The family : source materials for the study of family and personality / by Edward Byron Reuter and Jessie Ridgway Runner.

  • Reuter, Edward Byron, 1880-1946.
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The family : source materials for the study of family and personality / by Edward Byron Reuter and Jessie Ridgway Runner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    weaker party, and hence not in a position to dictate terms; she has gener ally accepted the larger measure of the disadvantages. Our existing laws on domestic relations represent an attempt measurably to safeguard the woman in recognition of her weaker position and her handicaps. As she gains a position of economic independence, she has less need of statutory guardianship in the domestic relation and the basic terms of wedlock must be altered somewhat in her favor. Chivalrous attention and care are no longer the full measure of compensation for the burden of childbearing which falls the more heavily on her. She is insisting that she shall determine whether and how often she shall assume that burden. The issue at stake here is whether the long-established property right in women shall continue to prevail. There is little doubt what the outcome will be ultimately, but no one can measure the amount of mis understanding and recrimination, of abject human misery for numbers of people of both sexes, that will attend the determination of the issue. The great task which the man faces is the curbing of his masculine possessive- ness; the great task for the woman is the intelligent assumption of the duties and responsibilities which go with her altered position. The nature of the family as a social institution is not dependent upon ecclesiastical pronouncement, royal edict, or legislative enactment. There are some things you cannot force a society to do, any more than an individual. You cannot by legislation, or by any form of compulsion, force men to be ambitious, to be energetic, or to be good and honest and true. No more can you by legislation compel a society to maintain an ideal marriage institution. It has never been true that the standard form of wedlock has had no departures from it. In between the simplest pairing arrangement of short duration and pair marriage for life we find numerous variations in the family relations of the sexes, and these varia tions are to a greater or lesser degree always present. Side by side with polyandry and with polygyny, monogamy is found. Where group marriage prevails, other forms are not wholly absent. Monogamy (pair marriage for life) has never succeeded, even with the powerful sanction of Christianity behind it, in obtaining the unvarying adherence of all classes and every individual member of society. The marriage institution is distinctly a social institution, one that is controlled by the customs, standards, and ideals of society. It lies in the mores. Its existence, its continuance, and the terms on which the marriage relation may be dissolved are really determined by the condi tions of life, and by the standards and ideals which characterize the society in question. If wedlock is regarded as merely a social conven ience, at a time when conditions are in many ways unfavorable to the maintenance of high-grade family life, as is true at present, divorce, or something which is practically the same thing, will be common. If wedlock has a solid basis in mutual interests for the parties concerned,