goddard.
Treatise on Idiocy, by Dr. Edward Seguin.
Proceedings and Addresses of Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth
Sessions of American Association for Study of the
Feeble-minded.
Experiments to Determine Possibilities of Subnormal Girls
in Factory Work, by Elizabeth B. Bigelow, _Mental
Hygiene_, April, 1921.
Vocational Probation for Subnormal Youth, by Arnold
Gesell, _Mental Hygiene_, April, 1921.
Report of Mental Examination of 839 Women and Girls, by
Anne T. Bingham, New York Probation and Protective
Association.
Colony and Extra-institutional Care of the Feeble-minded,
by Charles Bernstein, _Mental Hygiene_, January, 1920.
Human Nature and the Social Order, Chapter on Personal
Degeneracy, by C.H. Cooley.
Psychology, by William James.
Brain and Personality, by F.E. Thompson.
CHAPTER XI Page 219
Concerning Prisoners, by Bernard Glueck, _Mental Hygiene_,
April, 1918.
Report on the Draft Examinations, by H.W. Lanier.
Out-of-school Activities, _The Survey_.
Moral Equivalents for War, by William James.
The Socially Inadequate, by Harry H. Laughlin.
CHAPTER XII Page 233
Sociology and Modern Problems, by C.A. Ellwood.
The Divorce Problem, by W.F. Willcox.
Problems of Marriage and Divorce in Woman's Share in
Social Culture, by Anna Garlin Spencer.
Marriage and Social Control, by Anna Garlin Spencer, in
_Harvard Theological Review_, July, 1914.
CHAPTER XIII Page 246
History of Factory Legislation, by Hutchins and Harrison.
Census Estimates of Women Wage-earners.
Code for Women in Industry, by Department of Labor,
Division of Women in Industry.
Democracy in the Household, by Lucy Salmon, in _American
Journal of Sociology_, January, 1912.
CHAPTER XIV Page 269
Ethical Culture School and Pioneer Manual Training School,
New York, Reports.
Democracy and Education, by John Dewey.
The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, by Arthur
R. Todd.
Sex-Education, by Maurice A. Bigelow.
Moral Education Lessons, by F.A. Gould.
Categories of Moral and Civic Instruction, French School
Book.
Principles of Sociology with Educational Applications, by
Frederick C. Clow.
Dynamic Sociology, Chapter on Types of Education, by
Lester F. Ward.
A Social Theory of Religious Education, Chapter on The
Learning Process Considered as the Achieving of Character,
by George Albert Coe.
CHAPTER XV Page 290
First Report of Massachusetts State Board of Education, by
Horace Mann.
Songs, by Emily Dickinson, The Book.
Publications of the Foreign Language Information Service.
Publications of the Children's Bureau.
List of Representatives of Women's Organizations in the
Public Welfare Lobby at Washington.
Publications of the Societies to Further Preferential
Voting and Proportional Representation.
A Course in Citizenship, by Ella Lyman Cabot, and others.
The Pledge of the Athenian Youth.
A Municipal Creed, by T.L. Hinckley, in _The Survey_,
October 31, 1914.
The Children's Moral Code of American Citizenship, by W.
J. Hutchins, National Institute for Moral Instruction.
Army Intelligence Tests, by Cornelia J. Cannon, in
_Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1922.
The Neighborhood, by R.D. McKenzie.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES UNDER CHAPTER HEADS
Chapter First, The Family:
The Ethics of the Family, James S. Tufts, Ph.D.,
_International Journal of Ethics_, Chicago, Illinois.
College Women and Race Suicide, by William M. Sadler,
M.D., in _Ladies' Home Journal_ of April, 1922.
Applied Eugenics, by Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill
Johnson.
Program of a School for Homemakers, by L.D. Harvey, of
Stout Institute, Menominee, Wisconsin (a pioneer
movement for special training of women in higher
institutions of learning), published by Bureau of
Education, Washington, D.C., in 1911.
The Sex-Factor in Human Life, by T.W. Gallaway, Ph.D.,
American Social Hygiene Association, New York City.
Can the State Solve the Marriage Problem? by Gordon
Reeves, in _Physical Culture Magazine_ of May, 1918,
summing up 400 answers to 60 questions concerning
government financial aid to mothers.
Mothers' Pensions, For and Against, in _The Independent_
of November 9, 1914. A brief summary with bibliography.
Chapter Second, The Mother:
On the side of Birth Release, address by Louis J. Dublin,
Ph.D., Statistician of Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company, at Sixth Annual Meeting of American Social
Hygiene Association, October, 1919. Library American
Social Hygiene Association, 370 Seventh Avenue, New York
City.
Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes, by C.
Gasqueine Hartley.
La Question Sexuelle et la Femme, by Doctour Toulouse.
Bibliotheque-Charpentier.
The Logical Basis of Woman Suffrage, by A.G. Spencer, in
_Annals of American Academy of Political and Social
Science_, February, 1910.
Equal Pay and the Family: A Proposal for the National
Endowment of Motherhood, published by Headley Bros.,
London, England.
Chapter Third, The Father:
What Makes a Man a Husband? by Havelock Ellis, in
_Pictorial Review_ of September, 1919.
Chapter Fourth, The Grandparents:
Old Age Dependency in the United States, by L.W. Squier.
Chapter Eighth, The Children of the Family:
Program of Nutrition Clinics for Delicate Children, 44
Dwight Street, Boston, Mass.
Text of Bill H.R. 15400, to Create a Department of
Education in the Federal Government with a Cabinet Head.
Chapter Twelfth, The Broken Family:
Resolution for Uniform Divorce Legislation Introduced in
Senate by Wesley Jones, of Washington, with Hearings
before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Judiciary,
Senate Proceedings, Washington, D.C.
The Broken Family, Jane Colcord, Russell Sage Foundation.
Chapter Thirteenth, The Family and the Workers:
The Labor Contract from Individual to Collective
Bargaining, by Margaret Anna Schaffner, Ph.D., _Bulletin
of University of Wisconsin_, No. 182.
Women and Economic Revolution, by Theresa Schmid McMahon,
Ph.D., _Bulletin of University of Wisconsin_, No. 498.
The Industrial Training of Women, by Florence Marshall, in
_Annals of American Academy of Political and Social
Science_.
Report of Committee on Elimination of Waste in Industry of
the American Engineers' Council, appointed by Herbert
Hoover, in Publications of the Society of Mechanical
Engineers, 29 West Thirty-ninth Street, New York City.
Women in Industry in War-Time, by Frederick Warren
Junkins, a bibliography in _Bulletin of the Sage
Foundation Library_, 130 East Twenty-second Street, New
York City.
Chapter Fourteenth, The Family and the School:
A National Program of Education, by Hugh S. Magill, Field
Secretary of the National Education Association, Address
at Commission on Reconstruction, Headquarters N.E.A.,
1201 Sixteenth Street, Washington, D.C.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CURRENT PUBLICATIONS, WITH SUGGESTIONS
In pursuance of the practical aim of this book, an up-to-date study of
current social problems is urged and the use of reports and literature
issued by National and State organizations is recommended.
In addition, therefore, to the list of books and articles cited or
referred to in the text, the following special sources of information
concerning current activities and the discussion of immediate social
problems are given as aids to class study or to individual reading:
1. The Reports and Bulletins issued by the Federal Departments;
especially the Children's Bureau, Bureau of Education,
Vocational Education Board, Department of Agriculture,
Washington, D.C.
2. Reports from State Departments in the fields of Labor,
Education, Charity, Correction, Employment Agencies, and
Health.
3. Reports of the National Conference of Social Work (formerly
called the National Conference of Charities and Correction),
Office, 315 Plymouth Court, Chicago, Illinois. These Reports
constitute the best record of social movements we possess.
Since 1873 the attempt has been made each year to take account
of social stock and show what is being done for all classes
needing help toward better living. Alexander Johnson prepared
a Topical Index which serves to guide the student through the
earlier volumes, and there are now arrangements for securing
separate papers on particular subjects.
4. The Russell Sage Foundation, office, 130 East Twenty-second
Street, New York City, aims at the improvement of living
conditions and issues valuable publications which are
generously distributed. Enquiries are answered in a helpful
manner.
5. The American Social Hygiene Association, Office, 370 Seventh
Avenue, New York City, offers aid to all who seek to check
vice, sustain family life, and lessen diseases related to
prostitution. It publishes both a Quarterly and a Bulletin and
shares in a special library open to students.
6. The National Committee for Mental Hygiene at the same Office
Headquarters, publishes a valuable Quarterly and is a source
of information respecting the treatment and prevention of
mental diseases.
7. The American Association for Organizing Family Social Work,
Mrs. John M. Glenn, Chairman, with Office at 130 East
Twenty-second Street, is able to advise in relief work and
organized efforts toward family rehabilitation.
8. The Child Welfare League of America, C.C. Carstens, Director,
at the same Headquarters, 130 East Twenty-second Street, New
York City, can be consulted as to standards of child-care and
the status of child-helping in various parts of the country.
9. The National Child Labor Committee, Owen Lovejoy, Secretary,
with Office at 105 East Twenty-second Street, New York City,
furnishes information and practical aid in any part of the
United States and publishes valuable pamphlets showing
child-labor conditions.
10. The Community Service Agency, headed by Joseph Lee, with
Office at 315 Fourth Avenue, New York City, will help local
communities anywhere in organizing for better use of leisure
time.
11. The Consumer's League, Mrs. Florence Kelley, General
Secretary, with Office at 44 East Twenty-third Street, New
York City, promotes legislation for enlightened standards for
women and minors in industry and publishes important material
for students and workers.
12. The American Home Economics Association, which publishes the
_Journal of Home Economics_ at 1211 Cathedral Street,
Baltimore, Maryland, is an organization devoted to
standardizing the housemother's task and helping toward
efficient home-making.
13. The National Woman's Trade Union League, with Office at 311
South Ashland Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, publishes a
journal and other material of special interest to women
wage-earners.
14. The National Health Council, with Office at 370 Seventh
Avenue, New York City, and at 411 Eighteenth Street,
Washington, D.C., issues valuable publications.
15. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, with Office at 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City, and the
National Urban League for Social Service among negroes aim at
helping in problems of race adjustment.
16. The General Federation of Women's Clubs, with headquarters in
Washington, D.C., at 1734 N. Street, N.W., has centres of
influence throughout the country and furnishes the personnel
of many leaders in local social enterprises.
17. The National Council of Women of the United States, member of
the International Council of Women of the World, has
headquarters at the home of its President, Mrs. Philip North
Moore, Lafayette Avenue, St. Louis, Mo., and includes in its
membership all the leading bodies of organized women in the
country. At its Biennial gatherings reports of work are
presented from all these Associations and afterward published.
18. The National League of Women Voters, the child of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association, has its headquarters at
532 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., with Mrs. Maud
Wood Park as President, and energizes and directs a large
force of women in numerous local Leagues in non-partisan work
for better government.
19. The Woman's Party, with Headquarters also in the National
Capital, aims to secure a Federal Amendment which will wipe
out all sex-discriminations. It publishes much interesting
material.
20. Among the most valuable publications for constant reading for
those who would keep in touch with important social movements
in all fields is _The Survey_, published at 112 East
Nineteenth Street, New York City, Paul U. Kellogg, Editor.
21. The _American Journal of Sociology_, published by University
of Chicago Press, and the _Journal of Applied Sociology_,
published by the University of California, give more extended
treatment of the principles underlying social service.
22. The Council of Jewish Women, the National Catholic Welfare
Council, the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian
Associations, and the Federal Council of the Churches of
Christ, together with the Federation of Religious Liberals,
The Laymen's League, and Women's Alliance of the Unitarian
body, and other church organizations, have departments or
committees engaged specifically in work for the stability of
the family and the betterment of the home, as well as for the
ennobling of the common life and for the organization of the
world for permanent peace.
23. The Educational interests of the country are served by many
agencies and organizations, chief among them the U.S. Bureau
of Education, the Federal Board of Vocational Education at
Washington, D.C., which publish invaluable material, and the
National Education Association, with office at 1201 Sixteenth
Street, Washington, D.C., membership in which keeps one in
touch with progressive movements.
The vital thing for one who would prepare for practical service in
any line of social work is to study people and conditions in
one's own locality and then compare what is done or attempted
in that locality with what is considered by those best fitted
to judge to be the best and most efficient standards for
service of the kind considered.
The vital thing for those who would help in the educational field
is to know their local schools, their teachers, buildings,
equipment, management, and financial support, and then to
secure all possible national, state, and local aid in making
those schools the best they can be.
24. If the newest movements in education are chosen for study,
read The New Education, by L. Haden Guest, and other articles
in _The New Era_, published by Hodder and Co., London,
England. Also Nursery School Experiment, by Bureau of
Educational Experiments, 144 West Thirteenth Street, New York
City.
For comparison with these, read Talks to Teachers, by William
James, and also pamphlets of Home Education Series, by
Charlotte Mason, published by Parents' National Education
Union, 26 Victoria Street, London, England.
25. For economic reform especially helpful to family life, study
the publications of the Coöperative League of America, Doctor
and Mrs. Warbasse, Directors, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
26. For political reform, study the publications of Proportional
Representation League, 1417 Locust Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
* * * * *
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