Part 2 (1/2)

-- 6. THE HOME CHANGING; THE FAMILY ABIDING

The home is of importance only as a tool, a means to the final ends of the family life; the test of its efficiency is not whether it maintains traditional forms but whether it best serves the highest aims of family life. We may abandon all the older customs; our regret for them, as we look back on the days of home cooking, cannot be any greater than the regrets of our parents or grandparents looking back on the spinning-wheel and the hand loom that c.u.mbered the kitchen of their childhood. Surely no one contends that family life has deteriorated, that human character is one whit the poorer, because we have discarded the family spinning-wheel. Through the changes of a developing civilization, as man has moved from the time when each one built his own house, worked with his own tools to make all his supplies, to these days of specialized service in community living, the home has changed with each step of industrial progress, but the family has remained practically unchanged.

The family stands a practically unchanging factor of personal qualities at the center of our civilization; the family rather than the home determines the character of the coming days. In its social relations.h.i.+ps are rooted the things that are best in all our lives. In its social training lie the solutions of more problems in social adjustment and development than we are willing to admit. The family is the soil of society, central to all its problems and possibilities.

Before church or school the family stands potent for character. We are what we are, not by the ideals held before us for thirty minutes a week or once a month in a church, nor by the instructions given in the cla.s.sroom; we are what parents, kin, and all the circ.u.mstances that have touched us daily and hourly for years have determined we should be.

The sweetest memories of our lives cl.u.s.ter about the scenes of family life. The rose-embowered cottage of the poet is not the only spot that claims affectionate grat.i.tude; many look back to a city house wedged into its monotonous row. But, wherever it might be, if it sheltered love and held a shrine where the altar fires of family sacrifice burned, earth has no fairer or more sacred spot. The people rather than the place made it potent.

Stronger even than the memories that remain are the marks of habits, tendencies, tastes, and dispositions there acquired. Many a man who has left no fortune worth recording to his sons has left them something better, the apt.i.tude for things good and honorable, the memory of a good name, and the heritage of a life that was worthy of honor. The personal life has been always the enduring thing. Our concern for the future should be not whether we can pa.s.s on intact the forms of home organization, but whether we can give to the next day the force of ideal family life. Perhaps like Mary we would do well to turn our eyes from the much serving, the mechanisms of the home, to set our minds on the better part, the personal values in the a.s.sociation of lives in the family.

I. References for Study

W.F. Lofthouse, _Ethics and the Family_, chaps. ii, xi, xii. Hodder & Stoughton, $2.50.

Charles R. Henderson, _Social Duties from the Christian Point of View_, chaps. ii, iii. The University of Chicago Press, $1.25.

C.W. Votaw, _Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the American Home_. Religious Education a.s.sociation, $0.25.

II. Further Reading

Jacob A. Riis, _Peril and Preservation of the Home_. Jacobs, Philadelphia, Pa., $1.00.

Charles R. Henderson, _Social Elements_. Scribner, $1.50.

Charles F. Thwing, _The Recovery of the Home_. American Baptist Publication Society, $0.15.

III. Topics for Discussion

1. The tendency toward community life ill.u.s.trated in the schools, amus.e.m.e.nt parks, and hotel life. Remembering the ultimate purpose of the family, how far is communal life desirable?

2. Does the apartment or tenement building furnish a suitable condition for the higher purposes of the family?

3. Is it possible to restore to the home some of the benefits lost by present factory consolidation of industry?

4. What can take the place of the old household arts and of those which are now pa.s.sing?

5. What steps should be taken to secure to the family a larger measure of the time in terms of occupation of the parents?

6. What are the important things to contend for in this inst.i.tution? Why should we expect change in the form of the home and what are the features which should not be changed?

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Figures taken from C.W. Votaw, _Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the American Home_, 1911.

[3] A.J. Todd, _Primitive Family and Education_, p. 21. A most valuable and suggestive book.

[4] Cited by Todd, p. 21.

CHAPTER III