The Functions of the Family in the Modern Age

Modern industrial and scientific development could not fail to affect the family, especially in the milieus of the cities, whose populations have grown continuously ever since factories multiplied in them and villagers began moving to them for work. The function of industrial production shifted to the workplace instead of the home, and this produced in the family an inclination to move about after settledness, and a kind of loosening and drawing apart among its members, once they began — men and women alike — to leave the house for work, where they labor the whole day long. This going out and this drawing apart were a first step in freeing the woman and the children from the man's authority. With the spread of the principles of liberty, equality, and democracy in the nineteenth century, the family received its share of the influence of these principles: the share of freedom belonging to woman and children grew, and the authority of the parents dwindled; and with the spread of the principles of independence and self-government, the children's independence in planning their own future increased, and the man was compelled to share with his wife the responsibility of household management and to take part in the work of the home, just as she shared with him the work outside the home to increase the family income.

With the multiplication of specialists, the expansion of the sciences in all their variety, the growth of schools, the spread of day nurseries and kindergartens, and the advance of the mechanical arts, the functions of instruction and amusement shifted from the home to institutes of learning and to the cinema and theater houses, since these institutions became more capable than the family of performing these two functions, just as the specialists are more capable than the parents of performing them.

With the spread of the principle of individualism and the rise of the level of culture, the family shrank in size; married sons became independent of their parents; the cultivated inclined toward the limitation of offspring, and they freed themselves from the restraints laid down of old by the elders of the family, who had regarded in them their own interests and not the interest of the new generation.

The typical modern family has become small in size, with a small house that does not allow the lodging of unwanted relatives and guests. Its members are marked by relative independence; it is democratic and individualist, not tightly welded and clustered as was the case in olden times. All these characteristics are expected to grow steadily in the future.

These sweeping developments have led some researchers in the West to predict the collapse of the family in the future, the most famous of them being the scholar "Müller-Lyer," who holds in his book "The Family" that the world has passed through two eras, the era of the tribe and the era of the family; these two eras are over, and now has come the era of the individual.

Said this researcher: In the age of the first system the individual sacrificed for the interest of the tribe, and at times of the whole family. The traces of tribal domination remain powerfully influential in the primitive and half-civilized countries. In the age of the family system the individual sacrificed for the interest of his family, and the woman was first in sacrifice among all the members of the household. Family traditions still hold great sway even in the civilized Arab countries, but they hold stronger sway in the countries of ancient traditions, such as China and Japan and the rest of the lands of the East. Now, however, we have entered the era of the individual, and his interest has become first in claim to attention and precedence, because the home is no longer the goal sought, but rather the happiness and well-being of the individual.

The writer holds that there are other causes — besides the economic causes — which threaten the family with collapse. Among them, that the friendly ties which young men and young women form outside their family circle equal family ties in importance and constancy, if they do not surpass them. Then too, the rise of specialists in education has curtailed the function of the parents; and the like may be said of the wave of birth limitation that sweeps over civilized people in the present age.

And there are those who believe that science will succeed in delivering woman from the hardship of pregnancy and nursing by means of artificial procreation, and that society will take charge of the care of children — the proof being the increase of nurseries and juvenile homes and the great demand upon them: an experiment in which Russia has gone a long and successful way. (Here ends the statement of Müller-Lyer.)

Yet there are those who take a positive stand upon the future of the family, and hold that the family, though it evolves, is enduring and does not die, and that it is our duty to support its survival by teaching parents the principles of upbringing and household service; for the mother, if this study is made available to her, becomes better than the specialists and worthier than they of rearing her children, especially in the first years, when the child's need of affection is keenest. The social workers have found that the home — if it has a wholesome, cultivated atmosphere — is the best place for rearing the child; for this reason they try to find suitable families to adopt stray or abandoned juveniles. As for the modern inventions, they have restored to the home some of the tasks that had for some time moved outside it — such as washing and sewing. The spread of television will be a factor in the home's recovering its importance as a center of amusement and enjoyment; and the use of steel in building houses will make their construction cheap and their acquisition easy.

Summary

We have seen that the family was built, at the beginning of its eras, upon material functions: procreation, economic cooperation, the rearing of children. These functions branched out and advanced with the advance of civilization, and the spiritual functions appeared, such as the cultural function and — more important still — the function of affection. With the progress of the sciences and industry, the collapse of the tribal system, the rise of the individual's standing, and the spread of the idea of independence, the functions of the family began to contract and to submit to the developments to which all the circles of society have submitted.

But one function has kept the first and permanent place in the eyes of modern public opinion: that the family is the center of affection, companionship, and mutual love between the two spouses — that is, the spiritual function is the greatest justification of its existence, and on this foundation it must be built. The other functions, such as the question of children and the like, take on a secondary importance; and the material and economic bonds which make some members of the family a burden upon the others are a kind of enslavement, while the bond of affection is liberation and release, because it is elective and willed.

If we wished to measure the family evolution that has taken place in this country of ours, the matter would be difficult for us without conducting surveys; but we can say that evolution among us proceeds along the pattern we have described, though slowly and within a narrow compass. What we observe is that our practical evolution outruns our intellectual or theoretical evolution. We still raise a great outcry at every departure from family traditions and at every bold or unfamiliar social step. Yet these bold steps occur every day despite the agitation of the reactionaries and their clamor — but how many are those who are affected by that clamor and that agitation!

I once heard from a Western lady the following observation: "Man and woman in the West marry so that each may find a companion with whom to exchange affection, understanding, and esteem; but the Eastern man marries for material ends: to have an heir, or a woman to serve him. And likewise the Eastern woman marries in order to live."

And I said to myself, in comment upon this remark, that there is in it a generalization which does not hold true of all Easterners nor of all Westerners. But is it not true that the East's disease is still materialism? And I went searching, in the hope of finding some proof to show me that the East has begun to shed its materialism.