REINFORCING THE HOME

Evening Star, Issue 19782, 4 February 1928, Page 2

REINFORCING THE HOME

'ls the Homo Doomed?’ On that subject we wrote, on this page, a week ago. Is the "homo worth . preserving? If so, how can it be done? That is what we want to discuss in the present article. '• » Is the home worth preserving? \Ve [( get some idea of what Nature thinks of the worth of things by the trouble she takes to produce-, and preserve them. What does she say about the family and the home? They are the oldest institutions. They are coeval with humanity itself. Science has' revealed to us in these last days the long, long stages of their evolution. The story of this, as told by writers like Fiske, Drummond, and "in the classical work of Westermurck,. is almost commonplace now, Fronr their pages and those of other writers wo learn how, through long ages, the evolution of the animal progressed till the human mother and father appeared upon the scene. After long experiment it was found at last that “ the monogamic and monandrous union was best adapted for the struggle of existence.” Then the next thing was to relate the child to the parents for the longest possible time. Most of the lower creation scarcely know their progenitors. They are born equipped for life from the very beginning. But as we ascend the scale of existence the higher need their parents’ care'longer, and when we reach the human stage we find their progeny to be the most helpless of all. This was needful if those ethical qualities—love and tenderness and sympathy and unselfishness and duty—were to be developed. At first self-preservation dictated the care of the children. Bad parents would have weak children, and so wo die out in the struggle for existence. Hence came the necessity for a fixed abode. If the children are rola'ted for a lengthy period to the parents, there must be a more or less permanent place to abide in. So emerged the home. Nature has thus set its impress on the value of the family and the home by the long, long ages that she took to prepare them and secure their permanence. The same lesson is taught by history. The nations that have the best homes survive; the others die out. The secret of the vitality of the Jew, which is the wonder of everybody, has been its home life. The history of Scotland is the history of its homes. This also explains the toughnesj and tenacity of the Chinese. It is the fashion of certain superior critics to sneer at Tennyson's ‘ldylls of the King,’ in which he traces the collapse of the Round Table ideals to the corruption of family life. A growing crowd of voices to-day are clamoring against the permanency of tli© marriage bonds, and demanding in the name of progress free life, free love. But this is progress backward. It is a reversion to the animal, the barbaric, from which man has slowly and painfully emerged. The home is the heart of a nation. “So long as its first concern is for its homes, it matters little what it seeks second or third. Long before evolution showed its scientific interest in this first social aggregate and proclaimed it the strategic point in moral progress, poetry, philosophy, and history assigned it the same great place. The one point indeed where all students of the past agree, where all prophets of the future meet, where all the sciences from biology to ethics are enthusiastically at one, is in their faith in the imperishable potentialities of this yet most simple institution.” Thus science, poetry, philosophy, history unite in affirming that the one thing which Nature has set herself to -prepare and preserve through the ages is family life and the home.

* ,* We have seen that in our time many influences are threatening to bore away the foundations of the home. The greatest problem of the present is how to counteract these influences and cooperate with Nature in its preservation. We have space to make suggestions only. We must, to begin with, retrace our steps. We must go back and study the object lesson which Nature has set us when she set about the creation of the homo. Her first business was to keep parents and children together as long as possible. So the human progeny was made the most helpless, the most dependent on its parents. The whole tendency of modern times is to lessen the period of this relationship. The children of to-day escape from parental control at the earliest possible moment. The well-meant efforts of institutions like the nursery, the kindergarten, child welfare leagues, and such like threaten to take the place of the mother and father in the culture of their children. No institution that slackens the bonds of family life works out for good in the long run. Behind this early rupture of parental relationship is the economic urge. Mothers have to go out to work to increase the family purse, and children are forced out at the earliest moment into the industrial sphere. Nations must learn that if they are to survive they must somehow eliminate this economic necessity. It may , win them the immediate battle, but it will lose them the war. If history teaches anything, it teaches that. n * * * But the parents must be worthy of the name and adequate to the responsibility which parental duties impose. To be this they must be caught early. The break-up of home life to-day is largely due to the incompetency of parents for their job. They have started home life without any knowledge of what it involves, any proper sense of the seriousness of the step they have taken. They have had no training in the moral and intellectual aspects of the business, and hardly any in the domestic and social ones. “ When a horse bos run away,” writes Stevenson, “and the two flustered people in the gig have each possessed themselves of the rein, we know the end of that conveyance\vill be the ditch. So when I see a green girl fluted and fiddled in a dancing measure into the most serious contract, and setting out upon life’s journey with ideas so monstrously divergent and foolish, I am not "surprised that some make shipwreck, but that any come to port.” Not much can be done with those who have already contracted family obligations, but steps should be taken to prepare those whose destiny it will be some <3ay. This ought to be the business of the church. It should take some definite steps to instruct its, young people as to what marriage involves, especially in its religious sanctions and requirements. At present there is nothing being done in that way, or, if there, be,, it is only of the most perfunctory character, and yet what more important work is clamoring to be §oae?j Pf the church can only

touch a minority of tlio pojnilation. But the educational curricula should he no adjusted as to put far more 'emphasis on home and family life, and give special instruction on its dignity and duty. At present home V m the part of many parents is oasrJerod humdrum and dull. All the romance and adventure are outside in the dance hall of the picture shows. And so it comes about that many wives prefer poodles to babies, or, if they have children, they give to outside pleasures and engagements the time and thought they owe to them. When Caesar taw Roman women carrying dogs in their arms be asked if they no longer bore children. When Romo reached that stage it was on the highway to extinction. * # * « We need to recover and emphasise not only the importance, but the romance, of the home. A father, after discussing with his boys the future, turned to his girl and asked her what she was going to be. With immense decision she replied: “Oh, I’m going to be a mother.” The man did a little imagining, thinking, and was silent'for a moment trying to picture the eager little lassie in that capacity. So she asked anxiously: “Don’t you think it is a good thing to be?” “Excellent,” he answered heartily. “It is one of the oldest, most honorable of professions. Mothers are people we can in nowise do without.” “That’s what I thought,” she replied in a satisfied tone. “ And that’s what I’m going to be.” Our children of to-day need to have that ideal set before them. They need to have emphasised that Nature’s supremo work was, and is, to prepare and perpetuate homes and family life. In one of his books Chesterton discusses iu his characteristic way the idea that homo life is dull and unromantic. He thinks that to he a queen within a definite area, deciding sales, holy days, purchases, etc.; to bo a bazaar providing hoots, books,.cakes, and toys; to.he an Aristotle teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene—•“ I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, hut I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it he a large career to tell other people’s children about the rule of three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it he broad to he the same thing to everyone, and nari'ow to he everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs Jones for the largeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.” It is ideas like these that are needed to redeem home life and make it the power Nature intended it to be when she spent millenniums in preparing for it. * * * * But what shall we say Nature is? It is a large word, and as vague as it is large. It is only_, in short, another name for the Power, the Person, who has brought everything into existence and determines its destiny. Long ago the old Hebrew poet hit upon a truth without -which there can be no security for home life: “Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it.” History is the vindication of that. We may have elaborate structures, richly furnished, with every convenience that science and art can secure, and yet not have homes in the real sense of that word. There was a time in the late Principal Rainy’s life when ho was the best hated man in ScotlandChurches and newspapers attacked him. But he went on his calm; u nfancorous wayWvith ii strange'-'seren-ity. One day Dr Whyte, met him and said: “ Rainy, I cannot understand you. How do you manage to keep serene like this .exposed, to all these venomous attacks?” “Whyte, I’m very happy at home,” We may haveeverything that wealth can give us, but if we have not happy homes we shall have no shelter “when leaves fall and cold winds come.”