Читать книгу Religious Education in the Family - Henry Frederick Cope - Страница 16

The family is more important than the home, just as the man is more than his clothing. The form of the home changes; the life of the family continues unchanged in its essential characteristics. The family causes the home to be. Professor Arthur J. Todd insists that the family is the basis of marriage, rather than marriage the cause of the family.3 Small groups for protection and social living would precede formal arrangements of monogamy. Westermarck concludes that it was "for the benefit of the young that male and female continued to live together."4 The importance of this consideration for us lies in the thought of the overshadowing importance of this social group which we now call the family. The family is the primary cell of society, the first unit in social organization. Our thought must balance itself between the importance of this social group, to be preserved in its integrity, and the value of the home, with its varied forms of activity and ministry, as a means of preserving and developing this group, the family.

One hears today many pessimistic utterances regarding the modern home. Some even tell us that it is doomed to become extinct. Without doubt great economic changes in society are producing profound changes in the organization and character of the home. But the home has always been subject to such changes; the factor which we need to watch with greater care is the family; the former is but the shell of the latter.

The character of each home will depend largely on the economic condition of those who dwell in it. The homes of every age will reflect the social conditions of that age. The picture in historical romances of the home of the mediaeval period, where the factory, or shop, joined the dining-room, where the apprentices ate and roomed in the home, where one might be compelled to furnish and provision his home literally as his castle for defense, presents a marked difference to the home of this century tending to syndicate all its labors with all the other homes of the community. Since the home is simply the organization and mechanism of the family life, it is most susceptible to material and social changes. It varies as do the fashions of men.

Much that we assume to be detrimental to the life of the home is simply due to the fact that in the evolution of society the family, as it were, puts on a new suit of clothes, adopts new forms of organization to meet the changing external conditions.