PAPER 84
- MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE
Material necessity founded
marriage, sex hunger embellished it, religion sanctioned and
exalted it, the state demanded and regulated it, while in
later times evolving love is beginning to justify and
glorify marriage as the ancestor and creator of
civilization's most useful and sublime institution, the
home. And home building should be the center and essence of
all educational effort.
Mating is purely an act of
self-perpetuation associated with varying degrees of
self-gratification; marriage, home building, is largely a
matter of self-maintenance, and it implies the evolution of
society. Society itself is the aggregated structure of
family units. Individuals are very temporary as planetary
factors--only families are continuing agencies in social
evolution. The family is the channel through which the river
of culture and knowledge flows from one generation to
another.
The home is basically a
sociologic institution. Marriage grew out of co-operation in
self-maintenance and partnership in self-perpetuation, the
element of self-gratification being largely incidental.
Nevertheless, the home does embrace all three of the
essential functions of human existence, while life
propagation makes it the fundamental human institution, and
sex sets it off from all other social activities.
1. PRIMITIVE PAIR
ASSOCIATIONS
Marriage was not founded
on sex relations; they were incidental thereto. Marriage was
not needed by primitive man, who indulged his sex appetite
freely without encumbering himself with the responsibilities
of wife, children, and home.
Woman, because of physical
and emotional attachment to her offspring, is dependent on
co-operation with the male, and this urges her into the
sheltering protection of marriage. But no direct biologic
urge led man into marriage--much less held him in. It was
not love that made marriage attractive to man, but food
hunger which first attracted savage man to woman and the
primitive shelter shared by her children.
Marriage was not even
brought about by the conscious realization of the
obligations of sex relations. Primitive man comprehended no
connection between sex indulgence and the subsequent birth
of a child. It was once universally believed that a virgin
could become pregnant. The savage early conceived the idea
that babies were made in spiritland; pregnancy was believed
to be the result of a woman's being entered by a spirit, an
evolving ghost. Both diet and the evil eye were also
believed to be capable of causing pregnancy in a virgin or
unmarried
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woman, while later beliefs
connected the beginnings of life with the breath and with
sunlight.
Many early peoples
associated ghosts with the sea; hence virgins were greatly
restricted in their bathing practices; young women were far
more afraid of bathing in the sea at high tide than of
having sex relations. Deformed or premature babies were
regarded as the young of animals which had found their way
into a woman's body as a result of careless bathing or
through malevolent spirit activity. Savages, of course,
thought nothing of strangling such offspring at birth.
The first step in
enlightenment came with the belief that sex relations opened
up the way for the impregnating ghost to enter the female.
Man has since discovered that father and mother are equal
contributors of the living inheritance factors which
initiate offspring. But even in the twentieth century many
parents still endeavor to keep their children in more or
less ignorance as to the origin of human life.
A family of some simple
sort was insured by the fact that the reproductive function
entails the mother-child relationship. Mother love is
instinctive; it did not originate in the mores as did
marriage. All mammalian mother love is the inherent
endowment of the adjutant mind-spirits of the local universe
and is in strength and devotion always directly proportional
to the length of the helpless infancy of the species.
The mother and child
relation is natural, strong, and instinctive, and one which,
therefore, constrained primitive women to submit to many
strange conditions and to endure untold hardships. This
compelling mother love is the handicapping emotion which has
always placed woman at such a tremendous disadvantage in all
her struggles with man. Even at that, maternal instinct in
the human species is not overpowering; it may be thwarted by
ambition, selfishness, and religious conviction.
While the mother-child
association is neither marriage nor home, it was the nucleus
from which both sprang. The great advance in the evolution
of mating came when these temporary partnerships lasted long
enough to rear the resultant offspring, for that was
homemaking.
Regardless of the
antagonisms of these early pairs, notwithstanding the
looseness of the association, the chances for survival were
greatly improved by these male-female partnerships. A man
and a woman, co-operating, even aside from family and
offspring, are vastly superior in most ways to either two
men or two women. This pairing of the sexes enhanced
survival and was the very beginning of human society. The
sex division of labor also made for comfort and increased
happiness.
2. THE EARLY
MOTHER-FAMILY
The woman's periodic
hemorrhage and her further loss of blood at childbirth early
suggested blood as the creator of the child (even as the
seat of the soul) and gave origin to the blood-bond concept
of human relationships. In early times all descent was
reckoned in the female line, that being the only part of
inheritance which was at all certain.
The primitive family,
growing out of the instinctive biologic blood bond of mother
and child, was inevitably a mother-family; and many tribes
long held
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to this arrangement. The
mother-family was the only possible transition from the
stage of group marriage in the horde to the later and
improved home life of the polygamous and monogamous
father-families. The mother-family was natural and biologic;
the father-family is social, economic, and political. The
persistence of the mother-family among the North American
red men is one of the chief reasons why the otherwise
progressive Iroquois never became a real state.
Under the mother-family
mores the wife's mother enjoyed virtually supreme authority
in the home; even the wife's brothers and their sons were
more active in family supervision than was the husband.
Fathers were often renamed after their own children.
The earliest races gave
little credit to the father, looking upon the child as
coming altogether from the mother. They believed that
children resembled the father as a result of association, or
that they were "marked" in this manner because the mother
desired them to look like the father. Later on, when the
switch came from the mother-family to the father-family, the
father took all credit for the child, and many of the taboos
on a pregnant woman were subsequently extended to include
her husband. The prospective father ceased work as the time
of delivery approached, and at childbirth he went to bed,
along with the wife, remaining at rest from three to eight
days. The wife might arise the next day and engage in hard
labor, but the husband remained in bed to receive
congratulations; this was all a part of the early mores
designed to establish the father's right to the child.
At first, it was the
custom for the man to go to his wife's people, but in later
times, after a man had paid or worked out the bride price,
he could take his wife and children back to his own people.
The transition from the mother-family to the father-family
explains the otherwise meaningless prohibitions of some
types of cousin marriages while others of equal kinship are
approved.
With the passing of the
hunter mores, when herding gave man control of the chief
food supply, the mother-family came to a speedy end. It
failed simply because it could not successfully compete with
the newer father-family. Power lodged with the male
relatives of the mother could not compete with power
concentrated in the husband-father. Woman was not equal to
the combined tasks of childbearing and of exercising
continuous authority and increasing domestic power. The
oncoming of wife stealing and later wife purchase hastened
the passing of the mother-family.
The stupendous change from
the mother-family to the father-family is one of the most
radical and complete right-about-face adjustments ever
executed by the human race. This change led at once to
greater social expression and increased family adventure.
3. THE FAMILY
UNDER FATHER DOMINANCE
It may be that the
instinct of motherhood led woman into marriage, but it was
man's superior strength, together with the influence of the
mores, that virtually compelled her to remain in wedlock.
Pastoral living tended to create a new system of mores, the
patriarchal type of family life; and the basis of family
unity under the herder and early agricultural mores was the
unquestioned and arbitrary authority of the father. All
society, whether national or familial, passed through the
stage of the autocratic authority of a patriarchal order.
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The scant courtesy paid
womankind during the Old Testament era is a true reflection
of the mores of the herdsmen. The Hebrew patriarchs were all
herdsmen, as is witnessed by the saying, "The Lord is my
Shepherd."
But man was no more to
blame for his low opinion of woman during past ages than was
woman herself. She failed to get social recognition during
primitive times because she did not function in an
emergency; she was not a spectacular or crisis hero.
Maternity was a distinct disability in the existence
struggle; mother love handicapped women in the tribal
defense.
Primitive women also
unintentionally created their dependence on the male by
their admiration and applause for his pugnacity and
virility. This exaltation of the warrior elevated the male
ego while it equally depressed that of the female and made
her more dependent; a military uniform still mightily stirs
the feminine emotions.
Among the more advanced
races, women are not so large or so strong as men. Woman,
being the weaker, therefore became the more tactful; she
early learned to trade upon her sex charms. She became more
alert and conservative than man, though slightly less
profound. Man was woman's superior on the battlefield and in
the hunt; but at home woman has usually outgeneraled even
the most primitive of men.
The herdsman looked to his
flocks for sustenance, but throughout these pastoral ages
woman must still provide the vegetable food. Primitive man
shunned the soil; it was altogether too peaceful, too
unadventuresome. There was also an old superstition that
women could raise better plants; they were mothers. In many
backward tribes today, the men cook the meat, the women the
vegetables, and when the primitive tribes of Australia are
on the march, the women never attack game, while a man would
not stoop to dig a root.
Woman has always had to
work; at least right up to modern times the female has been
a real producer. Man has usually chosen the easier path, and
this inequality has existed throughout the entire history of
the human race. Woman has always been the burden bearer,
carrying the family property and tending the children, thus
leaving the man's hands free for fighting or hunting.
Woman's first liberation
came when man consented to till the soil, consented to do
what had theretofore been regarded as woman's work. It was a
great step forward when male captives were no longer killed
but were enslaved as agriculturists. This brought about the
liberation of woman so that she could devote more time to
homemaking and child culture.
The provision of milk for
the young led to earlier weaning of babies, hence to the
bearing of more children by the mothers thus relieved of
their sometimes temporary barrenness, while the use of cow's
milk and goat's milk greatly reduced infant mortality.
Before the herding stage of society, mothers used to nurse
their babies until they were four and five years old.
Decreasing primitive
warfare greatly lessened the disparity between the division
of labor based on sex. But women still had to do the real
work while men did picket duty. No camp or village could be
left unguarded day or night, but even this task was
alleviated by the domestication of the dog. In general, the
coming of agriculture has enhanced woman's prestige and
social standing; at least this was true up to the time man
himself turned agriculturist. And as soon as man addressed
himself to the tilling of the soil, there immediately ensued
great improvement in methods of agriculture, extending on
down through successive
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generations. In hunting and
war man had learned the value of organization, and he
introduced these techniques into industry and later, when
taking over much of woman's work, greatly improved on her
loose methods of labor.
4. WOMAN'S STATUS
IN EARLY SOCIETY
Generally speaking, during
any age woman's status is a fair criterion of the
evolutionary progress of marriage as a social institution,
while the progress of marriage itself is a reasonably
accurate gauge registering the advances of human
civilization.
Woman's status has always
been a social paradox; she has always been a shrewd manager
of men; she has always capitalized man's stronger sex urge
for her own interests and to her own advancement. By trading
subtly upon her sex charms, she has often been able to
exercise dominant power over man, even when held by him in
abject slavery.
Early woman was not to man
a friend, sweetheart, lover, and partner but rather a piece
of property, a servant or slave and, later on, an economic
partner, plaything, and childbearer. Nonetheless, proper and
satisfactory sex relations have always involved the element
of choice and co-operation by woman, and this has always
given intelligent women considerable influence over their
immediate and personal standing, regardless of their social
position as a sex. But man's distrust and suspicion were not
helped by the fact that women were all along compelled to
resort to shrewdness in the effort to alleviate their
bondage.
The sexes have had great
difficulty in understanding each other. Man found it hard to
understand woman, regarding her with a strange mixture of
ignorant mistrust and fearful fascination, if not with
suspicion and contempt. Many tribal and racial traditions
relegate trouble to Eve, Pandora, or some other
representative of womankind. These narratives were always
distorted so as to make it appear that the woman brought
evil upon man; and all this indicates the onetime universal
distrust of woman. Among the reasons cited in support of a
celibate priesthood, the chief was the baseness of woman.
The fact that most supposed witches were women did not
improve the olden reputation of the sex.
Men have long regarded
women as peculiar, even abnormal. They have even believed
that women did not have souls; therefore were they denied
names. During early times there existed great fear of the
first sex relation with a woman; hence it became the custom
for a priest to have initial intercourse with a virgin. Even
a woman's shadow was thought to be dangerous.
Childbearing was once
generally looked upon as rendering a woman dangerous and
unclean. And many tribal mores decreed that a mother must
undergo extensive purification ceremonies subsequent to the
birth of a child. Except among those groups where the
husband participated in the lying-in, the expectant mother
was shunned, left alone. The ancients even avoided having a
child born in the house. Finally, the old women were
permitted to attend the mother during labor, and this
practice gave origin to the profession of midwifery. During
labor, scores of foolish things were said and done in an
effort to facilitate delivery. It was the custom to sprinkle
the newborn with holy water to prevent ghost interference.
Among the unmixed tribes,
childbirth was comparatively easy, occupying only two or
three hours; it is seldom so easy among the mixed races. If
a woman
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died in childbirth,
especially during the delivery of twins, she was believed to
have been guilty of spirit adultery. Later on, the higher
tribes looked upon death in childbirth as the will of
heaven; such mothers were regarded as having perished in a
noble cause.
The so-called modesty of
women respecting their clothing and the exposure of the
person grew out of the deadly fear of being observed at the
time of a menstrual period. To be thus detected was a
grievous sin, the violation of a taboo. Under the mores of
olden times, every woman, from adolescence to the end of the
childbearing period, was subjected to complete family and
social quarantine one full week each month. Everything she
might touch, sit upon, or lie upon was "defiled." It was for
long the custom to brutally beat a girl after each monthly
period in an effort to drive the evil spirit out of her
body. But when a woman passed beyond the childbearing age,
she was usually treated more considerately, being accorded
more rights and privileges. In view of all this it was not
strange that women were looked down upon. Even the Greeks
held the menstruating woman as one of the three great causes
of defilement, the other two being pork and garlic.
However foolish these
olden notions were, they did some good since they gave
overworked females, at least when young, one week each month
for welcome rest and profitable meditation. Thus could they
sharpen their wits for dealing with their male associates
the rest of the time. This quarantine of women also
protected men from over-sex indulgence, thereby indirectly
contributing to the restriction of population and to the
enhancement of self-control.
A great advance was made
when a man was denied the right to kill his wife at will.
Likewise, it was a forward step when a woman could own the
wedding gifts. Later, she gained the legal right to own,
control, and even dispose of property, but she was long
deprived of the right to hold office in either church or
state. Woman has always been treated more or less as
property, right up to and in the twentieth century after
Christ. She has not yet gained world-wide freedom from
seclusion under man's control. Even among advanced peoples,
man's attempt to protect woman has always been a tacit
assertion of superiority.
But primitive women did
not pity themselves as their more recently liberated sisters
are wont to do. They were, after all, fairly happy and
contented; they did not dare to envision a better or
different mode of existence.
5. WOMAN UNDER
THE DEVELOPING MORES
In self-perpetuation woman
is man's equal, but in the partnership of self-maintenance
she labors at a decided disadvantage, and this handicap of
enforced maternity can only be compensated by the
enlightened mores of advancing civilization and by man's
increasing sense of acquired fairness.
As society evolved, the
sex standards rose higher among women because they suffered
more from the consequences of the transgression of the sex
mores. Man's sex standards are only tardily improving as a
result of the sheer sense of that fairness which
civilization demands. Nature knows nothing of
fairness--makes woman alone suffer the pangs of childbirth.
The modern idea of sex
equality is beautiful and worthy of an expanding
civilization, but it is not found in nature. When might is
right, man lords it over woman; when more justice, peace,
and fairness prevail, she gradually
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emerges from slavery and
obscurity. Woman's social position has generally varied
inversely with the degree of militarism in any nation or
age.
But man did not
consciously nor intentionally seize woman's rights and then
gradually and grudgingly give them back to her; all this was
an unconscious and unplanned episode of social evolution.
When the time really came for woman to enjoy added rights,
she got them, and all quite regardless of man's conscious
attitude. Slowly but surely the mores change so as to
provide for those social adjustments which are a part of the
persistent evolution of civilization. The advancing mores
slowly provided increasingly better treatment for females;
those tribes which persisted in cruelty to them did not
survive.
The Adamites and Nodites
accorded women increased recognition, and those groups which
were influenced by the migrating Andites have tended to be
influenced by the Edenic teachings regarding women's place
in society.
The early Chinese and the
Greeks treated women better than did most surrounding
peoples. But the Hebrews were exceedingly distrustful of
them. In the Occident woman has had a difficult climb under
the Pauline doctrines which became attached to Christianity,
although Christianity did advance the mores by imposing more
stringent sex obligations upon man. Woman's estate is little
short of hopeless under the peculiar degradation which
attaches to her in Mohammedanism, and she fares even worse
under the teachings of several other Oriental religions.
Science, not religion,
really emancipated woman; it was the modern factory which
largely set her free from the confines of the home. Man's
physical abilities became no longer a vital essential in the
new maintenance mechanism; science so changed the conditions
of living that man power was no longer so superior to woman
power.
These changes have tended
toward woman's liberation from domestic slavery and have
brought about such a modification of her status that she now
enjoys a degree of personal liberty and sex determination
that practically equals man's. Once a woman's value
consisted in her food-producing ability, but invention and
wealth have enabled her to create a new world in which to
function--spheres of grace and charm. Thus has industry won
its unconscious and unintended fight for woman's social and
economic emancipation. And again has evolution succeeded in
doing what even revelation failed to accomplish.
The reaction of
enlightened peoples from the inequitable mores governing
woman's place in society has indeed been pendulumlike in its
extremeness. Among industrialized races she has received
almost all rights and enjoys exemption from many
obligations, such as military service. Every easement of the
struggle for existence has redounded to the liberation of
woman, and she has directly benefited from every advance
toward monogamy. The weaker always makes disproportionate
gains in every adjustment of the mores in the progressive
evolution of society.
In the ideals of pair
marriage, woman has finally won recognition, dignity,
independence, equality, and education; but will she prove
worthy of all this new and unprecedented accomplishment?
Will modern woman respond to this great achievement of
social liberation with idleness, indifference, barrenness,
and infidelity? Today, in the twentieth century, woman is
undergoing the crucial test of her long world existence!
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Woman is man's equal partner
in race reproduction, hence just as important in the
unfolding of racial evolution; therefore has evolution
increasingly worked toward the realization of women's
rights. But women's rights are by no means men's rights.
Woman cannot thrive on man's rights any more than man can
prosper on woman's rights.
Each sex has its own
distinctive sphere of existence, together with its own
rights within that sphere. If woman aspires literally to
enjoy all of man's rights, then, sooner or later, pitiless
and emotionless competition will certainly replace that
chivalry and special consideration which many women now
enjoy, and which they have so recently won from men.
Civilization never can
obliterate the behavior gulf between the sexes. From age to
age the mores change, but instinct never. Innate maternal
affection will never permit emancipated woman to become
man's serious rival in industry. Forever each sex will
remain supreme in its own domain, domains determined by
biologic differentiation and by mental dissimilarity.
Each sex will always have
its own special sphere, albeit they will ever and anon
overlap. Only socially will men and women compete on equal
terms.
6. THE
PARTNERSHIP OF MAN AND WOMAN
The reproductive urge
unfailingly brings men and women together for
self-perpetuation but, alone, does not insure their
remaining together in mutual co-operation--the founding of a
home.
Every successful human
institution embraces antagonisms of personal interest which
have been adjusted to practical working harmony, and
homemaking is no exception. Marriage, the basis of home
building, is the highest manifestation of that antagonistic
co-operation which so often characterizes the contacts of
nature and society. The conflict is inevitable. Mating is
inherent; it is natural. But marriage is not biologic; it is
sociologic. Passion insures that man and woman will come
together, but the weaker parental instinct and the social
mores hold them together.
Male and female are,
practically regarded, two distinct varieties of the same
species living in close and intimate association. Their
viewpoints and entire life reactions are essentially
different; they are wholly incapable of full and real
comprehension of each other. Complete understanding between
the sexes is not attainable.
Women seem to have more
intuition than men, but they also appear to be somewhat less
logical. Woman, however, has always been the moral
standard-bearer and the spiritual leader of mankind. The
hand that rocks the cradle still fraternizes with destiny.
The differences of nature,
reaction, viewpoint, and thinking between men and women, far
from occasioning concern, should be regarded as highly
beneficial to mankind, both individually and collectively.
Many orders of universe creatures are created in dual phases
of personality manifestation. Among mortals, Material Sons,
and midsoniters, this difference is described as male and
female; among seraphim, cherubim, and Morontia Companions,
it has been denominated positive or aggressive and negative
or retiring. Such dual associations greatly multiply
versatility and overcome inherent limitations, even as do
certain triune associations in the Paradise-Havona system.
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Men and women need each other
in their morontial and spiritual as well as in their mortal
careers. The differences in viewpoint between male and
female persist even beyond the first life and throughout the
local and superuniverse ascensions. And even in Havona, the
pilgrims who were once men and women will still be aiding
each other in the Paradise ascent. Never, even in the Corps
of the Finality, will the creature metamorphose so far as to
obliterate the personality trends that humans call male and
female; always will these two basic variations of humankind
continue to intrigue, stimulate, encourage, and assist each
other; always will they be mutually dependent on
co-operation in the solution of perplexing universe problems
and in the overcoming of manifold cosmic difficulties.
While the sexes never can
hope fully to understand each other, they are effectively
complementary, and though co-operation is often more or less
personally antagonistic, it is capable of maintaining and
reproducing society. Marriage is an institution designed to
compose sex differences, meanwhile effecting the
continuation of civilization and insuring the reproduction
of the race.
Marriage is the mother of
all human institutions, for it leads directly to home
founding and home maintenance, which is the structural basis
of society. The family is vitally linked to the mechanism of
self-maintenance; it is the sole hope of race perpetuation
under the mores of civilization, while at the same time it
most effectively provides certain highly satisfactory forms
of self-gratification. The family is man's greatest purely
human achievement, combining as it does the evolution of the
biologic relations of male and female with the social
relations of husband and wife.
7. THE IDEALS OF
FAMILY LIFE
Sex mating is instinctive,
children are the natural result, and the family thus
automatically comes into existence. As are the families of
the race or nation, so is its society. If the families are
good, the society is likewise good. The great cultural
stability of the Jewish and of the Chinese peoples lies in
the strength of their family groups.
Woman's instinct to love
and care for children conspired to make her the interested
party in promoting marriage and primitive family life. Man
was only forced into home building by the pressure of the
later mores and social conventions; he was slow to take an
interest in the establishment of marriage and home because
the sex act imposes no biologic consequences upon him.
Sex association is
natural, but marriage is social and has always been
regulated by the mores. The mores (religious, moral, and
ethical), together with property, pride, and chivalry,
stabilize the institutions of marriage and family. Whenever
the mores fluctuate, there is fluctuation in the stability
of the home-marriage institution. Marriage is now passing
out of the property stage into the personal era. Formerly
man protected woman because she was his chattel, and she
obeyed for the same reason. Regardless of its merits this
system did provide stability. Now, woman is no longer
regarded as property, and new mores are emerging designed to
stabilize the marriage-home institution:
1. The new role of
religion--the teaching that parental experience is
essential, the idea of procreating cosmic citizens, the
enlarged understanding of the privilege of
procreation--giving sons to the Father.
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2. The new role of
science--procreation is becoming more and more voluntary,
subject to man's control. In ancient times lack of
understanding insured the appearance of children in the
absence of all desire therefor.
3. The new function of
pleasure lures--this introduces a new factor into racial
survival; ancient man exposed undesired children to die;
moderns refuse to bear them.
4. The enhancement of
parental instinct. Each generation now tends to eliminate
from the reproductive stream of the race those individuals
in whom parental instinct is insufficiently strong to insure
the procreation of children, the prospective parents of the
next generation.
But the home as an
institution, a partnership between one man and one woman,
dates more specifically from the days of Dalamatia, about
one-half million years ago, the monogamous practices of
Andon and his immediate descendants having been abandoned
long before. Family life, however, was not much to boast of
before the days of the Nodites and the later Adamites. Adam
and Eve exerted a lasting influence on all mankind; for the
first time in the history of the world men and women were
observed working side by side in the Garden. The Edenic
ideal, the whole family as gardeners, was a new idea on
Urantia.
The early family embraced
a related working group, including the slaves, all living in
one dwelling. Marriage and family life have not always been
identical but have of necessity been closely associated.
Woman always wanted the individual family, and eventually
she had her way.
Love of offspring is
almost universal and is of distinct survival value. The
ancients always sacrificed the mother's interests for the
welfare of the child; an Eskimo mother even yet licks her
baby in lieu of washing. But primitive mothers only
nourished and cared for their children when very young; like
the animals, they discarded them as soon as they grew up.
Enduring and continuous human associations have never been
founded on biologic affection alone. The animals love their
children; man--civilized man--loves his children's children.
The higher the civilization, the greater the joy of parents
in the children's advancement and success; thus the new and
higher realization of name pride comes into
existence.
The large families among
ancient peoples were not necessarily affectional. Many
children were desired because:
1. They were valuable as
laborers.
2. They were old-age
insurance.
3. Daughters were salable.
4. Family pride required
extension of name.
5. Sons afforded
protection and defense.
6. Ghost fear produced a
dread of being alone.
7. Certain religions
required offspring.
Ancestor worshipers view
the failure to have sons as the supreme calamity for all
time and eternity. They desire above all else to have sons
to officiate in the post-mortem feasts, to offer the
required sacrifices for the ghost's progress through
spiritland.
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Among ancient savages,
discipline of children was begun very early; and the child
early realized that disobedience meant failure or even death
just as it did to the animals. It is civilization's
protection of the child from the natural consequences of
foolish conduct that contributes so much to modern
insubordination.
Eskimo children thrive on
so little discipline and correction simply because they are
naturally docile little animals; the children of both the
red and the yellow men are almost equally tractable. But in
races containing Andite inheritance, children are not so
placid; these more imaginative and adventurous youths
require more training and discipline. Modern problems of
child culture are rendered increasingly difficult by:
1. The large degree of
race mixture.
2. Artificial and
superficial education.
3. Inability of the child
to gain culture by imitating parents--the parents are absent
from the family picture so much of the time.
The olden ideas of family
discipline were biologic, growing out of the realization
that parents were creators of the child's being. The
advancing ideals of family life are leading to the concept
that bringing a child into the world, instead of conferring
certain parental rights, entails the supreme responsibility
of human existence.
Civilization regards the
parents as assuming all duties, the child as having all the
rights. Respect of the child for his parents arises, not in
knowledge of the obligation implied in parental procreation,
but naturally grows as a result of the care, training, and
affection which are lovingly displayed in assisting the
child to win the battle of life. The true parent is engaged
in a continuous service-ministry which the wise child comes
to recognize and appreciate.
In the present industrial
and urban era the marriage institution is evolving along new
economic lines. Family life has become more and more costly,
while children, who used to be an asset, have become
economic liabilities. But the security of civilization
itself still rests on the growing willingness of one
generation to invest in the welfare of the next and future
generations. And any attempt to shift parental
responsibility to state or church will prove suicidal to the
welfare and advancement of civilization.
Marriage, with children
and consequent family life, is stimulative of the highest
potentials in human nature and simultaneously provides the
ideal avenue for the expression of these quickened
attributes of mortal personality. The family provides for
the biologic perpetuation of the human species. The home is
the natural social arena wherein the ethics of blood
brotherhood may be grasped by the growing children. The
family is the fundamental unit of fraternity in which
parents and children learn those lessons of patience,
altruism, tolerance, and forbearance which are so essential
to the realization of brotherhood among all men.
Human society would be
greatly improved if the civilized races would more generally
return to the family-council practices of the Andites. They
did not maintain the patriarchal or autocratic form of
family government. They were very brotherly and associative,
freely and frankly discussing every proposal and regulation
of a family nature. They were ideally fraternal in all their
family
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government. In an ideal
family filial and parental affection are both augmented by
fraternal devotion.
Family life is the
progenitor of true morality, the ancestor of the
consciousness of loyalty to duty. The enforced associations
of family life stabilize personality and stimulate its
growth through the compulsion of necessitous adjustment to
other and diverse personalities. But even more, a true
family--a good family--reveals to the parental procreators
the attitude of the Creator to his children, while at the
same time such true parents portray to their children the
first of a long series of ascending disclosures of the love
of the Paradise parent of all universe children.
8. DANGERS OF
SELF-GRATIFICATION
The great threat against
family life is the menacing rising tide of
self-gratification, the modern pleasure mania. The prime
incentive to marriage used to be economic; sex attraction
was secondary. Marriage, founded on self-maintenance, led to
self-perpetuation and concomitantly provided one of the most
desirable forms of self-gratification. It is the only
institution of human society which embraces all three of the
great incentives for living.
Originally, property was
the basic institution of self-maintenance, while marriage
functioned as the unique institution of self-perpetuation.
Although food satisfaction, play, and humor, along with
periodic sex indulgence, were means of self-gratification,
it remains a fact that the evolving mores have failed to
build any distinct institution of self-gratification. And it
is due to this failure to evolve specialized techniques of
pleasurable enjoyment that all human institutions are so
completely shot through with this pleasure pursuit. Property
accumulation is becoming an instrument for augmenting all
forms of self-gratification, while marriage is often viewed
only as a means of pleasure. And this overindulgence, this
widely spread pleasure mania, now constitutes the greatest
threat that has ever been leveled at the social evolutionary
institution of family life, the home.
The violet race introduced
a new and only imperfectly realized characteristic into the
experience of humankind--the play instinct coupled with the
sense of humor. It was there in measure in the Sangiks and
Andonites, but the Adamic strain elevated this primitive
propensity into the potential of pleasure, a new and
glorified form of self-gratification. The basic type of
self-gratification, aside from appeasing hunger, is sex
gratification, and this form of sensual pleasure was
enormously heightened by the blending of the Sangiks and the
Andites.
There is real danger in
the combination of restlessness, curiosity, adventure, and
pleasure-abandon characteristic of the post-Andite races.
The hunger of the soul cannot be satisfied with physical
pleasures; the love of home and children is not augmented by
the unwise pursuit of pleasure. Though you exhaust the
resources of art, color, sound, rhythm, music, and adornment
of person, you cannot hope thereby to elevate the soul or to
nourish the spirit. Vanity and fashion cannot minister to
home building and child culture; pride and rivalry are
powerless to enhance the survival qualities of succeeding
generations.
Advancing celestial beings
all enjoy rest and the ministry of the reversion directors.
All efforts to obtain wholesome diversion and to engage in
uplifting play are sound; refreshing sleep, rest,
recreation, and all pastimes which prevent the boredom of
monotony are worth while. Competitive games, storytelling,
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and even the taste of good
food may serve as forms of self-gratification. (When you use
salt to savor food, pause to consider that, for almost a
million years, man could obtain salt only by dipping his
food in ashes.)
Let man enjoy himself; let
the human race find pleasure in a thousand and one ways; let
evolutionary mankind explore all forms of legitimate
self-gratification, the fruits of the long upward biologic
struggle. Man has well earned some of his present-day joys
and pleasures. But look you well to the goal of destiny!
Pleasures are indeed suicidal if they succeed in destroying
property, which has become the institution of
self-maintenance; and self-gratifications have indeed cost a
fatal price if they bring about the collapse of marriage,
the decadence of family life, and the destruction of the
home--man's supreme evolutionary acquirement and
civilization's only hope of survival.
[Presented by the Chief of
Seraphim stationed on Urantia.] |