The family and its members

by Anna Garlin Spencer

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?