83. Court of Domestic Relations.—One of the most significant improvements that has taken place is the establishment of a court of domestic relations, which already exists in several cities, and has made an enviable record. In the early experiments it seemed practicable in Kansas to make such a court a branch of the circuit and juvenile courts, so arranged that it would be possible to deal with the relations of the whole family; in Chicago the new tribunal was made a part of the municipal court. By means of patient questioning, first by a woman assistant and then by the judge himself, and by good advice and explicit directions as to conduct, with a warning that failure would be severely treated, it has been possible to unravel hundreds of domestic entanglements.
84. Tendencies.—There can be no question that the present tendency is in the direction of greater freedom in the marriage relation. Society will not continue to sanction inhumanity and immorality in the relations of man to woman. Marriage is ideally a sacred relation, but when it is not so treated, when love is dead and repulsion has taken its place, and especially when physical contact brings disease and suffering, public opinion is likely to consider that marriage is thereby virtually annulled, and to permit ratification of the fact by a decree of divorce. On the other hand, it is probable that increasing emphasis will be put on serious and well-prepared marriage, on the inculcation of a spirit of mutual love and forbearance through the agency of the church, and on the exhaustion of every effort to restore right relations, if they have not been irreparably destroyed, before any grant of divorce will be allowed. In this, as in all problems of the family, the spirit of mutual consideration for the interests of all concerned is that which must be invoked for a speedy and permanent solution. Education of young people in the importance of the family as a social institution and in the responsibility which every individual member should feel to make and keep the family pure and strong as a bulwark of social stability, is the surest means of preventing altogether its dissolution.
READING REFERENCES
"Report on Marriage and Divorce," 1906, Bureau of the Census, I, pages 272-274, 331-333.
"Reports of the National League for the Protection of the Family."
Post: Ethics of Marriage and Divorce, pages 62-84.
Dealey: The Family in Its Sociological Aspects, pages 96-108.
Howard: History of Matrimonial Institutions, III, pages 3-160.
Willcox: The Divorce Problem.