6. What in your judgment are the first evidences of character development? In what way do these come to the surface in the family? What is the factor of love in the development of character?
7. Is that an ideal family in which none of the members bear pain or are called upon for self-denial? Can you see any especial advantage to character in the very difficulties and apparent disadvantages in the life of the family?
[5] See "Democracy in the Home," American Journal of Sociology, January, 1912.
[6] Francis G. Peabody, The Approach to the Social Question, p. 94.
CHAPTER IV
THE RELIGIOUS PLACE OF THE FAMILY
§ 1. DEVELOPMENT AS A RELIGIOUS INSTITUTION
The family is the most important religious institution in the life of today. It ranks in influence before the church. It has always held this place. Even among primitive peoples, where family life was an uncertain quantity, the relations of parents, or of one of the parents, to the children afforded the opportunity most frequently used for their instruction in tribal religious ideals and customs. We cannot generalize as to the practices of savage man in regard to family life, for those practices range from common promiscuous relationships, without apparent care for offspring, to a family unity and purity approaching the best we know; but this much is certain, that there was a common sense of responsibility for the training of young children in moral and religious ideas and customs, and that, in the degree that the family approached to separateness and unity, it accepted the primary responsibility for this task. The higher the type of family life the more fully does it discharge its function in the education of the child.[7]