The Family : Part 1

The Family and it's Members
by Anna Garlin Spencer

(Page 2 of 25)

"The family is the heart's fatherland; the fatherland is the cradle of humanity." - Mazzini.

"The family has two functions; as a smaller group it affords opportunity for eliciting qualities of affection and character which cannot be displayed in a larger group; and in the second place it is a training for future members of the larger group in the qualities of disposition and character which are essential to citizenship. Marriage converts an attachment between man and woman into a deliberate, permanent, responsible, intimate union for a common end of mutual good. Modern society requires that the husband and wife contemplate lifelong companionship, and the affection between husband and wife is enriched by the relation of parents to the children which are their care. The end of the family is not economic profit but mutual aid and the continuance and progress of the race." - Professor Tufts, in Ethics, by Dewey and Tufts.

Social Work and Family Conservation. - "By whatever name they may be called, the most essential elements of social work are those which seek to conserve the family life; to strengthen or supplement the home; to give children in foster homes or elsewhere the care of which tragic misfortune has deprived them in their natural homes; to provide income necessary in the proper care of their children; to restore broken homes; to discover and, if possible, remove destructive influences which interfere with normal home life and the reasonable discharge of conjugal and parental obligations. The institutions which exist for the benefit of those individuals who have no home or who need care of a kind that cannot well be supplied in the home, only emphasize the importance of conserving family life when its essential elements are present." - Edward T. Devine.

"Human nature has achieved the consciousness that existence has an aim. Human life, therefore, is a mission; the mission of reaching that aim, by incessant activity upon the path toward it and perpetual warfare against the obstacles opposed to it." - Mazzini.

The Home:
"For something that abode endued
With temple-like repose; an air
Of life's kind purposes pursued
With ordered freedom, sweet and fair;
A tent, pitched in a world not right,
It seemed, whose inmates, every one,
On tranquil faces bore the light
Of duties beautifully done."

- Coventry Patmore.

The Experience of the Past. - By many experiments, over many differing "folk-ways," the modern family has arrived. We name it now "monogamic," and mean by the name the union of one man and one woman, in aim at least for life, and their children. Whereas once it was the rule of a tribe or clan which determined every detail of sex-relationship, a rule represented either by the mother or the father, it is now an individualistic choice of two adult persons only, socially legalized by a required certificate and ceremony. Whereas once it was the basis of all social order and mutual aid, it is now one of several institutions inherited from the past, and is itself subject to the state, which is the chief heir to our social inheritance. The family, however, is now, as it has always been, the interior, vital, and so far indispensable social relationship, beginning, as it does, at first hand the training of each individual toward membership in society-at-large. In the past, under the mother-rule, the social elements of the family were emphasized, since her power was one delegated by the group of which she and her children were a part and closely related to peaceful ways and to primitive industrial arts. Under the father-rule, the political and legal elements of the family were emphasized, since his was an autocratic and personal control of wife and children, even of adult sons, and in many cases of his own mother, and marked the beginning and worked toward the power of the modern state. In all cases, however, it was as a representative of the group-ideal and the group-control that the parents held sway over the family; and if the family is to persist in the future as an institution it will hold its authority over individual lives as trustee of society-at-large. Name, line of inheritance, rights and duties of one member toward other members and to the family group as a whole, must all be determined in the last analysis by the "mores" of the people and the time concerned.

New Ideals Affecting the Family. - To-day the ideal of equality of rights for men and women, and the ideal of ministration to childhood's needs, are stronger than the ideal of family control. The social demand is, therefore, for standardization of family life and of child-care on a high plane of physical, mental, and moral development of each individual life rather than for an autocratic representation of the power of what Professor James called "the collectivity that owns us." Hence certain problems which have never before been clear in social consciousness are now arising to enter all debates on family stability and family success.

The Headship of the Father. - During the middle ages of our civilization and for centuries of our later past the headship of the family rested securely in the father. Now the ideal of "Two heads in council; Two beside the hearth; Two in the tangled business of the world" is working toward democratization of the family. This leads toward a legal status and an economic adjustment in which the relation of husband and wife may be equalized toward each other and toward their children. In this new process, which is a part of the general movement we call democracy, there are special difficulties of modification peculiar to the family relation. The monogamic ideal and practice demands permanency, solidarity of interest and unity of control both within and without the family circle, at least until all the children of a marriage have reached maturity.

Copyright, 1923 by J.B. Lippincott Company

About the Author

Anna Garlin Spencer (1851-1931) was an American educator, feminist, and Unitarian minister. Born in Attleboro, MA, she married the Rev. William H. Spencer in 1878. She was a leader in the women's suffrage and peace movements. In 1891 she became the first woman ordained as a minister in the state of Rhode Island.