Mrs. Bosanquet[105] has told us that the most important economic
function of the family to-day is its direct control of the prosperity or
ruin of nations; for here alone are found in combination the forces
which determine the quantity of the population with the forces which
determine its quality. To control these forces offers, to say the least,
a life-work for countless men and women. Both parents must safeguard the
character of their children's inherited nature; both sexes are more or
less directly or remotely concerned in the provision of a suitable
environment for human lives, infant or adult. Under the circumstances it
may well be a matter for surprise that we have been so slow to perceive
that the right performance of these duties demands a preliminary study
of the art of preserving health and promoting progress, and we marvel at
the placid spirit of content which has sanctioned the conversion into a
stronghold of empiricism, the very place where a sound knowledge of
progressive sanitary science is of primary importance.
In the book to which reference has been already made, Mrs. Bosanquet
also enumerates the causes which in her opinion militate most actively
against the continuance of family life at the present day. Among others
she mentions evasion of responsibility, self-indulgence (with which we
are very familiar), reliance upon external sources of maintenance, and
the unequal distribution among the members of a family of the burden of
support. Further, she refers to the unfortunate failure among parents to
realise that the old Roman customs of parental possession and filial
submission are out of date to-day, and calls upon the wise guardian to
substitute others which lead to loyalty and love.
The new movement for a study of the characteristics of childhood and
adolescence should materially contribute to the realisation that this
parental attitude of dominant authority must be now associated with and
modified by a more balanced understanding of the phases of youthful
development and of the intricacies of individual temperament.
Convenience has hitherto encouraged the customary regulation of a group
of young lives as if they were one and the same individual, no allowance
being made for variation in character or in age, in propensities or in
health. Each nursery party or infant school serves to illustrate the
point. Individual tendencies to cold or to fatigue, to nerve storms or
to indolence; individual capacities in diet, occupation or exercise,
must be intelligently respected if potentialities are to become
actualities.
In the well-conducted home, for example, a study of individual character
must in the future replace cast-iron discipline or easy-going,
child-spoiling indulgence. The fact that the early cultivation of good
habits makes for healthful happiness must be generally appreciated; and
the duty of the home to provide opportunity for the exercise of personal
tastes, the importance of training as a relief to nervous strain and as
the best means to develop resource and skill, must be perceived. It will
be by this constant understanding supervision in early years, and later
by the cultivation of an intimate sympathetic comradeship with his
children, that the modern parent will retain for his country the
cementing force of family life.