The family and its members

by Anna Garlin Spencer

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.