The Family and its Members Part 8

The sacrifices of many people of limited means to prevent such a catastrophe would make a long and heavy list of discomforts and privations. The duty of brothers, sisters, and next of kin to help provide for the poorer members of the family connection is thus still held firmly by social ideals. That all people, however, pay this debt of family responsibility or that as many struggle to do it as used to do so cannot be affirmed. On the contrary, many charitable societies make it a serious business to discover and hold to responsibility shirking members of families in which there is great discrepancy in financial condition.

There is now, however, no recognized social responsibility for giving support to poorer members of the family within one household. There is no pressure to bring those needing material relief tinder the roof of the well-to-do of the family circle. Even parents cannot claim residence with adult children, although they can claim by law some support commensurate with their children's income. It is seen now that the duty of aid does not carry with it the obligation for personal a.s.sociation. That is, on the whole, a gain, especially in cases where there is temperamental incompatibility.

The whole relationship of brothers, sisters, and next of kin is simplified and placed more securely on bases of affection and ethical ideal in modern life, and people are good brothers and sisters or good family relatives in proportion as they are unselfish and useful in all their other social relationships. There is a real family tie, however, which still holds. We see it in the Family Reunions, in the listing of relationships in those devoted to genealogy, and in the patriotic societies that indicate by membership what ancestors fought in the Revolution or held office in Colonial days. There is the permanent tie of blood that makes a peculiar bond unlike that of friendship and unlike that of marriage--a tie sometimes carried to extremes, as in the case of the woman who, angry with her husband for a breach of etiquette, declared she "was glad that he was no relation of hers!" On the whole, in reasonable moderation, one of the best ways we have to-day of helping a group is by means of the generosity of the more successful members of that group.

=Special Burdens of Women in Family Obligations.=--Brothers, usually, marry and have their own households to take care of. The unmarried sisters, coming from a long line of women who were supposed to work entirely for the family, with no commercial value placed upon their household service, feel a call to duty from ancient times to carry family burdens. The sons, however, do not escape the parental call for help and have often in the immediate past (when women ceased to have a large economic value in the home and had not yet acquired the capacity or desire for self-support) borne a heavy burden of financial aid for unmarried sisters. The tables are well-nigh turned now, however, and the number of self-supporting women who have relatives of varied nearness and ages dependent or partially dependent upon them, is much larger than that of spinsters care-free and independent. In all cases, however, whether of men or women, those who respond loyally to the needs of those kin to them are the unselfish and capable. The slogan of socialism, "To all in the measure of their need; from all in the measure of their capacity," may never be accepted by society in general, but it is now the rule in the family relation.

=Disadvantages of the Only Child.=--In the individualistic family of the modern monogamic type the chief need is for every child to have brothers and sisters or at least a brother or sister. The "one-child"

plan, which places a solitary little creature as sole recipient of money, affection, and care of the household, is one that shows poverty of condition for the child concerned, no matter how rich the parents.

Such a child lacks a chief aid in its development. Nature sometimes sends, even in a large family, all boys or all girls and makes coeducation at the start difficult. Usually, however, when there are two, three, four, or more children they are mixed in due and helpful proportion. When the family is too large, as it so often was in the older days, it must subdivide according to ages and tastes, and in many old-fashioned families some brothers and sisters were near in sympathy and love and others wide apart. In the moderate-size modern family, however, where there is enough companionship within the home for family good times and not enough to cause breakage into groups within the group, we have the ideal conditions for child development.

For the only child there are happily some subst.i.tutes for this home companionship in the "residential school," or the school with long days of group relationship of like age and condition, but it is not the same and seldom as good as the home circle of the right size and variety.

The modern conditions make the old ties seem less important to many.

In the United States, where people move about so freely across the vast s.p.a.ces of our continent, and where in the large cities so many move each year to try vainly to better themselves in hired houses, the ties of family outside of the immediate circle seem remote and to be easily set aside. It is not, however, a sign of advanced social spirit which makes a young girl declare "she has no use for her relations; she cares only for her chosen friends," and it is often of the essence of social danger that a young man wants to give up all connection with his family. The fact is that one can understand better how one came to be what one is by knowing something of one's forbears and one's living relatives.

=Permanent Value of the Family Bond.=--The feeling that one belongs to a blood group, the feeling so old and so wonder-working in the past, gives at least one ideal of permanence in a world of affairs whirling in such rapid change that the common mind becomes dizzy and the common idealism confused. On the other hand, it is cause for grat.i.tude unspeakable that the old bondage of the family life is relaxed, never to be tightened again to such oppression as once prevailed. The fact that inheritance is now seen to be so varied and so unpredictable that one child in a family may "take back" to one ancestor and another to a different one to ends of complete divergence of character and capacity, shows that the old attempt to keep them together, whether they could love each other or not, was a social mistake. To-day we are more reasonable. We even say that fathers and mothers may not be taken into the home of their children if it best serves the mutual happiness for them to have separate homes. We seldom now in enlightened families make the mistake of holding to "living together"

when living apart is clearly the wiser thing.

The old sense of family responsibility is, however, happily not lost and in its new ways of working often gives a finer representation of mutual aid than was common of old. The will of one rich man which included many gifts to sisters, cousins, and nieces, and left directions to the princ.i.p.al heirs to find out if there were any relatives of the same nearness left out and if so to make them equal sharers, is but a type of many who, with or without large means, share generously with all their name and kin.

On the other hand, we have examples of those who, in the effort to leave a large fortune for some specific object of education or of public charity, wholly neglect, often with cruel indifference, the needs of some member or members of their own family. One man of conspicuous gift to education left a sister and her two daughters without means for comfortable living while piling up money for his pet scheme. Many men skimp themselves and also their wives, children, and still more their parents and more remote kin, to h.o.a.rd a monster sum for some charity to be forever called by their name. These, however, are unusual examples of losing sight of the near in the remote. The average man and woman has in mind a series of concentric circles, those nearest to be helped first, those next beyond to share next, and the world outside to have what is left when these inner claims upon love and generosity are fully met.

If it were not for this general tendency society-at-large would have far more responsibility for all sorts of care of the aged, of the incapable, of the unsuccessful, of the invalid, of the defective, of the insane, of the "cranky" and of the lonely. Finally, without this innate tendency to feel a sense of responsibility for those nearest related by family ties much of the discipline toward social usefulness would be lacking in the lives of average people. We learn the larger duty through faithful response to the nearer and closer obligation.

For this reason the family holidays and reunions, the family birthday celebrations which include all the relatives within reach, the pressure of the law and of custom upon those able to care for those less strong and competent within the kinship bond, are all socializing influences which it is well to keep warm and consciously active.

The lovely spirit of Mrs. Hodgson Burnett's "Tembarom" when he finds a "real relative" is duplicated by many immigrants who after years of loneliness greet one of the family on the sh.o.r.es of the new country; and the member of the eastern family "gone west" is the most hospitable of all relatives to the visitor from the old home who has the same family tree.

The grat.i.tude of the ancient poet that "G.o.d has set the solitary in families" is not a sentiment to be outgrown. Those who feel that it is, lose something precious from the basis of human affection. The adjustment of this old bond to the new individualistic life is not yet made even in the Western world, while in the Eastern the vital problems of family adjustment press in supreme unrest. The one principle that should guide us in this as in all inheritance from the past is surely this, that while the sacredness of personality of any one member of any group, even of the family, shall not be wholly sacrificed to the needs and demands of any other member, yet "they that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak" in the old spirit of unselfish service.

QUESTIONS ON BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND NEXT OF KIN

1. In the monogamic system of the family what, in general, has been the legal responsibility toward blood kin?

2. Is the inherited legal and social responsibility for the care and well-being of relatives lessened at the present time? If so, is that for good or for ill in the wider social fabric?

3. How far should accepted obligations toward near relatives be met in ways to bring under one roof more than the fathers and mothers and children of a given generation?

4. Should natural kinship weigh heavily in considering arrangements for material relief in poverty? In the care of orphans and half-orphans? And in provisions for aid to the aged, the sick, and those out of work?

5. What special conditions make appeal to family feeling difficult in a population like that of the United States with many immigrants and great mobility in industrial relations?

6. Is there any way of strengthening family feeling without attempting return to older forms of family autonomy?

CHAPTER VI

FRIENDS AND THE CHOSEN ONE

"The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well, Thro' four sweet years arose and fell, From flower to flower, from snow to snow:

And we with singing cheer'd the way, And, crown'd with all the season lent, From April on to April went, And glad at heart from May to May.

And all we met was fair and good, And all was good that Time could bring, And all the secret of the Spring Moved in the chambers of the blood."

--TENNYSON.

"There is no man that imparteth his joy to his friend but he joyeth the more; and no man who imparteth his grief to his friend but he grieveth the less."--BACON.

"True, active, productive friendship consists in equal pace in life, in moving forward together, steadily, however much our way of thought and life may vary."--GOETHE.

"Accept no person against thy soul."--ECCLESIASTICUS.

"Your love, vouchsafe it royal-hearted Few And I will set no common price thereon; But aught of inward faith must I forego, Or miss one drop from truth's baptismal hand, Think poorer thoughts, pray cheaper prayers, and grow Less worthy trust, to meet your heart's demand.

Farewell! Your wish I for your sake deny; Rebel to love, in truth to love, am I."

--D.A. Wa.s.sON.

=The Power of Friendship.=--The man who said, "Our relations are thrust upon us; thank heaven we may choose our friends" expressed a feeling shared by many, that fate may handicap us by giving us birth in an uncongenial circle, but we may recoup ourselves by chosen friends and enjoy companionship with them which our kin cannot furnish.

Friendship has inspired many of the greatest deeds and many of the n.o.blest poems, and has given us examples of heroic devotion almost pa.s.sing the love of man for woman. It is not within our purpose to recall these great friendships, but they are familiar and furnish the unfailing stimulus of finer sentiment in youth as the cla.s.sic examples are recited to each generation. Real friendship is a sacred thing.

There are pinchbeck imitations which are neither sacred nor helpful.

The "mashes" and the "crushes" of school-life are not even good imitations. The bargain-counter exchange of services--"you give me society uplift, and I will give you under-current influence," as one woman frankly stated it to another, although it may be called friendship, has no element of real affection in it, as the first one to fail in "value received" so clearly understands. The unwholesome absorption of one woman with another, so that no minute apart can be endured, may be long-lived or an ephemeral expression of a weakness on one or the other side, but it is not the best type of friendship.

Among men the submergence of one personality in another, so that although there are two people there is but one mind and one purpose, may be friendship, but it is not that equal comradeship which the healthy-minded seek. The friendship between a man and a woman which does not lead to marriage or desire for marriage may be a life-long experience of the greatest value to themselves and to all their circle of acquaintance and of activity; but for this type of friendship both a rare man and a rare woman are needed. Perhaps it should be added that either the man or the woman thus deeply bound in life-long friendship who seeks marriage must find a still rarer man or woman to wed, to make such a three-cornered comradeship a permanent success.

Friendship at its best is a task as well as a gratification. Nothing in this world can be had for nothing. "Earth gets its price for what earth gives us." A really great friendship is a test and a challenge and a "time-consumer," as Emerson says. It is, next to marriage and parenthood, the most exacting of human relationships. For this reason few men and women can have a great friendship that does not lead to marriage, and at the same time have a complete marriage with another.

For this reason again, the great friendships are generally between two unmarried men or two unmarried women.

=The Newly Wed and Old Friends.=--Much is written of the sad disillusion experienced by the newly wedded man when he finds his friends are not as welcome at his new fireside as he had expected.

These friends of his are not of the sort prophesied by the love of David and Jonathan, but they are valued comrades and he has antic.i.p.ated sharing the delights of his new home with them. Many a woman in her desire to be all in all to her husband and in the selfish absorption of an undisciplined affection, starts married life the wrong way by making no place in the home life for these old friends of her husband's bachelor life. That reacts often in the worst possible manner upon his affection for her. She forgets too often that she is not called upon to give up her friends. They can come, and do come, when her husband is away at his work, while his friends, if they come at all, must come in his leisure hours which she often wishes to preempt for herself alone. It is the most short-sighted of follies for a woman to try to sweep clean of all former interests and friendships the life of the man with whom she is to try the great adventure of marriage.

The most a wife can accomplish by selfish denial to her husband of his right to keep his friends and enjoy the old as well as the new companionship is to make it impossible for him to enjoy his friends in her company. She can thus send him off on hunting trips or other outside enjoyments which leave her lonely at home. The fact that few worth-while men or women have lived to the marriage day without deep affection for some friend, or perhaps for many friends, is not a testimony to need of change when a new relation is formed but to the enlargement of both circles of comradeship and their amalgamation into friends of the family. This may be a difficult achievement. Many men and women have found, to their surprise, that although they are in love with wife or husband they are not at all in love with the respective families and still less inclined to accept each other's chosen friends as their own. One angle alone of the many-sided character may have "made the match;" quite other angles have already attracted and still hold the friends. These often mutually incongruous friends of both sides must somehow be made to attach themselves to the marriage plan or they may work much harm to the new home.

The art of holding on to old a.s.sociations and yet subst.i.tuting, where subst.i.tution is wise or necessary, a new for an established relationship is a great art. In the case of the newly married whose friends have been in widely different circles, it is often an impossible one.

Here is where the social wisdom that in some manner essays to make the twain to be later one a part of the same or a very similar social group, shows its finest results. When marriage was arranged by the elders of the respective families there was likely to be a similarity in the social standards of the two circles from which the bride and groom were drawn. Their friends were usually so inevitably of the same financial standing and of similar cultural ideals and manners that they would be likely to be congenial to each other and all to both husband and wife. When the one chosen was selected by the fathers and mothers there were some essentials for successful married life secured in advance. We have now come to feel that each couple must choose for themselves and that conscious, selective love is the very essence of that choice. It is well, however, to name over the essentials secured by the arranged marriages, to which such an enlightened country as France still gives much heed and still holds to some extent in family control.

=Some Advantages in Choices of Marriage by the Elders.=--The old arranged choice for marriage, in the first place, secured, and still secures in countries not yet changed in this particular, a similar financial position. Often greed of family prestige made the money end the chief one and sacrificed everything else to the bringing together of two great fortunes. Yet the fact that family choices usually united those of similar financial standing and power of gratification of taste did lead toward an easy adjustment of the young couple to life together. One of the chief causes of unhappiness in marriages wholly from personal choice and in response to an impulse of pa.s.sionate attachment is that the taste and "style" of living of the two has been so different that it is hard, after the first glamour wears away, to settle down to agreeable compromises. As a rule, "the beggar maid and King Cophetua" can get on better than the young woman heiress and the ex-chauffeur in such compromises; for it is always easier to extend one's income than to contract it, and women can still owe all to the loved one with better grace than men can bear the position of one "marrying above his lot." The tendency of the older custom, however, to limit all marriage choices on the basis of money to be contributed to the common fund was, and is when now in force, as destructive to real happiness in marriage as any ill-considered leaping across social barriers could well be. It is well, therefore, that it is outgrown.

The second condition believed essential to success in marriage from the point of view of family stability, when the marriage choice of the loved one was made by the elders, is far more important than that of financial equality. It is the congeniality of the two families to be united by the marriage. The custom of betrothing their children as a means of carrying on the close friendship of a lifetime beyond its natural limit into the generations yet to be, is an old and not a wholly bad one. It insures for the young couple a genuine love from both sides the family line. To be sure, that love may be an oppressive and undesired gift which one or the other of the young people ardently wishes to ignore or to be freed from, but it contains also some elements of a good start for those same young people in a mutually devoted double parentage. When, however, as in Eastern countries, it leads to betrothal in infancy or very early childhood and sets the girl who is to be the wife in the family of her betrothed when she is too young to know her own real nature or to have a mind to make up about what she would wish for herself, it may be and generally is an evil thing. In the questions concerning the family set forth by the Chinese inquiry, to which allusion has already been made, the first set of problems relates to "Early Engagements," and it is asked, "Is the practice of parents in arranging for the engagement of a girl while still a mere child productive of happiness in the future home?"

And, again, "Can a woman refuse to marry a man whom her family decides she should marry, after the formal engagement has taken place?" To our Western ideas the answer is so plain to both these questions that one may be impatient at their repet.i.tion here. Yet it is certainly true that many people freely engage themselves to their later unhappiness and there have been many family virtues bred on even the outgrown fashion of family choice. Where unhappiness has been prevented in the results of family choice doubtless the friendship of the two family heads has had much to do with such mitigation of bad effects of extreme parental control in marriage.

Social protection of the young has in a measure superseded the ancient family arrangement, but where it has not, a young person may be found to-day in as bad a position through personal choice as that of the girl set in a home without her own consent to be the future wife of a man she has not seen. The difference is, however, a vital one.

In the case of the Chinese girl the status is fixed. In the case of a girl of the Western world, even of most unfortunate circ.u.mstance or weakness of character, there is a possibility of escape from even the worst conditions into a new relationship to life and to marriage. We have suicides in the Western world, and some of them of young girls who, free to choose their mates, loved not wisely but too well; but the toll of suicides of wives in China is one that testifies that polygamy and the power of fathers over their daughters in marriage and even in their sale for immoral uses, and the legal right to hold girls in domestic slavery, are evils not made tolerable even by the high-minded who try to perpetuate the friendship as well as the power of leading families by intermarriage.

An early Ma.s.sachusetts law declared that "No female orphan could be given in marriage during her minority except with the approbation of a majority of the selectmen of the town." This was proof that in this country from the first, the social power was used not to make girls accept husbands that might be chosen for them but to protect girls from exploitation of designing persons, and if they had not a family protection they were held secure in that of the officers of the community. The law of 1719, in New York, that no person under twenty-one should be married without the written consent of parent or guardian was a step in the direction of social control. This law aimed not to make marriage choices for any young person but to safeguard such choice from possible harm.

The ancient family choice in marriage tried in the third place to give every one an equal chance to be married. The families concerned, when the age thought to be marriageable had been reached, sought to give the young persons a place in the family order. The idea of bachelors and maids of mature years was not only repugnant, it was an indictment of the vigilance and good offices of the elders. When a certain Doctor Brickell practised medicine in North Carolina in about 1731, he declared that "She that continues unmarried until twenty is reckoned a stale maid, which is a very indifferent character in this country;"