Other differences which should find mention under this heading are those that arise when the environment is changed by immigration. The man who precedes his wife by many years in coming to America has often outgrown her when she finally joins him, even if he has formed no other family ties. The handicap is not wholly overcome when the couple come to this country together, for the much greater opportunities of the man to learn American ways may drive a wedge between him and his wife. On the other hand it is a popular saying, particularly among young Italian immigrants, that girls who have been in America too long do not make good wives, that when a man wants to marry he had better send for a girl from the old country; and these marriages seem on the whole to turn out well.
4. Wrong Basis of Marriage.—Included here should be hasty marriages, mercenary marriages, marriages entered into unwillingly after pregnancy had occurred, as well as marriages where coercion was a factor for other reasons.[10]
When there have been sex relations before marriage, unless the custom of the community sanctions such intimacy, there are likely to develop jealousies, quarrels, and ill feeling. "He do be always castin' it up at me, but sure, 'twas himself was to blame" is one version of the age-old story.
There should also be included here those irregular unions called "common law marriages," which are still permitted in many of our states. The protection supposed to be afforded to the woman by this institution is mainly fictitious, as it is practically impossible to secure conviction for bigamy if one of the marriages was of the common law variety. A common law husband who deserts, even if he admits his wife's legal claim upon him, does not feel morally bound; and this fact undoubtedly plays its part in the causation of such desertions.[11]
5. Lack of Education.—More is included under this title than scanty "book-learning." Not only the morally undisciplined child but the mentally undisciplined youth is handicapped as spouse and parent. Ignorance of the physical and spiritual bases of married life is a potent cause of desertion. So also is a limited industrial equipment. Irregular school attendance, early "working papers," a dead-end job with no educational possibilities in it—these form a frequent background for later unsuccess in life and in marriage.
There seemed at first no good explanation for the desertion of Alfred West. Both his record and his wife's were good, and their mutual fondness for the children seemed a strong bond. They constantly bickered, however, over the small income Alfred was able to earn, and his wife and her relatives "looked down" upon him as being lower than they in the social scale. Inquiry into past history showed that he had grown up in a southern community where there were no facilities for education, and that he could not even read and write until after his marriage. Although of average capacity, he was restricted by his early lack of training in his choice of a job; and the mortification and sense of inferiority which his wife fostered led to discouragement and indifference, which ended in desertion. A thorough understanding of the two backgrounds involved enabled a social worker to effect a real reconciliation, with the woman's eyes opened to her ungenerous behavior and the man taking steps to improve his education in a night school.
6. Occupational Faults.—Closely allied to the foregoing, and in some respects growing out of it, are the shortcomings on the employment side that contribute to marital instability. Most of these can be referred back to lack of education or opportunity in youth, or to defects of character. Laziness, incompetence, lack of skill in any trade, lack of application, or, on the other hand, the possession by a man with no business "stake" in the community of a trade at which he can work wherever he takes a fancy to go, or of a trade which is seasonal and shifting—all these have a direct relation to desertion.
The wife's competence and willingness to earn often seems to have a causal connection with the man's failure as "provider."[12]
Corresponding to and complementing the man's industrial defects, and springing from the same causes, is the woman's failure in the business of being a housewife. The wife's laziness, incompetence, lack of interest, and lack of skill and knowledge create, as one case worker puts it, "the sort of home that tends to get itself deserted." These faults of the wife are responsible for as many desertions, probably, as are the faults of the husband. When the man and the wife are both industrial failures we get the extremity of family breakdown to be found in records of "chronic non-support" cases.
7. Wanderlust.—As a cause of family desertion this has probably been overestimated. Some item of this sort appears in every list of causes of desertion which has ever been compiled, and there are more or less exceptional cases in which it probably plays a part. The boy who becomes a vagabond in childhood and early takes to the road does not, however, seem to be a marrying man; and the instances from case work in which it is clear that the thirst for adventure was at the bottom of desertion are rare. The man whose line of work before marriage led him from place to place seems, in fact, hardly to contribute his quota to the ranks of wife-deserters, and it is unusual to find sailors or other wanderers from force of circumstance figuring among them.