The Children of the Family : Part 4

The Family and it's Members
by Anna Garlin Spencer

(Page 12 of 23)

3. An indemnity of 3 francs a day for each child under fourteen years of age, which becomes a part of the family income. The Paris district alone for the first four months of 1920 shows 39,266 families in receipt of these allowances, with 62,176 children benefited, at an expense of 4,115,014 francs. The money comes largely from a pooling of funds by combines of manufacturers in many industries, so that although business pays the extra charge it is distributed equally among all engaged in the same industry. The trade unions have not been wholly pleased with this discrimination in favor of fathers and mothers. They work for the strict equalization of wages. The national need for more children of strength and health, however, and the effect of low wages upon mothers and upon infant life have led to this social measure.

Surely, this is a way not wholly unreasonable by which a society can help pay for the children it demands.

The Endowment of Mothers. - In England, a different plan has been developed, although not yet applied. A Proposal for the National Endowment of Motherhood, advocated by K.D. Courtney, H.N. Brailsford, Eleanor F. Rathbone, A. Maude Royden, Mary Stocks, Elinor Burns, and Emilie Burns, has been published. In this plan the ideal is "that within each class of income the man with a family should not be in a worse position economically because he has a family than the single man in that class." They demand that "the standard of living be not lowered by children." The authors of this plan declare that in the present system "The mother is still the uncharted servant of the future who receives from her husband at his discretion a share in his wages." They want the mother to receive from society, through the Government, "a weekly allowance sufficient in amount to cover the primary cost of physical subsistence, paid to the mother for herself and for each of her children, throughout the period when the care of the children necessarily occupies her whole attention." They claim that such a plan would, in the first place, make "equal pay for equal work" for men and women really possible, since the argument that "men should be paid more because they have families to keep" would be outgrown. They claim also that such a plan would remove economic restrictions on parenthood which now often work social harm. They also claim that the health of children requires this public allowance for their care.

The authors of this plan, although frankly stating objections to this point, claim that the payment of this allowance should be directly to mothers "as the first step toward raising the status of women and blotting out, in what has been called the noblest of professions, those conditions which compare only with the worst of sweated employments." The whole discussion of this plan is worthy most serious attention of all interested in preserving the family from injury through economic inequalities.

Does This Plan Make Too Little of Fathers? - There is one question, however, among others, to be asked of the authors of this plan, and that is, Can not some means be devised to make the father's share in the care of the children more definite and better rewarded, less often shirked or incompetent, in any scheme for state subsidy for the care of young children? The difficulties that inhere in all subsidies for children are chiefly those that make people of small intelligence and little conscience trade with the state for larger subsidies for larger families, begotten by the less fit for parentage and with an eye on the public purse. This catastrophe, not unknown in the past history of England, must be avoided. If there shall develop any scheme for equal sharing by all the community in the expense of raising the coming generation then there must surely be no special honor paid to those that have very large families. Better, for social purposes, that no children above a reasonable number should in any family receive a special allowance, even if older brothers and sisters did do so. It may be that in France large families are desperately needed. Not so in the United States. The number of five or six should certainly be the limit for which any just scheme of family subsidy should mulct the taxpayer.

Just Limits to Number of Children in Subsidized Families. - The difference between the three under fourteen years which in so many cases can be cared for unassisted by the average workman, and the four and more that bring the family down to the danger-point of financial dependence, might be a subject for consideration in any scheme of family subsidy, and some clear idea of social need in family fertility should be a part of any proposition to make allowance from the public funds for each child under the earning age. In any case, the father's share in the self-sacrifice and burden of parenthood should have some clear recognition in any law dealing with such state aid. In the last analysis, unless some extreme form of socialism is better than the present industrial order and to be sought, the best way to help the family is to make fathers and mothers competent to take care of their own children without too great effort for themselves and without injurious consequences to the children. Those Trade Union leaders may be right in principle when they hesitate to accept any public family aid scheme lest it make wages less rather than more and bring on a condition in which heroic struggle for one's own, the very pith and marrow of manhood in its relation to the family, be less esteemed and less practiced.

We are confronted, however, both in the movements for aid to maternity in care before and after childbirth, and in all the many provisions for child-saving that publicly supported Boards of Health are everywhere inaugurating, with a tendency of the greatest strength and social appeal, tendencies toward a sharing by all of the burdens heretofore borne only by the heads of families. Some way must be devised by which such sharing will not cheat society of any gains to character and to sense of family responsibility which old systems of economic support of children have given the race. Some way must be devised to recognize as economic assets of society the special sacrifice and service of the housemother in her function of life-giver for the coming generations and yet not ignore the father but rather bring him nearer to competent fatherhood as social conditions make it easier for him to bear his part of the family load. The place for full discussion of these important considerations is not here, but the need for the child to have a father who can be the efficient partner of the competent mother in the task of rearing him must be always insisted upon, else reform measures that help the mother will only take us backward instead of forward.

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.