DISORGANIZATION: THE FAMILY
OLD AND NEW RÉGIMES IN THE FAMILY—THE DECLINING BIRTH-RATE—“SPOILED”
CHILDREN—THE OPENING OF NEW CAREERS TO WOMEN—EUROPEAN AND
AMERICAN POINTS OF VIEW—PERSONAL FACTORS IN DIVORCE—INSTITUTIONAL
FACTORS—CONCLUSION.
The mediæval family, like other mediæval institutions, was dominated
by comparatively settled traditions which reflected the needs of
the general system of society. Marriage was thought of chiefly as
an alliance of interests, and was arranged by the ruling members
of the families concerned on grounds of _convenance_, the personal
congeniality of the parties being little considered.
We know that this view of marriage has still considerable force among
the more conservative classes of European society, and that royalty or
nobility, on the one hand, and the peasantry, on the other, adhere to
the idea that it is a family rather than a personal function, which
should be arranged on grounds of rank and wealth. In France it is
hardly respectable to make a romantic marriage, and Mr. Hamerton tells
of a young woman who was indignant at a rumor that she had been wedded
for love, insisting that it had been strictly a matter of _convenance_.
He also mentions a young man who was compelled to ask his mother which
of two sisters he had just met was to be his wife.[157]
Along with this subordination of choice in contracting marriage
generally went an autocratic family discipline. Legally the wife and
children had no separate rights, their personality being merged in
that of the husband and father, while socially the latter was rather
their master than their companion. His rule, however—though it was no
doubt harsh and often brutal, judged by our notions—was possibly not so
arbitrary and whimsical as would be the exercise of similar authority
in our day; since he was himself subordinate not only to social
superiors, but still more to traditional ideas, defining his own duties
and those of his household, which he felt bound to carry out. The whole
system was authoritative, admitting little play of personal choice.
Evidently the drift of modern life is away from this state of things.
The decay of settled traditions, embracing not only those relating
directly to the family but also the religious and economic ideas by
which these were supported, has thrown us back upon the unschooled
impulses of human nature. In entering upon marriage the personal tastes
of the couple demand gratification, and, right or wrong, there is no
authority strong enough to hold them in check. Nor, if upon experience
it turns out that personal tastes are not gratified, is there commonly
any insuperable obstacle to a dissolution of the tie. Being married,
they have children so long as they find it, on the whole, agreeable
to their inclinations to do so, but when this point is reached they
proceed to exercise choice by refusing to bear and rear any more. And
as the spirit of choice is in the air, the children are not slow to
inhale it and to exercise their own wills in accordance with the same
law of impulse their elders seem to follow. “Do as you please so long
as you do not evidently harm others” is the only rule of ethics that
has much life; there is little regard for any higher discipline, for
the slowly built traditions of a deeper right and wrong which cannot be
justified to the feelings of the moment.
Among the phases of this domestic “individualism” or relapse to impulse
are a declining birth-rate among the comfortable classes, some lack of
discipline and respect in children, a growing independence of women
accompanied by alleged neglect of the family, and an increase of
divorce.
The causes of decline in the birth-rate are clearly psychological,
being, in general, that people prefer ambition and luxury to the large
families that would interfere with them.
Freedom of opportunity diffuses a restless desire to rise in the
world, beneficent from many points of view but by no means favorable
to natural increase. Men demand more of life in the way of personal
self-realization than in the past, and it takes a longer time and more
energy to get it, the consequence being that marriage is postponed and
the birth-rate in marriage deliberately restricted. The young people of
the well-to-do classes, among whom ambition is most developed, commonly
feel poorer in regard to this matter than the hand-workers, so that we
find in England, for instance, that the professional men marry at an
average age of thirty-one, while miners marry at twenty-four. Moreover,
while the hand-working classes, both on the farms and in towns, expect
to make their children more than pay for themselves after they are
fourteen years old, a large family thus becoming an investment for
future profit, the well-to-do, on the contrary, see in their children a
source of indefinitely continuous expense. And the trend of things is
bringing an ever larger proportion of the people within the ambitious
classes and subject to this sort of checks.
The spread of luxury, or even comfort, works in the same direction by
creating tastes and habits unfavorable to the bearing and rearing of
many children. Among those whose life, in general, is hard these things
are not harder than the rest, and a certain callousness of mind that
is apt to result from monotonous physical labor renders people less
subject to anxiety, as a rule, than those who might appear to have
less occasion for it. The joy of children, the “luxury of the poor,”
may also appear brighter from the dulness and hardship against which
it is relieved. But as people acquire the habit, or at least the hope,
of comfort they become aware that additional children mean a sacrifice
which they often refuse to make.
These influences go hand-in-hand with that general tendency to rebel
against trouble which is involved in the spirit of choice. In former
days women accepted the bearing of children and the accompanying cares
and privations as a matter of course; it did not occur to them that
anything else was possible. Now, being accustomed to choose their
life, they demand a reason why they should undergo hardships; and
since the advantages which are to follow are doubtful and remote, and
the suffering near and obvious, they are not unlikely to refuse. Too
commonly they have no inwrought principles and training that dispose
them to submit.
The distraction of choice grievously increases the actual burden
and stress upon women, for it is comparatively easy to put up with
the inevitable. What with moral strain of this sort and the anxious
selection among conflicting methods of nurture and education it
possibly costs the mother of to-day more psychical energy to raise four
children than it did her grandmother to raise eight.
It would be strange if children were not hospitable to the modern
sentiment that one will is as good as another, except as the other
may be demonstrably wiser in regard to the matter in hand. Willing
submission to authority as such, or sense of the value of discipline
as a condition of the larger and less obvious well-being of society,
is hardly to be expected from childish reasoning, and must come, if at
all, as the unconscious result of a training which reflects general
sentiment and custom. It is institutional in its nature, not visibly
reasonable.
But the child, in our day, finds no such institution, no general state
of sentiment such as exists in Japan and existed in our own past, which
fills the mind from infancy with suggestions that parents are to be
reverenced and obeyed; nor do parents ordinarily do much to instil this
by training. Probably, so great is the power of general opinion even
in childhood, they would hardly succeed if they tried, but as a rule
they do not seriously try. Being themselves accustomed to the view that
authority must appeal to the reason of the subject, they see nothing
strange in the fact that their children treat them as equals and
demand to know “Why?”
The fond attention which parents give to their children is often of a
sort to overstimulate their self-consequence. This constantly asking
them, What would you like? Shall we do this or that? Where do you want
to go? and so on, though amiable on our part, does the child little
good. The old practice of keeping children at a distance, whatever its
evils, was more apt to foster reverence.
Among hand-workers, especially in the country, the work being more
obvious and often shared by the whole family, the pressure of necessary
labor makes a kind of discipline for all, and the children are more
likely to see that there are rules and conditions of life above their
immediate pleasure. Social play, as we have seen, may also do much
for this perception. But this visible control of a higher law has a
decreasing part in modern life, especially with the well-to-do classes,
whose labors are seldom such as children may share, or even understand.
In this, as in so many other respects, we are approaching a higher kind
of life at the cost of incidental demoralization. The modern family
at its best, with its intimate sympathy and its discipline of love,
is of a higher type than the family of an older _régime_. “I never,”
said Thackeray, “saw people on better terms with each other, more
frank, affectionate, and cordial, than the parents and the grown-up
young folks in the United States. And why? Because the children were
spoiled, to be sure.”[158] But where this ideal is not reached, there
is apt to be a somewhat disastrous failure which makes one regret the
autocratic and traditional order. Not merely is discipline lacking,
but the affection which might be supposed to go with indulgence is
turned to indifference, if not contempt. As a rule we love those we can
look up to, those who stand for the higher ideal. In old days parents
shared somewhat in that divinity with which tradition hedged the great
of the earth, and might receive a reverence not dependent upon their
personality; and even to-day they are likely to be better loved if
they exact respect—just as an officer is better loved who enforces
discipline and is not too familiar with his soldiers. Human nature
needs something to look up to, and it is a pity when parents do not in
part supply this need for their children.
In short, the child, like the woman, helps to bear the often grievous
burden of disorganization; bears it, among the well-to-do classes, in
an ill-regulated life, in lack of reverence and love, in nervousness
and petulance; as well as in premature and stunting labor among the
poor.
The opening of new careers to women and a resulting economic
independence approaching that of men is another phase of
“individualism” that has its worse and better aspects. In general it
has, through the fuller self-expression of women, most beneficial
reactions both upon family life and society at large, but creates some
trouble in the way of domestic reluctance and discontent.
The disposition to reject marriage altogether may be set aside as
scarcely existent. The marriage rate shows little decline, though the
average age is somewhat advanced. The wage-earning occupations of
women are mostly of a temporary character, and the great majority of
domestic servants, shop and factory girls, clerks, typewriters and
teachers marry sooner or later. There is no reason to doubt that a
congenial marriage continues to be the almost universal feminine ideal.
A more real problem, perhaps, is found in the excessive requirements,
in the way of comfort and refinement, that young women are said to
cherish. In the United States their education, so far as general
culture is concerned, outstrips that of men, something like
three-fifths of our high school pupils being girls, while even in
the higher institutions the study of history, foreign languages and
English literature is largely given over to women. A certain sense
of superiority coming from this state of things probably causes the
rejection of some honest clerks or craftsmen by girls who can hardly
look for a better offer; and it has a tendency toward the cultivation
of refinement at the expense of children where marriage does occur.
It need hardly be said, however, that aggressive idealism on the part
of women is in itself no bad thing, and that it does harm only where
ill-directed. Hardly anything, for instance, would be more salutary
than the general enforcement by women of a higher moral standard upon
the men who wish to marry them.
And certainly nothing in modern civilization is more widely and subtly
beneficent than the enlargement of women in social function. It means
that a half of human nature is newly enfranchised, instructed and
enabled to become a more conscious and effective factor in life. The
ideals of home and the care of children, in spite of pessimists, are
changing for the better, and the work of women in independent careers
is largely in the direction of much-needed social service—education
and philanthropy in the largest sense of the words. Any one familiar
with these movements knows that much of the intellectual and most of
the emotional force back of them is that of women. One may say that the
maternal instinct has been set free and organized on a vast scale, for
the activities in which women most excel are those inspired by sympathy
with children and with the weak or suffering classes.
To the continental European, accustomed to a society in which the
functions and conventions of men and women are sharply distinguished
and defined by tradition, it seems that Americans break down a natural
and salutary differentiation, making women masculine and men feminine
by a too indiscriminate association and competition. No doubt there is
some ground for distinct standards and education, and in the general
crumbling of traditions and sway of a somewhat doctrinaire idea of
equality some “achieved distinctions” of value may have been lost sight
of. Like other social differentiations, however, this is one that can
no longer be determined by authority, but must work itself out in a
free play of experiment. As Mr. Ellis says, “The hope of our future
civilization lies in the development, in equal freedom, of both the
masculine and feminine elements in life.”[159]
Perhaps, also, the masculine element, as being on the whole more
rational and stable, should be the main source of government, keeping
in order the emotionality more commonly dominant in women: and it may
appear that this controlling function is ill-performed in America. It
should be remembered, however, that with us the emancipation of women
comes chiefly from male initiative and is a voluntary fostering of _das
ewig Weibliche_ out of love and respect for it. And also that most
European societies govern women by coercive laws or conventions and, in
the lower classes, even by blows. Americans have almost wholly foregone
these extrinsic aids, aiming at a higher or voluntary discipline, and
if American women are, after all, quite as well guided, on the whole,
as those of Europe, it is no mean achievement.
There are in general two sorts of forces, one personal and one
institutional, which hold people together in wedlock. By the personal
I mean those which spring more directly from natural impulse, and may
be roughly summed up as affection and common interest in children. The
institutional are those that come more from the larger organization of
society, such as economic interdependence of husband and wife, or the
state of public sentiment, tradition and law.
As regards affection, present conditions should apparently be
favorable to the strength of the bond. Since personal choice is so
little interfered with, and the whole matter conducted with a view
to congeniality, it would seem that a high degree of congeniality
must, on the whole, be secured. And, indeed, this is without much
doubt the case: nowhere probably, is there so large a proportion of
couples living together in love and confidence as in those countries
where marriage is most free. Even if serious friction arises, the
fact that each has chosen the other without constraint favors a sense
of responsibility for the relation, and a determination to make it
succeed that might be lacking in an arranged marriage. We know that if
we do not marry happily it is our own fault, and the more character and
self-respect we have the more we try to make the best of our venture.
There can hardly be a general feeling that marriage is one thing and
love another, such as may prevail under the rule of _convenance_.
Yet it is not inconsistent to say that this aim at love increases
divorce. The theory being that the contracting parties are to be made
happy, then, if they are not, it seems to follow that the relation is
a failure and should cease: the brighter the ideal the darker the fact
by contrast. Where interest and custom rule marriage those who enter
into it may not expect congeniality, or, if they do, they feel that it
is secondary and do not dream of divorce because it is not achieved.
The woman marries because her parents tell her to, because marriage is
her career, and because she desires a wedding and to be mistress of a
household; the man because he wants a household and children and is
not indifferent to the dowry. These tangible aims, of which one can be
fairly secure beforehand, give stability where love proves wanting.
And while freedom in well-ordered minds tends toward responsibility and
the endeavor to make the best of a chosen course, in the ill-ordered
it is likely to become an impulsiveness which is displayed equally
in contracting and in breaking off marriage without good cause. The
conditions of our time give an easy rein to undisciplined wills, and
one index of their activity is the divorce rate. Bad training in
childhood is a large factor in this, neglected or spoiled children
making bad husbands or wives, and probably furnishing the greater
number of the divorced. Common observation seems to show that the
latter are seldom people of thoroughly wholesome antecedents.
It may not be amiss to add that personal affection is at the best an
inadequate foundation for marriage. To expect that one person should
make another happy or good is requiring too much of human nature. Both
parties ought to be subject to some higher idea, in reverence for
which they may rise above their own imperfection: there ought to be
something in the way of religion in the case. A remark which Goethe
made of poetry might well be applied to personal love: “It is a very
good companion of life, but in no way competent to guide it”;[160] and
because people have no higher thought to shelter them in disappointment
is frequently the reason that marriage proves a failure.
As regards institutional bonds there is of course a great relaxation.
Thus economic interdependence declines with the advance of
specialization. The home industries are mostly gone, and every year
more things are bought that used to be made in the house. Little is
left but cooking, and that, either as a task of the wife or in the
shape of the Domestic Service Question, is so troublesome that many are
eager to see it follow the rest. At one time marriage was, for women,
about the only way to a respectable maintenance, while to men a good
housewife was equally an economic necessity. Now this is true only of
the farming population, and less true of them than it used to be: in
the towns the economic considerations are mostly opposed to married
life.
Besides making husband and wife less necessary to each other, these
changes tend to make married women restless. Nothing works more for
sanity and contentment than a reasonable amount of necessary and
absorbing labor; disciplining the mind and giving one a sense of
being of use in the world. It seems a paradox to say that idleness is
exhausting, but there is much truth in it, especially in the case of
sensitive and eager spirits. A regular and necessary task rests the
will by giving it assurance, while the absence of such a task wearies
it by uncertainty and futile choice. Just as a person who follows a
trail through the woods will go further with less exertion than one who
is finding his way, so we all need a foundation of routine, and the
lack of this among women of the richer classes is a chief cause of the
restless, exacting, often hysterical, spirit, harassing to its owner
and every one else, which tends toward discontent, indiscretion and
divorce.
The old traditional subordination on the part of the wife had its uses,
like other decaying structures of the past; and however distasteful to
modern ideas of freedom, was a factor in holding the family together.
For, after all, no social organization can be expected to subsist
without some regular system of government. We say that the modern
family is a democracy; and this sounds very well; but anarchy is
sometimes a more correct description. A well-ordered democracy has
a constitution and laws, prescribing the rights and duties of the
various members of the state, and providing a method of determining
controversies: the family, except as we recognize within reasonable
limits the authority of the husband and father, has nothing of the
sort. So long as the members are one in mind and feeling there is
an unconscious harmony which has nothing to do with authority; but
with even slight divergence comes the need of definite control.
What would happen on shipboard if the captain had to govern by mere
personal ascendency, without the backing of maritime law and custom?
Evidently there would be mutinies, as among pirate crews, which only an
uncommonly strong man could quell; and the family is often in a similar
condition.[161]
The relaxation of moral sentiment regarding marriage by migrations and
other sorts of displacement is easily traced in statistics, which show
that divorce is more frequent in new countries, in cities—peopled by
migration—and in the industrial and commercial classes most affected
by economic change. To have an effective public opinion holding people
to their duty it is important that men should live long in one place
and in one group, inheriting traditional ideas and enforcing them
upon one another. All breaking up of old associations involves an
“individualism” which is nowhere more active than in family relations.
The same principles go to explain diminished control by the law and the
church. Thus we notice that the states of the American Union, having
made their marriage laws in comparative independence of the English
tradition and in harmony with a relaxing public sentiment, have much
divorce; while in Canada the restraining hand of that tradition has
kept the law conservative and made divorce difficult and rare. The
surprising contrast in this regard between the two sides of the Detroit
or St. Lawrence rivers is only partly explained by the different social
traits of the people.
Christian teaching is the chief source of the ideal of marriage as a
sacred and almost indissoluble bond, and church organization has been
the main agent in enforcing this ideal. The Roman Catholic church
has never admitted the possibility of absolute divorce, and to her
authority, chiefly, is due its absence in Spain and Italy; while in
England the Established Church, not much behind Rome in strictness,
has been perhaps the chief cause of conservatism in English law and
sentiment. And the other Protestant churches, though more liberal, are
conservative in comparison with the drift of popular feeling. So the
fact, needless to discuss in this connection, that the disciplinary
authority of the church has declined, makes directly for the increase
of divorce.
The relaxation of the family is due, then, to changes progressive on
the whole, but involving much incidental demoralization; being in
general those arising from a somewhat rapid decay of old traditions and
disciplines and a consequent dependence upon human impulse and reason.
The evil involved is largely old evil in a new form; it is not so much
that new troubles have arisen between husband and wife as that a new
remedy is sought for old ones. They quarreled and marriage vows were
broken quite as much in former times as now, as much in England to-day
as in America: the main difference is in the outcome.
Moreover, the matter has its brighter side; for divorce, though full of
evils, is associated with a beneficent rise in the standing of women,
of which it is to a certain degree the cause. The fact that law and
opinion now permit women to revolt against the abuse of marital power
operates widely and subtly to increase their self-respect and the
respect of others for them, and like the right of workmen to strike,
does most of its good without overt exercise.
FOOTNOTES:
[157] French and English, 357.
[158] Philip, chapter 28.
[159] Man and Woman, 396.
[160] Die Muse das Leben zwar gern begleitet, aber es keineswegs zu
leiten versteht.
[161] That the increase of divorces is due chiefly to the initiative
of the wife is seen in the fact that as they become more numerous an
increasing proportion is granted at the instance of the woman. Under
the old _régime_ the divorcing of a husband was almost unknown, the
first case in England occurring in 1801. (See the essay on Marriage
and Divorce in Mr. Bryce’s Studies in History and Jurisprudence.) In
the United States a great preponderance are now granted to wives, and
the greater the total rate the greater this preponderance. In those
states where the rate is highest the proportion is from two-thirds to
three-fourths. It is not far wrong to say that the old idea of divorce
was to rid the husband of an unfaithful wife, the new is to rid the
wife of an uncongenial or troublesome husband.