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The Marriage Question To-day the "Husband-problem.”The whole situation is changing in so many ways as relates to the mutual obligation of men and women in family life that Havelock Ellis is right when he says "the marriage question to-day is much less the wife-problem than the husband-problem." That is to say, the single headship of the family is invaded and yet the methods of adjustment of two heads are not yet clear in either law or custom. As the Bishop of Hereford said at the meeting of his brother Bishops, in which the resolution to omit the word "obey" from the marriage service of the Church of England was withdrawn (on the ground that if presented it would be successfully opposed), "It is obvious to every one that it would not be convenient to have two heads to a family."* There are already two heads in every up-to-date family in the United States! The real difficulty now is to see how best to adjust mutual responsibilities toward each other and toward the children involved, and to write a consistent and uniform set of statutes into the law. That law respecting marriage and the family, partly inherited without change from the patriarchal order, partly altered in particulars in obedience to some popular demand based on cramping conditions made by the law whenever it was enforced, after it was already outgrown, needs careful revision. Ignored so often by the moral and intellectual élite, inconsistently set aside by new measures passed without regard to what is already established as precedent, all laws respecting marriage, the family, and the parental relation which have come down from the past, need thorough overhauling and the best wisdom should be exercised in full revision and codification.

The husband and father, meanwhile, many times holds firmly to his old-time fine chivalry and adds justice without spoiling his relationship to the family. The wife keeps her inherited aptitude for loving care of husband and children, and adds a new independence of thought and action without danger of confusion of ideal or function.

Can Women Have All the New Freedom and Also All the Old Privileges?-Some women, however, are trying the absurd and dangerous experiment of seeing how much they can take

*Since that decision a General Convocation of the American Protestant Episcopal Church has voted to eliminate the word "obey" from its marriage service.

from men in the old lines of "support" and how little they can give in the old lines of service; how much they can gain in the new freedom and how little they can pay for it in individual work. These are the women who are willing that the family property shall be in their name for the purpose of cheating creditors, and at the same time acknowledge no obligation to support the children from a common family fund. These are the women who demand their liberty to achieve and deny their duty to help. These are the women who take "alimony" from a man with whom they will not live and have married for their own convenience. They are the women who have independent incomes from inheritance or from vocational success and yet excuse themselves from any responsibility toward even invalid husbands, and never see the parental bond as now binding both fathers and mothers alike.

Many men are struggling in some confusion of mind as to the outcome of this new tendency to equalize rights and opportunities, and to the credit of most of them, be it spoken, they want to do the right thing.

It is now for women to preserve the father, the best of him, and for men to still call for the mother, the noblest of her, in the new adjustments that wait for full realization of the new democracy in the family.

Here, again, we need not wait for perfect consistency in law, or full understanding of social tendencies and their outcome, to find our way in life. Love shows the way-love between intellectual and moral equals, who, in trying to adjust their own lives to a higher law in which "self-reverencing each and reverencing each," settle all problems on the higher levels of thought and feeling.

New Social Advantages for Fathers.-Meanwhile, again, the father-office stands out in actual living function as never before. The fathers that now show what fatherhood was meant to bethey are legion. Holding the wife and mother in her place of sacred honor, they are to their children the Supreme Court of appeal in grave questions of discipline, the highest functionary of the family in the distribution of honors and rewards, the best comrade in fun, the most delightful companion in games, the strongest challenger in effort, and the symbol of knowledge and power of the community life.

With the new partnership of men and women in the family the father has a chance to be a companion and friend as never before. He has an opportunity to show his children that side which the ancient father often failed to develop, the side of friendship and understanding. To the boy a clear picture of what he would be, to the girl a declaration of the kind of man she would marry, the modern father of the highest type makes possible a modern mother who shall show her son what womanhood may become in freedom, and who can lead her daughter to be, like herself, the flower of all the best of the past.

QUESTIONS ON THE FATHER

1. What, in general, have been the social demands upon husbands and fathers, and how have these been met in the past?

2. What effect has the new freedom of women had upon the autonomy of the family and the legal obligations of the husband and father?

3. Should the relation of men and women to family life be identical? If not, why not? If so, what new agencies can or should be developed to secure what husbands and fathers are now legally obligated to provide?

4. What ideal of fatherhood should we now secure and maintain? 5. In Minnesota, recent bills presented to the Legislature "relating to and regulating marriage” include among the items "prohibition of marriage within six months after a divorce has been granted from a former spouse; and forbidding of marriage between persons either one of whom is epileptic, imbecile, feeble-minded, insane, an habitual drunkard, affected with a venereal disease, or addicted to the use of opium, morphine, or cocaine." This indicates the trend of newer laws regulating marriage. Is this trend justified? If so, how do the laws of your own State compare with others in this particular?

6. Doctor Devine says, "Home is not a boarding-house, but a complex of relations, physical and spiritual, which were never more beautiful, more enduring or more ennobling than in the modern family." Is that true? If so, what contribution must the father continue to make to family success?

CHAPTER IV

THE GRANDPARENTS

"FROM my grandfather I learned good morals and the government of temper. From my great-grandfather to know that on education one should spend liberally. From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character. From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence not only from evil deeds but from evil thoughts; and, further, simplicity in way of living. To the gods I am indebted for having good grandparents, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends."-MARCUS AURELIUS.

"Honorable age is not that which standeth in length of years, nor that is measured by number of years; but wisdom is the grey hair unto men and an unspotted life is old age. The multitude of the wise is the welfare of the world; and the righteous live forevermore."-THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON.

"Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the springs of life.

"Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. We grow old only by deserting our ideals. In every heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from other men and women, and from the Infinite, so long is every one young."-SAMUEL ULMAN.

"Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made."

-BROWNING.

Relative Increase of the Aged in Modern Life.-The outstanding fact concerning the aged is that they increase proportionately to population as civilization increases. Easier conditions of living make for longer life. Public sanitation, private hygiene, good heating arrangements in each house, good water and plenty

of it, sidewalks and porches for easy airing, medical science and the art of nursing made more widely available even for the poor, more physical comforts of every sort, more widely distributed, all tend toward the preservation of life after middle age is reached. They also tend to keep alive many babies who would have died in harder conditions and prolong the life of many invalids who would have succumbed to hardships in early youth. Indeed, Doctor Holmes declared that "the best insurance of a long life was to acquire an incurable disease when young;" while the average of robust health in all modern communities is certainly lowered by the modern methods of preservation of the delicate and the aged.

Savage Treatment of the Old.-In the annals of savage life we find many gruesome tales of intentional disposal of the aged. The use of the old grandmother as a target for the training of young boys in the art of slaying one's enemy is an extreme example. The pathetic couple left behind when the tribe migrated, often with a small supply of food saved for them by some pitiful member of the family from the scanty hoard that must suffice until the next harvest or the next hunting, the neglect and the actual abuse that often made the last days quickly ended, all show that when life is too hard there is no room for the old.

The Relation of Ancestor-worship to Respect for Aged Men. Two things, at least, helped to give the aged a better place in the social esteem and in the provision for necessities as primitive life developed toward civilization. One was ancestor-worship, which made the father and the grandfather a link, indispensable and therefore honored, in the chain of blood relationship which carried on the generations. This type of religious belief and practice did not, however, work to ease the lot of old women. If the young wife did not have a child, especially a son, she could be repudiated often, and lose her standing in the family relation and hence be subjected to hardships that made her early old and often ended her life while still in middle age. If she had a son and rose to be a grandmother she might attain a most honorable position, having her son's wife to be her servant and her son's son's wife to be her slave. Even with the best intentions, the patriarchal father could not attend to all the details of government within his usually extensive household, and no man has yet lived who could manage unassisted a

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