A third change should be taken into account. There is a marked
difference between the general position of women and children in
relation to the authority of the husband and father in this country
and that in the old country. It is indicated in both general opinion
and express statutory amendment in this country, although not in the
so-called common law. The latter, in common with practice in the
native lands of immigrants, provided that marriage gave the husband
the right to determine where the domicile should be, the right
"reasonably to discipline" wife and children, the right to claim her
services and to appropriate her earnings and those of the children,
the right to take any personal property (except "_paraphernalia_" and
"_pin money_") she might have in full ownership, the right to manage
any land she might become entitled to, and the right to enjoy the
custody of the children, regardless of the maintenance of his
conjugal fidelity, in the absence of such obscene and drunken conduct
on his part as would be obviously demoralizing to the young child.
There existed no adequate provision for enforcing the father's
performance of either conjugal or parental obligations, and the result
has been the development of two bodies of legislative change. One of
these has granted to the wife certain rights as against the husband,
on the theory that the wife retains her separate existence after
marriage and should retain rights of individual action. The other body
of statutes imposes on the man the duty of support, making abandonment
or refusal to support punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both.
The theory of this legislation is that the support of wife and
children is to be a legally enforceable duty, which may rightly be
laid upon the man because of his special interest and special ability.
Moreover, through the establishment of the juvenile court, the
community has undertaken, not only to say that support must be given,
but to set a standard of "proper parental care" below which family
groups are not to be allowed to sink and still remain independent and
intact. By creating the juvenile probation staff, an official
assistant parent is provided. In the same way, by authorizing
commitment of children to institutions, the dissolution of the home
that falls persistently to too low a standard is made possible.
The common law, as accepted in the various states, was not entirely
uniform, but it was substantially the universal family law; now the
states differ widely in the body of statutory enactments developed in
this field. All have some laws recognizing the claims of children to
have their home conditions scrutinized--though they may have no
express juvenile-court law, all recognize to some extent the separate
existence of the married women--though only twenty-one have given the
mother substantial rights as against the father over their children,
and they all recognize the parent's duty to secure the child's
attendance at school, and have imposed some limitation on the parent's
right to set his young child to work. In other words, in all the
states the idea of the separate existence of the wife and of the
interest of the community in the kind of care given the child has been
embodied in legislation.
These statutes have been enacted by legislatures composed largely, if
not exclusively, of men, and register the general change in the
community attitude toward the family group. An unlimited autocracy is
gradually becoming what might now be termed a constitutional
democracy. But the law of the jurisdictions from which most of the
immigrant groups come, undoubtedly represents a theory of family
relationship not widely different from that underlying the common law.
The South Italian group, in which the right of the father to
discipline wife and daughter is passed on to the son, may represent an
extreme survival of the patriarchal idea; but almost all the
foreign-born groups hold to the dominion of man over woman, and of
parents over children.
Immigrant groups evidence their realization of the changed conditions
in different ways. Among the Ukrainians in Chicago, for example, it is
said that, whereas in the old country the men kept complete control of
the little money that came in, here they very generally turn it all
over to their wives. Some of them have laughed, and said that America
was the "women's country." Among other groups, notably the Jugo-Slav
and the Italian, there is said to be a general attempt to keep the
women repressed and in much the same position they held in the old
country. Sometimes the woman perceives the difference in the situation
more quickly than her husband. Then if he attempts to retain the old
authorities in form and in spirit, she may submit or else she may
gradually lead him to an understanding. But she may not understand and
yet may rebel and carry her difficulty to the case-work agency.
One of the settlements in Chicago is said to have become very
unpopular with the men in its neighborhood, as it has the reputation
of breaking up families, because women who have been ill treated by
their husbands have gone to the settlement to complain, and have there
been given help in taking their complaints to court.
The Immigrant's Protective League in Chicago receives many complaints
from women who have learned that their husbands have not the right to
beat them or their children. One Lithuanian woman, who had been in
this country six years, came to the league with the statement that her
husband often threw her and their eight-year-old son out of the house
in the middle of the night. Another Lithuanian woman living in one of
the suburbs took her three children and came to Chicago to her
sisters, because her husband abused her, called her vile names, and
beat her. When the husband was interviewed he agreed not to do so
again, and his family returned to him.
Of course, the theory underlying even the feminist "married woman's
property laws" included not only her enjoyment of rights, but her
exercise of legal responsibility; but the restrained exercise of newly
acquired freedom is evidence of high social and personal development.
And the women in the foreign-born groups come from the country, the
village, the small town. They have had little education, their days
have been filled with work, so that there has been little time for
reflection, they come from a simple situation in which there was
little temptation to do wrong. They find here, on the other hand, a
situation which is complex in the extreme, and in which there are
elements that tend to make matters especially difficult for women.
Attention has already been called to the confusion created by the
lodger in the home and the special temptation to the woman to desert
her husband for the lodger. The relative scarcity of women in the
group, the presence of large numbers of men who cannot enter a legal
marriage relationship because they have wives in the old country, the
spiritual separation that often results from physical separation
caused by the man's coming ahead to prepare a place--all these are
undoubtedly factors that enter in to make difficult the wise use of
her freedom. Native endowment, moral as well as physical and mental,
varies among these women as among other women. Confronted with this
confused and difficult situation, the change from the old sanctions,
the old safeguards, even the old legal obligations, is difficult.
It is inevitable that a few will find themselves unequal to the task
of readjusting their lives. The father of one family came to the
Immigrant's Protective League in Chicago, asking help because his wife
had turned him out of his home. He said that she drank and was
immoral. Instead of caring for the home and the two-year-old child,
she spent her time behind the bar in her brother's saloon, having "a
good time" with the customers. She had deserted six weeks before, but
he had found her and had had her in the Court of Domestic Relations,
where he had been persuaded to take her back. He said she was still
drinking and still neglecting the child. Shortly after asking the help
of the league, the father ran away, taking with him the child whom the
mother left alone in the house while she went to the "movies."
The women who assert themselves in their new rights are in a small
minority. A young Polish woman complains that the women of her group
are too submissive even in this country, and "bear beatings just as
their mothers did in the old country." In the great majority of
foreign-born families, as in all families, the question of the legal
rights of the woman is never raised. The habits and attitudes formed
under the old system of law and customs are carried over into the life
in the new country, and are changed so gradually and imperceptibly
that no apparent friction is caused in the family group. Moreover, in
many cases where the woman perceives her changed position she is able
to make her husband see it too, and she herself is able to work her
way through to a new understanding. It is interesting to note that the
women of the foreign-born groups who have worked their way through are
now bending their energies toward helping the women who have not yet
started.