goes along with a family in which father and children are of first importance that a wife may even be glad to have her servant bear the children if they may only be reckoned as hers. The husband has thus greater freedom--for polyandry seems to have been rare among civilized peoples except under stress of poverty. The greater freedom of the husband is likely to appear also in the matter of divorce. Among many savage peoples divorce is easy for both parties if there is mutual consent, but with the families in which father right prevails it is almost always easier for the man. The ancient Hebrew might divorce his wife for any cause he pleased, but there is no mention of a similar right on her part, and it doubtless did not occur to the lawgiver. The code of Hammurabi allows the man to put away the mother of his children by giving her and her children suitable maintenance, or a childless wife by returning the bride price, but a wife who has acted foolishly or extravagantly may be divorced without compensation or kept as a slave.
The woman may also claim a divorce "if she has been economical and has no vice and her husband has gone out and greatly belittled her." But if she fails to prove her claim and appears to be a gadder-about, "they shall throw that woman into the water." India and China have the patriarchal family, and the Brahmans added the obligation of the widow never to remarry. Greater freedom of divorce on the part of the husband is also attended by a very different standard for marital faithfulness.
For the unfaithful husband there is frequently no penalty or a slight one; for the wife it is frequently death.
=The Roman Family.=--The modern family in western civilization is the product of three main forces: the Roman law, the Teutonic custom, and the Christian Church. Early Roman law had recognized the extreme power of the husband and father. Wife and children were in his "hand." All women must be in the _tutela_ of some man. The woman, according to the three early forms of marriage, passed completely from the power and hand of her father into that of her husband. At the same time she was the only wife, and divorce was rare. But by the closing years of the Republic a new method of marriage, permitting the woman to remain in the _manus_ of her father, had come into vogue, and with it an easy theory of divorce. Satirists have charged great degeneracy in morals as a result, but Hobhouse thinks that upon the whole the Roman matron would seem to have retained the position of her husband's companion, counselor, and friend, which she had held in those more austere times when marriage brought her legally under his dominion.[249] =The Germanic Family.=--The Germanic peoples recognized an almost unlimited power of the husband. The passion for liberty, which Cæsar remarked as prevalent among them, did not seem to require any large measure of freedom for their women. In fact, they, like other peoples, might be said to have satisfied the two principles of freedom and control by allotting all the freedom to the men and all, or nearly all, the control to the women. Hobhouse thus summarizes the conditions: "The power of the husband was strongly developed; he might expose the infant children, chastise his wife, dispose of her person. He could not put her to death, but if she was unfaithful, he was, with the consent of the relations, judge and executioner. The wife was acquired by purchase from her own relatives without reference to her own desires, and by purchase passed out of her family. She did not inherit in early times at all, though at a later period she acquired that right in the absence of male heirs. She was in perpetual ward, subject, in short, to the Chinese rule of the three obediences, to which must be added, as feudal powers developed, the rule of the king or other feudal superior. And the guardianship or _mundium_ was frankly regarded in early law rather as a source of profit to the guardian than as a means of defense to the ward, and for this reason it fetched a price in the market, and was, in fact, salable far down in the Middle Ages. Lastly, the German wife, though respected, had not the certainty enjoyed by the early Roman Matron of reigning alone in the household. It is true that polygamy was rare in the early German tribes, but this, as we have seen, is universally the case where the numbers of the sexes are equal. Polygamy was allowed, and was practiced by the chiefs."
=Two Lines of Church Influence.=--The influence of the church on marriage and family life was in two conflicting lines. On the one hand, the homage and adoration given to Mary and to the saints, tended to exalt and refine the conception of woman. Marriage was, moreover, treated as a "sacrament," a holy mystery, symbolic of the relation of Christ and the church. The priestly benediction gave religious sacredness from the beginning; gradually a marriage liturgy sprang up which added to the solemnity of the event, and finally the whole ceremony was made an ecclesiastical instead of a secular function.[250] The whole institution was undoubtedly raised to a more serious and significant position. But, on the other hand, an ascetic stream of influence had pursued a similar course, deepening and widening as it flowed. Although from the beginning those "forbidding to marry" had been denounced, it had nearly always been held that the celibate life was a higher privilege. If marriage was a sacrament, it was nevertheless held that marriage made a man unfit to perform the sacraments. Woman was regarded as the cause of the original sin. Marriage was from this standpoint a concession to human weakness. "The generality of men and women must marry or they will do worse; therefore, marriage must be made easy; but the very pure hold aloof from it as from a defilement. The law that springs from this source is not pleasant to read."[251] It must, however, be noted that, although celibacy by a selective process tended to remove continually the finer, more aspiring men and women, and prevent them from leaving any descendants, it had one important value for woman. The convent was at once a refuge, and a door to activity.
"The career open to the inmates of convents was greater than any other ever thrown open to women in the course of modern European history."[252] Two important contributions to the justice of the marriage relation, and therefore to the better theory of the family, are in any case to be set down to the credit of the church. The first was that the consent of the parties was the only thing necessary to constitute a valid marriage.
"Here the church had not only to combat old tradition and the authority of the parents, but also the seignorial power of the feudal lord, and it must be accounted to it for righteousness that it emancipated the woman of the servile as well as of the free classes in relation to the most important event of her life."[253] The other was that in maintaining as it did the indissolubility of the sacramental marriage, it held that its violation was as bad for the husband as for the wife. The older theories had looked at infidelity either as an injury to the husband's property, or as introducing uncertainty as to the parenthood of children, and this survives in Dr. Johnson's dictum of a "boundless" difference. The feelings of the wife, or even of the husband, aside from his concern for his property and children, do not seem to have been considered.
The church thus modified the Germanic and Roman traditions, but never entirely abolished them, because she was divided within herself as to the real place of family life. Protestantism, in its revolt from Rome, opposed both its theories of marriage. On the one hand, the Reformers held that marriage is not a sacrament, but a civil contract, admitting of divorce. On the other hand, they regarded marriage as the most desirable state, and abolished the celibacy of the clergy. The "subjection of women," especially of married women, has, however, remained as the legal theory until very recently. In England it was the theory in Blackstone's time that "The very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs everything." According to the old law, he might give her "moderate correction." "But with us in the politer reign of Charles II., this power of correction began to be doubted." It was not until 1882, however, that a married woman in England gained control of her property. In the United States the old injustice of the common law has been gradually remedied by statutes until substantial equality in relation to property and children has been secured.
§ 2. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS OF THE FAMILY The psychology of family life may be conveniently considered under two heads: that of the husband and wife, and that of parents and children, brothers and sisters.
1. The complex sentiment, love, which is found in the most perfect family life, is on the one hand (1) a feeling or emotion; on the other (2) a purpose, a will. Both these are modified and strengthened by (3) parenthood and (4) social and religious influences.
=(1) The Emotional and Instinctive Basis.=--As feeling or emotion love may have two roots. A mental sympathy, based on kindred tastes and interests, is sometimes present at the outset, but in any case it is likely to develop under the favoring conditions of a common life, particularly if there are either children or a common work. But it is well known that this is not all. A friend is one thing; a lover another.
The intimacy involved requires not only the more easily described and superficial attraction of mind for mind; it demands also a deeper congeniality of the whole person, incapable of precise formulation, manifesting itself in the subtler emotional attitudes of instinctive reaction. This instinctive, as contrasted with the more reflective, attraction is frequently described as one of opposites or contrasting dispositions and physical characteristics. But this is nothing that enters into the feeling as a conscious factor. The only explanation which we can give in the present condition of science is the biological one. From the biological point of view it was a most successful venture when Nature, by some happy variation, developed two sexes with slightly different characters and made their union necessary to the continuance of life in certain species. By uniting in every new individual the qualities of two parents, the chances of variation are greatly increased, and variation is the method of progress. To keep the same variety of fruit the horticulturist buds or grafts; to get new varieties he plants seed. The extraordinary progress combined with continuity of type, which has been exhibited in the plant and animal world, has been effected, in part at least, through the agency of sex. This long process has developed certain principles of selection which are instinctive.
Whether they are the best possible or not, they represent a certain adjustment which has secured such progress as has been attained, and such adaptation to environment as exists, and it would be unwise, if it were not impossible, to disregard them. Marriages of convenience are certainly questionable from the biological standpoint.
But the instinctive basis is not in and of itself sufficient to guarantee a happy family life. If man were living wholly a life of instinct, he might trust instinct as a guide in establishing his family.
But since he is living an intellectual and social life as well, intellectual and social factors must enter. The instinctive basis of selection was fixed by conditions which contemplated only a more or less limited period of attachment, with care of the young for a few years. Modern society requires the husband and wife to contemplate life-long companionship, and a care for children which implies capacity in the father to provide for a great range of advantages, and in the mother to be intellectual and moral guide and friend until maturity. To trust the security of these increased demands to instinct is to invite failure. Instinct must be guided by reason if perfect friendship and mutual supplementation in the whole range of interests are to be added to the intenser, but less certain, attraction.
=(2) The Common Will.=--But whether based on instinct or intellectual sympathy, no feeling or emotion by itself is an adequate moral basis for the life together of a man and a woman. What was said on p. 249, as to the moral worthlessness of any _mere_ feeling abstracted from will, applies here. Love or affection, in the only sense in which it makes a moral basis of the family, is not the "affection" of psychological language--the pleasant or unpleasant tone of consciousness; it is the resolute purpose in each to seek the other's good, or rather to seek a _common_ good which can be attained only through a common life involving mutual self-sacrifice. It is the good will of Kant specifically directed toward creating a common good. It is the formation of a small "kingdom of ends" in which each treats the other "as end," never as means only; in which each is "both sovereign and subject"; in which the common will, thus created, enhances the person of each and gives it higher moral dignity and worth. And, as in the case of all purpose which has moral value, there is such a common good as the actual result. The disposition and character of both husband and wife are developed and supplemented.
The male is biologically the more variable and motor. He has usually greater initiative and strength. Economic and industrial life accentuates these tendencies. But alone he is apt to become rough or hard, to lack the feeling in which the charm and value of life are experienced. On the other hand, the woman, partly by instinct, it may be, but certainly by vocation, is largely occupied with the variety of cares on which human health, comfort, and morality depend. She tends to become narrow, unless supplemented by man. The value of emotion and feeling in relation to this process of mutual aid and enlargement, as in general, is, as Aristotle pointed out, to perfect the will. It gives warmth and vitality to what would otherwise be in any case partial and might easily become insincere. There was a profound truth which underlay the old psychology in which "the heart" meant at once character and passion.
=(3) The Influence of Parenthood.=--Nature takes one step at a time. If all the possible consequences of family life had to be definitely forecasted, valued, and chosen at the outset, many would shrink. But this would be because there is as yet no capacity to appreciate new values before the actual experience of them. "Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfillments; each of its joys ripens into a new want."
Parental affection is not usually present until there are real children to evoke it. At the outset the mutual love of husband and wife is enough. But as the first, more instinctive and emotional factors lose relatively, the deeper union of will and sympathy needs community of interest if it is to become permanent and complete. Such community of interest is often found in sharing a business or a profession, but under present industrial organization this is not possible as a general rule.
The most general and effective object of common interest is the children of the family. As pointed out by John Fiske, the mere keeping of the parents together by the prolongation of infancy in the human species has had great moral influence. Present civilization does not merely demand that the parents coöperate eight or ten years for the child's physical support. There has been a second epoch in the prolongation. The parents now must coöperate until the children are through school and college, and in business or homes of their own. And the superiority of children over the other common interests is that in a different form the parents repeat the process which first took them out of their individual lives to unite for mutual helpfulness. If the parents treat the children not merely as sources of gratification or pride, but as persons, with lives of their own to live, with capacities to develop, the personality of the parent is enlarged. The affection between husband and wife is enriched by the new relationship it has created.
=(4) Social and Religious Factors.=--The relations of husband and wife, parent and child, are the most intimate of personal relations, but they are none the less relations of social interest. In fact, just because they are so intimate, society is the more deeply concerned. Or, to put it from the individual's standpoint, just because the parties are undertaking a profoundly personal step, they must take it as members of a moral order. The act of establishing the family signifies, indeed, the entrance into fuller participation in the social life; it is the assuming of ties which make the parties in a new and deeper sense organic parts of humanity. This social and cosmic meaning is appropriately symbolized by the civil and religious ceremony. In its control over the marriage contract, and in its prescriptions as to the care and education of the children, society continues to show its interest. All this lends added value and strength to the emotional and intellectual bases.
=2. Parent and Child.=--The other relationships in the family, those of parents and children, brothers and sisters, need no elaborate analysis.
The love of parents for children, like that of man and woman, has an instinctive basis. Those species which have cared for their offspring have had a great advantage in the struggle for existence. Nature has selected them, and is constantly dropping the strains of any race or set which cares more for power, or wealth, or learning than for children.
Tenderness, courage, responsibility, activity, patience, forethought, personal virtue--these are constantly evoked not by the needs of children in general, but by the needs of our own children. The instinctive response, however, is soon broadened in outlook and deepened in meaning. Intellectual activity is stimulated by the needs of providing for the physical welfare, and, still more, by the necessity of planning for the unfolding mind. The interchange of question and answer which forces the parent to think his whole world anew, and which with the allied interchange of imitation and suggestion produces a give and take between all members of the family, is constantly making for fluidity and flexibility, for tolerance and catholicity. In the thoughtful parent these educative influences are still further enriched by the problem of moral training. For in each family, as in the race, the need of eliciting and directing right conduct in the young is one of the most important agencies in bringing home to the elders the significance of custom and authority, of right and wrong. It is natural enough, from one standpoint, to think of childhood as an imperfect state, looking forward for its completeness and getting its value because of its rich promise. But the biologist tells us that the child is nearer the line of progress than the more developed, but also more rigidly set, man. And the lover of children is confident that if any age of humanity exists by its own right, and "pays as it goes," it is childhood. It is not only meet, but a joy, that the fathers labor for the children. Many, if not most, of the objects for which men and women strive and drudge seem less satisfactory when obtained; because we have meanwhile outgrown the desire. Children afford an object of affection which is constantly unfolding new powers, and opening new reaches of personality.[254] Conversely, an authority which is also tender, patient, sympathetic, is the best medium to develop in the child self-control. The necessity of mutual forbearance where there are several children, of sharing fairly, of learning to give and take, is the best possible method of training for membership in the larger society. In fact, from the point of view of the social organism as a whole, the family has two functions; as a smaller group, it affords an opportunity for eliciting the qualities of affection and character which cannot be displayed at all in the larger group; and, in the second place, it is a training for future members of the larger group in those qualities of disposition and character which are essential to citizenship.[255] § 3. GENERAL ELEMENTS OF STRAIN IN FAMILY RELATIONS =Difference in Temperament.=--While there are intrinsic qualities of men and women that bring them together for family life, and, while there is in most cases a strong reënforcement afforded by the presence of children, there are certain characteristics which tend just as inevitably to produce tension, and those forces of tension are strengthened at the present time by certain economic, educational, and cultural conditions. The differences between men and women may be at the basis of their instinctive attraction for each other; they certainly have possibilities of friction as well. A fundamental difference already noted is that the male is more variable, the female more true to the type. Biologically at least, the _varium et mutabile_ is applied by the poet to the wrong sex. Applied to the mind and disposition, this means probably not only a greater variation of capacity and temper as a whole,--more geniuses and also more at the other extreme than among women,--but also a greater average mobility.
=Differences Accentuated by Occupation.=--From the early occupations of hunting and fishing, to the modern greater range of occupations, any native mobility in man has found stimulation and scope, as compared with the energies of women which have less distinct differentiation and a more limited contact with the work of others. And there is another industrial difference closely connected with this, which has been pointed out by Ellis,[256] and Thomas.[257] Primitive man hunted and fought. Much of primitive industry, the prototype, so far as it existed, of the industrial activity of the modern world, was carried on by woman.
Industrial progress has been signalized by the splitting off of one phase of woman's work after another, and by the organization and expansion of this at the hands of man. Man's work has thus become more specialized and scientific; woman's has remained more detailed, complex, and diffused. Her work in the family of ordering the household, caring for the children, securing the health and comfort of all its members, necessarily involves personal adjustment; hence it resists system. As a result of the differentiation man has gained in greater and greater degree a scientific and objective standard for his work; woman neither has nor can have--at least in the sphere of personal relations--the advantage of a standard. Business has its ratings in the quantity of sales or the ratio of net profits. The professions and skilled trades have their own tests of achievement. A scientist makes his discovery, a lawyer wins his case, an architect builds his bridge, the mechanic his machine; he knows whether he has done a good piece of work, and respects himself accordingly. He can appeal from the man next to him to the judgment of his profession. Conversely, the standard of the trade or profession helps to lift the individual's work. It is a constant stimulus, as well as support. A woman's work in the family has no such professional stimulus, or professional vindication. If the family is lenient, the work is not held up to a high level. On the other hand, it must make its appeal to the persons immediately concerned, and if they do not respond, the woman feels that she has failed to do something really worth while. If her work is not valued, she feels that it is not valuable. For there is no demonstrative proof of a successful home any more than there is of a good work of art. It is easy enough to point out reasons why the picture or the home should please and satisfy, but if the work itself is not convincing, no demonstration that similar works have satisfied is of any avail.
The way in which men and women come into contact with others is another element in the case. Man comes into contact with others for the most part in an abstract way. He deals not with men, women, and children, but with employers or employed, with customers or clients, or patients. He doesn't have to stand them in all their varied phases, or enter into those intimate relations which involve strain of adjustment in its fullest extent. Moreover, business or professional manner and etiquette come in to relieve the necessity of personal effort. The "professional manner" serves the same function in dealing with others, which habit plays in the individual life; it takes the place of continual readjustment of attention. When a man is forced to lay this aside and deal in any serious situation as "a human being," he feels a far greater strain. The woman's task is less in extension, but great in intension.
It obliges her to deal with the children, at any rate, as wholes, and a "whole" child is a good deal of a strain. If she does not see the whole of the husband, it is quite likely that the part not brought home--the professional or business part of him--is the most alert, intelligent, and interesting phase. The constant close-at-hand personal relations, unrelieved by the abstract impersonal attitude and the generalizing activity which it invites, constitute an element of strain which few men understand, and which probably few could endure and possess their souls.
The present division of labor seems, therefore, to make the man excessively abstract, the woman excessively personal, instead of supplementing to some extent the weak side of each.
=Difference in Attitude toward the Family.=--As if these differences in attitude based on disposition and occupation were not enough, we have a thoroughgoing difference in the attitude of men and women toward the very institution which invites them. The man is ready enough to assent to the importance of the family for the race, but his family means not an interference with other ambitions, but usually an aid to their fulfillment. His family is one interest among several, and is very likely subordinate in his thought to his profession or his business. In early ages to rove or conquer, in modern life to master nature and control her resources or his fellowmen--this has been the insistent instinct which urges even the long-tossed Ulysses from Ithaca and from Penelope again upon the deep. Woman, on the other hand, if she enters a family, usually abandons any other ambition and forgets any acquired art or skill of her previous occupation. To be the mistress of a home may be precisely what she would choose as a vocation. But there is usually no alternative if she is to have a home at all. It is not a question of a family in addition to a vocation, but of a family _as_ a vocation. Hence woman must regard family life not merely as a good; it must be _the_ good, and usually the exclusive good.
If, then, a woman has accepted the family as the supreme good, it is naturally hard to be in perfect sympathy with the man's standard of family life as secondary. Of course a completer vision may find that a division of labor, a difference of function, may carry with it a difference in standards of value; the mastery of nature and the maintenance of the family may be neither an absolute good in itself, but each a necessity to life and progress. But neither man nor woman is always equal to this view, and to the full sympathy for the relative value of the other's standpoint. Where it cuts closest is in the attitude toward breach of faith in the family tie. Men have severe codes for the man who cheats at cards or forges a signature, but treat much more leniently, or entirely ignore, the gravest offenses against the family. These latter do not seem to form a barrier to political, business, or social success (among men). Women have a severe standard for family sanctity, especially for their own sex. But it would probably be difficult to convince most women that it is a more heinous offense to secrete a card, or even with Nora in _The Doll's House_, to forge a name, than to be unfaithful. It is not meant that the average man or woman approves either form of wrongdoing, but that there is a difference of emphasis evidenced in the public attitude. In view of all these differences in nature, occupation, and social standard it may be said that however well husband and wife may love each other, few understand each other completely. Perhaps most men do not understand women at all.
Corresponding to the "psychologist's fallacy," whose evils have been depicted by James, there is a "masculine fallacy" and a "feminine fallacy."
=Difference in Age.=--The difference in age between parents and children brings certain inevitable hindrances to complete understanding. The most thoroughgoing is that parent and children really stand concretely for the two factors of continuity and individual variation which confront each other in so many forms. The parent has found his place in the social system, and is both steadied and to some extent made rigid by the social tradition. The child, though to some extent imitating and adopting this tradition, has as yet little reasoned adherence to it. The impulses and expanding life do not find full expression in the set ways already open, and occasionally break out new channels. The conservatism of the parent may be a wiser and more social, or merely a more hardened and narrow, mode of conduct; some of the child's variations may be irrational and pernicious to himself and society; others may promise a larger reasonableness, a more generous social order--but meanwhile certain features of the conflict between reason and impulse, order and change, are constantly appearing. Differences in valuation are also inevitable and can be bridged only by an intelligent sympathy. It is easy to consider this or that to be of slight importance to the child when it is really his whole world for the time. Even if he does "get over it," the effect on the disposition may remain, and affect the temper or emotional life, even though not consciously remembered.
Probably, also, most parents do not realize how early a crude but sometimes even passionate sense for "fairness" develops, or how different the relative setting of an act appears if judged from the motives actually operative with the child, and not from those which might produce such an act in a "grown-up." Most parents and children love each other; few reach a complete understanding.
§ 4. SPECIAL CONDITIONS WHICH GIVE RISE TO PRESENT PROBLEMS In addition to the more general conditions of family life, there are certain conditions at present operative which give rise to special problems, or rather emphasize certain aspects of the permanent problems.
The family is quite analogous to political society. There needs to be constant readjustment between order and progress, between the control of the society and the freedom of the individual. The earlier bonds of custom or force have to be exchanged in point after point for a more voluntary and moral order. In the words of Kant, heteronomy must steadily give place to autonomy, subordination of rank or status to division of labor with equality in dignity. The elements of strain in the family life at present may fairly be expected to give rise ultimately to a better constitution of its relations. The special conditions are partly economic, partly educational and political, but the general process is a part of the larger growth of modern civilization with the increasing development of individuality and desire for freedom. It is sometimes treated as if it affected only the woman or the children; in reality it affects the man as well, though in less degree, as his was not the subordinate position.
=The Economic Factors.=--The "industrial revolution" transferred production from home to factory. The household is no longer as a rule an industrial unit. Spinning, weaving, tailoring, shoemaking, soap-making, iron- and wood-working, and other trades have gone to factories. Men, young unmarried women, and to some extent married women also, have gone with them. Children have lost association with one parent, and in some cases with both. The concentration of industry and business leads to cities. Under present means of transportation this means apartments instead of houses, it means less freedom, more strain, for both mother and children, and possible deteriorating effects upon the race which as yet are quite outside any calculation. But leaving this uncertain field of effects upon child life, we notice certain potent effects upon men and women.
It might be a difficult question to decide the exact gains and losses for family life due to the absence of the man from home during the day.
On the one hand, too constant association is a source of friction; on the other, there is likely to result some loss of sympathy, and where the working-day is long, an almost absolute loss of contact with children. If children are the great natural agencies for cultivating tenderness and affection, it is certainly unfortunate that fathers should be deprived of this education. The effect of the industrial revolution upon women has been widely noted. First of all, the opening of an increasing number of occupations to women has rendered them economically more independent. They are not forced to the alternative of marriage or dependence upon relatives. If already married, even although they may have lost touch to some extent with their former occupation, they do not feel the same compulsion to endure intolerable conditions in the home rather than again attempt self-support. An incidental effect of the entrance of women upon organized occupations, with definite hours and impersonal standards, is to bring out more strongly by contrast the "belated" condition of domestic work. It is difficult to obtain skilled workers for an occupation requiring nearly double the standard number of hours, isolation instead of companionship during work, close personal contact with an employer, a measure of control over conduct outside of the hours on duty, and finally the social inferiority implied by an occupation which has in it survivals of the status of the old-time servant. Indeed, the mistress of the house, if she "does her own work," doesn't altogether like her situation. There is now no one general occupation which all men are expected to master irrespective of native tastes and abilities. If every male were obliged to make not only his own clothing, including head- and foot-wear, but that of his whole family, unassisted, or with practically unskilled labor, there would