ESTABLISHING THE HOME
=The Purpose of the Home.= The cause, historically, and the reason,
socially, for the home is the child and the family. Home is the great
training school of life for parents as well as for children. It is
not merely a place to eat and sleep; any boarding-house can provide
that. The ideal home is a community of congenial spirits, a place of
inspiration, comfort, rest of spirit as well as of body. Here dwell
together two who have chosen each other as comrades in the complex
problem of living, to share their fare, their mirth, their troubles,
to give cheer in distress, encouragement in struggle, ambition for
achievement, sympathy in trial and happiness, friendly criticism to
refine; and to coöperate in their mutual desire, responsibility,
joys, and trials of rearing a family.
As young men and women face squarely the possibilities in a home,
as they perceive the causes of discord in family life, and study
the basis of family stability and happiness, as they take the time
before marriage to compare sincerely their ideals, tastes, standards,
expectations, they will minimize the possibilities of later
discord—even tragedy. If they cannot agree sincerely and heartily on
economic, social, physiological, and psychological adjustments before
the wedding ceremony, when each has the altruism of romance and the
spur of the game, how can they expect to adjust themselves amicably
afterwards, in the severe test of everyday needs and situations?
Marriage is the concern of the individual, because his happiness
and his activity are involved. It is also the concern of the State,
because property rights, social harmony, and future citizenship are
involved. A brief study of the historical and social development
of the home and family relations will give a surer basis for the
rational discussion of this problem than would a theoretical
discussion based merely on prejudices of individualism or altruism.
=Evolution of Marriage.= In the human species, infancy is prolonged
over several years. From this mutual care by the mother and the
father in primitive society, there evolved the mutual love for the
little child and later for each other; and with this the permanent
relationship which alone could produce the organization of the
family. The beginnings of morality likewise developed from this sense
of a community interest which called for a subordination of selfish
desires.
For ages mankind has experimented with different forms of family
relation and home organization, trying to discover which serve
best to foster the child, conserve the State, and satisfy the men
and women who form the family. Under different social and economic
conditions, polygamy and polyandry (more than one wife or husband),
promiscuity (several temporal husbands or wives) and monogamy (one
husband or wife) have been tried.
Polygamy, in primitive society, developed where women were in excess,
or their labor increased family income, or where a man’s fortune
enabled him to support more than one wife and her children. The
polygamous nature of man was accepted by Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and
Mohammedan religions, and its practice permitted by their statutes.
The Jewish nation early evolved from polygamy to monogamy, and
incorporated the latter into its religion and customs. Anglo-Saxon
ideals were of monogamy. The teachings of Christ emphasized
monogamy. The early Christian teachers even carried this, as other
ideals, to its farthest extreme, and preached the ideal of celibacy.
It remained for Mormonism to sanctify polygamy and make it a duty.
But polygamy, which was flatly opposed by the general sentiment of
the United States, was short-lived in the territory of the Mormon
Church. The local feeling on this issue at present may be summarized
in the following sentiment, expressed by a distinguished citizen of
Utah:
“Our citizenship must be world citizenship. It is a matter of
common knowledge and comment that that citizen is most valuable to
his town who can see the town’s needs in relation to those of his
county; that he is of most value to his county who sees that county
as a constituent part of the state and consents to nothing for his
county that would hurt the state; that a state’s most valuable and
serviceable citizen is the man who has the power in his thinking,
reasoning, and acting to rise above sectionalism and act as a citizen
of the nation. This is the test to which our citizenship must
submit—the standard up to which it must measure.”
In primitive, as well as in civilized societies, the beginning
of a new home is customarily celebrated with civil and religious
ceremonies; customs and laws provide for the relative rights of the
husband and wife to their persons, their children, their property,
and the returns from their labor. Infidelity (particularly of the
wife), common-law marriages (living as husband and wife without
legal marriage), promiscuous relations, divorce, have generally been
branded as anti-social and reprehensible, expressions of lack of
self-control, altruism, and foresight.
Mankind is finding through the experience of the ages that monogamy
best conserves child life, the home, the State, and individual
happiness. It has found that irresponsible parenthood, shallowness
of marital or parental affection, promiscuous relations, all endanger
the life and welfare of the child. It has learned that marriage
customs and laws requiring considerable formality and therefore
deliberation of the contracting parties, reduced the proportion of
hasty, unsatisfactory, and temporary unions with their uncertain
responsibility for the children, and their quarrels over property.
Many factors have contributed to the establishment of the really
monogamous family and home as the social ideal and the increasing
social practice. The lengthening period of infancy, with the
consequent longer period of mutual coöperation of parents in nurture
and training; realization of the Christ spirit of love for others,
of respect for the value and individuality of every human life; the
consequent refinement of the emotional life and social feeling, and
the sublimating of sex instincts to the development of a richer
personality, to mental creative work and to social service; the
democratization of education and social status; freedom in choice of
a marriage partner—all have contributed a part.
Freedom of choice has been far less prevalent than capture, purchase,
or family contract, in marriages of the past. It is wearisome to even
try to imagine the procession of brides, since those early days of
the cavemen, who had no choice in the matter of their husbands. For
what countless millions of brides was the marriage arranged by barter
between their fathers and their future household lords, sometimes
the father requiring a purchase price, sometimes the bridegroom
demanding a dowry. What millions of girls have been selected while
mere children as the future wives and slaves of their husbands and
the family drudges of the household. How many millions of brides and
bridegrooms have never been consulted as to their personal feelings
or desires, but have been married because the elders of their
families decreed it. Under all such conditions, if husband and wife
developed affection for each other, that was so much of advantage to
them from the combination; otherwise they must adapt themselves as
best they could to the daily round of life in their common dwelling
and throughout their family responsibilities.
Trial marriages have been an experiment in many societies. They are
based upon suspicion and expectation of termination, instead of upon
that whole-hearted confidence and expectation of endurance which
is the basis of a permanent relation. Psychologically, therefore,
their basis is false and weak. They presented a crude method of
testing mutual adaptation and affection, which to-day may be gained
by visiting a few weeks in each other’s families, by thorough
preliminary discussion of problems of adjustment, and by consultation
with a competent physician, biologist, and sociologist or a mature
and thoughtful counsellor.
Thus has marriage evolved by stages from biological matings, based
on physical attraction; to the business contract, based on economic
relations; to the social contract, based on social advantage to the
family, clan, or State; and finally to a spiritual relationship,
based on mutual social and intellectual interests and ties. Romantic
love as a general experience in marriage has developed only during
the past few hundred years. No one of these phases—the biological,
economic, social, or spiritual—can be ignored in marriage to-day
without disaster, as divorce records and daily observation show so
clearly. To ignore the higher relationships and base marriage simply
on the biological or material is to revert back to a lower stage in
human development. A marriage based simply on physical attraction
soon loses its glamour, and is as a house built upon the sands.
The enduring ties are those of spiritual comradeship. It is this
spiritual-biological love, evolving with the personality and soul
of man, that has inspired the great wealth of spiritual creations in
poetry, music, drama, and painting.
The American young woman of to-day, especially of the middle classes,
is economically, socially, and religiously free to choose from among
her suitors the one she finds most congenial and whom she really
loves. Legislators are providing in many States for the woman’s equal
rights in marriage to her person, property, and children. Churches,
associations, and parents are awakening to their responsibility in
providing natural and wholesome social opportunities for young men
and women to become acquainted. If a woman does not find her ideal
in the community where she lives, she is socially free to migrate to
any part of the country, enter any one of a thousand occupations,
and seek until she finds a suitable helpmeet. In this country, in
contrast to Europe, there is an excess of some two million men in
the population. She will find a large proportion of young men of her
social class and education, whose standards and habits of life are
as fine as Sir Galahad’s, who have the economic ability to make a
comfortable living, and who are ready to coöperate intelligently and
whole-heartedly in home-making. The young man of to-day will find
an increasing proportion of young women who combine physical charm,
social gifts, intellectual comradeship, home-making instincts, and
preparation.
=Why Homes Are Broken.= In a country where divorce is easily obtained
by either husband or wife, for serious cause, the proportion of
divorces is an index (1) to the percentage of dissatisfied couples
(which will always be considerably higher than the percentage of
divorces); and (2) to the intelligence and forethought with which
young people enter marriage. The census of 1910 estimated one
marriage in twelve ending in divorce, and counted as direct parties
about one half of one per cent. of the population, something over
three hundred thousand men and women, with children involved in about
sixty per cent. of these families. The causes stated in the court
records would, of course, be only those allowed in the laws as the
legal grounds for granting a divorce. These, in the order of their
frequency, were (1) desertion by the husband, (2) cruelty of the
husband, (3) desertion by the wife, (4) non-support by the husband,
(5) cruelty of the wife, (6) adultery. The most frequent real causes,
as found by social investigation, are lack of self-control, lack of
mutual ideals in regard to sex relations, ignorance of sex hygiene,
use of alcohol, irresponsibility, economic extravagance, disagreement
regarding the family income, hasty marriage after brief acquaintance.
Among the other causes productive of discord are selfishness,
insincerity, false pride, nagging, poor housekeeping, the husband’s
lack of economic ability; marked differences in age, education,
social status, religion; abnormal craving for social excitement;
unnatural, crowded, unattractive homes.
=How Homes Are Made Steadfast and a Benediction.= The fundamental
requisite of family happiness is love; not merely sex attraction,
which may be wholly selfish, but love that is service, happier
to give than to receive, willing to share. In some respects
similarity between husband and wife is important in their social and
intellectual tastes, moral standards, religious faith, refinement,
love of children, rate of ability to progress, degree of seriousness
or frivolousness, ardor and expression of affection. These make for
congenial daily living. In some respects complementary qualities are
desired. If one is impatient, the other may well possess a degree
of patience and sense of humor to meet this; if one is extravagant,
the other should be thrifty; if one is radical, the other may well
be conservative, although marked extremes would always clash. The
degree of positiveness in the one should approximate that in the
other; if equal, neither is willing to yield; if very unequal, one
domineers the other. These complementary traits make for balance of
family life. The qualities that each should possess would include
responsibility, self-control, sincerity, kindliness; freedom from
drugs, conscientious abstinence from alcohol and from vicious habits;
a degree of maturity and experience equal to the responsibilities of
home-making (usually not under twenty years for women and twenty-one
for men), love of home life and of children; good health, freedom
from any serious germ disease, a family history free from criminal
tendencies, alcoholism, mental defects, tuberculosis. A gambler,
spendthrift, flirt, vacillating or superficial man or woman, or one
who is “sowing wild oats” has not the qualifications for establishing
a home. The man should be able to earn a comfortable living, and the
woman to administer the household efficiently and smoothly. Every
woman should have some means of making her livelihood at the time she
marries; it will greatly increase her husband’s respect for her and
be a source of confidence to herself. She usually cannot do better,
from the economic aspect, than to become thoroughly skilled in phases
of home-making.
How the family income should be divided, what share the wife shall
have for household use and for her personal use, is so diplomatic and
acute a problem that it should be as sincerely and frankly discussed
as all these other phases.
Whether the wife should undertake work besides managing the
home-making is a moot question. Certainly her first responsibility
is to make a home not only comfortable but inspiring. She needs to
have such opportunity for relaxation, meditation, reading, personal
development, that however weary and tense her husband may return
in the evening, she can give rest, good cheer, and refreshment of
spirit, because of her reserve of vitality, and can send him each
morning to his work with the courage and good spirits stimulated by
her blitheness. She needs, also, to be storing reserve strength for
her children.
The location of the house greatly affects the family life. Ideally,
it should be a separate dwelling, with a porch for outdoor social
life, a garden where all members of the family have room to work and
play, with rooms enough for individual privacy; and it should be
owned, not rented.
The minimum income on which two people may advisably marry will
depend largely upon their degree of adaptability, patience, and
sense of humor. Acquaintance before marriage may safely be not less
than a year and preferably two, not only for thorough and sincere
acquaintance, but for the possibility of the reaction and even
repulsion that is so likely to follow a violent case of love on short
acquaintance. If love is too ardent, it needs this discipline of
patience and restraint. If it is deep enough to last through the rest
of time, it will stand the test of waiting.
Having established their home, husband and wife may well cultivate
their love wisely, seeing that it does not starve from lack of
service in little thoughtfulnesses; that it is not surfeited by too
much of sweetness or selfish expression; that it is protected by
residence separate from relatives, friends, strangers; that both
have individual social life and friends and pursuits so that they
do not become wearisome to each other; that they busy themselves
in some mutual objective interest—social welfare, club, lodge work
or a reading course. The few minutes spent together each day in
gaining inspiration, either in religious worship, or reading from
some great book, or singing noble songs, will do much to keep the
family life harmonious and to reduce the petty frictions. It is well
to agree on the first day—and carry through the agreement—that if
misunderstanding or the least suspicion arises, it shall be frankly
and thoroughly faced, discussed, and eliminated, remembering that it
is “the little rift within the lute” that silences the music. Then,
as the poet sings:
“Through the long years liker must they grow,
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world,
She, mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Until at last she set herself to man
Like perfect music unto noble words.”