The Functions of the Family

We would not be wrong to claim that most people among us still, in certain aspects of their social thinking, live in the past age. It is as though they had set up a barrier between themselves and the developments of the present age — economic, scientific, and political — so that they cannot witness its powerful, all-embracing effect in all the fields of life, and especially the social field.

Our wonder at this may vanish if we recall that material development has been, and still is, ahead of spiritual development; and that modern man's development in the field of inventions and applied sciences far exceeds his development in the social and moral spheres. That is to say, society advances materially at tremendous speed, while its social and moral progress keeps the pace of a tortoise. This upsetting of the balance is the source of the misery of present-day society, and the cause of the tremendous crises and problems that the modern age faces.

Here is what a Western researcher says on this subject: "The gap is still vast between our economic system and our social system in point of development. Our economic circles have opened their doors to the employment of married women, and we have seen the number of working women grow day by day in the factories, the offices, the institutions of higher learning, the hospitals, and the other establishments. Our social system, however, has not yet fully succeeded in adjusting itself to this economic phenomenon, and still clings to the opinion that woman's place is the home, although this opinion is no longer practicable in our new order of living. What a dwarf, trying to grapple with a giant!"

Yet this social development is inevitably taking place, even if its steps are slow. Its spray has touched all the circles of society, among them the family, which is counted the oldest and most firmly established social institution and, consequently, the citadel of conservatism and rigidity — and sometimes the citadel of reaction.

From its earliest ages the family has performed three basic functions: procreation, economic cooperation, and the care of the children. Its functions kept widening and adapting themselves as society adapted, so that some have brought them to six: the affectional or friendly function, the economic, home recreations, discipline and religious training, and protection. Others gather them into four that embrace everything: the procreative function, the economic, the affectional, and the cultural.

The procreative function is still among the most important functions of the family, especially in the countries concerned with encouraging offspring for national and military ends, like Germany just before the last war. The importance of this function was at its height in the era of the tribal order, when the standing of the tribe depended on the greatness of its numbers and the number of its fighting males. In that era the taking of several wives flourished, out of the desire to increase offspring and to shelter the captives of war. That is what we see in the pre-Islamic era among the Arabs; and we see remnants of the tribal order apparent among us in the banding together of the family on the pattern of the pre-Islamic tribe, and in its members' desire for as many male children as possible. And though this function is of less importance than before in civilized circles, it still receives special encouragement from society, prompted by tradition on the one hand and by the instinct of preserving the species on the other.

The economic function: the economic function was the most important factor in the creation of the family. Man's need of woman's labor in the age of early agriculture drove him to take her as a permanent wife, in place of the shifting or temporary marriage that prevailed in the primitive ages. This economic factor was also among the causes of the taking of several wives in agricultural circles, for the man whose properties multiplied needed several women to carry on the work of farming.

Woman is very necessary to man on the farms and in rural circles, and for this reason early marriage is widespread in these circles. Woman was necessary to man in the age of household industry — the domestic system — and so were the children, because of his great need of the labor of wife and children when the home was the factory. At that time the home was woman's place, because it was the center of work. But now that industry has moved into the mills, thanks to the industrial revolution, the economic function of the family has declined in the cities, and woman's work there has been confined to the management of the house, or to domestic service where servants are lacking. Woman has begun to leave the house to work in the factory; and in the emancipated city circles, leaving the house leads her to other kinds of productive work, in offices, cultural circles, and elsewhere. In the wealthy conservative circles that keep servants, woman remains a parasite of little use, working neither outside the house nor within it.

The cultural function: in some of its ages the family was a means of preserving the cultural heritage, when the means of spreading learning were few and difficult. Today its function in this respect is narrow and limited. Even so, the home is still the source of the first impressions in the child's soul, and there is no one who denies the value of its cultural influence. One manifestation of this function is that certain families keep among themselves the secrets of certain crafts and bequeath them to their own children and to no others. Under the cultural function comes also the function of modifying and refining the sexual instinct in husband and wife, of widening experience, and of completing life by means of married companionship and the rearing of children. For in this there is a broadening of the parents' horizon, an increase in the subjects of their daily concern, and a pushing of their thought out of the region of self into the region of the children and the circles of the society that must be made ready for the new generation.

The affectional function: the family is a means of creating lasting friendships and bonds of pure affection between husband and wife, and also between parents and children. It is likewise a means of relief and rest after the toil of work, and of enjoyment in protecting the children and guiding them and exchanging with them affection and a comradeship free of selfish aims, where that is possible.

These are the most important functions of the family in the past; on another occasion I shall speak of the development of these functions in the modern age.