The Purpose of the Home. The cause, historically, and the reason, socially, for the home is the child and the family. Home is the great training school of life for parents as well as for children. It is not merely a place to eat and sleep; any boarding-house can provide that. The ideal home is a community of congenial spirits, a place of inspiration, comfort, rest of spirit as well as of body. Here dwell together two who have chosen each other as comrades in the complex problem of living, to share their fare, their mirth, their troubles, to give cheer in distress, encouragement in struggle, ambition for achievement, sympathy in trial and happiness, friendly criticism to refine; and to coöperate in their mutual desire, responsibility, joys, and trials of rearing a family.
As young men and women face squarely the possibilities in a home, as they perceive the causes of discord in family life, and study the basis of family stability and happiness, as they take the time before marriage to compare sincerely their ideals, tastes, standards, expectations, they will minimize the possibilities of later discord—even tragedy. If they cannot agree sincerely and heartily on economic, social, physiological, and psychological adjustments before the wedding ceremony, when each has the altruism of romance and the spur of the game, how can they expect to adjust themselves amicably afterwards, in the severe test of everyday needs and situations?
Marriage is the concern of the individual, because his happiness and his activity are involved. It is also the concern of the State, because property rights, social harmony, and future citizenship are involved. A brief study of the historical and social development of the home and family relations will give a surer basis for the rational discussion of this problem than would a theoretical discussion based merely on prejudices of individualism or altruism.
Evolution of Marriage. In the human species, infancy is prolonged over several years. From this mutual care by the mother and the father in primitive society, there evolved the mutual love for the little child and later for each other; and with this the permanent relationship which alone could produce the organization of the family. The beginnings of morality likewise developed from this sense of a community interest which called for a subordination of selfish desires.
For ages mankind has experimented with different forms of family relation and home organization, trying to discover which serve best to foster the child, conserve the State, and satisfy the men and women who form the family. Under different social and economic conditions, polygamy and polyandry (more than one wife or husband), promiscuity (several temporal husbands or wives) and monogamy (one husband or wife) have been tried.
Polygamy, in primitive society, developed where women were in excess, or their labor increased family income, or where a man’s fortune enabled him to support more than one wife and her children. The polygamous nature of man was accepted by Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Mohammedan religions, and its practice permitted by their statutes. The Jewish nation early evolved from polygamy to monogamy, and incorporated the latter into its religion and customs. Anglo-Saxon ideals were of monogamy. The teachings of Christ emphasized monogamy. The early Christian teachers even carried this, as other ideals, to its farthest extreme, and preached the ideal of celibacy. It remained for Mormonism to sanctify polygamy and make it a duty. But polygamy, which was flatly opposed by the general sentiment of the United States, was short-lived in the territory of the Mormon Church. The local feeling on this issue at present may be summarized in the following sentiment, expressed by a distinguished citizen of Utah:
“Our citizenship must be world citizenship. It is a matter of common knowledge and comment that that citizen is most valuable to his town who can see the town’s needs in relation to those of his county; that he is of most value to his county who sees that county as a constituent part of the state and consents to nothing for his county that would hurt the state; that a state’s most valuable and serviceable citizen is the man who has the power in his thinking, reasoning, and acting to rise above sectionalism and act as a citizen of the nation. This is the test to which our citizenship must submit—the standard up to which it must measure.”
In primitive, as well as in civilized societies, the beginning of a new home is customarily celebrated with civil and religious ceremonies; customs and laws provide for the relative rights of the husband and wife to their persons, their children, their property, and the returns from their labor. Infidelity (particularly of the wife), common-law marriages (living as husband and wife without legal marriage), promiscuous relations, divorce, have generally been branded as anti-social and reprehensible, expressions of lack of self-control, altruism, and foresight.
Mankind is finding through the experience of the ages that monogamy best conserves child life, the home, the State, and individual happiness. It has found that irresponsible parenthood, shallowness of marital or parental affection, promiscuous relations, all endanger the life and welfare of the child. It has learned that marriage customs and laws requiring considerable formality and therefore deliberation of the contracting parties, reduced the proportion of hasty, unsatisfactory, and temporary unions with their uncertain responsibility for the children, and their quarrels over property. Many factors have contributed to the establishment of the really monogamous family and home as the social ideal and the increasing social practice. The lengthening period of infancy, with the consequent longer period of mutual coöperation of parents in nurture and training; realization of the Christ spirit of love for others, of respect for the value and individuality of every human life; the consequent refinement of the emotional life and social feeling, and the sublimating of sex instincts to the development of a richer personality, to mental creative work and to social service; the democratization of education and social status; freedom in choice of a marriage partner—all have contributed a part.
Freedom of choice has been far less prevalent than capture, purchase, or family contract, in marriages of the past. It is wearisome to even try to imagine the procession of brides, since those early days of the cavemen, who had no choice in the matter of their husbands. For what countless millions of brides was the marriage arranged by barter between their fathers and their future household lords, sometimes the father requiring a purchase price, sometimes the bridegroom demanding a dowry. What millions of girls have been selected while mere children as the future wives and slaves of their husbands and the family drudges of the household. How many millions of brides and bridegrooms have never been consulted as to their personal feelings or desires, but have been married because the elders of their families decreed it. Under all such conditions, if husband and wife developed affection for each other, that was so much of advantage to them from the combination; otherwise they must adapt themselves as best they could to the daily round of life in their common dwelling and throughout their family responsibilities.
Trial marriages have been an experiment in many societies. They are based upon suspicion and expectation of termination, instead of upon that whole-hearted confidence and expectation of endurance which is the basis of a permanent relation. Psychologically, therefore, their basis is false and weak. They presented a crude method of testing mutual adaptation and affection, which to-day may be gained by visiting a few weeks in each other’s families, by thorough preliminary discussion of problems of adjustment, and by consultation with a competent physician, biologist, and sociologist or a mature and thoughtful counsellor.
Thus has marriage evolved by stages from biological matings, based on physical attraction; to the business contract, based on economic relations; to the social contract, based on social advantage to the family, clan, or State; and finally to a spiritual relationship, based on mutual social and intellectual interests and ties. Romantic love as a general experience in marriage has developed only during the past few hundred years. No one of these phases—the biological, economic, social, or spiritual—can be ignored in marriage to-day without disaster, as divorce records and daily observation show so clearly. To ignore the higher relationships and base marriage simply on the biological or material is to revert back to a lower stage in human development. A marriage based simply on physical attraction soon loses its glamour, and is as a house built upon the sands. The enduring ties are those of spiritual comradeship. It is this spiritual-biological love, evolving with the personality and soul of man, that has inspired the great wealth of spiritual creations in poetry, music, drama, and painting.
The American young woman of to-day, especially of the middle classes, is economically, socially, and religiously free to choose from among her suitors the one she finds most congenial and whom she really loves. Legislators are providing in many States for the woman’s equal rights in marriage to her person, property, and children. Churches, associations, and parents are awakening to their responsibility in providing natural and wholesome social opportunities for young men and women to become acquainted. If a woman does not find her ideal in the community where she lives, she is socially free to migrate to any part of the country, enter any one of a thousand occupations, and seek until she finds a suitable helpmeet. In this country, in contrast to Europe, there is an excess of some two million men in the population. She will find a large proportion of young men of her social class and education, whose standards and habits of life are as fine as Sir Galahad’s, who have the economic ability to make a comfortable living, and who are ready to coöperate intelligently and whole-heartedly in home-making. The young man of to-day will find an increasing proportion of young women who combine physical charm, social gifts, intellectual comradeship, home-making instincts, and preparation.
Why Homes Are Broken. In a country where divorce is easily obtained by either husband or wife, for serious cause, the proportion of divorces is an index (1) to the percentage of dissatisfied couples (which will always be considerably higher than the percentage of divorces); and (2) to the intelligence and forethought with which young people enter marriage. The census of 1910 estimated one marriage in twelve ending in divorce, and counted as direct parties about one half of one per cent. of the population, something over three hundred thousand men and women, with children involved in about sixty per cent. of these families. The causes stated in the court records would, of course, be only those allowed in the laws as the legal grounds for granting a divorce. These, in the order of their frequency, were (1) desertion by the husband, (2) cruelty of the husband, (3) desertion by the wife, (4) non-support by the husband, (5) cruelty of the wife, (6) adultery. The most frequent real causes, as found by social investigation, are lack of self-control, lack of mutual ideals in regard to sex relations, ignorance of sex hygiene, use of alcohol, irresponsibility, economic extravagance, disagreement regarding the family income, hasty marriage after brief acquaintance. Among the other causes productive of discord are selfishness, insincerity, false pride, nagging, poor housekeeping, the husband’s lack of economic ability; marked differences in age, education, social status, religion; abnormal craving for social excitement; unnatural, crowded, unattractive homes.
How Homes Are Made Steadfast and a Benediction. The fundamental requisite of family happiness is love; not merely sex attraction, which may be wholly selfish, but love that is service, happier to give than to receive, willing to share. In some respects similarity between husband and wife is important in their social and intellectual tastes, moral standards, religious faith, refinement, love of children, rate of ability to progress, degree of seriousness or frivolousness, ardor and expression of affection. These make for congenial daily living. In some respects complementary qualities are desired. If one is impatient, the other may well possess a degree of patience and sense of humor to meet this; if one is extravagant, the other should be thrifty; if one is radical, the other may well be conservative, although marked extremes would always clash. The degree of positiveness in the one should approximate that in the other; if equal, neither is willing to yield; if very unequal, one domineers the other. These complementary traits make for balance of family life. The qualities that each should possess would include responsibility, self-control, sincerity, kindliness; freedom from drugs, conscientious abstinence from alcohol and from vicious habits; a degree of maturity and experience equal to the responsibilities of home-making (usually not under twenty years for women and twenty-one for men), love of home life and of children; good health, freedom from any serious germ disease, a family history free from criminal tendencies, alcoholism, mental defects, tuberculosis. A gambler, spendthrift, flirt, vacillating or superficial man or woman, or one who is “sowing wild oats” has not the qualifications for establishing a home. The man should be able to earn a comfortable living, and the woman to administer the household efficiently and smoothly. Every woman should have some means of making her livelihood at the time she marries; it will greatly increase her husband’s respect for her and be a source of confidence to herself. She usually cannot do better, from the economic aspect, than to become thoroughly skilled in phases of home-making.
How the family income should be divided, what share the wife shall have for household use and for her personal use, is so diplomatic and acute a problem that it should be as sincerely and frankly discussed as all these other phases.
Whether the wife should undertake work besides managing the home-making is a moot question. Certainly her first responsibility is to make a home not only comfortable but inspiring. She needs to have such opportunity for relaxation, meditation, reading, personal development, that however weary and tense her husband may return in the evening, she can give rest, good cheer, and refreshment of spirit, because of her reserve of vitality, and can send him each morning to his work with the courage and good spirits stimulated by her blitheness. She needs, also, to be storing reserve strength for her children.
The location of the house greatly affects the family life. Ideally, it should be a separate dwelling, with a porch for outdoor social life, a garden where all members of the family have room to work and play, with rooms enough for individual privacy; and it should be owned, not rented.
The minimum income on which two people may advisably marry will depend largely upon their degree of adaptability, patience, and sense of humor. Acquaintance before marriage may safely be not less than a year and preferably two, not only for thorough and sincere acquaintance, but for the possibility of the reaction and even repulsion that is so likely to follow a violent case of love on short acquaintance. If love is too ardent, it needs this discipline of patience and restraint. If it is deep enough to last through the rest of time, it will stand the test of waiting.
Having established their home, husband and wife may well cultivate their love wisely, seeing that it does not starve from lack of service in little thoughtfulnesses; that it is not surfeited by too much of sweetness or selfish expression; that it is protected by residence separate from relatives, friends, strangers; that both have individual social life and friends and pursuits so that they do not become wearisome to each other; that they busy themselves in some mutual objective interest—social welfare, club, lodge work or a reading course. The few minutes spent together each day in gaining inspiration, either in religious worship, or reading from some great book, or singing noble songs, will do much to keep the family life harmonious and to reduce the petty frictions. It is well to agree on the first day—and carry through the agreement—that if misunderstanding or the least suspicion arises, it shall be frankly and thoroughly faced, discussed, and eliminated, remembering that it is “the little rift within the lute” that silences the music. Then, as the poet sings: