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[ToC]

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