and hourly for years have determined we should be.
The sweetest memories of our lives cluster about the scenes of family life. The rose-embowered cottage of the poet is not the only spot that claims affectionate gratitude; many look back to a city house wedged into its monotonous row. But, wherever it might be, if it sheltered love and held a shrine where the altar fires of family sacrifice burned, earth has no fairer or more sacred spot. The people rather than the place made it potent.
Stronger even than the memories that remain are the marks of habits, tendencies, tastes, and dispositions there acquired. Many a man who has left no fortune worth recording to his sons has left them something better, the aptitude for things good and honorable, the memory of a good name, and the heritage of a life that was worthy of honor. The personal life has been always the enduring thing. Our concern for the future should be not whether we can pass on intact the forms of home organization, but whether we can give to the next day the force of ideal family life. Perhaps like Mary we would do well to turn our eyes from the much serving, the mechanisms of the home, to set our minds on the better part, the personal values in the association of lives in the family.
I. References for Study
W. F. Lofthouse, Ethics and the Family, chaps. ii, xi, xii. Hodder & Stoughton, $2.50.
Charles R. Henderson, Social Duties from the Christian Point of View, chaps. ii, iii. The University of Chicago Press, $1.25.
C. W. Votaw, Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the American Home. Religious Education Association, $0.25.
II. Further Reading
Jacob A. Riis, Peril and Preservation of the Home. Jacobs, Philadelphia, Pa., $1.00.
Charles R. Henderson, Social Elements. Scribner, $1.50.
Charles F. Thwing, The Recovery of the Home. American Baptist Publication Society, $0.15.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. The tendency toward community life illustrated in the schools, amusement parks, and hotel life. Remembering the ultimate purpose of the family, how far is communal life desirable?
2. Does the apartment or tenement building furnish a suitable condition for the higher purposes of the family?
3. Is it possible to restore to the home some of the benefits lost by present factory consolidation of industry?
4. What can take the place of the old household arts and of those which are now passing?
5. What steps should be taken to secure to the family a larger measure of the time in terms of occupation of the parents?
6. What are the important things to contend for in this institution? Why should we expect change in the form of the home and what are the features which should not be changed?
2 Figures taken from C. W. Votaw, Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the American Home, 1911.
3 A. J. Todd, Primitive Family and Education, p. 21. A most valuable and suggestive book.
4 Cited by Todd, p. 21.
CHAPTER III
THE PERMANENT ELEMENTS IN FAMILY LIFE
§ 1. THE DOMINANT MOTIVE
The chief end of society is to improve the race, to develop the higher and steadily improving type of human beings. We can test the life of the family and determine the values of its elements by asking whether and in what degree they minister to this end, the growth of better persons. This is more than a theoretical aim or one conceived in a search for ideals. It is written plain in our passions and strongest inclinations. That which parents supremely desire for their children is that they may become strong in body, capable and alert in mind, and animated by worthy principles and ideals. The parent desires a good man, fit to take his place, do his work, make his contribution to the social well-being, able to live to the fulness of his powers, to take life in all its reaches of meaning and heights of vision and beauty. In true parenthood all hopes of success, of riches, fame, and ease, are seen but as avenues to this end, as means of making the finer character, of growing the ideal person. If we were compelled to choose for our children we should elect poverty, pain, disgrace, toil, and suffering if we knew this was the only highway to full manhood and womanhood, to completeness of character. Indeed, we do constantly so choose, knowing that they must endure hardness, bear the yoke in their youth, and learn that
Love and joy are torches lit
At altar fires of sacrifice.
With this dominating purpose clearly in mind we are prepared to ask, What are the elements of family life which among the changes of today we need most carefully to preserve in order to maintain efficiency in character development? In days when the outer shell of domestic arrangements changes, when readjustments are being made in the organization of the family, what is there too precious to lose, so worthy and essential that we waste no time when seeking to maintain it?
§ 2. POTENCIES TO BE PRESERVED—SOCIAL QUALITIES
The first great element to be preserved in all family life is that of the power of the small group for purposes of character development. The infant's earliest world is the mother's arms. In order to grow into a man fitted for the wider world of social living, he must learn to live in a world within his comprehension. A child's life moves through the widening circles of mother-care, family group, neighborhood, school, city, state, and nation into world-living. He must take the first steps before he is able to take the next ones. He must learn to live with the few as preparation for living with the many. In earliest infancy he takes his first unconscious lessons in the fine art of living with other folks as he relates himself to parents and to brothers and sisters.
Secondly, the family life affords the best agency for social training. The family is the ideal democracy into which the child-life is born. Here habits are formed, ideals are pictured, and life itself is interpreted. It is an ideal democracy, first, because it is a social organization existing for the sake of persons. The family comes nearer to fulfilling the true ideal of a democratic social order than does any other institution. It is founded to bring lives into this world; it is maintained for the sake of those lives; all its life, its methods, and standards are determined, ideally, by the needs of persons. It is an ideal democracy, secondly, because its guiding principle is that the greater lives must be devoted to the good of the lesser, the parent for the little child, the older members for the younger, in an attempt to extend to the very least the greatest good enjoyed by all. Thirdly, ideally it is a true democracy in that it gives to each member a share in its own affairs and develops the power to bear responsibilities and to carry each his own load in life. Thus the family group is the best possible training for the life and work of the larger group, the state, and for world-living.5
