The Grandparents : Part 4

The Family and it's Members
by Anna Garlin Spencer

(Page 8 of 24)

What is thus ideally pictured is a fact in thousands of families. No one can say that it is always best to have three generations under one roof, but all who have had a happy family experience believe that the grandparents should be "handy by," to use the Scotch phrase. The grandparents' house in the country is best of all, where all family and national holidays can be celebrated with due form and in accordance with ancient tradition. The grandparents' house for the city children is next best, if in a suburb near by where more space and independence of movement are possible than in the city residence. The grandparents' house or apartment in the same or a near-by city is, however, not at all to be despised as a refuge when "Mother does not understand," or "Father is so particular."

Is Any House Large Enough for Two Families? - Although the proverb says, "No house was yet made large enough for two families," the residence of one grandparent (oftener the mother than the father) within the family circle has often proved highly successful if only a few rules have been observed. One of these rules is that each adult person shall have one place strictly his of her own. Another is a rule, so difficult for some aged persons of both sexes to obey, namely, that each person married is doubly entitled to individual choices in action without interference even from parents, since each such married person has to adjust his or her ideas to another person. To work out full agreement between themselves is all that any married couple should be expected to accomplish. Hence, in the nature of things, the grandparents who are so near the new family that they know and see everything have a far more difficult rôle to play than do the grandparents who have their own home and simply visit and are visited. It is, however, often a necessity of financial provision and often a choice of ease in ministration to the needs of the aged, that brings one grandparent or even two within the daughter's or son's household. The time-worn jokes about the "mother-in-law" are based upon the fact that it is more often the daughter than the son who is expected to or needs to personally care within her own home for the mother. The son is not so bound by social custom to take his mother in. Hence, more husbands than wives have trials with their parents-in-law.

Reasons Why Husbands Desert Their Families. - The statistics of deserting husbands, as compiled in a careful study made by Lillian Brandt and Roger Baldwin, show that among the chief causes of "leaving home" is "trouble with the wife's relations." In these cases it is not only the grandmother, although she is often a member of the disturbed family; it is also often other relatives - a sister, a brother, or a first husband's people - who cause trouble. The wife's mother is, however, often enough a member of the household the husband leaves behind to give some point to the coarse and often unjust jokes concerning the mother-in-law.

Where the feeling is right, and both generations reasonable and just, there are still many problems of adjustment arising from an attempt to bring either or both parents of the married couple into the same household. The first problem is that of the financial support. It ought not to be the case that any aged couple or any widowed father or mother should be left wholly dependent upon their children. The demand for better economic provision for the aged is one of the most vital and pressing of social needs. The difficulty of taking care of the father and mother when the children are coming on with pressing needs of their own is felt acutely in cases of narrow income. The call is almost universal to provide more adequately for grandparents. How can we meet this call?

The Financial Provision for Old Age. - In the case of those whose earning capacity is not equal to saving a sufficient old-age provision while at work the claim for an Old-age Pension is growing. This may be either a subsidy from the state, a joint pension from the state and the employing business in which the man or woman has worked, or it may be a threefold provision contributed to from the savings of the laborer, the quota from the employer, and the state subsidy. Since no insurance system that discourages thrift, or fails to encourage it, is socially sound, the latter seems the best ideal. There may be, in addition, or as a substitute, a family provision on the plan so well suggested by Mr. Taber in his book, The Business of the Household, a plan that calls for the definite setting apart of an "Old-age Fund," to which each child shall contribute in the years when he is earning most, not as a gift but as a "deferred payment," as it were, for all that the parents give in childhood. To this Old-age Fund any savings of the father and mother may be added until a sufficient sum is secured for comfortable care in old age. Mr. Taber indicates that at least five dollars out of every twenty-five saved should be thus assigned and invested only in the safest manner and held inviolate, no matter what the temporary needs of the family may be, until the work-time has passed. Whatever plan may be adopted, it is certain that family well-being and the happiness of the aged alike call for a better and more adequate old-age provision.

The laborers who earn less than the required sum for a decent standard of life for father, mother, and children cannot, of course, make any provision for their own old age or care for dependent parents. In such families the public institutions or privately endowed and managed "Homes for the Aged" offer the only and often a comfortable and sometimes a happy place for the grandparents. The movement for this social care of the aged has many phases. In some countries, as in The Danish Care of the Aged, so well described by Edith Sellers in her book of that name, there is a far more complete and generous use of public funds than we have in the United States, a possibility of careful grading of persons in appropriate groups, and a removal of the crushing sense of public charity which those of English ancestry so often feel when obliged "to go upon the town;" yet this leaves much to be desired.

In the grade of economic condition above that in which it is a dire struggle to make both ends meet for the husband, wife, and their little children, there are to be considered five ways in which the care of the aged can be made adequate and not too great a burden upon those of young and those of middle life.

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.