Marriage and Family Life!
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While the sexes never can hope fully to understand each other, they are effectually complementary; and though their co-operation is often more or less personally antagonistic, such co-operation is still 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. It is also the mother of all human institutions, for it leads directly to home founding and home maintenance — which is the structural basis of society.
Home building is basically a sociologic institution; and should therefore be the center and essence of all educational effort.
Marriage — the basis of home building, is the highest (human achievement) manifestation of that antagonistic co-operation which so often characterizes the contacts of nature and society. The conflict is inevitable — for mating is inherent (it is natural), but marriage is not biologic (it is sociologic).
Every successful human institution embraces antagonisms of personal interest which have been adjusted to practical working harmony; and homemaking-the rearing of offspring — is no exception! The reproductive urge unfailingly brings men and women together for self-perpetuation, but it alone does not insure their remaining together in mutual cooperation — the founding of a home.
Sex mating is instinctive, children are the natural result, and thus the family automatically comes into existence.
Individuals are very temporary as planetary factors. Only families are continuing agencies in social evolution; for families are the channel through which the river of culture and knowledge flows from one generation to another. The family is thus 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. And thus, as are the families of a race or nation, so is its society; the society being the aggregated structure of family units. If therefore the families are good, the society is likewise good.
Passion insures that man and woman will come together, but the weaker parental instinct and the social mores hold them together.
The mores: religious, moral, and ethical, together with property, pride, and chivalry, stabilize the institutions of marriage and family. Whenever the mores fluctuate, so does the stability of the home marriage institution fluctuate. 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.
Monogamy has always been, now is, and forever will be the idealistic goal of all human sex evolution; and is the yardstick by which the advance of social evolution is measured-as it is distinguished from purely biologic evolution.
Marriage is now (on earth) 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; and this system did provide stability — regardless of its merits. Now a woman is no longer regarded as property, thus the following new mores are emerging, designed to stabilize the marriage-home institution:
- The New Role of Religion — the teaching that parental experience is essential. The idea of procreating cosmic citizens or (you) giving sons to God; the enlarged understanding of the privilege of procreation.
- The New Role of Science — procreation becoming more and more voluntary; becoming subject to our control.
- The New Function of Pleasure Lures — introducing a new factor into racial survival. Ancient man exposed undesired children to die; modern man refuses to bear them.
- The Enhancement of Parental Instinct! Each new generation tending 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.
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 — giving sons to God!
Civilization regards the parents as assuming all duties; the child as having all the rights.
In our 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. For any attempt to shift parental responsibility to state or church will prove suicidal to the welfare and advancement of civilization.
Modern problems of child culture are rendered increasingly difficult by:
1. the large degree of race mixture,
2. artificial and superficial education, and
3. the inability of the child to gain culture by imitating parents — for the parents are absent from the family picture so much of the time.
The true parent is engaged in a continuous service-ministry which the wise child comes to recognize and appreciate.
Respect of the child for his parents arises not in knowledge of the obligation, nor 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 family provides for the biologic perpetuations of the human species. The home is the natural social arena wherein the ethics of blood brotherhood may be grasped by the growing children.
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 quicken attributes of mortal personality.
In an ideal family, filial and parental affection are both augmented by fraternal devotion.
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 our civilized races would more generally return to the family-council of olden year; for 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 thus ideally fraternal in all their family government.
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 God — the Paradise Parent of all personalities!
Jesus stated, when in discussion with his apostles as to the fundamental characteristics of family life, and their application to the relationship existing between God and His child, that a true family is founded on the following seven facts:
- The Fact of The fact of the relationship of nature and the phenomena of mortal likeness are bound up in the family. Children inherit certain parental traits; they take origin in the parents, and their personality existence depends on the act of the parent. The relationship of father and child is inherent in all nature, and pervades all living existences.
- Security and Pleasure. True fathers take great pleasure in providing for the needs of their children. Many fathers are not content with supplying the mere wants of their children, but also enjoy making provision for their pleasures too.
- Education and Training. Wise fathers carefully plan for the education and adequate training of their sons and daughters. When young, they are prepared for the greater responsibilities of their later life.
- Discipline and Restraint. Farseeing fathers also make provision for the necessary discipline, guidance, correction, and sometimes restraint of their young and immature offspring.
- Companionship and Loyalty. The affectionate father holds intimate and loving intercourse with his Always is his ear open to their petitions; he is ever ready to share their hardships and assist them over their difficulties. The wise father is supremely interested in the progressive welfare of his children.
- Love and Mercy. A compassionate father is freely forgiving; fathers do not hold vengeful memories against their children. Fathers are not like judges, enemies, or creditors. Real families are built upon tolerance, patience, and forgiveness.
- Provision for the Future. Death terminates an individual’s life — but not necessarily the family’s life. The family continues from one generation to another. Death only ends one generation — to mark the beginning of thus temporal fathers like to leave an inheritance for their sons!
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