HEAD OFFICE, MONTREAL, DECEMBER 1948

THE FAMILY AND ITS PROBLEMS

A LTHOUGH the family is the smallest of socialinstitutions, it occupies first rank in import-ance.

It is the primary unit in every civilized community,it is the first place of instruction in matters spiritualand material, it is the most closely-knit centre of socialactivity, it is the basic buying unit, and it is the stageupon which are played out the greatest joys and sor-rows of human life.

Improvement of family living is not merely senti-mental. It is a necessity for the smooth-running com-munity, the sound nation and the vitality of democracy.

But the family is not escaping, any more than othertreasured things, the turmoil of the age. Some dis-turbing influences are hold-overs from pre-war days.These have been intensified and new ones have beenadded by the experiences of the past ten years. Evenin Canada, with all its resources and liberties andopportunities, there is an increasing tenseness infamily relationships.

Romance is not Enough

In the opinion of some observers the fostering ofromantic dreams by movies, radio, magazines, adver-tisements and newspaper strips is chiefly to blame fora lowered resistance to family difficulties. "More andmore," said Life in a recent issue, "as the result of suchhighly coloured suggestion, young people havetended to rely impulsively on physical attraction andlove at first sight."

Family life is not made up of romance, although thatis one of its most important ingredients. There arehundreds of small, r~alistic problems to be facedevery week, and both senior partners in the familymust be prepared for patient and self-denying hardwork. It is necessary to have companionship andfriendship alongside the romance.

The Archbishop of York said at the marriage ofPrincess Elizabeth and Prince Philip:

Love must always be unselfish, and unselfishness is thetrue secret of a happy married life. It must show itselfnot only in a great moment of heroic self-sacrifice butcontinually in all small problems and incidents of every-day life. It means thoughtfulness and patience, ready

sympathy and forbearance, talking over and sharingtogether the special interests and cares which each ofyou will have.

Just as bad as leaning exclusively on romance for asuccessful family life is taking for granted that romanceceases after marriage. It is not sensible to imaginethat the ceremony ends the need for that charm ofmanner, personality, courtesy, respect and esteemwhich were the basis of common admiration duringcourting days.

Perhaps certain German peasants have a good idea.Before the wedding ceremony the engaged couple arebrought together and given a two-handled saw. Inthe presence of their neighbours they have to saw a log.

It is a test that can reveal many things: if one wishesto take the lead and do everything by himself, therhythm is lost; if they tug against each other, the jobtakes twice as long and uses twice as much energy;if one leaves the work to the other, the saw wobblesand the cut is uneven. These German villagers haverealized that co-operation is one of the greatest needsof a good marriage.

Many hasty, ill-considered marriages were enteredinto in Canada as elsewhere during the war, and theparties are now living above their emotional income.Time was not taken to appraise intelligently thequalities of prospective partners, to make sure that aharmonious family relationship could be founded onthe marriage ceremony.

Helen Gardom gives some homely advice in herbook How to Marry the Perfect Man: "Some flawsthere must be, but make very sure they are the kind offlaws a little spit and polish will smooth out." It ishard to d~cide in a hurry whether defects are on thesurface or deeply ingrained.

Romance obtained a rather low rating as the mostimportant quality in marriage in a survey by theCanadian Institute of Public Opinion reported in theMontreal Star last May. In view of the way in whichpollsters went off the beam in the United Stateselection, most of us will add a grain of salt to ourfuture readings of polls. However, if we use discretion,these polls can be taken as indicators to some extentof what people believe.

In the poll we are discussing, married womenplaced "Good provider" first on their list of mostimportant qualities, with "Faithfulness" and" Patience,kindness, etc." following closely. Men to theextent of 40 per cent inscribed "Good home-maker" first on the list, with a long drop to the nextmost, important quality, "Agreeable, good com-pany’, which took only 17 per cent of the votes.Only half the percentage of men felt the needof patience, as compared with women. "Loving"as a quality of first demand received the same votefrom both sexes, three per cent.

What we have said indicates a sharp division be-tween the thinking of those who are still in the throesof youthful wishing and those who have been throughthe mill of practical experience. Young people, ledaway by idealistic features they extract from theirreading and entertainment, are misled into expectingthat they can float through life on a cloud of romance;married people have found that the discharge ofmutual obligations is the basis upon which love exists.

What is a Family?

The family is made up of a small number of personsclosely and intimately bound together. If every familywere suspended in a vacuum, family life would bemuch easier, but as it is every member is subjected todifferent influences outside the family circle, and thedelicate mechanism of family harmony has to absorbmany shocks.

Social scientists divide the family historically intopatriarchal, small patriarchal, and democratic. Thesettlers who came to Canada from France, the BritishIsles, and other parts of Europe, brou.ght with themthe traditions and pattern of the patriarchal family:wife and children were subject to authority of thefather.

This type of family was stable and settled. It hadan enduring relationship with its fireside, it honouredtraditions, and it established its children near thehomestead so as to watch over and preserve them.The family lasted for many generations.

Today, most families have no abiding attachmentto the hearth and no permanent root anywhere. Atypical urban family rises and falls like this: marriageof the parents, increasing size as children are born,decreasing size as children marry and leave home, anddisappearance with the death of the parents. Duringthis cycle the family may have lived in twenty or morehouses, each of which was temporarily, not signifi-cantly, "home."

The Family’s Functions

It is well, before attempting to pass judgment onany type of family, to have a clear idea of the functionsfor which the family stands.

First and foremost is reproduction of the race. Thehuman infant requires years to achieve maturity, de-manding association with his parents until well intohis teens. His education begins with his first trainingin behaviour, and continues, right up to the end, inadvice and explanation.

The beginnings of formal religion are in the family.It is here that the spiritual and moral outlook of theadult are born. Political education, not having to dowith transient things like parties but the lasting prin-ciples of citizenship, democracy, and duty to the stateis a family function.

Knowledge of the industrial environment, thedivision of labour, the principles of individual con-tribution, the use of money, and a sense of responsi-bility: all these should be taught in the family.

And, finally, social behaviour is learned here ornever. The principles of the Golden Rule and co-oper-ation, of respective rights and duties in the community,must be learned in the family if the child is not to growinto a misfit or a social failure.

Size of Families

There were in Canada in 1947 about 3,042,000families, an increase of 516,700 since the 1941 census.This increase ranged from 11 per cent in the PrairieProvinces to 47 per cent in British Columbia.

The average size of family last year was 3.7 persons,compared with 3.9 persons at the 1941 census.

There were, in 1947, the following number offamilies with the indicated number of children:

Canada’s birth rate per 1,000 of population was23.9 in 1945. Other countries, for comparison, were:New Zealand 23.1; Eire 22.3; Australia 21.8; Sweden20.2; United States 19.8; Scotland 16.9; Englandand Wales 16, and Belgium 15.5.

Parents Have Troubles

After this digression to discuss the statisticalposition of the family, let us return to considerationof the family as a part of our social life.

Parents are obliged to maintain themselves and theirfamilies in health and comfort, to pay their debts, tosave, to increase their prosperity by increasing theirefficiency. They try to give their children a bettereducation than they had. And all through their chil-dren’s lives, the parents must stand by with ready aidand guidance whenever called upon, no matter howstrange the problem or bizarre the type of behaviourthat caused it.

With the emancipation of women from the shacklesof never-ending housework there may have come alessened appreciation of just how essential they arein family life and child training. Neither physiciansnor nurses nor any other professional group can fur-nish daily care, protection and development of indi-viduals such as mothers provide in homemaking andhousekeeping.

Not that the woman in the house is pre-eminentlyimportant. The average Canadian family functionsthrough the division of labour and responsibilitybetween husband and wife. He is the provider and sheis the homemaker. He meets the day-to-day needs,such as shelter, food and clothing, and the prudentman plans ahead for future needs and to protect hisfamily in case of his death.

The Family is Needed

Man became human through association, and thefamily is the first school in which the child learns be-haviour patterns which guide him in his associationswith other people. The family.is the smallest groupunit and the first of the socieues within which menand women spend their lives. It is our most importantsocial institution; to millions of people it is a sacredinstitution.

If the family is to be preserved in its distinguishedrole, everyone needs to do some clear and candidthinking. It is all too easy to brush off criticism, orto seek to transfer the responsibility elsewhere. Asurvey not long ago reported that 45 per cent of Cana-dian adults felt teen-agers to be worse in their be-haviour than a generation ago; another poll said that31 per cent of Canadian adults believe parents areworse today than they were 25 years ago. Both maybe right, or both wrong, but there are certain factswhich give a better criterion than mere opinion.

The divorce rate in Canada has been climbing muchmore rapidly than in the United States. In 1926 theCanadian rate was about one-seventeenth that in theUnited States; by 1945 the fraction had increasedto about one-seventh. Within the Dominion, the rateincreased more than five times in this period.

Here are the actual numbers of divorces in repre-sentative years: 1921, 548; 1931, 700; 1941, 2,461;1945, 5,076. Or look at it another way:

In addition, the census of 1941 showed that therewere 80,137 legally separated people.

An attempt is being made in social work circles tocentre attention upon the causes of divorce in order toeliminate them. Immature and hasty marriages arecondemned as a leading cause by some sociologists.Others blame the way in which we talk and write andbroadcast about the one marriage in twenty-two whichends in divorce, ignoring those which are successful.

Clarita deForceville said in Marriages are Made atHome that a generation ago divorce was less common,not because people were more moral or the pace oflife was slower, but because of a number of establishedconventions which tended to hold husbands and wivestogether. The rules of society were stricter; religionplayed a more powerful part in everyone’s life than iscustomary today; family principles and traditions didnot countenance divorce and remarriage.

A poll last year reported that 45 per cent of thosequestioned said family life is less successful than intheir parents’ generation. This is a terrible indictment,when upwards of half the people examined admittheir disappointment with what they have been ableto make of family life as compared with their parents.

What are the Causes?

Under the disturbed conditions of these times it isno wonder that there should be stresses in families.

Immigration from abroad to this land, and migra-tion from country to city and from city to city opena great gap between the old culture of parents and thenew culture of children. Parental wisdom becomesobsolete in the eyes of young people. The intellectualcapital built up through generations of close, familylife (called by some persons "folk knowledge ’) failsto be transmitted. The younger generation is leftwithout compass and maps, and sets out on the voyagethrough adult life on a basis of trial and error.

Besides the added stresses within the family, thereare pressures from outside to which we have notbecome acclimatized. Children are urged by stories,advertisements and radio to do this or that beyondthe financial or cultural reach of the family; they arelured into loose thinking and fanciful appreciationsof life by movies, comic strips and fiction.

It is the fashion today to laugh at Horatio Alger’ssuccess boys, and at Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help. But theplain fact is: those stories and essays had the savinggrace that what the heroes won they worked for;today’s easy life is pictured as being reached bysmartness or outwitting other people, or leaning onsocial security provided by parents or the government.

What are the Symptoms?

Prominent among symptoms of family breakdown isthe revolt of youth against establi~’hed things. Thisis evidenced first by devaluation of parents. Scarcelyany area of family life is safe from criticism in thisstage. It may touch the home, the style of furnishing,the mother’s qualities as a homemaker, the father’sability as a breadwinner, and everything else frommother’s clothes to father’s political ideas.

This is nothing new. It is the last stage reached byadolescents in their psychological weaning fromparents., But, says Dr. D. E. Cameron in LiJe is JorLiving, ’There is reason to think that these conflictsare sharper than they used to be."

In former days the beliefs and attitudes which a boylearned from his father would serve him as he grew tomanhood and, with little change, were still valid inhis last years.

Today, youths are inclined to fixate upon some out-sider, a teacher, club leader or pal, and accept hisopinions as infallible. This is hard for parents to take,because they usually believe they are at least as intelli-gent as the McWhistles, with whom junior anddaughter spend their spare time.

Another symptom is the striving for "independ-ence", sometimes camouflaged under the title "de-mocracy." Individualism weakens the unity of the

family. The natural spreading of democratic thinkinginto family affairs is seized upon in the immaturity ofadolescence as a license to freedom, and youth goesto extremes.

What to do about it

There is no simple and easy way of dealing with theconditions which promote family disorganization.There are too many factors involved, and humannature is too varied to allow of a simple recipe.

In business life we can turn many relations intoroutine, so that daily contacts are smooth, but wecannot turn the family into a routine affair withoutkilling it.

One lesson can, however, be carried over frombusiness into the family. Executives have found that itpays to listen to employees’ and colleagues’ troubles.Even if nothing can be done to help, just giving aperson a chance to talk things over provides a reliefwhich makes relations happier. It should be done inlittle pieces, not left until so much has piled up thatonly an explosion provides relief. When labour rela-tions or family relations reach bursting point it is anindication that someone has not been listening.

Several public and civic movements are trying to dosomething about the tangled threads of family life.

Probably most hopeful of the activities are thosedirected toward education for marriage. At a Con-ference on Family Life, sponsored by the ChristianSocial Council of Canada and the Canadian WelfareCouncil, and attended by representatives of eightdenominations, the problem was carried to a veryhigh plane.

Rev. J. R. Mutchmor, of the United Church, said:"To Catholic, Jew, and Protestant alike, marriage isthe ground of human fellowship and society, and ismost precious to mankind. It is not to be entered uponlightly or unadvisedly, but reverently and as in thepresence of God. Christian marriage is therefore to beregarded as a holy estate which God has establishedand sanctified for the welfare and happiness of man-kind."

Rev. Father Andr~ Guay, of the Marriage Prepara-tion Service, University of Ottawa, said that pre-marriage education included spiritual-preparation aswell as factual instruction, and these are combined andintertwined in the textbook he uses. More than 3,000students are taking the course by correspondence, andthe plan used in Canada is being adopted by manyother countries.

The job of educating for marriage and familyresponsibilities is a big and worthy one in which manyagencies may take part. People will see their properplace in the scheme of things when we point out tothem, in their impressionable years, the duties in-volved in family life, and the sacred and civic natureof the obligations they assume when they undertakemarriage. It is a work for all our teaching, preachingand social agencies, and for the press and the radio.

Then there is parent education. Someone has saidthat parenthood is the last stand of the amateur. Forall other jobs some training is required, but for thedelicate job of guiding a family and the intricate jobof promoting the physical, social and intellectualdevelopment of children, it has been assumed that nospecialized training is needed.

Dr. S. R. Laycock, professor of educational psy-chology at the University of Saskatchewan, sees twoprincipal ways in which parent education can becarried on: through the work of voluntary agenciessuch as Home and School Associations, of whichthere are over 1,300 in Canada, and through govern-ment or university departments of extension. He com-mends the National Committee for Mental Hygiene(Canada) and the Canadian Association for AdultEducation for their help to other agencies, but regretsthe lack of financial means which prevents theirlaunching a systematic programme of parent educa-tion on their own.

Co-operation

Marriage is neither a delirious passionate madnessnor jogging along in stagnant habit, but the livingco-operation of two people who are going the sameway.

As Dr. Margaret Mead wrote in the AmericanJournal of Sociology last May, in a special issue devotedto the family:

The life of a family is coming to be seen as a shipwhich may be wrecked by any turn of the tide unlessevery member of the family, but especially the twoparents, are actively and co-operativel.y en.gaged insailing the boat, vigilantly tacking., trimming theirsails, resetting their course, bailing in storms -- all tosave something which is worth their continuous care.

Marriage is not made of isolation, any more than itis made of subordination. In the marriage partnershipit is as important to respect opinions, ideals, habits,and the privacy of the individual as it is in other humanpartnerships. Because it is a partnership both partiesare equal and equally responsible.

When couples are asked what they have gained frommarriage, one of the most frequent answers is "Com-panionship." It is out of this fact that hope rises forthe future of the family.

The ideal characteristics in family life are affection,sharing experiences, enjoying mutual confidence,participating in the making of decisions affecting thefamily or individuals, having common interests inreligion, recreation and civic affairs and putting forthcombined efforts in case of family crises. Out of thesewill develop a feeling of security, and a sense ofrecognition, which is a product of being consultedand heard.

In family life there are no trifles. Everything counts.Being a family means having fun together, as well asshouldering together the serious things like bills,housing troubles and the children’s school problems.A sense of humour can soften the blows that are sureto fall. For a family to be able to laugh at the samethings is the saving grace.

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