Chapter XI
The Constituent Parts of the Family
I. The Man in the Family
The first question which suggests itself in connection with the actual function of the man at the present day and in the modern Family, is that of his authority. Bearing in mind our survey of the past, we may ask: How does the father of a modern Family stand as compared with his ancestors in respect of the authority which he exercises? He is still recognised as the Head of the Family, but when we ask whether this position carries with it the power which it used to carry, and upon what his power, such as it is, is based, we are forced to recognise great changes. When, for instance, we take that authority in its most exaggerated form but at its lowest level amongst the most primitive peoples of all, we find it based mainly upon the man's superior physical strength, upon brute force, and tending to last just so long as his strength enables him to maintain it. Upon this basis his authority over his wife is absolute and permanent; over his children it is absolute, but only until the time comes when they are stronger than he. But in the modern Family physical strength counts for comparatively little. Except amongst the roughest and most uncivilised classes, public opinion is too strongly against the man who cannot maintain his authority without recourse to violence for physical strength to be a factor of any importance in supporting the rule of man. Moreover, public opinion has found clear and authoritative expression in the law; the State has not only ceased to recognise the father's right to inflict corporal injuries upon members of his Family, it definitely intervenes to protect them against cruelty on his part. Perhaps we may still find traces of the old view in the leniency with which the offence of wife-beating is punished; but the fact remains that it is punished, and not recognised as the legitimate means of enforcing authority.
Again, in a far more advanced state of society, we found in the priestly function of the Head of the Patriarchal Family the basis of an authority the most complete and permanent that has ever been known. Does anything remain of this? Religious ceremonial has long ceased to be a private family affair; it has been taken over and organised by the churches, and though some of its priests adopt the name of father, fathers are no longer allowed to call themselves priests. And yet the priestly function lingers to some extent. It is still the Head of the Family who "reads prayers"; and in the absence of any strong reason to the contrary, it is the father who determines what the religion of the Family will be. Riehl insists upon this. "If I am asked," he writes, ""why are you a Protestant?' I can only answer, and there seems to me nothing superficial in the answer, because my father was a Protestant. I am a Protestant by conviction, but I should never have attained to this conviction unless I had grown up amongst Protestant views and ideas, unless my family had been Protestant; thus my religious belief, of all things apparently most peculiarly my own, has been essentially inoculated into me through the authority of the Family. Hence the ordinary man regards the falling away from the faith of one's fathers as particularly disgraceful, because it involves the greatest renouncing of the Family."1 In Families, then, where religion is a living force, it can hardly fail to be that the authority of the father is strengthened and raised to a higher level by the fact that he is the medium through which members of his Family have come to hold the faith that is in them. And so far as this is the basis of his authority, it will tend to be permanent; but religion itself, in its insistence upon personal freedom and responsibility, will limit it and make it but the faint reflection of the paternal power from which it is descended.
In less developed communities, again, we found the authority of the father based upon his superior wisdom and experience, in the absence of any accumulated and accessible store of knowledge. He was the teacher and adviser of the young, who looked to him for guidance in their inexperience. But this function also has to a large extent been taken from him; and education has been organised in books and schools in such a way as to make the young apparently independent of their parents in the acquisition of knowledge.
But here the change has been largely apparent; the wisdom of life, the art of living, as distinct from book learning and knowledge about things, still rests with those who have lived, and can rarely be taught in books or schools. The fathers who recognise this prerogative of theirs and all that is involved in it, find in it one of the surest bases of authority; it is to their, and not to books, that their sons will turn when they are first confronted with problems in life which call for wisdom and experience in their solution.
Still another function has been taken from the Head of the Family in that he is seldom now the head also of an industrial community. The authority delegated to him in that capacity in agricultural communities would be indistinguishable from his authority as a father; the respect paid to his commands as a master from that paid to his commands as a father. But the modern Family has largely, though not entirely, ceased to be an industrial community, and so far another basis of paternal authority has disappeared.
Closely allied to this last is the authority which the Head of the Family derives from his power over the family estate. How this power has varied throughout the history of the Family, and how its variations have affected the relations between different members of the Family, we have already seen. It still lingers in an attenuated form in the feudal Families which remain; and the father's authority in these Families may vary in proportion as he has freedom of control over the property. But it is in the more strictly modern Family, where property is apt to be regarded as appertaining entirely to the individual, that this power suddenly springs into importance again, and becomes a formidable weapon in the hands of the father who can find no better basis for his authority. The power of the purse, the power to cut off allowances or to disinherit, is strong; but it is strong only in proportion as those who are subjected to it are weak; it is a tyranny which can be cast off as soon as its victims find the sources of independence within themselves. The only true and firm basis of authority must be one which I finds a response in the natures of those over whom the authority is exercised; and the power of the purse, like that of brute force, elicits no response, only subjection.
It is only amongst the wealthy minority that this spurious power has any force to speak of. The majority of the English race aims, as we have said, less at endowing their children with the material for subsistence than with the capacity of obtaining that subsistence for themselves; and it might be argued that in thus promoting the early independence of their children, fathers were relinquishing their strongest hold upon them. However that may be, an early independence is almost universal for the boys of a middle or workingclass Family, and increasingly so for the girls, although for the latter domestic subjection, based on the power of the purse, remains not uncommon.
Taking the matter in this way, and seeking to find a basis for parental authority in the relics of past institutions, it would seem as if Time had been purely destructive; and as if what we had left to us was little more than a tradition, ready to crumble away altogether at the shock of any further change. But if we take it differently and seek rather for the positive element in the present, we shall find that the action of Time has been one of change, it is true, hut of change in the sense of development ratherthan of destruction.
To begin with, we must, in studying our modern Family, distinguish between two kinds of submission. There is the submission which implies a tyranny, based upon the weakness and impotence of its victims; and there is the submission which may be expressed as loyalty, and which implies a rule eliciting a response from the highest qualities of those who are subject to it. Now the development of the modern Family has been almost entirely in the direction of eliminating those elements which lead to the first kind of submission, and of strengthening those which lead to loyalty.
Take, for instance, the change implied in the present devotion of the parents to the interests and welfare of the children, as compared with the times when children were regarded as entirely subservient to the aims of the parents or the cult of the ancestors. It is true, of course, that there are still Families where the interests of the children are almost entirely neglected, but they are now abnormal, and instance a degradation from the type. The trend of modern development is to throw the weight of interest on to the rising generation. It is obvious, no doubt, that this leaves more scope for the play of selfish and egotistical instincts on the part of the children, but it also leaves scope for a far higher order of response than that of mere submission. Gratitude forms a part of this response; but it is something different from and more than gratitude. There is an unconscious spontaneity about it which wholly precludes the sense of burdensomeness which may attach to mere gratitude; and it is unlimited by any question of proportion between the benefits mutually conferred and received. Moreover, loyalty is a principle which is active in children long before the time when they begin to realise what they have owed to their parents' care and effort. The normal child in the normal Family accepts everything which comes to him in the ordinary course of the home life with a sublime unconsciousness of any sacrifice being involved. It is a part of his loyalty to his parents that he leaves it all to them, with full confidence In that they will be equal to every occasion. proportion as he himself begins to share in the family responsibilities, he will begin also to realise what he has owed to them; but an adequate knowledge can only come when he has felt the full burden of life, and when, if his sense of loyalty has been unimpaired, he is already a willing minister to the claims of the Family. And the father, as the originator, the organiser, the support, the author of the Family, will seldom fail of the loyalty of its members unless he himself by his unwisdom or tyranny has destroyed the respect in which it is rooted.
In so far as the authority of the parent is based upon a greater maturity of reasonable will, it must always exist until such time as the will of the child is itself rationalised and matured. This lies in the nature of things, and is no more than to say that where two forces combine, the strongest will have most influence in determining the result. There is no tyranny involved in this when the purpose and aim of the parents includes the welfare of the Family, for then they are but guiding the will of the child to attain an end which it is as yet incapable of conceiving and attaining for itself. "We are born free as we are born rational," writes John Locke, "not that we have actually the use of either; age that brings one, brings with it the other too. And thus we see how natural freedom and subjection to parents may consist together, and are both founded on the same principle. A child is free by his father's title, by his father's understanding, which is to govern him till he hath it of his own. The freedom of a man at years of discretion, and the subjection of a child to his parents, while yet short of it, are so consistent and so distinguishable that the most blinded contenders for monarchy 'by right of fatherhood' cannot miss of it; the most obstinate cannot but allow of it."2
When we consider the relation between man and wife in the modern Family it seems to me more | especially true that this idea of loyalty—both to each other and to a common purpose—is the only one which adequately represents it. The day is past when the patient Griselda, ready with unreasoning submission for every tyrannical command of her despotic husband, was extolled as fulfilling the highest ideal of wifely duty. Disobedience might be considered as reprehensible as ever, but a large share of the blame would be reserved for the husband who should make conformity to his will a frequent problem. In place of despotism on the one side and submission on the other, we find the willing loyalty which recognises that if two wills conflict in their pursuit of a common purpose, then the will which called the Family into being, and which is primarily responsible for its welfare, must in the interests of the Family be supreme. But self-assertion, selfrealisation, cease to be hostile forces when each of the selves concerned is seeking the fulfilment of its purposes, its own fullest realisation, in a common end, whether that end be the family life or some other and perhaps wider.
Another reason for the continued authority of the man within the Family is the fact that he continues to represent it, as recognised Head, to the outside world. He acts for the Family, stands for the Family, gives his name to the Family, and is the legal and authorised representative of the Family. And he is held responsible to the community of which he is a member for the proper maintenance, conduct, and upbringing of the Family which he has called into existence. There is only one curious exception to this representative character of the man; it is that in Society he has no official value. It is true, no doubt, that his rank determines the particular "circle" within which the Family will "move"; but the movements themselves, in order to be valid, must be performed by the woman. In society intercourse (a somewhat different matter from social intercourse) the woman only is accepted as representative and official; it is she who must organise recognised hospitality, must be the dispenser of invitations, must initiate or reject acquaintanceships, and—quaintest function of all—must "pay the calls." The man, of course, may and does participate in all these functions, but he cannot discharge them; all that he does in this connection is unofficial and does not count.
Apart from this one convention, however, his responsibility to the world is complete, from the moment when she whom he has chosen for his partner is "given" to him in marriage. He can only repudiate it by taking formal and recognised steps to do so, and it lasts as long as the Family itself remains together as one household. This being so, it is clearly necessary and just that he should have sufficient authority within the Family to control it in those matters for which he is held responsible.
One of the most important functions which a man exercises in a community is that of electing its rulers; and the question has been raised whether he exercises his electoral privileges as representative of his Family or merely as an individual taxpayer. That able and strenuous opponent of the enfranchisement of women, W. H. Riehl, maintains that if the right to the franchise is based merely upon the taxation of individuals, then there is no justification for the exclusion of women. But he also maintains the true theory of political representation to be that the State represents not individuals but Families; and that the woman, as part of the Family, is adequately represented by the vote of the Head of the Family. "The man is not only the legal guardian of the household; it is through him alone that all which the household does for education and morality is extended to wider circles, is made public property. Where the marriage is a true one, spiritually equal and morally complete, there are always two persons contributing to the highest thoughts and opinions of the man-himself and his wife. In this lofty and pure sense all true wives are represented in Parliament when the husband sits there."3
But Riehl is clear-sighted enough to see that this theory involves the limitation of the franchise to Heads of Families, and he is prepared accordingly to grant it only to husbands or widowers. The argument that a woman is sufficiently represented by her husband or father is of course frequently used in England, especially by those who also maintain that to grant her the franchise would cause instant strife between her and her male representatives; but no one, I think, has suggested that the Family as such should be the unit for voting purposes. It is true that in "household suffrage" we have something like the idea; but household suffrage admits many single men who represent at most themselves and their domestic servants, while the lodger franchise practically abandons the idea of a household as the basis of political representation.
In virtue of what prerogative does the man hold this supreme place as representative of his Family in the community? To ascribe it to his superior physical strength will hardly satisfy our modern conceptions, any more than to ascribe his authority within the Family to the same cause; although the argument that woman is disqualified by her incapacity to serve in the army, which is frequently advanced in Germany, approaches perilously near to this. A far more acceptable theory to one half of the human race would be that the man alone possesses a fully-developed intellect, and that by virtue of this he is natural ruler and guide. This is, I think, the explanation which would be most generally offered at the present day: almost universally in Germany, less so perhaps in France, to a large extent in England, least of all in America. But whether or not it is the case that a woman's intellect is never of the highest order, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain with any show of reason that it may not, with proper education, be as fully developed as that of the average man, and the argument from intellect becomes daily less relevant.
Nevertheless, it seems neither likely nor desirable that the function of representing the Family should ever be transferred to the woman during the lifetime of the man. In the numerous cases of widows or single women the matter is different; but where the Family is based, as it normally is, upon a partnership, law, convention, and mutual assent have fixed upon the man as most suitable for the purpose, not only by natural disposition, but also and mainly by the natural and necessary division of labour between the two chief members of the partnership. This division of labour, under which a large part of the woman's activities are directed towards domestic cares, would in itself suffice to debar her from acquiring facility in matters of business intercourse. But the division is essential, and the lines which it follows are drawn not so much by the woman's inability to work for her Family in the outside world—she constantly does so when the death or illness of her husband throws the double burden upon her; but from the obvious fact that the man is incapable of the more domestic duties incident upon the rearing of children. And it is largely this incapacity which gives him the power both of concentration and of width of view. While the woman's mental energies are being dissipated over the thousand little details which are necessary to the successful management of a family, the man's are free to pursue some line of thought, to concentrate on some course of action, to organise some business, to frame and follow out some policy.
Now it seems obvious that if man's predominance in the outside world is the natural consequence of a recognised division of labour, it should not extend to matters which have been assigned by that division to the other partner; and as a matter of fact the families in which it does so are probably exceptional. His authority remains, no doubt, as determining the basis of the family life, and the main outlines of its movements, the scale upon which the household is to be organised, the kind of education the children are to receive, the place in which the Family is to reside, and so on; but it should not extend to details. His position is that of supreme authority, a court of appeal to be called in as a last resource, and as such the mere fact of his existence is invaluable to the housewife by strengthening her hands in the management of children and servants. But it is a power which is soon lost if exercised on any but the most important occasions; and the wise man recognises that the real acting authority in daily life is that of the woman. If we accept the mysterious term "Influence," with which women are invariably consoled for the absence of political rights, we might apply it to describe the mode in which the man's authority is normally exercised in domestic life. In reference to the outside world, man has power and woman "influence"; within the home, woman has the active power, and man the "influence."
This more or less roughly describes the division of work in all classes where the man earns and the woman spends, but it is more especially true amongst the wage-earners. "Money matters are left entirely to the wife; it is she who decides whether an increased rent can be paid or an article of furniture bought, whether a boy shall be apprenticed or must take what work he can find, and what insurance clubs, etc., shall be joined. The custom of leaving the management of money to the wife is so deeply rooted that children always speak of the family income as belonging entirely to her, and will constantly tell you: 'Mother has to pay so and so for rent'; 'Mother is going to try and afford father this or that'; 'Mother isn't going to let father work for Mr.— any more, she says the wages isn't worth the hours.'4. Fathers are regarded by the children as plainly inferior to mothers in authority, in knowledge of right and wrong, and, above all, of 'manners.'... Talk of the subjection of women !—I doubt if the bare idea of fathers being equal to mothers in rank and authority ever enters the mind of any cottage child under sixteen. From their conversation all my little friends might be fatherless, except for an occasional dramatic recital of how dad 'went and did' something that mother said he 'hadn't ought to,' and the disastrous results of this untimely rebellion. Father is generally regarded in the light of mother's eldest child, and disobedience in him is far more heinous a crime than in them, because he'd ought to know better than not to do what mother says.' Fathers are, as a rule, perfectly satisfied with this position, not minding in the least when the youngest born publicly raises a note of warning: 'Mother said as you wasn't to do that, dad.' "5
There is one point upon which the position of the man in the Family is apt to be gravely misrepresented, and that is in his attitude towards, and treatment of, the children. Broadly stated, the very common assumption is that he dislikes children, regards them as an inevitable encumbrance, and is consistently unsympathetic and often cruel in his dealings with them. It is of course against the working class that this libel, for libel it is, is most frequently directed. This pessimistic, one might almost call it brutal view, finds expression in one of Sydney Smith's essays: "A ploughman marries a ploughwoman because she is plump; generally uses her ill; thinks his children an encumbrance; very often flogs them; and, for sentiment, has nothing more nearly approaching to it than the ideas of broiled bacon and mashed potatoes. This is the state of the lower orders of mankinddeplorable but true and yet rendered much worse by the Poor Laws."
This is a view which finds many supporters at the present day, and those who hold it pride themselves on being freed from sentimental prejudice, and looking at things "as they really are." It is due partly, no doubt, to the vulgar assumption that "the poor" belong indeed to a "lower order," in that they do not share in the natural affections and virtues which are reserved for the moneyed classes, and partly again to a lack of familiarity with the people in their normal and healthy relations. It is perhaps the exception for those who hold this view to come into relation with the working classes except in connection with the demoralising influences of charity and the Poor Law, and they draw their inferences from the families which these agencies have helped to destroy. But such a view of father and child is contrary to the whole history of the human race, which has found no higher or more adequate conception in which to express its sense of divine loving-kindness than that of fatherhood. And who will say that the Psalmist had only the cultured few in mind when he declared in words which go home to every heart: "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him"? To those who have eyes to see, this tenderness of the father is to be found in every class of society which still maintains its independence, and certainly not less among the poor than among the rich. "The ideal of fatherhood," writes Miss Loane, "is less developed among the poor than the ideal of motherhood. The tenderness lasts far too short a period, and there is rarely any attempt at moral training. Nevertheless, men of the working class are as much libelled as fathers as working-class women are as cooks, nurses, and managers. In both cases the millions bear the blame that is only due to a few tens of thousands. Paternal affection may not be very strong after a boy has reached his tenth and a girl her twelfth year, but it is lavished on them at an age when the circumstances of poor people's daily lives make it almost indispensable for their children's health and happiness. In countless homes the busy, many-childed mother breathes freely for the first time in the day when her husband returns from work. The honours of fatherhood are divided. The professional man generally begins to show most attention to his children about the time when the working man's devotion slackens. The working man adores children at an age when the former would not dare to give his candid opinion of them even to a confirmed bachelor."
This generalisation cannot, of course, be applied at all rigidly. Towards his own babies, at least, the indifference of the professional man is sometimes only assumed as a cloak to cover the extremity of sentiment with which he regards them. But there is, I think, little doubt that the distinction exists, and that the working man is apt to be more completely unabashed in his tenderness for his children. When he cares for them at all, there are no reservations about it. Clean or dirty, laughing or crying, asleep or awake, quiet or naughty, he adores them in all their moods, and applauds their misdemeanours as much as their virtues. From the point of view of education this has its drawbacks, and a love with more self-restraint would doubtless be both better for the children and more enduring; but it enables the man to tolerate annoyances which would be intolerable to one of finer sensibilities.
It is partly, no doubt, the possession of more highly strung nerves which makes the educated man less tolerant of babydom. But partly, also, it is the awkwardness and restraint which he feels in the presence of the strange creature which forms a barrier between him and the baby. He has no means of communication with it; for all practical purposes of intercourse it is deaf and dumb; he does not know how it will respond to his advances, nor how to deal with its difficulties. In the Family of the working man he is forced into close contact with the newcomer from its first arrival, and must take his share in ministering to its needs; and thus he learns almost as soon as its mother to be on terms of intimacy. But in a Family where a nurse takes charge from the first, the father's acquaintance is apt to be limited to a more or less formal introduction, and it may be months, or even years, before he feels really at home with the stranger whom he has invited to become a permanent member of his household. But though it may be longer in his case before the channels of communication can be opened up and the true relationship of fatherhood established, this relationship has about it the possibilities of a permanent friendship of the highest type, just because it is based not only upon instinctive affection.