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. WASSON.

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 noblest poems, and has given us examples of heroic devotion almost passing 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 classic 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 anticipated 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 associations and yet substituting, where substitution 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 passionate 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 repetition 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 circumstance 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 Massachusetts 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;" and in New England the unmarried man, as elsewhere, was subjected to special tax and social odium.

The family arrangement for marriage of the young did one thing, at least, in a time when women and girls enjoyed little protection or financial security outside of marriage—it set at work forces to provide husbands for many girls who would not be the first choice in a free competition for masculine favor.

Some Ancient Spinsters, But Few.—There were, however, some distinguished women of the older time who never married. Margaret Brent, of Maryland, for example, whose appeal for "voyce and vote with men," in the making of laws to which she must owe allegiance, is historic. And that Mary Carpenter, sister of Alice, wife of Governor Bradford, who, at the beginning of her ninety-first year, was declared a "godly old maid;" and, again, that "ancient maid of forty years," who is said to have founded the town of Taunton, Massachusetts. Others of distinction might be mentioned. These show clearly that the right not to marry at all, and the right not to marry a person whom she had not seen or, having seen, did not want as husband, was well sustained in the case of young girls in our own country from the first.

The lot of most women here in the United States, as elsewhere in the world, includes marriage; and although no one wants to go back to family arrangement of nuptials, the desirability of marriage within a congenial and familiar circle—that which the family arrangement distinctly set out to secure—is still obvious.

The fourth element of family stability and well-being which the ancient parental arrangement of marriage was intended to secure is deliberation and chance for learning all the facts on both sides, so that there may be no marrying in haste to repent at leisure. The reaction from this deliberation in tying the nuptial knot is seen in "running away to be married" without the slightest knowledge on either side of the qualities or capacities of the chosen partner and without giving the parents any opportunity of safeguarding from disastrous choice. This is the swing of the pendulum in a new freedom, often to personal disaster. Social ideals and legal provisions are alike engaged more and more to prevent too ignorant and too hasty marriages. Such may turn out to have been made in heaven as nearly as the average union, but the chances are against that happy consummation.

New Demands for Social Control of Marriage Choices.—Social wisdom obliges more deliberation in the case of young people seeking a marriage license on their own initiative and perhaps after a very brief acquaintance. There is a strong demand that a certain period shall elapse between the request for the license and its granting and that sufficient publicity be secured to make it easy for interested parties to ascertain any facts concerning both the man and the woman involved, which might make the marriage either illegal, as bigamy, or a catastrophe, as uniting one unfit for marriage with an unsuspecting person blinded by sudden attraction. More than this, many States of our Union are beginning processes of law to require certificates of physical fitness, of freedom from infectious or dangerous disease, and some statement of facts as to previous obedience to law and ability for self-support such as alone would make marriage successful. Ministers of religion of various sects are taking more and more a stand against marriage of persons whom they know are of bad habits or otherwise likely to give a married partner an unhappy life. Insanity in the family is now considered in some States a disqualification for marriage, and statutes requiring some family testimony to facts concerning that inheritance are coming into enactment and enforcement. The tragedy of marrying ignorantly into a certain and hopeless fate of union with one who can never be of sound mind is so terrible that the state itself is trying to safeguard carelessness on that point. The medical profession is more and more acting a parental part in requiring the registry of diseases that are most unsocial in their effect—diseases incident to vice, and which make any man while suffering from them unfit for marriage. It is proposed by many, and by law required in some States, that no marriage license shall be given without a certificate of both mental and physical fitness, to be handed to the officer before registry of the application, in order that there may be no public refusal on such grounds of unfitness after it is known that a license to marry has been sought. This would be far better than, as has been proposed by some persons, for clergymen to take the initiative in requiring such physical and mental tests after a request to marry two people and after a license has been secured. After a matter has gone so far as to result in a request to a clergyman to officiate at the marriage ceremony, the exaction of an examination which the state has not previously required would inevitably, as has been already shown in some instances, lead to suspicion and bad feeling. The duty of the state, which alone in our country gives power to marry (the clergyman performing the ceremony pronouncing the couple married "by virtue of the power invested in him by the state"), is clear. That duty is to take all initiative in all previous inquiries aimed at preventing the marriage of unfit persons. If the state does take such initiative and for all alike, no matter what their social standing or reputation may be, then there is no stigma for any individual and no suspicion aroused to injure any class of persons. There seems as good reason why a compulsory physical and mental examination, together with an inquiry into the main facts of a person's life in order to prevent fraud and exploitation, should always precede the giving of a marriage license as for the required physical and mental examination of children when they enter the tax-supported public school. It is, in both cases, a way by which society secures itself, in the interest of the family and of social life, against the fostering or continuance of evils that may be prevented from poisoning the sources of moral and intellectual growth.

The fiat has gone forth in the Western world that no one shall be compelled to marry against his or her will. The first revolt from family control of marriage, that which made so many persons believe that any one should be allowed to marry any one whom he or she might choose, is now, however, waning. Elements of social control are superseding the "marriage broker" and the parental office in deciding what unions shall be allowed.

The Young Should be Helped to Make Wise Choices.—Wisdom and consistency are not yet developed in this new way of helping the young, even against their will, to avoid mistakes of ignorance and folly, but they are developing. Meanwhile, many children still revere their parents' wishes and ideals, even if the wild few do as they please without regard to their elders. Most marriages in our country are not only safely entered upon but happy in results because of tendencies and tastes engendered in homes of love, truth, and goodness. The increase of social control in the direction of knowledge and caution even among the best people, and the safeguarding of the less advantaged in family training, must go on until all the good things parental choice gave to marriage arrangements are retained more perfectly and all the bad things outgrown.

The fifth element in the ancient parental control of marriage choices was the definite placing of youth under the leadership of age and thus holding firm the inherited "mores" to make the family stable in ideal as in practice. We have now a revolt of youth against the leadership of age. We have now, even among those whose affection for their parents is strong in feeling and generous in action, an idea that the convictions and reverences of the older generation are outgrown and for the better. There is a general impression, perhaps speeded unduly by the war, that what is new must be good, and what is old must be, if not bad, at least not the best. The decay of family religion lessens respect for old sanctions. The fact that business and pleasure alike take the different members of each family on different ways all the week and Sunday, too, make each age represented in the household influenced chiefly by its own set of friends. The way in which mechanical invention gives unexampled speed in opposite directions to the young and the old alike intensifies the segregation of each group and minimizes the influence of the family bond. The fact, perhaps of all most significant, that every form of art, from the lowest to the highest, is changing before our eyes into something new and strange tends toward the unconscious absorption by youth of new ideals of what is desirable in life. These things all conspire to make youth impatient of age.

The Revolt of Youth.—Many of the boys who went to torture and cripplement in the war have returned to declare that the old life is gone, and if there can be no better one devised and realized then the old world should go too. Many of the girls who went overseas to a vivid excitement and a stimulus of unwonted comradeship with men feel that they have so much more insight into real things than do their mothers that they know not only what is best for themselves but what is best for all youth. Many women, for the first time earning independent livelihood during the war-struggle, feel that now, at last, they have arrived; and what have they to do with old-fashioned behavior? More than all else, the modern economic independence of women of good breeding and assured position, in social classes which used to consider that only women in direst need could properly earn money, gives a wholly different aspect to many social questions. The tendency to individualism, so often seen in the modern woman, unbalanced by study of the past or its lessons or by any real grappling with present problems as they relate to possible future adjustments, now begins its strongest revolt at the fireside and makes the daughter often a stranger to her mother.

Only the older woman who has kept in touch not only with young life outside her own family but with the problems that modern changes in education, in industry, in art and literature, press upon the mind, can understand why so many young people to-day distrust everything that is old and welcome everything that seems new, however ancient it may actually be. Many of the newest things proclaimed are old mistakes of human nature revamped for a masquerade. A little study, for example, would show many young people who think they are responding to fresh revelation of the right relation of the sexes that they are really coming under the spell of some ancient and discarded plan of getting all satisfaction out of a relationship without assuming any obligation in return.

The Wisdom of the Ages Must be the Guide of Youth.—There is no chance of putting youth back into tutelage to age in any personal relation and in the old sense. Wise older people do not wish that. What is happening, and will be accelerated in action when the first flush of youthful consciousness of power is a bit balanced by knowledge of life's difficulties, is this; the wisdom of the ages, not the wisdom of their own parents and family alone, will be available to youth and used by youth in ever-increasing reverence. Not that some one who has lived longer shall of right determine a young life, but that young life shall learn more than in any past time it could do what the experience of the race has to teach. Happy the child whose parent can interpret this wisdom of life and happy the parent whose child can even now see that there is wisdom from the past to interpret.

Meanwhile, the fact that so many people marry and so many marriages turn out happily speaks well for the wisdom of youth or else gives testimony of the kindness of the fate that watches over lovers. We are told that at the ages of twenty to twenty-five half of the women and one-fourth of the men in the United States are married, and at the period of life between thirty-five and forty-five years only seventeen per cent. of the men are single and only eleven per cent. of the women; while at sixty-five years and over only six per cent. of either sex are listed as having never married. If out of this large proportion who dare matrimony on their own motion, and often without even the parental approbation, only one marriage out of ten to twelve turns out so badly that the parties ask to be released from their marriage vows, surely it argues well for independence in choosing one's partner for one's self even if there are mishaps and disasters for the few.

Personal Choice in Marriage Has Now the Widest Range.—One fact which many overlook when making estimates of the mistakes in marriage (and drawing therefrom dire prognostication for the future of the family in our country) is that personal choice among a circle of friends was not only never so free for young people but also never able to cover so wide a range of divergent national and racial backgrounds as in the United States. Marriages in this country often bridge or try to bridge a chasm between centuries of social development and continents of educational influence. It is estimated that of the 3,424 languages and dialects spoken in the world, about one-third, or 1,624, are spoken in some part of the American continent. The English language is spoken by more people than use either the German, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese, but the 150,000,000 who thus preserve the "mother-tongue" of the early American settlers have to come into intimate contact with those of far different lingual background. This difference in language, which is found so often a barrier to unity between the respective parents of the young people who choose each other in marriage, is but a sign and symbol of deep-seated and ineradicable divergence in family tradition, in fashion of customary ways of living, in scale of moral values and in personal habits. It is rather a matter for astonishment that so many "mixed marriages" turn out well than that a minority prove disastrous. Mixed marriages will continue and with wider range of alignment in the future than in the past. That is inevitable with our increased complexity of life, which brings together in school and in labor, in social gatherings and in political association, all sorts and conditions of men, and women. Love not only laughs at prison bars, love scoffs at parental differences as well as at parental control. Yet is it true that wide divergence in family background is accountable for many of the tragedies of broken families after love has cooled and the facts of sober obligations incurred have become obvious.

The great social need in the United States is for means of acquaintance and friendship for the young in lines of association in which a safe and helpful marriage choice may be made. William Penn said, "Never marry but for love, but see that thou lovest what is lovely." The effort of all social arrangements for the young in families where the elders do not try to reinstate parental control but rather to give a chance for safeguarded independence of choice is to bring together young people who should find, each one of them in that group, a chosen one of the right sort. Financial capacity, mutually congenial relatives, suitable age and similar tastes, after acquaintance giving reasonable basis for hope for permanent agreement in essentials, might insure suitable marriages. The many advantages of close friendships within a group bound together by similar culture and outlook is the real reason for "society." Often foolish in its ways and defeating its own higher ends, it is yet a real effort to give a new and more democratic guidance through favorable circumstances, rather than through personal will or family rule, to the marriage choice of youth.

The reason why one is chosen and another not is never clear to any but the ones who make the choice. To them, indeed, it may be a mystery, but one they are sure must have its source in the necessity of things. To others it is often a puzzle past understanding because so many of the friends of each of the twain "would have chosen so differently, you know."

Something of racial need both for mixture and for persistency of type, something of hidden demand of temperament for a complementary personality, something of easy awakening of passion and easy holding of attention, something of requirement for a larger sympathy than most friends can give and the favored one seems able to supply—all these enter into the selection of the chosen one from all the rest of one's friends. The need is for as wide a range of personalities and for as large a chance to make friends with the suitable and truly congenial as can be given to youth in order that the choice may be really free and the result happy.

The Value of the Church in Social Life.—In our day the best opportunities for such a choice within social ranges most likely to offer the right choice is found in the churches. Whatever they may lack in power of leadership, the churches have a social activity to-day which gives the very best opportunity to youth in its quest for the perfect other half. It is not necessary or best to do as the Friends have done, turn out of the communion those who "marry out of meeting." It is not a wholesome sign when religion puts bars before the marriage altar, for one's true mate may be found in another temple than that in which one was consecrated in infancy. It is often the very difference in family faith that unites two people whose religious inheritance has slipped away from bondage and gives only a reminiscent glow. It is, however, true that like beliefs, like forms of worship, like use of the same tabernacle, Sunday after Sunday, which bring parents and elders of families together, give chances for the young to form wide and strong attachments of friendship within a circle of like quality and tastes. In spite of the fact that many people bridge vast social chasms with high success in a marriage venture, the majority of happy marriages are of those who do not have to engage an outside interpreter in order to understand each other in reaction to social habit, ethics, and culture.

It is often made a reproach to the modern church that it is so much a supplement of the home, so largely a social opportunity rather than a controlling moral force. In some sense the reproach may be a just one, but in a very real meaning of human service, the church that aids young people to find themselves and each other in a friendly circle of the like-minded, like-mannered, and like-spirited, within the circle of whom a really good marriage choice may be made, can claim recognition as of those functionaries that meet a need not met so well by any other social agency. The straining of this point by advertised "courting parlors" for the friendless and homeless may not be the right thing, but what is needed is an opportunity providing the right atmosphere and chaperonage for easier acquaintance among young people away from home.

The sad fact that so many young men and young women never meet the right mates in youth and marry perforce, if at all, any one that "comes along," makes any organization that naturally and simply enables those who need it to make acquaintance with those among whom a congenial mate may easily be found socially useful.

Either as substitute for home surroundings or as supplement to unhappy or inadequate family life, the church home may be a benefactor in this direction of enabling young people to find what all need, friends and possible chosen ones among those friends.

The prophetic mission of the church, laments an earnest reformer, is now too much in eclipse. Perhaps so, but it may be truer to say that the prophetic mission has now escaped all walls, even of grandest cathedrals, and is now busy at organizing that mission into specialties of social reform and social progress. However that may be, the church as a home-extension meeting-place of the higher, broader, and finer friendly association, in which all ages can come together, in a friendly spirit and for worship of all that is lovely and of good report;—the church as such a home-extension service has a noble place to fill in modern life.

Easy Divorce Does Not Lessen Marriage Responsibility.—At any rate, by whatever means of help, or however left to struggle alone with its problems, the youth of to-day has taken all life's choices in its own hands, especially the choice that puts one friend above all others and takes the first step in the founding of a home. If any one thinks that it is so slight a thing to do this now, since if one is not satisfied one can get a divorce, he or she is not giving the choice a fair chance. It must be held within the heart and purpose as a permanent bond or the marriage will not be likely to realize its own possibilities.

The real lover is sure that he will love forever the same. It is that feeling that consecrates the marriage and gives most assurance of its success. If we could get rid of romantic love we should have no good start toward married happiness. If we got rid of the ideal of life-long devotion we should not build the home on sure foundations. The psychology of permanence is an essential of true marriage.

On the other hand, if we tried to put the family back into the bondage of the old time, when youth was subject and could never exercise its own power of choice, we should lose the one precious gift of freedom to love, the power to find and keep one's own. If we fear the future of the family because now the spiritual essence of marriage is demanded, even if the form of its first enclosure prove too strait for its growth, we cannot turn back to the harsh practice and coarse ideals that once made all unions seem right that preserved a legal bond and all men and women wrong-doers who sought freedom from intolerable ills.

New and Finer Marriage Unions.—There is a way of life, full of difficulties and not yet clear, a way of life that leads to such a noble comradeship and such a type of loving union as the world could rarely see in the older days.

Our children and our children's children will know how to use freedom for service, and service for mutual growth, and mutual growth for community betterment, in those "world's great bridals, chaste and calm," which the future shall make the common glory of the home.

QUESTIONS ON FRIENDS AND THE CHOSEN ONE

1. Does youth now take its own way in choice of companionship as never before? If so, does it mean better or worse choices in marriage?

2. Should early marriages be encouraged? If so, how should the social opportunity for wise choices be secured to youth? If not, how can the social dangers of postponement of marriage be minimized?

3. Should young people in shops and manufactories, in college, in school, in recreation centres, and elsewhere, be guided into social circles in which marriage choices are likely to be wisely made? If so, how can this be done?

4. How can the disproportion in numbers of men and women in given localities, which is an acknowledged cause of late marriages and failure to marry at all, and which is largely due to economic conditions, be mitigated?

5. Is the "revolt of youth," so called, a passing phase of rapid social changes, or is it evidence that old institutions in which the elders had superior power are becoming permanently outgrown?



CHAPTER VII

HUSBANDS AND WIVES

"First, the love of wedded souls; next, neighbor loves and civic, All reddened, sweetened from the central heart." —E.B. BROWNING.

"Two shall be born the whole wide world apart And speak in different tongues, and have no thought Each of the other's being and no heed; And those o'er unknown seas to unknown lands Shall come, escaping wreck, defying death, And all unconsciously shape every act And bend each wandering step to this one end—That one day, out of darkness, they shall stand And read life's meaning in each other's eyes." —SUSAN MARR SPAULDING.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light." I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. —ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

"A home is not an accidental or natural coming together of human souls under the same roof in certain definite relationships; it is a work of art, to be builded upon fixed principles of life and action."—HENRY WARE, in Home Life.

"True love is but a humble, low-born thing, And hath its food served up in earthenware; It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand, Through the every-dayness of this work-day world, Baring its tender feet to every roughness, Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray From Beauty's law of plainness and content; A simple, fireside thing, whose quiet smile Can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home." —LOWELL.

Not Fancied but Genuine Happiness in Marriage Now Demanded.—The fairy tales ended with the wedding and "they lived happily forever after." The dramas and novels of to-day are often devoted to telling how they did not live happily ever after and what or who caused the unhappiness. Although no one need be alarmed that some people get divorced when marital unhappiness becomes acute, every right-minded person wishes that every marriage should turn out happily. We now, however, demand that it shall be genuine, not make-believe happiness, and that places a heavier strain upon all concerned. We have grown wise enough to see that holding people together who should never have been brought into close relationship does not really conduce to high family morality or social well-being. That, however, only makes it seem the more important that we should somehow learn how to prevent the marriage of those who cannot make their union a success. The part that social control can play in preventing the attempt to marry by the wholly unfit in body, mind, or work-capacity has been already suggested, and that pressure of the community upon the individual choice will, without doubt, largely increase as the bad results of too great individualism in the family relation are more clearly perceived.

Social Restrictions on Marriage Choices.—There will, in time, be a narrowing of the circle within which personal choices can be made, so that the markedly defective in mind, the victims of disease inimical to family well-being, and the pauper strains of inheritance will be ruled out before young people have a chance to marry according to their own inclination.

With such helpful narrowing of choices there would still remain many dangers to be avoided if the divorce statistics are to be held within bounds of social safety.

The part that the family elders once played in settling vital questions of adjustment within the marriage bond has now, for the most part, to be undertaken for consideration and decision by the young people themselves. To name these most important questions of adjustment and discuss them in the light of modern ideals and desires is to get a better impression of the difficulties they indicate.

Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Name?—In the first place, the matter of the name for the married couple must be now considered. Shall it be one or two? Shall the new sense of personal dignity, so common to the modern woman, increase the already spreading fashion of retention of the maiden name, her inherited family name, as permanently her own, untouched by the fact of marriage union? No one can be cognizant of the conviction and practice of many feminists without understanding that this is a real problem to be settled surely before the marriage ceremony. There is already in the field a "Lucy Stone League" to give the support of the practice of a great and beloved woman to the fashion of keeping one's own name. The question of the desirability of having children bear the same name as both parents is left for the most part in abeyance by those who thus advocate two names for the married couple. It may be that each child is expected to bear as a second name his mother's and as a last name his father's family name, as, for example, John Jones Jackson, Jones being the mother's and Jackson the father's personal signature; but when the child marries, by what name shall the family line be carried on?

To most of us who see in the family name adopted by both husband and wife at marriage a sign of family unity not to be lost without serious embarrassment to offspring, and some danger of easy drifting apart without the knowledge of others, the name seems not to be of vital importance. Why, then, it is asked, should the woman always give up her family connection as indicated by inherited name, and the man retain his? The fact that the custom has grown up by reason of the legal absorption of the wife's life in that of the husband is obvious, and gives much color to the claim that now, when a woman is a recognized personality in the law whether married or single, she should keep the name by which her personality has become known. That is easily seen to be advantageous in the case of professional women of wide influence. The great singer, the great writer, any creative genius or artist, continues, as a rule, to be known by the name under which greatness has been achieved. In such cases, however, women often bear two names, the professional name either of family inheritance or a chosen nom de plume, and the social name, which is their husband's and engraved on calling cards. The tendency now is increasing to keep the one designation to which one is born and make no concessions to conventional nomenclature. It must be remembered that in such cases it is the father's name by which the married daughter is called and the mother's maiden name is lost with all the rest of the silent majority of her sex. The fact that men have given the wedded name for ages, and that men are most often senior partners in the marriage firm, and the fact that any other suggested plan gives two names for one family instead of one seems to make that a part of the old inheritance that may not cause great uneasiness if one accepts it without revolt. There is a compromise method which long has been a custom among Friends and is growing even more rapidly than that of holding permanently to the full maiden name. That is the plan of keeping the father's name, or the "maiden name," as a middle one, and adding the husband's name; so that Miss Mary Jane Wood shall, on marrying John Hartley Stone, become, not Mrs. John Hartley Stone, but Mrs. Mary Wood Stone. That keeps in memory her family designation and yet gives her children a chance to call themselves by the one name which is a sign of the family unity. However the settlement may be made, the point is that such a vital question, entering into the legal signature for business purposes as well as into all social relationship, shall reach conclusion before the two enter upon the marriage bond.

Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Nationality?—In the second place, there is now a question of nationality to be settled, a most important one in all its political and legal bearings. The old law made a wife the subject of her husband's national law and took her automatically away from her own country if her husband was born and was citizen of another country. The national allegiance of her birth and her family was thus automatically transferred to that of the man she had married. The suffering of many a woman in the late war when her husband's national allegiance made her legally an "enemy alien" to her own beloved land has sharpened the claim that now, when women have the franchise, they should have complete choice of the body politic to which they owe allegiance. If they wish to marry men of another country they shall have the determination of whether or not they shall become naturalized by his government or whether they shall keep political relation with their own native country. The League of Women Voters is now hard at work to make the national allegiance of women, as of men, a personal matter whether women are married or single. The Federal Bill that is called for by this body would make it incumbent upon all women of foreign birth desiring to use the franchise in the United States to become naturalized, and would protect any woman on marrying from the loss of her own national allegiance, whatever her husband's might be.[7] Surely such a protection of individual citizenship is best for both men and women, whatever their marital state. It is, however, a matter that often comes up for adjustment in international marriages. It is matter of importance that women of foreign birth as well as men coming to this country from other lands should personally seek for full citizenship and not have it handed to them with a marriage certificate. It is equally of importance that no person should lose allegiance to the country of his or her birth and affection simply by reason of marriage. This question of what country shall one continue to belong to after marriage is one for settlement on high grounds of patriotism and civic duty before the marriage is consummated.

Who Shall Choose the Domicile?—In the third place, the matter of chosen domicile is now up for discussion or may be in the near future. The law from time immemorial has given the choice of residence of the family, wife as well as children, into the complete control of the husband and father. A woman may be "posted" in the public press as "leaving her husband's bed and board," and thereby the husband may be released from any responsibility for her debts or support. The inference is that married women have no rights in marriage that can survive independent choice on her part of a residence apart from the husband. Now we have a movement that if successful would place the law behind an equal choice by married men and married women, of domicile, and of all that goes with that possible separation of residence. There are those who declare that separate residence for husbands and wives might keep the flame of romantic love burning longer and more ardently, since "familiarity often breeds contempt" and the absence of the loved one often kindles desire. This is not, however, the general feeling, and the demand for independent choice of domicile has many side-issues not at present fully met, if at all understood, by those who make the demand noted above. The legal right of choice of domicile goes consistently with the legal obligation to "support," The law still makes it incumbent upon a husband to give financial support to his wife commensurate with his earnings or income and still more demands of the father the full support of minor children. Naturally, if he has these obligations to meet, a man must go where he can earn sufficient to meet them. He may be unwise or mistaken in his choice, but, having the responsibility, he must try to meet it as best he can, and among the necessary elements in that trial are free movement to the place or places in which he can find work.

If, therefore, the family are all to be kept in one residence, father, mother and children, this economic aspect of the father's responsibility must be considered. If the father and mother each "gang their ain gait," and decide for business reasons or from personal preference to live in separate places, perhaps far apart from each other, then which one is to have the child or children? The old idea that men should have the power to hold women in wholly unsuitable surroundings, and that no matter what home was offered her a wife must submit and accept, is long outgrown in all the States of this Union. The wife has now the right to help choose domicile, and in point of fact, at least among the older Americans, has often more than an equal share in such determination; but to pass a "blanket law" that at once gave the suggestion of two choices for the family domicile without any qualifying statement of release of men from "support" clauses in the family legislation as those clauses relate to wives might be neither just nor wise. The one in the family upon whom is placed the heavier economic burden for support of children must have much freedom of choice of residence. To restrict that freedom might be to add to present family difficulties without really giving women better chances in marriage. Now, any woman who feels herself oppressed in the matter of domicile has the remedy in her own hands. She can make complaint to a court or she can leave her husband and no one can prevent her, and she can establish a separate establishment if she has the means and make herself eligible thereby to a practical if not a legal divorce. But if the twain stay together, and mean to do so, there are mutual considerations that require an adjustment, and there is now little danger of women having to submit to injustice in the matter of choice of domicile, except in cases where no home together would seem desirable to either or to both.

The matter of choice of domicile is now in the United States so much a mutual question and to be decided upon economic grounds, that it is one of the things that it is well to discuss from the bottom up if two people wish to marry, provided there are any reasons why the relative merits of two or more places of residence are involved in the issue. The reasonableness and generosity of the average American man quite equals the like qualities in the average American woman; hence the domicile question may well be left in abeyance in any struggle for "equality of rights between the sexes" and confined to personal debate and decision; but in that personal debate and decision it should have recognized place.

Shall the Married Woman Earn Outside the Home?—The fourth question, now sometimes a burning one, and one most intimately related to that of choice of domicile, is that concerning the continuance of professional or business connection by the woman after marriage. Shall I keep on with my work or not? This is the problem that besets many a woman when the question of marriage with the chosen one is imminent. For the woman who is a teacher, and already established in the educational field in the city or town where both the man and the woman concerned find it easy to choose to live after marriage, there is a probability that she can continue her work after marriage with comparative ease. The laws that used to penalize the woman teacher who married are rapidly ceasing to operate, and although the common legal requirement for a two years' vacation from public school employment when a child is to be born may exert a strong influence upon the birth-rate (either for or against) the fact that marriage does not disqualify for teaching and that teaching is so near the home interest may lead to much continuance of that type of professional work after marriage. The question, however, is not one for the woman alone to solve. Many women find that the ideal of "taking care of his wife," which long ages of law and custom have ingrained in man's nature, may stand in the way of her earning outside the home after marriage. To be settled right this question must be settled by full consent of both parties and that consent may be hard to get from the man who fears that he will be considered incapable if he "lets his wife earn." What is to be done in such a case? That must be determined by the possibility of compromise on both sides.

If the woman has attained a high position in some profession, law, or medicine, as preacher, teacher, or nurse, as business manager or welfare worker, the chances are that she feels she can best help in the family life by hiring things done in the household, which she has little skill, perhaps, to do herself, and keeping on with the vocation for which she has been trained and in which she has already gained a place. But she may have attained her vocational opportunity and to keep it must continue to live in a locality remote from the man's home and work. What then? To be near each other and to live together is the chief desire of genuine lovers. That would be no home which had two centres of vocational activity miles apart. Circumstances may compel such separation for economic reasons long after marriage has bound two lives together so closely that distance even cannot really separate them. But at the outset, if two people are to belong to each other, they must be able to combine their home life if that is to be a help and not a hindrance to the joint affection that alone makes the two one. The question of domicile, bound up with that of whether or not the woman shall continue her vocational connection after marriage, sometimes becomes acute in this manner:—the woman earns more than the man and her place of earning is in a far-away location from his and the transplanting of his life has no promise of economic readjustment. Shall she give up her larger salary and go with him to a place in which she is less likely than if single to gain a professional foothold and they both make the smaller income do? Or shall she insist, if he is willing, that the economic advantage of the married firm requires his removal to the seat of her labors at any risk of his getting another hold upon vocational opportunity?

Those who ask such a question should remember that the facts of life, social and economic, all make the upsetting of the man in his work seldom a safe or a happy solution. In the first place, the position of a man who even temporarily depends upon his wife's vocational success and relinquishes his own economic position, is far more difficult than that of a woman who sacrifices her own professional standing to go with her husband to a new centre. Any woman asks more of a man in the way of sacrifice, both of his standing as a man and his chances as a worker, if she demands that he take her income as the basic economic element in the joint family treasury (when such demand entails a change of residence and a giving up of assured income on his part) than any man asks of a woman when the conditions proposed are the reverse. No woman loses "caste" who depends upon her husband in an economic sense. Perhaps the time will come when it will cost a woman the loss of social prestige and of the best chance for work outside the home (as it now does a man) when the choice is made to follow the larger income from one locality to another. Now, however, it means that a woman can adjust herself to such change far better than a man, and hence that equal right to demand sacrifice and equal duty to mutually help each other demand that where such acute problems arise the woman shall give the man's relation to his work right of way. Moreover, even those who, like Doctor Patten, believe that women should continue vocational work after marriage place the chief economic burden of the family permanently upon the husband and father. The wife may earn outside the home if both agree and the opportunity offers in the place where the man's work already is; but the maintenance of the economic standing and the improvement of social condition remain, as of old, with the man. And for the obvious reason that if the woman has children they may take a large portion of her interest and of her strength and energy and, in any case, the married woman, if she really makes a home, must mix her vocational work with a more or less extended devotion to that home-making. Also, although a woman at marriage may be in receipt of a larger income from vocational service than is the man she wishes to marry, he will be more likely, if worth-while, to gain steadily toward a much larger compensation. The positions which women fill are for the most part self-limited. They are fast developing high qualities for routine work in the professions, like school doctor and hospital clinician and workers for legal aid and other like salaried employments. These are not highly paid, but have manifest advantages for women in that they give a fixed income, if small, and in that they allow for regulation of hours of service that may easily be made half-time work in case of divided effort. Hence, although at a given point in earlier life (when the usual greater precocity of women give some women the advantage in salary and position), a woman may have a higher salary at marriage, a far greater rise in both income and leadership may be on the husband's side as the years go on.

Economic Considerations Involved.—At any rate, the question of whether or not the woman shall earn outside the home after her marriage must wait upon the deeper question, shall she do anything which will disturb or render more difficult the man's economic adjustment? There are exceptions, a growing number of exceptions, but as a general thing the question of domicile and the question of which one shall give way when there is difficulty of both being well situated in individual work in one place, must be settled on the basis of the man's longer, larger, and more continuous responsibility for the economic standing of the family.

The exceptions make their own excuse and shape their own defense. The average married woman carries on two vocations if she keeps on with her own work, one inside and one outside the home. The one in which she earns outside the home must in the long run and the large way be subordinated to the joint partnership of the household in which she bears a larger share of the internal management and he the heavier burden of the outside support.

Any thorough-going discussion of the questions involved in the wage-earning of married women and mothers outside the home must include study of actual expense of alternate plans. The fundamental question may be one concerning the social value of the woman's vocational work. The next must certainly be what would the family treasury gain or lose by the housemother's continued vocational service outside the home. In the suggestive and encouraging book by Mrs. Mary Hinman Abel, entitled Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income, this economic aspect of the problem is treated with definiteness. In addition to the general conclusion reached by many that a family income of from $2,500 to $3,000 must be reached before continual hired help can be economically justified, Mrs. Abel shows by tables at pre-war prices that unless a married woman has a high-grade profession with a good independent income the duties performed by the average housemother within the home cannot be hired without a distinct economic loss to the family treasury. For example, reckoning conservatively the cost of the full-time hired girl or working housekeeper at $600 to $1,000 per year, and estimating the economic value of the woman who does all her own housework except washing and heavy cleaning at only fifteen cents an hour, the saving by the average married woman who is competent and well and does all her own work is a large one. There are the best of reasons, therefore, why, for the woman who is in ordinary circumstances and not so averse to household care and work as to insure her failure in it, the answer to the question, Shall I keep on with my outside earning after marriage?—should be in the negative. The old notion that all women were domestic and would enjoy housework if only they could do it in their own homes is indeed exploded. The natural differences among women are now allowed. The advantages, social, economic, and in matters of health and control of work-time and of leisure, which the average housemother enjoys over the average woman who works at manual labor under the factory system of industry, were, however, never better known or more justly evaluated. The proof of this is in the inclusion of training in household arts by the Smith-Hughes Bill, under which the Federal Government makes large appropriations for vocational training directly aimed at improving the efficiency of women whose labor is confined to the private home.

It is a sign, among other things, of desired and needed flexibility in domestic arrangements that there were listed in 1910 as married twenty-five per cent. of the women at work in "gainful occupations." Not all the conditions indicated by this count were socially helpful; since in the textile industries, in which many married women are employed, there are fewer children born and more die before the end of the second year than in the average population. It does, however, indicate that among those of higher opportunity in life there is a growing disposition to treat the question of women's continuance in vocational service outside the home after marriage as a real problem and one to be settled in freedom, and with social approval of that freedom, by the two persons most deeply concerned. Only, it must be insisted, that all a married woman gains in salary or wages cannot be reckoned as increase of the family income. The economic value of the average housemother's contribution is now definitely computed and must be reckoned hereafter as so much actually contributed to the family income. And so far, if a woman is physically able, temperamentally adjustable, and adequately trained for household tasks, she can in the vast majority of cases serve her day and generation in no better fashion than by assuming and carrying the multiple duties of the private home.

Hence, although freedom means new choice, prudence and affection alike oftenest point to the old paths of family service for the average woman. As Mrs. Abel well says of the competent housemother who chooses full and personal service to the home and the family, "At her best she represents individual effort fully utilized. She fits her tasks together; she utilizes bits of time; she invents short cuts in her work," Of such it may be truly declared, in the new time as in the old, that she translates every dollar of the family income into many dollars' worth of comfort, of health, and of happiness.

Is It Bad Form to Earn After Marriage?—One more consideration, quite new in its full significance, should be given place in any discussion of the wife's relation to work outside the home. That consideration is concerned with the use of her time not needed in household tasks. The modern aids to those tasks, of which mention has been made, give many women who assume full responsibility for the housemother's work a considerable amount of strength and time which may be used in some chosen way outside the strictly family service. The general idea is that such time should be given in gratuitous "social welfare work" or in some form of activity divorced from regular vocations. An able President of the Federation of Women's Clubs, the body most distinctly representing the interest and service of women in volunteer social service in this country, has said, in addressing her large constituency, "Sport is work we do without pay—we are all sports." The sentiment was applauded and with evident sense of superiority to the "paid worker." The feeling, so general in many circles of society, that women lose "caste" if they work for wages or salary, reaches its maximum of prejudice in the case of married women. It is thought highly honorable to sell things in a "Fair" for a good cause and come in contact with a crowd of strangers in the process among people who would consider "keeping a shop," unless from dire necessity, a very questionable proceeding. It is thought most virtuous and wifely for a woman married to a minister of the church to give her time and strength gratuitously in multitudinous religious helps to the organization which usually counts on getting the service of two first-class people for a second-or third-class salary for one. But for the wife of such a minister, realizing that the income is generally insufficient for proper living, to work outside her home, even for a few hours each day, for pay, is to lay herself and her husband also open to harsh criticism; even if her house is kept well and her children properly cared for. It is also thought by many people that the only really justifiable use of time that can be spared from household duties is in furthering the husband's work, if he is struggling up; or, if he has "arrived," in these miscellaneous gratuitous social services in which the club-women so abound.

There is great need that this judgment be revised. Not only is this true in the interest of women whose devotion to a chosen vocation has right of way in justice when the debate is on as to the use of any left-over time she may save from domestic duties. It is also true that we can not have the democratic feeling and influence from women of social position which our political life so sadly needs unless it is understood that it is as honorable for a woman, married or unmarried, to earn money for her work as it is for a man with or without an inherited fortune. The class feeling that makes all married women range themselves with those of their sex who have inherited fortunes, and leads them to place those who serve the community in salaried positions as less unselfish and less honorable social workers than themselves, is one to outgrow. An interest divorced from professional standards or professional compensation is not necessarily nobler or more useful. This fact makes the choice of women before marriage as to the use of time that may justly be spared, even when the home makes its heaviest demands upon them, a choice of social as well as of personal significance.

Every year social effort once strictly of private provision and support becomes a public service, with organized supervision and standardized compensation. When such volunteer social effort becomes a public service it is highly desirable that the trained women it demands for its staff should (some of them, at least) be married women. Otherwise, the same loss of efficiency that the rapid turn-over of the women teaching staff of our schools occasions will be discovered in our social work as it changes its centre of gravity from the private to the public organization.

There is a far greater need from this point of view for reorganization of hours and details of work so as to give more half-time or quarter-time employment to women of proved ability, than for any wholesale condemnation of the woman who works outside her home for pay, even when her husband is able and willing to "take care of her." It is for society to say, indeed, that women marrying and having children owe first duty to the home. It is for women themselves to say whether they shall use any time at their disposal after that duty is met in continuing such relation to their vocation as is now possible, or in being "sports."

The fact that men are trying to see both sides of this vexed question and that women, as a rule, are trying to make adjustment that will hold an equitable and happy balance between the personal and the family well-being means that this problem will work itself to a democratic result without social loss.

Shall Parenthood be Chosen?—The fifth question that should come up for serious discussion and some measure of agreement in advance of the wedding ceremony is that of children. Shall there be any? If so, how many, if we can afford them? If so, how soon shall we try to call about us the new life? If not, why not, and how shall we live together without hope of offspring? These are vital questions. For want of agreement, or at least of understanding of disagreement before marriage, many unions are shipwrecked.

In the old days there were no questions of this nature. Every woman must have as many children as nature allowed, and when she could bear no more must give way to a new wife and a step-mother to carry on the family life; and if there were more children in a family than the father and family friends could support, they had to be cared for by the community. The modern condition is the same in the case of those below a certain grade of intelligence and self-control. But as human beings become more rational in other respects, they apply reason, common sense, and prudence to the great function of parenthood. Indeed, so much is this the case that the social danger of breeding only from below the higher levels is felt to be an increasing one. There are not wanting those who believe that rationalism in parenthood is wrong and should be prevented, if possible, but those are the people who decry the use of reason in all other matters, except it may be in the strictly economic field. The fact is that whatever may be said on the side of ancient religious sanction and inherited sentiment, the tendency on all sides is irresistibly toward the personal choice in parenthood as in marriage.

Some People Have a Right to Marry and Remain Childless.—There are many, however, who believe that no one should marry unless wishing and expecting to have children. That is a belief which will doubtless be more and more outgrown. There are young people, children of dependent parents and near relatives, who see no way of starting a family of their own, who yet should not be denied the comfort and help of married life. The tragedies of sons and daughters made to drag out a lonely existence and either condemning the one they love to like denial or else giving up the hope of union and seeing their chosen one wedded to another—the sort of tragedy that forms the subject of many novels—is a tragedy to be outgrown. It may be that social burdens in behalf of parents or other dependents can not be lifted to the extent of making a completed family life possible to some young people. All the more, two people who truly love each other and are bound to one great sacrifice, namely, that of children of their own, should be able to escape another, that of denial of marriage.

There are other cases in which marriage is right and childbearing may be wrong. There are tendencies to disease, in which, although there may be a long and useful life for the one bearing a family taint, it may be socially wrong to risk carrying on that taint. If all who need to know are agreed, and there is a chance of living many years of real union together, no law should step in to prevent, and no inherited view of the limitation of marriage to those seeking parental relation should refuse assent to the union. There are many conceivable limitations to parental functioning, even for those who are keenly aware of the social significance of parenthood, which do not apply to marriage of those truly mated in thought and purpose. It is, however, the height of irrationality, and will more and more be seen to be such, for men and women to enter a relation the natural result of which, in the vast majority of cases, is the bearing of children, with no idea on either side as to what is the ideal and the wish and the purpose of the other party in the marriage union.

The question, again, for those who are agreed that they want to start a family as well as begin a mating is definitely to be considered, namely, that of the right time to begin the family they wish to have. It may be, as many believe, that too hasty adding of the strenuous discipline of parenthood to the often difficult task of adjustment of two mature and forceful natures, such as marriage so often brings together, is likely to give an unnecessarily hard start in the new life. Two people who have just got used to themselves, perhaps, have at marriage to get used to each other. It may be that they could succeed better in this great task if they had not so often to adjust themselves during the first year to the needs and masterful claims of a baby. There is no form of tyranny equal to that of the infant, who, assured of his right to unlimited service from all in sight, makes his demands at all times and in all ways. He pays for his subjection of parents and grandparents and they are all usually willing slaves. But it is often a great advantage if the parents, at least, have had a chance to make full acquaintance with each other's pet weaknesses and each other's best qualities before "the baldheaded tyrant from No Man's Land" makes his appearance. It is, therefore, clearly a matter of frank and full discussion and settlement before marriage not only as to the fundamental question of whether or not there shall be children, but also if, as is the case in the overwhelming majority of cases, the young people hope for offspring, when they shall begin to call them to the home.

The thing of all others to be avoided is the outgrown idea that heavenly magic attends completely to these matters. It is earthly wisdom and unselfishness and good intent that are needed in this as in all the great decisions of life. Hence, there can be nothing more absurdly out of drawing with a rationalized civilization than any law which forbids the serious discussion of this most vital of social questions or one that forbids the full dissemination of scientific knowledge needed by those who would do the right thing in the parental as in all other relations of life.

What Is the Just Financial Basis of the Household?—The sixth question that has right of debate before the marriage ceremony is that of the financial support of the household and of the distribution of the joint income. The use of the words joint income prejudges the case on this point. The old idea was of one purse, of right that of the "head of the family," and whatever it held was his to disburse. He it was who determined how the wife should be fed and clothed and sheltered. If he were generous and kind she fared well; if the opposite she fared ill. Her legal right was only the same as that of her minor child. Now the case is wholly different. In spite of some inconsistent left-over laws that can make a showing of belated tyranny when culled from old statute books, the financial right of the wife in the household is generally recognized. It is, however, still true that no logical system of financial sharing has been worked out so clearly as to be accepted by the common mind. We still have talk of a wife being "supported" when, as housemother, she works harder and more hours than her husband. We still have listing of those housemothers, who are the majority of the women of every country, as "without occupation." It is possible for men to speak of "giving" their wives what they think is needed for the household and without reference to any personal preference of the wives in expenditure, as if it were an act of charity and not a debt owed the family life.

On the other hand, some women, having achieved partial or entire financial independence of the husband and earning handsome sums in work outside the home, look upon all that the man earns as "belonging to the family," and all that they earn as wholly belonging to themselves. "What's John's belongs to us all; what is mine belongs to me," said one wife, without any idea of the absurd injustice of taking all the advantage that new conditions had made possible for women and at the same time hanging on to all that old-time privilege gave to wives. There is need of the strictest and most balanced thinking along the line of the economics of the household.

If, as seems in the vast majority of cases the best plan, the husband and father can be and is depended upon for the entire financial support of the family in the matter of earning and the housemother gives an actual service of great economic value in saving and service (as the competent housewife assuredly does give), then what is earned and what is produced by housework and management makes in justice one family treasury. If to that is added some special earning outside the home which the housemother is able to mix in with her family service, then that also is a part of the family treasury. After the marriage there should be a real partnership. There may be a separate account on either side of the gifts of inheritance or savings preceding the marriage, but after the twain are one in home-building they may justly be one in a common treasury. Two bank-books they may have, it is true, and perhaps better so, although many find one in the name of both husband and wife sufficiently convenient. The main thing is to get firmly in mind on both sides before any actual adjustments are necessary what, on the financial side, is the right attitude and plan of married life. The best way seems to be, for some people, at least, the division of the family treasury into three distinct parts. The first, and alas, in most families the much larger share, to be dedicated to common household expenses. The excellent work of specialists in family budgets shows us how this fund should be distributed in details of rent or dwelling, cost of food, clothing, reading, church, recreation, etc. Any one can now make up with prudence and wisdom such an estimate in proportion to the known income and the ascertained cost of living in any given locality. After this common expense is provided for, with due regard for the duty of saving for future needs, the remaining portion, be it much or little, should be equally divided as the personal fund of the husband and the wife. Some of those who have written on the family budget think that the contribution of the housewife in work, for which wages would have to be paid if she did not give this personal labor in the home, should be estimated in wages value, and should go into her part of a separate fund, after the common household expenses are deducted. That, it seems, would not be fair, for if the man puts in his labor value the woman should put in hers for the first and indispensable expense of the common life together. What is to be made right is the old custom of reckoning the savings and common property acquired after marriage as "his" estate. It is the estate of both, and should be so considered, even if he has earned outside and she saved and earned and helped him earn from within the household only.

What Shall be the Accepted Standard of Living?—The final question that must be considered by the two who are to marry and set up housekeeping is the scale of living they shall aim to attain. It has been well said that "the standard of living is what we desire; the scale of living what we can achieve." What is desired often, and what seems to the young only reasonable for all to have, is the scale of living the parents' households have attained after a life of hard work. It is a matter for profound ethical thinking to decide what measure of increase in expense of home upkeep should follow upon increase of income where there are children to be affected by changes. It may sometime be seen to be a social duty to keep much farther within bounds the natural desire to expand expense as income increases; both for the reason that income may decrease with advancing years for the parents and retrenchment be necessary when it is hardest, and also for the more important reason that children naturally make standards at the height of parental expenditure and may find it thereby the more difficult to "begin at the bottom" when they marry. At any rate, the young couple starting out must keep within their means or suffer from the worst of fortunes, the dread of arriving bills and the shame of inability to pay them. That means some agreement before housekeeping begins as to what is involved in that adventure.

A witty woman said, "I love to travel with my friend Mary, for her economies and mine are the same." Some uniformity of temperamental reaction both to regular economies and to occasional extravagances is, if not an essential, a valuable basis for happy marriage. That means that the engaged couple might well start a game of "Must Haves" and "Would Like to Haves" in the moments that can be spared from other pursuits, a game in which without the other's knowledge each should write the secret wishes and requirements to be later compared for mutual enlightenment. The woman who would gladly go with two meals a day for a fortnight in order to get a ticket for the opera or symphony, and the man who would sacrifice a needed new suit of clothes with pleasure for a fishing trip, may be able to compromise on essentials, but will find it difficult in the matter of extras unless warned beforehand. Affection bridges many chasms, and sensible people learn that even in the best regulated families father, mother, and the children may all get some of their best times apart. A basis of mutual understanding is, however, essential. The necessity to get at a common plan for the economic standards of the household is a vital one. How many men have run in debt for what they believed essential to the wife's happiness because she had such things in her father's house, without letting the wife know that economy was necessary, only to find out that if full confidence had been given a mutual effort would have secured better results. How many women have gone without things they might have had for want of knowledge of their husband's income and suffered fears that need not have been in the mind. How many also, alas, both of men and women, have lived beyond their means from selfish demand one upon the other, a demand which might have been chastened, at least, if full knowledge of economic resources had been attained before the scale of living was fixed.

All these items of suggested conference and decision given above are counsels of prudence and wisdom. Many, perhaps most, however, of the young couples starting out in life "go it blind" in all or some of these particulars. The wonder is that these who start on the most serious of compacts and the one leading to the greatest extremes of both happiness and unhappiness with so little knowledge of each other's condition, capacity, or deepest wishes, get along, on the whole, so well. We see them on every side starting on the sea of married life with gaiety of heart because the chosen one is obtained for company and with no conception of the difficulties that may make the voyage tempestuous. But they often make safe harbor of comfortable comradeship for middle life and old age, and if they have had a harder time than they need have had at least prove that "love is the greatest thing in the world."

The Need for Full and Mutual Understanding Before Marriage.—The rising tide of divorce, however, gives point to the plea of this chapter for a more careful charting of the sailing course in advance. The fact that so many get their discipline of knowledge and direction as they go along and do not make shipwreck even if matrimonial storms grow frequent or heavy, is a very good testimony to the native goodness of men and women and to their ability to make good their mistakes and work out success even from failure provided the indispensable north star of unselfish affection leads them on. It would be well, however, to lessen the failures if that can be done. When men and women show what marriage can become for the wise, the idealistic, and the loving, it gives a picture of satisfaction and mutual service that makes most other human associations seem trivial and short-lived. Only parenthood is equal or superior to marriage in its possibilities of moral discipline and personal development. To make it successful is worth striving for.

Literature, science, and art have many great marriages to their credit—men and women brought together by identical tastes and similar capacities, working together in high pursuits through a long life of achievement. They illumine the way of life with a peculiar glow. Elizabeth Barrett Browning sang:

"Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart! Our ministering two angels look surprise On one another as they strike athwart Their wings in passing."

but her union with Robert Browning showed that they were nearer alike than in her sad humility she had fancied. Jonas Lie, the Norwegian novelist, and his gifted wife, it is said, "knew the felicity of a perfect union," and he himself has testified, "If I have ever written anything of merit, my wife has as great a share in it as myself, and her name should appear on the title-page as collaborator." The joint discoveries of the Curies are well known, linking husband and wife together in a great gift to humanity. In humbler circles of the gifted and the talented the married couples are becoming more numerous each decade whose work as well as whose affection binds them together.

The Supreme Satisfactions of Successful Marriage.—Take it all in all, although no particular marriage may be "made in heaven," the sort of union that monogamic marriage has worked out at its highest reaches is without a rival in depth of feeling, in satisfaction of association, in wealth of comradeship, and in social value as a foundation for family life and for initial training toward social serviceableness. No wise person can do aught to lessen its opportunity for ethical drill, or for that due mingling of attraction and duty which make all the vital associations of human beings helps toward the higher life. No wise person will continue in the ancient error of mistaking show for substance in these weighty matters.

All who believe that the family is an institution whose gift to the social order is not yet outgrown and whose possibilities of social value are not yet fully developed, must work to make the right marriages easier to secure, and the wrong ones less easy to be consummated, and to purge the ideals of home of selfishness and of superficiality by constant portrayal of the best in the married life.

The stage and the moving picture should more often portray the world's marriage successes rather than perpetual reproductions of the marriage failures. The novel should more often show how many people save, so as by fire, the dreams of youth in rescue of their married life from threatening ills. Such portrayal would not be against a realistic ideal of art, but a more perfect and balanced use of realism. The rise of people on "stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things" is quite as dramatic as the succession of falls that land them in the pit of despair. The struggles that succeed are quite as capable of exciting emotional response as are those that fail.

Real life shows a larger measure of successful achievement than of bitter failure, else would life not go on. Marriage at its highest is yet to be used in any adequate measure as the theme of the artist and the stimulant of response to art.

The day will come when "Main Street" will reveal its best and not its worst; its richest, and not its poorest products, for the satisfaction of universal sentiment.

QUESTIONS ON HUSBANDS AND WIVES

1. Are there any subjects upon which husbands and wives must be in substantial agreement in order to secure a successful marriage? If so, what are some of them?

2. Are there any radical differences in belief, respecting religion, politics, education of children, ways of living, business relationship, etc., which marriage may successfully bridge, provided there is genuine and faithful affection? If so, name some of them.

3. How can "engaged" couples make sure that essentials of agreement, and non-essentials of agreement to differ, are well understood in advance?

4. Are there any new spiritual relationships of men and women in marriage made possible by the modern tendency toward the democratization of the family? If so, what are some of them?

FOOTNOTES:

[7] This bill, the so-called "Cable Act," was passed September 22, 1922.



CHAPTER VIII

THE CHILDREN OF THE FAMILY

The human being arrives:

"Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me; Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen; For room to me the stars kept aside in their own rings, They sent influences to look after what was to hold me; Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me, And forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me; Now, on this spot I stand with my robust soul." —WALT WHITMAN.

"The child grows up in a setting of social functions of a type higher always than that of his private accomplishment. He must grow by gradual absorption of copies, patterns and examples."—BALDWIN.

"He is happy who comes with healthy body into the world; much more he who goes with healthy spirit out of it. Nature has implanted within us the seeds of learning, of virtue, and of piety; to bring these to maturity is the object of education. All men require education, and God has made children unfit for other employments in order that they may have leisure to learn."—COMENIUS.

"The most critical interval of human nature is that between the hour of birth and twelve years of age; this is the time when vice and error may take root without our being possessed of any instrument to destroy them; the first art of education, then, consists neither in teaching virtue nor truth but in guarding the heart from evil and the mind from error."—ROUSSEAU.

"A ladder leading to heaven is let down to every child, but he must be taught to climb it. Education should decide for every child not only what is to be made of its life, but should seek an answer to the question, what was it intended that child should become?"—PESTALOZZI.

"An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy."—OLD PROVERB.

"Come, let us live with our children!"—FROEBEL.

Conditions to be Secured for Every Child.—There are several conditions which must be secured for every child to insure that it may be born and reared according to high standards.

These may be listed as follows:

I. Two parents, to secure in advance a favorable social position.

II. A competent mother, to insure his first two or three years of life in health, happiness, and growing power.