§ 5. UNSETTLED PROBLEMS: (1) ECONOMIC
The family as an economic unit includes the relation of its members to society both as producers and as consumers.
The Family and Production.—We have noted the industrial changes which have seemed to draw the issue sharply between the home and outside occupations. We have seen that the present organization of industry, business, and the professions has separated most of the occupations from the family, so that woman must choose between family and a specific occupation, but cannot ordinarily combine the two. We have said that in requiring all its women to do the same thing the family seems to exclude them from individual pursuits adapted to their talents, and to exclude them likewise from the whole scientific and technical proficiency of modern life. Is this an inevitable dilemma? Those who think it is divide into two parties, which accept respectively the opposite horns. The one party infers that the social division of labor must be: man to carry on all occupations outside the family, woman to work always within the family. The other party infers that the family life must give way to the industrial tendency.
(1) The "domestic theory," or as Mrs. Bosanquet styles it, the "pseudo-domestic" theory, is held sincerely by many earnest friends of the family in both sexes. They feel strongly the fundamental necessity of family life. They believe further that they are not seeking to subordinate woman to the necessities of the race, but rather to give her a unique position of dignity and affection. In outside occupations she must usually be at a disadvantage in competition with men, because of her physical constitution which Nature has specialized for a different function. In the family she "reigns supreme." With most women life is not satisfied, experience is not full, complete consciousness of sex and individuality is not attained, until they have dared to enter upon the full family relations. Let these be preserved not merely for the race, but especially for woman's own sake. Further, it is urged, when woman enters competitive occupations outside the home, she lowers the scale of wages. This makes it harder for men to support families, and therefore more reluctant to establish them. Riehl urges that not only should married women remain at home; unmarried women should play the part of "aunt" in some one's household—he says alte Tante, but it is not necessary to load the theory too heavily with the adjective.
(2) The other horn of the dilemma is accepted by many writers, especially among socialists. These writers assume that the family necessarily involves not only an exclusively domestic life for all women, but also their economic dependence. They believe this dependence to be not merely a survival of barbarism, but an actual immorality in its exchange of sex attraction for economic support. Hence they would abandon the family or greatly modify it. It must no longer be "coercive"; it will be coercive under present conditions.
Fallacies in the Dilemma.—Each of these positions involves a fallacy which releases us from the necessity of choosing between them. The root of the fallacy in each case is the conception that the economic status determines the moral end, whereas the moral end ought to determine the economic status.
The fallacy of the pseudo-domestic theory lies in supposing that the home must continue its old economic form or be destroyed. What is essential to the family is that man and wife, parents and children, should live in such close and intimate relation that they may be mutually helpful. But it is not essential that present methods of house construction, domestic service, and the whole industrial side of home life be maintained immutable. There is one fundamental division of labor between men and women. The woman who takes marriage at its full scope accepts this. "The lines which it follows are drawn not so much by the woman's inability to work for her family in the outside world—she constantly does so when the death or illness of her husband throws the double burden upon her; but from the obvious fact that the man is incapable of the more domestic duties incident upon the rearing of children."[258] But this does not involve the total life of a woman, nor does it imply that to be a good wife and mother every woman must under all possible advances of industry continue to be cook, seamstress, housemaid, and the rest. True it is that if a woman steps out of her profession or trade for five, ten, twenty years, it is in many cases difficult to reënter. But there are some occupations where total absence is not necessary. There are others where her added experience ought to be an asset instead of a handicap. A mother who has been well trained ought to be a far more effective teacher in her wholesome and intelligent influence. She ought to be a more efficient manager or worker in the great variety of civic and social enterprises of both paid and unpaid character. There is no doubt that the present educational and social order is suffering because deprived of the competent service which many married women might render, just as women in their turn are suffering for want of congenial occupation, suited to their capacities and individual tastes. A growing freedom in economic pursuit would improve the home, not injure it. For nothing that interferes with normal development is likely to prove beneficial to the family's highest interest.
The fallacy of those who would abolish the family to emancipate woman from economic dependence is in supposing that because the woman is not engaged in a gainful occupation she is therefore being supported by the man for his own pleasure. This is to adopt the absurd assumptions of the very condition they denounce. This theory at most, applies to a marriage which is conceived from an entirely selfish and commercial point of view. If a man marries for his own pleasure and is willing to pay a cash price; if a woman marries for cash or support and is willing to pay the price, there is no doubt as to the proper term for such a transaction. The result is not a family in the moral sense, and no ceremonies or legal forms can make it moral. A family in the moral sense exists for a common good, not for selfish use of others. To secure this common good each member contributes a part. If both husband and wife carry on gainful occupations, well; if one is occupied outside the home and the other within, well also. If there are children, the woman is likely to have the far more difficult and wearing half of the common labor. Which plan is followed, i.e., whether the woman works outside or within the home, ought to depend on which plan is better on the whole for all concerned, and this will depend largely on the woman's own ability and tastes, and upon the number and age of the children. But the economic relation is not the essential thing. The essential thing is that the economic be held entirely subordinate to the moral conception, before marriage and after.
The Family as Consumer.—The relation of the family as consumer to society and to the economic process at large involves also an important moral problem. For while production has been taken from the home, the selective influence of the family over production through its direction of consumption has proportionally increased. And in this field the woman of the family is and should be the controlling factor. As yet only the internal aspects have been considered. Most women regard it as their duty to buy economically, to secure healthful food, and make their funds go as far as possible. But the moral responsibility does not stop here. The consumer may have an influence in helping to secure better conditions of production, such as sanitary workshops, reasonable hours, decent wages, by a "white label." But this is chiefly valuable in forming public opinion to demand workrooms free from disease and legal abolition of sweatshops and child labor. The greater field for the consumers' control is in determining the kind of goods that shall be produced. What foods shall be produced, what books written, what plays presented, what clothing made, what houses and what furnishing shall be provided—all this may be largely determined by the consumers. And the value of simplicity, utility, and genuineness, is not limited to the effects upon the family which consumes. The workman who makes fraudulent goods can hardly help being injured. The economic waste involved in the production of what satisfies no permanent or real want is a serious indictment of our present civilization. It was said, under the subject of the economic process, that it was an ethically desirable end to have increase of goods, and of the kind wanted. We may now add a third end: it is important that society should learn to want the kinds of goods which give happiness and not merely crude gratification. Men often need most what they want least. Not only the happiness of life but its progress, its unfolding of new capacities and interests, is determined largely by the direction of the consumption. Woman is here the influential factor.
If there were no other reason for the better and wider education of woman than the desirability of more intelligent consumption, society would have ample ground to demand it.