THE PRESENT STATUS OF FAMILY LIFE
§ 1. CONTRASTED TYPES
In a beautiful village, in one of the farther western states, two men
were discussing the possible future of the home and of family life.
Sitting in the brilliant moonlight, looking through the leafy shades,
watching the lights of a score of homes, each surrounded by lawn and
shade trees, each with its group on the front porch, where vines trailed
and flowers bloomed, listening to the hum of conversation and the
strains of music in one home and another, it seemed, to at least one of
these men, that this type of living could hardly pass away. The separate
home, each family a complete social integer, each with its own circle of
activities and interests, its own group, and its own table and fireside,
seemed too fine and beautiful, too fair and helpful, to perish under
economic pressure. Indeed, one felt that the village home furnished a
setting for life and a soil for character development far higher and
more efficient than could be afforded by any other domestic
arrangement--that it approached the ideal.
But two weeks later two men sat in an upper room, in the second largest
city in America, discussing again the future of the family. Instead of
the quiet music of the village, the clang of street cars filled the
ears, trains rushed by, children shouted from the paved highway,
families were seated by open windows in crowded apartments, seeking cool
air; the total impression was that of being placed in a pigeonhole in a
huge, heated, filing-case, where each separate space was occupied by a
family. One felt the pressure of heated, crowded kitchens, suffocating
little dining-rooms; one knew that the babies lay crying in their beds
at night, gasping their very lives away, and that the young folks were
wandering off to amusement parks and moving-picture shows. Here was an
entirely different picture. How long could family life persist under
these conditions where privacy was almost gone and comfort almost
unknown?
In the village separate home integers appear ideal; in the city they are
possible only to the few. The many, at present, find them a crushing
burden. Desirable as privacy is, it can be purchased at too high a
price. It costs too much to maintain separate kitchens and dining-rooms
under city conditions.
§ 2. COMMUNAL TENDENCIES
Present conditions spell waste, inefficiency, discomfort. The woman
lives all day in stifling rooms, poorly lighted, with the nerve-racking
life of neighbors pouring itself through walls and windows. The men
come from crowded shops and the children from crowded schoolrooms to
crowd themselves into these rooms, to snatch a meal, or to sleep. How
can there be real family life? What joy can there be or what ideals
created in daily discomfort and distress? Little wonder that such homes
are sleeping-places only, that there is no sense of family intercourse
and unity. Little wonder that restaurant life has succeeded family life.
Many hold that we are ready for a movement into community living, that
just as the social life of the separate house porches in the villages
has become communized into the amusement parks in the cities, so all the
activities of the family will move in the same direction. How long could
the family as a unit continue under these conditions?
The village life will persist for a long time; it may be that, when we
apply scientific methods to the transportation of human beings in the
same measure as we have to the moving of pig iron, we can develop large
belts of real village life all around our industrial centers. But more
and more the village tends to become like the city; in other words,
highly organized communal life is the dominant trend today. Just as
business tends to do on a large scale all that can be more economically
done in larger units, so does the home. We must look for the increasing
prevalence of the city type of life for men and women and for families.
§ 3. THE ECONOMICAL DEVELOPMENT
It is worth while to note, in some brief detail, just what changes are
involved in the tendency toward communal living. At the beginning of the
industrial revolution which ushered in the factory period, each family
was a fairly complete unit in itself. The village was little more than a
nucleus of farmhouses, with a few differing types of units, such as
workers in wood, in wearing apparel, and in tools. The home furnished
nearly all its own food, spun and made its clothes, trained its own
children, and knew scarcely any community endeavor or any syndication of
effort except in the church.
The industrial revolution took labor largely out of the home into the
factory. Except for farm life, the husband became an outside worker and
the older boys followed him to the distant shop or factory. Earning a
living ceased to be a family act and became a social act in a larger
sphere. But in this change it ceased to be a part of the family
educational process. Boys who, from childhood up, had gradually learned
their father's trade in the shop or workroom, which was part of the
house, where they played as children in the shavings, or watched the
glowing sparks in the smithy, now missed the process of a father's
discipline and guidance as their hands acquired facility for their
tasks. The home lost the male adults for from nine to twelve hours of
each day, more than two-thirds of the waking period, and thus it lost a
large share of disciplinary guidance. In the rise of the factory system,
to a large extent the family lost the father.
When the workshop left the home its most efficient school was taken from
it. The lessons may have been limited, crude, and deadly practical, but
the method approximated to the ideals which modern pedagogy seeks to
realize. Among the shavings children learned by doing; schooling was
perfectly natural; it involved all the powers; it had the incalculable
value of informality and reality. The father gone and the mother still
fully occupied with her tasks, the children lost that practical training
for life which home industry had afforded. On the one hand, the young
became the victims of idleness and, on the other, the prey of the
voracious factory system.
This condition gave rise to the public-school system. It appealed to
Robert Raikes and others. The school appeared and took over the child.
Of course schools had existed, here and there, long before this, but now
they had an enlarged responsibility; they must act almost in the place
of the parents for the formal training of children. Having lost the
father and older males for the greater portion of the day, the home now
loses the children of from seven to the "'teen" years for five or six
hours of the day. The mother is left at home with the babies. The
family, once living under one roof, now is found scattered; it has
reached out into factory and school. Its hours of unified life have been
markedly reduced.
But the factory system soon had a reflex influence on the home. That
which was made in the factory came back into the home, not only in the
form of the articles formerly made by the men, but in those made by the
women. Clothes, candles, butter, cheese, preserves, and meat--all
formerly home products for the use of the family producing them--now
were prepared in larger quantities, by mechanical processes, and were
brought back into the home. Woman's labor was lightened; the older girls
were liberated from the loom and they began to seek occupation,
education, and diversion according to their opportunities in life.
That last step made it possible for people to think of the communization
of home industry, to think of eating food cooked in other ovens than
their own, to think of one oven large enough for a whole village. Many
interesting experiments in co-operative living immediately sprang up.
But the next step came slowly and, even now, is only firmly established
in the cities, in the actual abandonment of the family kitchen for the
community kitchen in the form of the restaurant. In such families we
have unity only in the hours of sleep and recreation.
Along with abandonment of the separate kitchen there has proceeded
the abandonment of the parlor in the homes of the middle classes.
To lose the old, mournful front room may be no subject for tears,
but the loss of the evening family group, about the fireside or
the reading-lamp, is a real and sad loss. The commercialized amusements
have offered greater attractions to vigorous youth. The theater and
its lesser satellites, amusements, entertainments, lectures, the
lyceum, and recreation-by-proxy in ball games and matches have taken
the place of united family recreation. Of course this has been a
natural development of the older village play-life and has been by
no means an unmixed ill.
Now, behold, what has become of the old-time home life! The family that
spent nearly twenty-four hours together now spends a scarce seven or
eight, and these are occupied in sleeping! Little wonder that the next
step is taken--the abandonment of this remainder, the sleep period,
under a domestic roof, as the family moves into a hotel!
Along with the tendency toward communal working and eating we see the
tendency to communal living by the development of the apartment
building. Since roof-trees are so expensive, and since in a practical
age, few of us can afford to pay for sentiment, why not put a dozen
families under one roof-tree? True we sacrifice lawns, gardens, natural
places for children to play; we lose birds and flowers and the charm of
evening hours on porches, or galleries, but think of what we gain in
bricks and mortar, in labor saved from splitting wood and shoveling
coal, in janitor service! The transition is now complete; the home is
simply that item in the economic machinery which will best furnish us
storage for our sleeping bodies and our clothes!
We are undoubtedly in a period of great changes in family life, and no
family can count on escaping the influence of the change. The one single
outstanding and most potent change, so far as the character of family
life is concerned, is, in the United States, the rapid polarization of
population in the cities. The United States Census Bureau counts all
residents in cities of over 8,000 population as "urban." In 1800 the
"urban" population was 4 per cent of the total population; in 1850 it
was 12.5 per cent; in 1870, 20.9 per cent; in 1890, 29.2 per cent; in
1900, 33.1 per cent; in 1910 it was estimated at 40 per cent.[2] Here
is a trend so clearly marked that we cannot deny its reality, while its
significance is familiar to everyone today.
However, the village type remains; there are still many homes where a
measure of family unity persists, where at least in one meal daily and,
for purposes of sleeping and, occasionally, for the evening hours of
recreation, there is a consciousness of home life. Yet the most remote
village feels the pressure of change. The few homes conforming to the
older ideals are recognized as exceptional. The city draws the village
and rural family to itself, and the contagion of its customs and ideals
spreads through the villages and affects the forms of living there.
Youths become city dwellers and do not cease to scoff at the village
unless later years give them wisdom to appreciate its higher values. The
standard of domestic organization is established by the city; that type
of living is the ideal toward which nearly all are striving.
The important question for all persons is whether the changes now taking
place in family life are good or ill. It is impossible to say whether
the whole trend is for the better; the many elements are too diverse and
often apparently conflicting. Faith in the orderly development of
society gives ground for belief that these changes ultimately work for a
higher type of family life. The city may be regarded as only a
transition stage in social evolution--the compacting of masses of
persons together that out of the new fusing and welding may arise new
methods of social living. The larger numbers point to more highly
developed forms of social organization. When these larger units discover
their greater purposes, above factory and mill and store, and realize
them in personal values, the city life will be a more highly developed
mechanism for the higher life of man. The home life will develop along
with that city life.
§ 4. PURPOSEFUL ORGANIZATION
At present the home is suffering, just as the city is suffering, from a
lack of that purposeful organization which will order the parts aright
and subject the processes to the most important and ultimate purposes.
The city is simply an aggregation of persons, scarcely having any
conscious organization, thrown together for purposes of industry. It
will before very long organize itself for purposes of personal welfare
and education. The family is usually a group bound in ties of struggle
for shelter, food, and pleasure. Such consciousness as it possesses is
that of being helplessly at the mercy of conflicting economic forces.
The adjustment of those forces, their subjection to man's higher
interests, must come in the future and will help the family to freedom
to discover its true purpose.
It is easy to insist on the responsibility of parents for the
character-training of their children, but it is difficult to see how
that responsibility can be properly discharged under industrial
conditions that take both father and mother out of the home the whole
day and leave them too weary to stay awake in the evening, too poor to
furnish decent conditions of living, and too apathetic under the dull
monotony of labor to care for life's finer interests. The welfare of the
family is tied up with the welfare of the race; if progress can be
secured in one part progress in the whole ensues.
There are those who raise the question whether family life is a
permanent form of social organization for which we may wisely contend,
or is but a phase from which the race is now emerging. Some see signs
that the ties of marriage will be but temporary, that children will be
born, not into families but into the life of the state, bearing only
their mothers' names and knowing no brothers and sisters save in the
brotherhood of the state. Whether the permanent elements in family life
furnish a sufficiently worthy basis for its preservation is a subject
for careful consideration.
§ 5. THE HOME AND THE FAMILY
The family is more important than the home, just as the man is more than
his clothing. The form of the home changes; the life of the family
continues unchanged in its essential characteristics. The family causes
the home to be. Professor Arthur J. Todd insists that the family is the
basis of marriage, rather than marriage the cause of the family.[3]
Small groups for protection and social living would precede formal
arrangements of monogamy. Westermarck concludes that it was "for the
benefit of the young that male and female continued to live
together."[4] The importance of this consideration for us lies in the
thought of the overshadowing importance of this social group which we
now call the family. The family is the primary cell of society, the
first unit in social organization. Our thought must balance itself
between the importance of this social group, to be preserved in its
integrity, and the value of the home, with its varied forms of activity
and ministry, as a means of preserving and developing this group, the
family.
One hears today many pessimistic utterances regarding the modern home.
Some even tell us that it is doomed to become extinct. Without doubt
great economic changes in society are producing profound changes in the
organization and character of the home. But the home has always been
subject to such changes; the factor which we need to watch with greater
care is the family; the former is but the shell of the latter.
The character of each home will depend largely on the economic condition
of those who dwell in it. The homes of every age will reflect the social
conditions of that age. The picture in historical romances of the home
of the mediaeval period, where the factory, or shop, joined the
dining-room, where the apprentices ate and roomed in the home, where one
might be compelled to furnish and provision his home literally as his
castle for defense, presents a marked difference to the home of this
century tending to syndicate all its labors with all the other homes of
the community. Since the home is simply the organization and mechanism
of the family life, it is most susceptible to material and social
changes. It varies as do the fashions of men.
Much that we assume to be detrimental to the life of the home is simply
due to the fact that in the evolution of society the family, as it were,
puts on a new suit of clothes, adopts new forms of organization to meet
the changing external conditions.
§ 6. THE HOME CHANGING; THE FAMILY ABIDING
The home is of importance only as a tool, a means to the final ends of
the family life; the test of its efficiency is not whether it maintains
traditional forms but whether it best serves the highest aims of family
life. We may abandon all the older customs; our regret for them, as we
look back on the days of home cooking, cannot be any greater than the
regrets of our parents or grandparents looking back on the
spinning-wheel and the hand loom that cumbered the kitchen of their
childhood. Surely no one contends that family life has deteriorated,
that human character is one whit the poorer, because we have discarded
the family spinning-wheel. Through the changes of a developing
civilization, as man has moved from the time when each one built his own
house, worked with his own tools to make all his supplies, to these days
of specialized service in community living, the home has changed with
each step of industrial progress, but the family has remained
practically unchanged.
The family stands a practically unchanging factor of personal qualities
at the center of our civilization; the family rather than the home
determines the character of the coming days. In its social relationships
are rooted the things that are best in all our lives. In its social
training lie the solutions of more problems in social adjustment and
development than we are willing to admit. The family is the soil of
society, central to all its problems and possibilities.
Before church or school the family stands potent for character. We are
what we are, not by the ideals held before us for thirty minutes a week
or once a month in a church, nor by the instructions given in the
classroom; we are what parents, kin, and all the circumstances that have
touched us daily and hourly for years have determined we should be.
The sweetest memories of our lives cluster about the scenes of family
life. The rose-embowered cottage of the poet is not the only spot that
claims affectionate gratitude; many look back to a city house wedged
into its monotonous row. But, wherever it might be, if it sheltered love
and held a shrine where the altar fires of family sacrifice burned,
earth has no fairer or more sacred spot. The people rather than the
place made it potent.
Stronger even than the memories that remain are the marks of habits,
tendencies, tastes, and dispositions there acquired. Many a man who has
left no fortune worth recording to his sons has left them something
better, the aptitude for things good and honorable, the memory of a good
name, and the heritage of a life that was worthy of honor. The personal
life has been always the enduring thing. Our concern for the future
should be not whether we can pass on intact the forms of home
organization, but whether we can give to the next day the force of ideal
family life. Perhaps like Mary we would do well to turn our eyes from
the much serving, the mechanisms of the home, to set our minds on the
better part, the personal values in the association of lives in the
family.
I. References for Study
W.F. Lofthouse, _Ethics and the Family_, chaps. ii, xi, xii. Hodder
& Stoughton, $2.50.
Charles R. Henderson, _Social Duties from the Christian Point of
View_, chaps. ii, iii. The University of Chicago Press, $1.25.
C.W. Votaw, _Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the
American Home_. Religious Education Association, $0.25.
II. Further Reading
Jacob A. Riis, _Peril and Preservation of the Home_. Jacobs,
Philadelphia, Pa., $1.00.
Charles R. Henderson, _Social Elements_. Scribner, $1.50.
Charles F. Thwing, _The Recovery of the Home_. American Baptist
Publication Society, $0.15.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. The tendency toward community life illustrated in the schools,
amusement parks, and hotel life. Remembering the ultimate purpose
of the family, how far is communal life desirable?
2. Does the apartment or tenement building furnish a suitable
condition for the higher purposes of the family?
3. Is it possible to restore to the home some of the benefits lost
by present factory consolidation of industry?
4. What can take the place of the old household arts and of those
which are now passing?
5. What steps should be taken to secure to the family a larger
measure of the time in terms of occupation of the parents?
6. What are the important things to contend for in this
institution? Why should we expect change in the form of the home
and what are the features which should not be changed?
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Figures taken from C.W. Votaw, _Progress of Moral and Religious
Education in the American Home_, 1911.
[3] A.J. Todd, _Primitive Family and Education_, p. 21. A most valuable
and suggestive book.
[4] Cited by Todd, p. 21.