Ethics

by John Dewey; James Hayden Tufts

Difference in Attitude toward the Family.—As if these differences in attitude based on disposition and occupation were not enough, we have a thoroughgoing difference in the attitude of men and women toward the very institution which invites them. The man is ready enough to assent to the importance of the family for the race, but his family means not an interference with other ambitions, but usually an aid to their fulfillment. His family is one interest among several, and is very likely subordinate in his thought to his profession or his business. In early ages to rove or conquer, in modern life to master nature and control her resources or his fellowmen—this has been the insistent instinct which urges even the long-tossed Ulysses from Ithaca and from Penelope again upon the deep. Woman, on the other hand, if she enters a family, usually abandons any other ambition and forgets any acquired art or skill of her previous occupation. To be the mistress of a home may be precisely what she would choose as a vocation. But there is usually no alternative if she is to have a home at all. It is not a question of a family in addition to a vocation, but of a family as a vocation. Hence woman must regard family life not merely as a good; it must be the good, and usually the exclusive good.

If, then, a woman has accepted the family as the supreme good, it is naturally hard to be in perfect sympathy with the man's standard of family life as secondary. Of course a completer vision may find that a division of labor, a difference of function, may carry with it a difference in standards of value; the mastery of nature and the maintenance of the family may be neither an absolute good in itself, but each a necessity to life and progress. But neither man nor woman is always equal to this view, and to the full sympathy for the relative value of the other's standpoint. Where it cuts closest is in the attitude toward breach of faith in the family tie. Men have severe codes for the man who cheats at cards or forges a signature, but treat much more leniently, or entirely ignore, the gravest offenses against the family. These latter do not seem to form a barrier to political, business, or social success (among men). Women have a severe standard for family sanctity, especially for their own sex. But it would probably be difficult to convince most women that it is a more heinous offense to secrete a card, or even with Nora in The Doll's House, to forge a name, than to be unfaithful. It is not meant that the average man or woman approves either form of wrongdoing, but that there is a difference of emphasis evidenced in the public attitude. In view of all these differences in nature, occupation, and social standard it may be said that however well husband and wife may love each other, few understand each other completely. Perhaps most men do not understand women at all. Corresponding to the "psychologist's fallacy," whose evils have been depicted by James, there is a "masculine fallacy" and a "feminine fallacy."

Difference in Age.—The difference in age between parents and children brings certain inevitable hindrances to complete understanding. The most thoroughgoing is that parent and children really stand concretely for the two factors of continuity and individual variation which confront each other in so many forms. The parent has found his place in the social system, and is both steadied and to some extent made rigid by the social tradition. The child, though to some extent imitating and adopting this tradition, has as yet little reasoned adherence to it. The impulses and expanding life do not find full expression in the set ways already open, and occasionally break out new channels. The conservatism of the parent may be a wiser and more social, or merely a more hardened and narrow, mode of conduct; some of the child's variations may be irrational and pernicious to himself and society; others may promise a larger reasonableness, a more generous social order—but meanwhile certain features of the conflict between reason and impulse, order and change, are constantly appearing. Differences in valuation are also inevitable and can be bridged only by an intelligent sympathy. It is easy to consider this or that to be of slight importance to the child when it is really his whole world for the time. Even if he does "get over it," the effect on the disposition may remain, and affect the temper or emotional life, even though not consciously remembered. Probably, also, most parents do not realize how early a crude but sometimes even passionate sense for "fairness" develops, or how different the relative setting of an act appears if judged from the motives actually operative with the child, and not from those which might produce such an act in a "grown-up." Most parents and children love each other; few reach a complete understanding.

§ 4. SPECIAL CONDITIONS WHICH GIVE RISE TO PRESENT PROBLEMS

In addition to the more general conditions of family life, there are certain conditions at present operative which give rise to special problems, or rather emphasize certain aspects of the permanent problems. The family is quite analogous to political society. There needs to be constant readjustment between order and progress, between the control of the society and the freedom of the individual. The earlier bonds of custom or force have to be exchanged in point after point for a more voluntary and moral order. In the words of Kant, heteronomy must steadily give place to autonomy, subordination of rank or status to division of labor with equality in dignity. The elements of strain in the family life at present may fairly be expected to give rise ultimately to a better constitution of its relations. The special conditions are partly economic, partly educational and political, but the general process is a part of the larger growth of modern civilization with the increasing development of individuality and desire for freedom. It is sometimes treated as if it affected only the woman or the children; in reality it affects the man as well, though in less degree, as his was not the subordinate position.

The Economic Factors.—The "industrial revolution" transferred production from home to factory. The household is no longer as a rule an industrial unit. Spinning, weaving, tailoring, shoemaking, soap-making, iron- and wood-working, and other trades have gone to factories. Men, young unmarried women, and to some extent married women also, have gone with them. Children have lost association with one parent, and in some cases with both. The concentration of industry and business leads to cities. Under present means of transportation this means apartments instead of houses, it means less freedom, more strain, for both mother and children, and possible deteriorating effects upon the race which as yet are quite outside any calculation. But leaving this uncertain field of effects upon child life, we notice certain potent effects upon men and women.

It might be a difficult question to decide the exact gains and losses for family life due to the absence of the man from home during the day. On the one hand, too constant association is a source of friction; on the other, there is likely to result some loss of sympathy, and where the working-day is long, an almost absolute loss of contact with children. If children are the great natural agencies for cultivating tenderness and affection, it is certainly unfortunate that fathers should be deprived of this education. The effect of the industrial revolution upon women has been widely noted. First of all, the opening of an increasing number of occupations to women has rendered them economically more independent. They are not forced to the alternative of marriage or dependence upon relatives. If already married, even although they may have lost touch to some extent with their former occupation, they do not feel the same compulsion to endure intolerable conditions in the home rather than again attempt self-support. An incidental effect of the entrance of women upon organized occupations, with definite hours and impersonal standards, is to bring out more strongly by contrast the "belated" condition of domestic work. It is difficult to obtain skilled workers for an occupation requiring nearly double the standard number of hours, isolation instead of companionship during work, close personal contact with an employer, a measure of control over conduct outside of the hours on duty, and finally the social inferiority implied by an occupation which has in it survivals of the status of the old-time servant. Indeed, the mistress of the house, if she "does her own work," doesn't altogether like her situation. There is now no one general occupation which all men are expected to master irrespective of native tastes and abilities. If every male were obliged to make not only his own clothing, including head- and foot-wear, but that of his whole family, unassisted, or with practically unskilled labor, there would probably be as much misfit clothing as there is now unsatisfactory home-making, and possibly there would be an increase of irritability and "nervousness" on the one side and of criticism or desertion on the other, which would increase the present strain upon the divorce courts. To an increasing number of women, the position of being "jack-at-all-trades and master-of-none" is irritating. The conviction that there is a great waste of effort without satisfactory results is more wearing than the actual doing of the work.

For the minority of women who do not "keep house," or who can be relieved entirely of domestic work by experts, the industrial revolution has a different series of possibilities. If there is a decided talent which has received adequate cultivation, there may be an opportunity for its exercise without serious interference with family life, but the chances are against it. If the woman cannot leave her home for the entire day, or if her husband regards a gainful occupation on her part as a reflection upon his ability to "support the family," she is practically shut out from any occupation. If she has children and has an intelligent as well as an emotional interest in their welfare, there is an unlimited field for scientific development. But if she has no regular useful occupation, she is not leading a normal life. Her husband very likely cannot understand why she should not, in the words of Veblen, perform "vicarious leisure" for him, and be satisfied therewith. If she is satisfied, so much the worse. Whether she is satisfied or not, she is certainly not likely to grow mentally or morally in such an existence, and the family life will not be helped by stagnation or frivolity.

In certain classes of society there is one economic feature which is probably responsible for many petty annoyances and in some cases for real degradation of spirit. When the family was an industrial unit, when exchange was largely in barter, it was natural to think of the woman as a joint agent in production. When the production moved to factories and the wage or the wealth was paid to the man and could be kept in his pocket or his check-book, it became easy for him to think of himself as "supporting" the family, to permit himself to be "asked" for money for household expenses or even for the wife's personal expenses, and to consider money used in these ways as "gifts" to his wife or children. Women have more or less resistingly acquiesced in this humiliating conception, which is fatal to a real moral relation as well as to happiness. It is as absurd a conception as it would be to consider the receiving teller in a bank as supporting the bank, or the manager of a factory as supporting all the workmen. The end of the family is not economic profit, but mutual aid, and the continuance and progress of the race. A division of labor does not give superiority and inferiority. When one considers which party incurs the greater risks, and which works with greater singleness and sincerity for the family, it must pass as one of the extraordinary superstitions that the theory of economic dependence should have gained vogue.

Cultural and Political Factors.—Educational, cultural, and political movements reënforce the growing sense of individuality. Educational and cultural advance strengthens the demand that woman's life shall have as serious a purpose as man's, and that in carrying on her work, whether in the family or without, she may have some share in the grasp of mind, the discipline of character, and the freedom of spirit which come from the scientific spirit, and from the intelligent, efficient organization of work by scientific methods. Political democracy draws increasing attention to personal dignity, irrespective of rank or wealth. Increasing legal rights have been granted to women until in most points they are now equal before the law, although the important exception of suffrage still remains for the most part. Under these conditions it is increasingly difficult to maintain a family union on any other basis than that of equal freedom, equal responsibilities, equal dignity and authority. It will probably be found that most of the tension now especially felt in family life—aside from those cases of maladaptation liable to occur under any system—results either from lack of recognition of this equality, or from the more general economic conditions which society as a whole, rather than any particular family, must meet and change.