The Family and it's Members

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LIPPINCOTT'S

FAMILY LIFE SERIES

EDITED BY
BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D.

TEACHERS COLLEGE. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

THE FAMILY AND ITS MEMBERS
By ANNA GARLIN SPENCER

LIPPINCOTT'S HOME MANUALS

Edited by BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D.
Teachers College, Columbia University

CLOTHING FOR WOMEN

By LAURA I. BALDT, A.M., Teachers College, Columbia University.
454 Pages, 7 Colored Plates, 202 Illustrations in Text.

SUCCESSFUL CANNING AND PRESERVING

By OLA POWELL, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. 425
Pages, 5 Colored Plates, 174 Illustrations in Text. Third
Edition.

HOME AND COMMUNITY HYGIENE

By JEAN BROADHURST, Ph.D. 428 Pages, 1 Colored Plate, 118
Illustrations in Text.

THE BUSINESS OF THE HOUSEHOLD

By C.W. TABER, Author of _Taker's Dietetic Charts_, _Nurses'
Medical Dictionary_, etc. 438 Pages. Illustrated. Second Edition,
Revised.

HOUSEWIFERY

By L. RAY BALDERSTON, A.M., Teachers College, Columbia
University. 351 Pages. Colored Frontispiece and 175 Illustrations
in Text.

LAUNDERING

By LYDIA RAY BALDERSTON, A.M., Instructor in Housewifery and
Laundering, Teachers College, Columbia University. 152
Illustrations.

HOUSE AND HOME

By GRETA GREY, B.S., Director of Home Economics Department,
University of Wyoming. Illustrated.

MILLINERY (_In Preparation_)

By EVELYN SMITH TOBEY, B.S., Teachers College, Columbia
University

LIPPINCOTT'S FAMILY LIFE SERIES

Edited by BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D.
Teachers College, Columbia University

CLOTHING--CHOICE, CARE, COST

By MARY SCHENCK WOOLMAN, B.S. 290 Pages. Illustrated. Second
Edition.

SUCCESSFUL FAMILY LIFE, ON THE MODERATE INCOME

By MARY HINMAN ABEL. 263 Pages.

THE FAMILY AND ITS MEMBERS

By ANNA GARLIN SPENCER, Special Lecturer in Social Science,
Teachers College, Columbia University.

LIPPINCOTT'S FAMILY LIFE SERIES
EDITED BY BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D., TEACHERS
COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

THE FAMILY
AND ITS
MEMBERS

BY

ANNA GARLIN SPENCER

SPECIAL LECTURER IN SOCIAL SCIENCE, TEACHERS COLLEGE OF
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, FORMERLY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF THE
NEW YORK SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK, SPECIAL LECTURER AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AND HACKLEY PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY
AND ETHICS AT MEADVILLE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL; AUTHOR OF
WOMAN'S SHARE IN SOCIAL CULTURE

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

PRINTED AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.

TO THE MOTHERS AND FATHERS, IN
NUMBER BEYOND COUNT, WHOSE
COURAGE, LOVE AND FAITHFULNESS
CARRY ONWARD THE GENERATIONS
AND KEEP THE MAIN CURRENTS
OF LIFE STRONG AND WHOLESOME.

INTRODUCTION

=A Threefold Aim.=--This book is based upon three theses--namely,
first, that the monogamic, private, family is a priceless inheritance
from the past and should be preserved; second, that in order to
preserve it many of its inherited customs and mechanisms must be
modified to suit new social demands; and third, that present day
experimentation and idealistic effort already indicate certain
tendencies of change in the family order which promise needed
adjustment to ends of highest social value.

Many learned books have been written concerning the evolution of sex,
the history of matrimonial institutions and the development of the
family. This volume is not an attempted rival of any of these. The
work of Havelock Ellis, of Le Tourneau, of Otis T. Mason, of Geddes
and Thompson, and others building upon the foundations laid by the
great pioneers in the study of the family, constitute a sufficient
mine of historical information and scientific analysis and evaluation.
The studies and suggestions of Olive Schreiner, Mrs. Clews Parsons,
Mrs. Helen Bosanquet, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ellen Key and others
indicate the tendency of modern inquiry into the just basis of the
family order. The work of Professors Howard, Giddings, Thomas, Boss,
Goodsell, Calhoun, Patten, Dealey, Cooley, Ellwood, Todd and others in
college fields, shows the importance of the family and the necessity
of giving all that concerns it the most serious attention.

This book aims to begin where many of these students leave off and to
turn specific attention to the problems of personal and ethical
decision which now face men and women who would make their own married
life and parenthood successful. The past experience of the race is
drawn upon only in so far as it seems to explain present conditions
and point the way to future social and personal achievements.

=Basic Principles Underlying All Socially Useful Changes.=--A
fundamental principle in democracy is the right and duty of every
human being to develop a strong, noble and distinctive individuality.
For such development it is necessary that a person be self-supporting,
free of despotic control by others, and able and willing to bear equal
part with every other human being in the social order to which he or
she belongs.

This implies that no human being should be wholly sacrificed in
personal development to the service or welfare of any other human
being, or group of human beings, either inside or outside the family
circle. On the other hand, after temporary excursions into an extreme
individualism that ordained a free-for-all competition in every walk
of life, society is now keenly alive to the need for control of
personal desire and individual activity within channels of social
usefulness. It is beginning to be clearly seen that society has a
right to demand from any person or class of persons that form of
community service which definitely inheres in the social function
which is assumed by, or which devolves upon, such person or class of
persons. In the old days of "status," when each and every person found
himself in a place set for him and from which he could not depart,
there was only the duty of being content and useful in the "sphere of
life to which he was called." In the new condition of "contract," in
which each and every person in a democratic community finds himself at
liberty to use all common opportunities in the interest of his own
achievement, there is the duty of choice along every avenue of purpose
and of activity. This gives the new double call to the intelligence
and conscience; the call to become the best personality one can make
of oneself and the call to serve the common life to ends of social
well-being.

=The Sense of Kind and the Sense of Difference.=--Doctor Giddings
declares in fine summary "we may conceive of society as any plural
number of sentient creatures more or less continuously subjected to
common stimuli, to differing stimuli and to inter-stimulation, and
responding thereto in like behaviour, concerted activity or
cooeperation, as well as in unlike or competitive activity; and
becoming, therefore, with developing intelligence, coherent through a
dominating consciousness of kind while always sufficiently conscious
of difference to insure a measure of individual liberty." Democracy
tends to enlarge the area of those who, while conscious of kind that
unites, are also keen in desire to develop in liberty any natural
difference which can make their personality felt as distinctive or
powerful. The individual differences among women were wholly ignored
in the past. They were never in reality all alike, as they were
commonly thought to be. The usual designation of a subject class lumps
all together as if all were the same. It is the mark of emergence from
the mass to the class, and from the class to the individual, that more
and more defines differences between persons. Women have now, for the
first time in the civilization called Christian, arrived at a point in
which differences between members of their sex can claim social
recognition. They are, therefore, now called upon as never before to
balance by conscious effort the personal desire and the social claim.
The family, more than any other inherited institution, feels the
oscillations between the individual demand for personal achievement
and the response to the social need for large service within group
relationships which now, for the first time, stir in the consciousness
of average women.

=The Family as We Know It Is the Central Nursery of Character.=--The
inevitable outcome of the new freedom, education and economic
opportunity of women gives us the problem of the modern family. The
ideal of the democracy we are trying to achieve is higher personality
in all the mass of the people. The method of democracy so far as we
can see is education, perfected and universalized, by which all the
children of each generation may be developed physically, mentally,
morally, and vocationally to their utmost excellence and power. The
family, as we have inherited it, is so far the central nursery and
school in this development. So far in the history of the race or in
its present social manifestation no rival institution, even the formal
school, offers an adequate substitute for the family in this beginning
of the educative process. The intimate and vital care and nurture of
the individual life still depends for the mass of the people upon the
private, monogamic, family. This intimate and vital care of the
children of each generation has so far in human experience cost women
large expenditure of time and strength; so large expenditure that
personal achievement has been wholly and is even now largely
subordinated to the social service implied in home-making. The deepest
problems of the modern family inhere in the effort to adjust the new
freedom of women, and its new demands for individual development in
customary lines of vocational work, to the ancient family claim. New
adjustments are called for not only in the family itself but in all
the educational, political, economic, and social arrangements of life
to accommodate this new demand of women to be achieving persons
whether married or single. Women have entered, as newly emerging from
status to contract, into a man-made social organization, a man-made
school, a man-made industrial order, and a man-made state.
Achievement, individual and successful, means to most of them, as to
any newly enfranchised class, the type of distinctive activity and
accomplishment which their elder brothers have outlined. The
antithesis, therefore, which now works toward acute problems in the
minds of both men and women is between the sort of achievement which
men have sought after and attained, and the sort of social service
which the past conditions required of women. Slowly it is being
perceived that in the actual family service, as it is now aided by
social mechanisms surrounding the household, is place and economic
opportunity for high personal achievement by competent women. Still
more slowly is it being apprehended that in the new adjustments of
economic and professional life there is or may be opportunity for
married women and mothers to serve the family in high measure and also
attain outside some distinctive vocational pride and satisfaction of
craftsmanship. Most slowly of all is it being understood that the
future calls for such modification of specialization in outside work
that men and women alike may serve the generations in family devotion
to the sort of work fathers and mothers have to do and yet cherish
some personal and ideal vocational effort which may sweeten and enrich
their lives.

=Vital Changes in All the Basic Institutions of Society.=--There are
five basic institutions in modern social organization. They may be
named the family, the school, the church, the industrial order, and
the state. They have all come to us as parts of our social inheritance
from time too remote to reckon. They have mingled and intermingled
their tendencies of control and influence in varieties of social
functioning too numerous to mention. They are now emerging to
distinctness only to be engaged in new forms of interaction that make
the highest ideals of each and all seem fundamentally akin.

The main tendency of development in all these institutions is,
however, identical and one clearly perceived. It is the tendency from
status to contract, from fixed order to flexible adjustment, from
static to dynamic condition, already noted in regard to the family.

In the school we have moved and are now moving from an aristocracy of
command, by which ancient life was reproduced, to a democracy of
comradeship in which it is aimed to make each generation improve upon
its predecessor. In the church, as it has moved from the family ritual
at the domestic fireside to the self-chosen altar of each worshipper
in the world's cathedrals, the reactionaries have held on to "the
faith once delivered to the saints" and the progressive minds have
moved to some new prophecy of the truth and right; until to-day, as
Professor Coe well says, "the aim of the modern church is to give
education in the art of brotherhood," and to evoke "faith in a
fatherly God and in a human destiny that outreaches all the accidents
of our frailty." In the industrial order, still in the trial stage of
conflict between the fixed status of the "hand" and the "master" and
the contract of equal partners in a cooeperative enterprise, the
movement is steadily toward the social requirement of equality,
justice, and good-will. In the state we have achieved mechanical
expression of complete democracy. We still lack, and in our own
country woefully lack, the "spirit within the wheels" that can move
with power toward an actual government by the people, for the people,
and truly of the people. Yet by fire and sword and through blood and
suffering the handwriting of equality, justice, and fraternity has
been set in our Constitutions and Bills of Right. What remains to be
done is the socializing of the political mechanisms. That means simply
that we shall learn to live our democracy and be no longer content to
merely write it in law. The difficulty now is not so much to get a
good statement of democratic right as to make it work effectively in
common action. This fact makes it of doubtful wisdom that men and
women so often concentrate effort on the eighteenth-century
doctrinaire position of appeal for Constitutional Amendments and
blanket state legislation as if of themselves these could secure
actual personal liberty and social welfare. The objection that some
forward-looking persons have to the demand of the "National Woman's
Party," so called, for a Federal Amendment that shall "abolish all sex
discriminations in law" is not that its principle is too radical, but
that its method is too antiquated.

The business of the present and the immediate future is to so adjust
the family life to "two heads" as to keep love and to balance duties.
The next job is to adjust the family order itself to a contract system
of industry that gives each member of the family a free and often a
separating access to daily work and to its return in wages or salary,
in such manner as to retain family unity and mutual aid while giving
freedom and opportunity for each of its members. The pressing
political duty is to use the new voters, the women recently
enfranchised, for needed emancipation from partisan and selfish
political despotism in the interest of effective choices for the
public good. The ever-growing demand of the school is for some
translation of freedom of self-development in terms of respect for
social order and in the spirit of social service. The family life, in
the United States, at least, stands not so much in need of manifestoes
of equality of rights between men and women as of delicate and
discriminating adjustments of that equality to the social demands upon
husbands and wives and upon fathers and mothers. This book aims to
suggest some of the changes in external customs and inherited ways of
living which may lead toward a firmer hold upon social idealism within
the family, as well as within all other inherited institutions, while
new bases of democratic freedom are being firmly installed.

=Coveted Uses of the Book.=--This volume is intended to meet the needs
of college and teacher-training school students; of university
extension classes; of study groups in Women's Clubs, Consumers'
Leagues, Leagues of Women Voters and Church Classes. It is also hoped
that it may form the basis for private study by groups within the
home.

The book is written with a poignant sense of the breaking up of old
social foundations in the agony and terror of the Great War. It is
sent forth with a keen understanding of the spirit of youth that
to-day challenges every inherited institution and ideal, even to the
bone and marrow of the church, the state, the industrial order, the
educative process, and even the family itself. It issues from an
abiding faith that "above all things Truth beareth away the victory"
and hence that no fearless inquiry can harm the essential values of
life. It confesses a clear trust in "the Spirit that led us hither and
is leading us onward." It would sound a call to hold all that has
dowered the race at the sources of life sacred and of worth. It would
echo all that bids us move onward to higher and better things.

The greatest ambition herein recorded is to serve as one who opens
doors of insight into the House of the Interpreter.

--THE AUTHOR.

JANUARY, 1923.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 5

A Threefold Aim. Basic Principles Underlying All Socially
Useful Changes. The Sense of Kind and the Sense of Difference.
Vital Changes in All the Basic Institutions of Society.
Coveted Uses of This Book.

I. THE FAMILY 19

The Experience of the Past. New Ideals Affecting the Family.
The Headship of the Father. Is It Possible to Democratize the
Family? What Is the Modern Ideal in Child-care? Modern Ideals
of Sex-relationship. Ellen Key and Her Gospel. What is Meant
by the Demand that Illegitimacy be Abolished? The Legitimation
of Children Born Out of Wedlock. Philanthropic Tendencies
Respect Legal Marriage. Illicit Unions of Men and Women in
Divergent Social Position. Shall We Return to Polygamy? All
Children Entitled to Best Development Possible. The Work of
the Children's Bureau. The Suggested Uniform Laws. Have
Unmarried Women a Social Right to Motherhood? Ellen Key's
Estimate of Motherhood. Monogamic Marriage Does Not Work
Inerrantly. New Demand that Motherhood Have Social Support.
The Increasing Tendency of Women Toward Celibate Life. Women
Cannot be Forced Back to Compulsory Marriage. A Few Believe in
a Third Sex. Most Social Students Believe in Marriage. Dangers
of Extreme Specialization. Industrial Exploitation of Children
and Youth. Social Measures Needed to Prevent These Evils. The
Attack upon the Family by Reactionaries. The Prevalence of
Divorce. Old Institutions Need New Sanctions. The Monogamic
Family Justifies Itself by Social Usefulness. The Inherited
Family Order Demands New Social Adjustments. The Family as an
Aid to Spiritual Democracy. The Family the Nursery of
Personality. Life, Not Theory About Life, Teaches Us. The
Moral Elite in the Modern Family. Questions.

II. THE MOTHER 46

Antiquity of the Mother-instinct. Recognized Essentials in
Child-care. The Protective Function. Social Elements in Modern
Protection of Children. Women's Leadership in Social
Protection. The Provision of Food, Clothing and Shelter. The
Woman in Rural Life. Modern Demand for Standardization. The
Apartment House and the Family. New Uses of Electric Power.
Certain Duties the Mother Cannot Delegate. The Mother's
Compensation for Personal Service. Early Drill in Personal
Habits. Early Practice in Talking, Walking, Obedience, and
Imitation. Special Responsibility of the Average Mother.
Women's Relation to More Formal Education. Women's Relation to
Educational Agencies. The Social Value of Parental Affection.
What Women Need Most. Questions.

III. THE FATHER 69

Historic Background of Fatherhood. Purchase and Capture of
Wives. The Patriarchal Family. The Three Chief Sources of
Influence. Ancient Military Training of Youth.
Ancestor-worship. The Double Standard of Morals. Basic Needs
for Equality of Human Rights. Special Protection of Women
Needed in Ancient Times. The Social Value of the Patriarchal
Family. The Responsibilities of the Ancient Father
Commensurate with His Power. Moral Qualities in Women
Developed by Masculine Selection. The Highest Ideal of
Fatherhood. Incomplete Adjustment to Equality of Rights in the
Family. The Marriage Question To-day the "Husband-problem."
Women Cannot Have All the New Freedom and Also All the Old
Privileges. New Social Advantages for Fathers. Questions.

IV. THE GRANDPARENTS 90

Relative Increase of the Aged in Modern Life. Savage Treatment
of the Aged. The Relation of Ancestor-worship to Respect for
Aged Men. The Position of Chief-mother in the Ancient Family.
Memory of the Aged Valued in Primitive Life. Old Women and the
Witchcraft Delusion. Older Women in Religious Vocations
Honored in Middle Ages. To-day Comparatively Few Really Old at
Seventy. Is Any House Large Enough for Two Families? Reasons
Why Husbands Desert Their Families. The Financial Provision
for Old Age. Needed Ways of Preparing for Old Age. Pension
Laws. Old age Home Insurance. To Prevent Premature Old Age.
Check Extreme Requirements for Youth in Labor. Need of
Experience in Many Fields of Work. Prepare Vocationally for
Old-age Needs. The Attitude of Mind Toward Old Age. The
Special Gifts of the Old to the Home and the World. Questions.

V. BROTHERS, SISTERS AND NEXT OF KIN 116

The Ancient Kinship Bond. Present Demands of Kinship. Special
Burden of Women in Family Obligation. Disadvantages of the
Only Child. Permanent Value of the Family Bond. Questions.

VI. FRIENDS AND THE CHOSEN ONE 124

The Power of Friendship. The Newly-wed and Old Friends. Some
Advantages in Choices of Marriage by the Elders. New Demands
for Social Control of Marriage Choices. The Young Should be
Helped to Make Wise Choices. The Revolt of Youth. The Wisdom
of the Ages Must be the Guide of Youth. Personal Choice in
Marriage Has Now Widest Range. The Value of the Church in
Social Life. Easy Divorce Does Not Lessen Marriage
Responsibility. New and Finer Marriage Unions. Questions.

VII. HUSBANDS AND WIVES 141

Not Fancied but Genuine Happiness in Marriage Now Demanded.
Social Restraints on Marriage Choices. Shall the Wife Take the
Husband's Name? Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Nationality?
Who Shall Choose the Domicile? Shall the Married Woman Earn
Outside the Home? Economic Considerations Involved. Is It Bad
Form to Earn After Marriage? Shall Parenthood be Chosen? Some
People Have a Right to Marry and Remain Childless. What is the
Just Financial Basis of the Household? What Shall be the
Accepted Standard of Living? The Need for Full and Mutual
Understanding Before Marriage. The Supreme Satisfactions of
Successful Marriage. Questions.

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