The purpose of this book is to help in the adjustment of immigrant
family life in this country. The immigrant will feel America to be his
own land largely to the extent that he feels his American home to be
as much his home as was his native hearth. To define what makes a home
is harder even than to achieve one. Perhaps more than any other human
institution the home is a development, the result and component of
innumerable adjustments. This growth comes about largely
spontaneously, without conscious effort on the part of its members,
except that of living together as happily as possible.
There is among most housewives, whether native or foreign born, a
certain complacency about housekeeping and bringing up children.
Housekeeping is supposed to come by nature, and few women of any
station in life are trained to be homemakers and mothers. The native
born, in part consciously through their own choice and in part blindly
moved by forces they do not understand, have been gradually moving
away from the old tradition of subordination on the part of the wife
and of strict and unquestioning obedience of children. In the general
American atmosphere there are suggestions of a different tradition.
In the old country the mother knew what standards she was to maintain
and, moreover, had the backing of a homogeneous group to help her. In
this country she is a stranger, neither certain of herself nor sure
whether to try to maintain the standards of her home or those that
seem to prevail here. As a matter of fact, these difficulties are
usually surmounted, so that by the time the foreign-born housewife has
lived here long enough to raise her family she has learned to care for
her home as systematically and intelligently as most of her
native-born neighbors, who have not had her difficulties. Sometimes
they have learned from the members of the group who have been here
longer; and sometimes they have learned by going into the more
comfortable American homes as domestic servants.
In the American domestic evolution a scientific and deliberate factor
has been introduced. Students of family life have conducted inquiries
into domestic practices, needs, and resources, and applied the
researches of physiologists, chemists, economists, and architects. The
result has been the discovery of certain standards and requirements
for wholesome family life. It must be admitted that the attempt at
formulation of standards for family life encounters difficulties not
found in the field of education or of health, where the presence and
service of the expert are fairly widely recognized. For many reasons
the subject of the _minima_ of sound family life has been more
recently attacked and is, in the nature of things, more difficult of
analysis and especially of formal study. The impossibility, for
example, of applying to many aspects of the family problem the
laboratory methods of study or of examining many of the questions in a
dispassionate and objective manner, must retard the scientific
treatment of the subject.
There are, however, some aspects of family life with reference to
which there may be said to be fairly general agreement in theory if
not in practice in the United States. The content of an adequate food
allowance is generally agreed upon by the students of nutrition, and
the cost and special features of an adequate diet for any group at any
time and place can therefore be described and discussed. In the matter
of laying the responsibility for support of the family on the husband
and father, at least to the extent of enabling the children to enjoy
seven years of school life and fourteen years free from wage-paid work
and the resulting exploitation, there is wide agreement embodied in
legislation.
Such standards are becoming gradually adopted and incorporated into
domestic life through the slow processes of suggestion, imitation, and
neighborly talks already mentioned. While the slow establishment of
social standards is required for a complete and adequate adjustment of
family life on the basis of specialists' discoveries, many systematic
and formal efforts can be made which will forward and accelerate the
process. These efforts can help to remove the feeling of strangeness,
perhaps the greatest obstacle in adjusting home life; they should seek
to connect with the appreciations and sense of need already felt by
the women who are to be influenced.
There is necessity for thorough inquiry into what are the points of
contact in these problems for immigrant women; what are their present
customs and standards in which the specialists' knowledge can be
planted with the prospect of a promising combination of seed and soil.
This study indicates how great is the need of search for the
possibilities of just such organic connections. Pending such further
studies, this report can do two things:
First, it can exhibit, so far as possible, the difficulties
encountered by foreign-born families in attaining in their family
relationships such satisfaction as would constitute a genuine feeling
of hominess, and make the immigrant home an integral part of the
domestic development in this country.
Second, the report can suggest the deliberate and systematic methods
which can be effective in introducing the immigrant family and
specialists' standards to each other. The services of social agencies
have been largely in this field, and it is hoped that they may find in
this book lines for increased usefulness. Incidentally, evidence will
be presented to show that, in allowing many of these difficulties to
develop or to remain, the community suffers real loss, and it is hoped
that in the following chapters suggestion will be found of ways by
which some of these difficulties may be overcome and some of the waste
resulting from their continued existence be eliminated.