Broken Homes Part 9

Juvenile courts and domestic relations courts having proved a success separately, there is a strong movement on foot to combine them into one court, for which the name Family Court has been proposed.

A leader in this movement is Judge Hoffman of the Family Court of Cincinnati, which he describes thus:

"The Court of Cincinnati was organized for the purpose of dealing with the family as a unit and to ascertain possibly the cause of its disruption. It has exclusive jurisdiction in all divorce and alimony cases, and all matters coming under the Juvenile Court Act. It also has jurisdiction in cases of failure to provide. The ideal court would include in connection with the foregoing functions, adoption of children, the issuing of marriage licenses, and b.a.s.t.a.r.dy cases."[49]

One advantage of this plan is the economy it effects in the time of probation officers. It is generally admitted that in children's court cases it is the parents rather than the children who are really on probation; and with two courts and two separate probation systems, we may even have the anomaly of the same family being under the care of two probation officers at once. Specialization can no further go! Other leaders in the domestic relations court movement see little merit in the proposal for a one-part family court. They think that, in the large cities at least, the need would be better served by having the domestic relations and juvenile courts under one roof, but as two separate and distinct parts of the same court. All are agreed, however, that the powers of one or the other of the two special courts should be enlarged to cover b.a.s.t.a.r.dy cases, where this is not now done.

The domestic relations court, whether separate or as part of a family court, ought to have equity powers, so that the usual rules of evidence need not be so closely adhered to and more lat.i.tude could be allowed the magistrate in disposing of cases, not necessarily according to ruling and precedent but according to the social needs disclosed. A const.i.tutional amendment now pending in New York is a model for this sort of legislation. It is in part as follows:

"The legislature may establish children's courts and courts of domestic relations as separate courts or parts of existing courts, or courts hereafter to be created, and may confer upon them such equity and other jurisdiction as may be necessary for the correction, protection, guardianship and disposition of delinquent, neglected or dependent minors, and for the punishment and correction of adults responsible for or contributing to such delinquency, neglect or dependency, and to compel the support of a wife, child or poor relative by persons legally chargeable therewith who abandon or neglect to support any of them."[50]

Many courts of domestic relations which now exercise equity powers, such as ordering that a man remain away from home or that a wife allow her husband to see his children at stated times, do so without actual legal warrant and subject at any time to appeal of counsel. The conferring of equity powers on courts of domestic relations is a form of protection both to the court and to its clients which social workers should stand ready to work for.

Juvenile courts have in the main outstripped the domestic relations courts in the use of physicians and psychiatrists. The best examples of both these courts have, however, facilities for the making of physical examinations and mental tests, where necessary, before adjudication.

Judge Hoffman says that the fact that so many cases in courts of domestic relations disclose abnormal or perverted s.e.x habits, makes important the services of a psychiatrist accustomed to diagnosing these conditions.[51]

In most states the jurisdiction of the courts of domestic relations should be extended and co-ordinated. Few states escape some glaring inconsistencies in the laws governing desertion and abandonment. There is, for instance, much confusion between states as to whether a woman whose husband brings her to a strange city and there deserts her must prosecute him in the city where their home is or where the desertion took place. Under certain circ.u.mstances the woman is forced to travel to the city where her husband has gone, and bring action against him there, if the courts in that place will entertain a suit. In New York state there is no law which covers the case of a man who abandons his wife while she is pregnant, if there is no other living child. To const.i.tute an extraditable crime there must have been abandonment of a child _in esse_ not merely _in posse_.

But no inst.i.tution, however carefully established by law, is any more effective than the people who run it; and the usefulness of the domestic relations court in any community depends entirely upon the social-mindedness and freedom from political entanglement of the judge and the amount and quality of probation service. From a social point of view, the latter is more important than the former; for a bad decision of the court can be mitigated by good case work later on, while a poor probation officer may nullify the effects of the wisest judicial decision ever made.

The importance of having enough probation officers to handle the work of the court has already been touched upon. An overworked officer is perforce an inefficient officer. He has usually to spend at least half his time in the court and attending to the clerical end of his job. From 50 to 60 cases is probably all that one probation officer can be expected to handle thoroughly at one time, if, as is to be hoped, he is required to make careful preliminary investigations to be presented to the judge _before_ the trial.

In training and in equipment for the job, probation officers should be the equals of case workers in private agencies. Examinations for probation officers ought to be conducted by social workers of skill and high standards. A few months of cramming at a civil service school, or a few weeks of volunteer visiting with some case working agency, should not suffice to enable candidates to pa.s.s the examinations. The standards should be high enough and the salaries sufficiently attractive to draw into this field people who have successfully completed their apprenticeship in the art of case work. Only then can the status of the probation officer be raised to what it should be in the court itself.

The relation of the probation officer to the judge ought to be exactly like the relation of the medical social worker to the physician--that of a person acting under his direction in a general way, but with a special contribution to make to the treatment of the case and with a recognized standing as an expert in his own particular field.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] Now changed to The National Conference of Social Work.

[47] Motion, J.R.: Wife and Family Desertion: Emigration as a Contributory Cause. Glasgow Parish Council, 1912.

[48] Handling of Cases by the Juvenile Court and Court of Domestic Relations of the Philadelphia Munic.i.p.al Court. Bulletin 2, Bureau for Social Research, the Seybert Inst.i.tution, Philadelphia, 1918.

[49] Hoffman, Charles W.: The Domestic Relations Court and Divorce, _The Delinquent_, February, 1917.

[50] For a fuller discussion of equity powers see an article by Judge C.F. Collins in the _Legal Aid Review_ for January, 1919.

[51] Hoffman, Charles W.: Domestic Relations Courts and Divorce. _The Delinquent_, February, 1917.

X

NEXT STEPS IN PREVENTIVE TREATMENT

At this time of writing it is too soon after the signing of the armistice to make predictions as to what the Great War may do to marriage. Whether desertion and divorce will increase or decrease it is impossible to say, and the experience of Europe is beside the mark. The war will leave traces on this generation--no doubt about that; but our losses have not been heavy enough seriously to disturb the balance of the s.e.xes. The war, which has been to the common people of our country a war of service and ideals, has erased much that was petty and selfish; it has also caused nervous shocks and strains incalculable and unimagined. Years from now we may be able to strike the balance, but today this cannot be done. It is impossible also to say whether the growing irresponsibility that was generally recognized to be threatening married life in the years before the war is still operating with like effect, or whether the full tide of emotion in which the world has been lately submerged may have swept at least a part of it away.

We are dealing here, however, not so much with modifications in the spirit of the times, as with prevention in the individual case.

One very fundamental claim can be made concerning marital shipwrecks; namely, that the way to prevent many of them would have been to see that the marriage never was allowed to take place. Marriage laws and their enforcement form a whole subject in themselves which is now receiving careful study, the results of which should be available shortly.[52]

This fact precludes any discussion of the subject here, though the relation of our marriage laws to marital discord is so obvious that some mention of the matter is necessary.

It was formerly the belief of students of family desertion that the best way to prevent desertions was to punish them quickly and severely.

It should be said that this plan has never received a fair trial on a large scale, for legal equipment has always lagged behind knowledge. It may be true that just as a community can, within limits, regulate its death rate by what it is willing to pay, so it can by repressive measures regulate its desertion rate. But measures that keep the would-be deserter in the home which constantly grows less of a home, simply through fear of consequences if he left it, seem hardly a desirable form of prevention from the social point of view. It would be much better to catch the disintegrating family in whatever form of social drag-net could be devised, and deal with it individually and constructively along the lines which case work has laid down.

Is it possible, however, to recognize a "pre-desertion state?" And if so, what are the danger signals? One case worker answers this question sententiously: "Any influences which tend to destroy family solidarity are possible signs of desertion." Another writes: "We have sometimes found it possible to recognize a 'pre-desertion state' in the intermittent deserter, where we know the conditions which previously led to desertion, but I doubt whether we have very often been able to note it in the case of first desertions. In general, I should say a growing carelessness or a growing despondency as to his ability to care for his family are danger signals in the man, of which it is well to keep track."

The conditions listed in Chapter II as "contributory factors" might in certain combinations be decided danger signals of impending desertion.

Non-support itself is, indeed, one of the most common of such signals, though a man who has dealt with hundreds of desertion cases maintained recently that the best and most hopeful type of deserter is the one who supports his family adequately up to the time of leaving home.

In the following case the items that led the case worker to suspect an approaching desertion are set down in the order stated by her. The couple were Irish; the man had never deserted before.

(1) He had spoken with eagerness of the wages that were being earned in munition plants in a city a few hours away--said he would like to go to some of those munition places and see what he could make.

(2) He was an intermittent drinker.

(3) His work record was poor; employers said he was irregular and unreliable.

(4) Visitor felt he had never earned as much as he was easily capable of earning and was rather indifferent to the needs of his family.

(5) The woman was willing to work--had applied for day nursery care, but visitor had persuaded the nursery not to accept the children.

After the visitor had stated the first two of the above items she stopped, and did not add the more significant three that followed until reminded that many workmen who drank intermittently were at that time thinking enviously of munition factory wages; and that these hardly const.i.tuted danger signals. The c.u.mulative effect of all five items cannot, however, be denied.

Another statement, similarly obtained, concerns a colored couple, married about two years and with two children, the youngest less than a month old. Man had been out of work and family had gone to live with relatives.

(1) Man earns $20 a week but refuses to start housekeeping again, although they are seriously overcrowded--seven adults and five children in five rooms.

(2) Woman says he makes her sleep on chairs so that he can get better rest.

(3) He is seeing a good deal of another woman, a friend of the wife (wife's statement only).

(4) Woman had applied for nursery care for both children so that she might go to work.

(5) It transpires that she lived with him before marriage, and that the first child was a month old when the marriage took place. He "holds it over her."

(6) Man had been married before and divorced.

(7) The family's habits of recreation are changed; the man no longer "takes her out."

Such attempts to foretell the future are not infallible, of course; but a listing process is a valuable aid to diagnosis, and, by its help, a situation may be uncovered which tends toward complete family breakdown.

This may be taken in time and prevented; or, if separation is inevitable it can be prepared for in advance, the necessary legal arrangements can be made to protect the family, and the anxiety, suspense, and useless effort avoided which a sudden and downright abandonment would cause.

But the trouble is that the problem seldom comes to the case worker until matters have progressed farther than this. The real question is--not how to recognize pre-desertion symptoms, but how to get hold of families when these symptoms are in the incipient stage.

Mr. Hiram Myers, manager of the Desertion Bureau of the New York a.s.sociation for Improving the Condition of the Poor, who has made a close study of the subject, holds the theory that the real period of stress in marital adjustment comes not during the "critical first year,"

about which we have been told so much, but at a later period, which he sets roughly at from the third to the fifth year after marriage. By this time there are usually one or two babies, the wife's girlish charm has gone, and the romance of the first attraction has vanished, while the steady force of conjugal affection which should smooth their path through the years ahead has not come to take its place. It is in this middle period that longings for the delights of his care-free youth begin to come back to a man; if he ever had the wandering foot, it begins again to twitch for the road; of else his fancy is captured by some other girl not tied down at home by children. It is at this time, too, that endless discords and misunderstandings arise--that the last bit of gilt crumbles off the gingerbread.