Home Problems from a New Standpoint

by Caroline Louisa Hunt

NEW WORK FOR THE HOME

WE have considered the effect of social, industrial, and political changes upon woman, upon man, upon the household employee, upon the health and beauty of the home, and upon the relations between the producer and consumer of wealth. It remains to ask how they are affecting the home itself, considered as an institution. Are they tending to cripple and destroy it, or are they merely tending to modify its external form and the “minutia of its daily usages”? Or is there perhaps a third and a better possibility that for the very reason that they are changing its form they are increasing its possibilities for social usefulness and for the enrichment of individual lives?

These questions can be answered only in the light of a clear distinction between the spirit of home and the form of home, between the purpose that lies back of its various activities and the material means which it employs for the accomplishment of that purpose. To spirit, the one essential is love. The love that leads to the founding of most homes has its origin in and springs from sex attraction, but crowns that purely self-regarding instinct with an unselfish desire for the welfare and happiness of its object. The impulse may, however, come from the love of parents who seek satisfactory means of preparing the child for independent life, or from the love of comrades who seek mutual helpfulness in close association, or from a love of broader application which seeks to provide a meeting place for those of like interests and aspirations. Something there must be of other-regarding affection, or the spirit is wanting.

Of this unselfish affection home is the expression, and all those material things which we are in the habit of associating with the home are the tools of the expression. Roofs and walls, furniture and dishes, may or may not be part of home. They are such only when they represent some one’s affectionate desire to secure for another the good things of life. Since home is an expression of affection, and not a means of making one’s self comfortable and happy, it follows that it approaches the ideal in proportion as love is strong and is successfully expressed. When one loves another very much, he desires that that other person may attain to completeness of life, and seeks to assist him to make full use of all the means at hand and to overcome, as far as possible, all those obstacles which are due to his natural endowment, or to his environment, and which lie between him and success. Men especially seem to forget that by means of their homes they can do more than protect their wives and shield them from hardship; that they can give them positive assistance in making the most of themselves and of their powers. This is what the intimate association that the home offers is for. If the home does not offer the opportunity for mutual understanding, it is a failure; but if it does not add mutual helpfulness, in the broadest sense, to mutual understanding, it is a worse failure; and it is frequently upon the external form of the home that its possibilities for such helpfulness depend.

Since the chief factor in determining the form of home is the need of the opportunity for close and intimate and helpful association, we may disregard the popular fear that the home will finally take upon itself the characteristics of a public institution, and will cease to offer facilities for private family life. Human intelligence, which suits means to ends, and which is ever coming to the aid of human affection, will prevent that. So long as affection lasts it will seek satisfactory expression in home life, and so long as intelligence endures it will stand in the way of the extension of the borders of the home beyond the possibilities of the mutual helpfulness to its members.

If home is to be a perfect expression of affection, it must not only provide the opportunity for close association, but it must also from time to time adjust itself and its activities to the opportunities which society offers to men and to women in fields unconnected with the household. If the home-making of either man or woman is to be satisfactory, it must not interfere unnecessarily or arbitrarily with the outside work that is offered to the other partner in home-making enterprise. This rule affects man’s home-making at present more than it does woman’s, for her opportunities are multiplying more rapidly than his, and they must be taken into account by him. At present, woman’s life differs from man’s not so much in the variety of occupations that are open to her as in the extent to which the home interferes with these occupations. Part of this interference is, of course, inevitable, being connected with the bearing and rearing of children; but part is avoidable, being connected with details of housekeeping which might be entrusted to specialists. If all women except professional housekeepers were relieved of the tasks of cooking and cleaning, or of the superintendence of such work, the external form of the average home would be somewhat radically changed. Much less of its space would be given to kitchen and laundry, and it would be planned to accommodate fewer industries. In this form, however, it might offer even more facilities for family life than it does now, and even larger opportunities for close association and mutual helpfulness. It might, too, offer to man a better chance than he has at present to express his love for his wife by helping her to take advantage of the opportunities offered to her outside of the home, and to add the pleasures of the cultivation and use of special talents to the joys of home and of family life.

But we have said that the home must at any given time provide those material and creature comforts which the individual cannot secure through other channels. Because of their recognition and acceptance of this fact, women are doing and will probably continue for a long time to do work of which they might be relieved. It is common to think of this work as necessary because of the mechanical difficulties lying in the way of public housekeeping for the benefit of private home-making. As a matter of fact, most of the difficulties of this kind have been removed. Food can be prepared satisfactorily in much larger quantities than it is in private houses. This is proved by the quality of the food that is served in first-class hotels, restaurants, and clubs. There is a greater cleanliness than that of private homes. This is proved by the fact that surgeons insist upon performing operations in hospitals, where the cleaning is done by specialists under expert direction. A few problems, those involved in the satisfactory transportation of cooked food, for example, remain to be solved, but these seem small when considered in connection with the inventive skill shown in other industrial enterprises. The real difficulty in the way is, of course, social rather than mechanical. There seems no doubt that by general agreement among the housekeepers of a given community to avail themselves more largely than at present of the results of modern industrial development, radical changes could be made in the form of the home and in its activities without decreasing the comfort and enjoyment of home life.

Perhaps the only real danger to the home lies in the fact that women, who are its natural protectors, are not free to control the industrial changes which affect it, and that these changes are being determined too largely by commercial interests. Experience has shown that women have had only a passive part in the removal of industries from the home, and that business enterprises have had a very active part. It has shown, also, that these changes have not been followed as speedily as they should have been by legislation necessary for the control of the industries under their new conditions. How slowly, for example, the Pure Food Law followed the factory method of preparing foods! Women must be freer to work in the interest of the home and of the children. They must be free from unnecessary labor and care within the home, and able to work for it in public; they must be free economically, and able to control their own incomes and to make experiments for themselves in new methods of housekeeping; they must be free politically, and able to control, by means of the ballot, public methods of preparing and transporting food, of caring for streets, of educating children, and of doing other work which affects the welfare of the home.

Present conditions in the home seem to demand that women must have greater and not less freedom in its service, greater and not less power for use in its protection; and so long as love and intelligence last, they may be expected to use added freedom and added power for the benefit of family life. They may be expected to do more and not less work for the home by adding to their work for it in private a public work demanded by its changed position.