The Present Status of Family Life : Part 1

Religious Education in the Family
by Henry F. Cope

(Page 2 of 24)

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, dis cussing 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 economi cally 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.

Copyright 1915 by The University of Chicago