Rural Problems of Today

by Ernest R. Groves

The harmfulness of the homes that give their children too much care is not so generally realized as is the danger of the careless and selfish home, although, in a general way, everyone acknowledges that children may be given too much attention. The difficulty is to determine when a particular child is being given too much adult supervision and too little freedom. No one would question the fact that a child can become an adult only by a decrease of adult control and an increase of personal responsibility. Nevertheless, in spite of a general belief that a child needs an opportunity to win self-government, there are parents not a few who, from love and anxiety, run into the danger of protecting and controlling their children too much. The father or mother spends too much time with the children. The children are pampered. Too many indulgences are permitted them. Children in these over-careful homes are likely to grow up neurotic, conceited, timid, babyish, daydreaming men and women, who are of little use in the world and are often a serious problem for normal people. Probably this second type of a deficient home is more dangerous than the first, for children without sufficient home care often discover a substitute for their loss, but the over-protected children can obtain no antidote for their misfortune.

Everyone knows that attacks are increasingly being made upon the home in its present form by people who regard it as inefficient or as an anachronism. It is usually thought, however, that these attacks come mostly from agitators who set themselves more or less in opposition to all the institutions established by the present social order. Perhaps for this reason many do not believe that the family is receiving any serious criticism and its satisfactory functioning is therefore taken for granted. Such an easy-going optimism is not justified, for criticism of the home is coming from science as well as from the agitators. For example read "The Deforming Influences of the Home," by Dr. Helen W. Brown, which appeared in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology for April, 1917. She writes in one place as follows:

"Small wonder, then, if we begin to see that many of the mental ills that afflict men are not due, as has been commonly supposed, to lack of home training and the deteriorating influence of the world, but to too much home, to a narrow environment which has often deformed his mind at the start and given him a bias that can only be overcome through painful adjustments and bitter experience."

The psychoanalysts and the clinic psychologists are gathering material all the time that illustrates the bad results of home influences, and soon the agitator will be using this as proof of the harmfulness of the home as an institution. Some of us believe that no skepticism can be more dangerous socially than that relating to the value of the home. The best protection of the home must come from its moral efficiency and this cannot be obtained if people are unwilling to face reasonable and constructive criticism of the present working of the home. It is natural for the adult looking backward to his childhood to assume too much for the home, and then to transfer his emotion and his sense of the value of his home experience to the present family as an institution. With this enormous prejudice he refuses to see how often the family influence is morally and socially bad. It would surprise such a person at least to read an article like Emerson's "The Psychopathology of the Family" which recently appeared in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Material showing the unhappy results of inefficient family influences may be found in nearly any number of the Psychoanalytic Review.

There appear to be three causes of the unwholesomeness of home influences: lack of competition between homes, insufficient science regarding the home problems, and the pleasure basis of family organization.

First: There is no competition between homes. This is a most strikingly peculiar situation. The home is competed against by other institutions, such as the saloon, the moving picture, and the like, but as between homes there is no competition whatever. Home life is a private affair. Public opinion rules that it remain private. Nothing is sooner or more seriously resented than interference with or criticism of the home life of the individual. Professional men, such as doctors, lawyers, and ministers, and business men compete with one another, and from this competition comes constant, sane change and progress. But in the home, there being no competition, methods of home management, however bad, go on without change. Parents never realize their habitual carelessness in home life. The scientists are seeking to bring some sort of competition into home life, but they are under a very heavy handicap. In fact this handicap is greater now than formerly, for our forefathers made long visits with each other, sometimes staying for weeks in one home, thus giving ample opportunity for valuable criticisms and suggestions from guest to host.

Second: Bringing up children is really a scientific task and requires scientific information. But to obtain scientific information of practical value relating to the home is a baffling proposition. Human instincts and child development have been studied very little. We have theorized a great deal about such problems, but we have a remarkably small fund of actual accurate information. Such knowledge as we have recorded has been mostly obtained by parents, who have, of course, been prejudiced. In such cases we seldom know the later history of the child or the character of the home management and the actual contribution that the home made as compared with other influences. Men who have had to consider the entire history of an individual, who comes to the mind specialist for treatment because of some abnormality of mental or moral character, are gathering a great deal of valuable material regarding family influences, but much of this is in regard to men and women who in one way or another have been social failures. We have no material at present of equal value in regard to the persons who in a popular sense are "normal individuals." Such valuable information as we already have, we are not very seriously trying to distribute. Yet, fortunately, a beginning has been made and the entire problem is receiving an attention that it has never before had.

Third: People are finding it difficult to accept the responsibilities that belong to family life. Modern men and women more and more are basing the home upon pleasure and comfort and personal advantages in a narrow and thoughtless sense. When the crucial tests of family fitness come with the children, the parents fail. They have had little specific training for their greatest obligation and under such circumstances it is strange only that so often they do not greatly fail. Children are often unwelcome when they come into the home. Their coming disturbs the easy-going pleasure regime of the household and as they become somewhat of a burden to the father and mother, their interests are compromised, that their parents may continue to have some of the freedom which they enjoyed before the children came. Imagination cannot prepare for experience in such a degree as to make it possible for those who marry to realize the possible responsibilities of their choice. Because of this they often are found to have undertaken tasks against which in their heart of hearts they protest. It is natural for them, with such an internal dissatisfaction, not to commit themselves fully or sufficiently to the needs of their children.

Of one fact there is no doubt. Modern science is all the time illustrating that early childhood, the period when the influence of parents counts most, is the most significant of all the life of the individual. Diseases and weaknesses of a physical character that originate in early life bring about physical results that show in later life. The same fact is true, but not so easily seen, with reference to mental, moral, and social characteristics. The influence of the parents upon the thinking of the child is particularly important. A child must be trained to think rightly early in life. He should be saved from a fanciful, dreamy life. He should be made to face real conditions, for only as he tussles with reality is he prepared to enter the relationships later demanded of mature adults. In all this he is much influenced by his parents. At times real ability in the child to meet his tasks with childish heroism is crushed by his parents and his entire life spoiled.

The county worker, the minister, and the social leader in the country must in their work consider seriously the needs of the home. The great war will surely put a new strain upon the family. One result is likely to be a freer relation between the sexes. Women now in new occupations, because of the demands for labor due to war conditions, are likely to remain in considerable numbers. This will influence the home status. Schools are becoming more and more efficient and are taking over more of the home functions. Good social service in the country will encourage the home to use more fully its opportunities, to accept all its possible functions. It is well not to be in a hurry to take as our work that which the home fails to accomplish. The bad families, on the other hand, should be stripped of all functions possible. Such homes cannot be "eaten up" too soon.