In this, as in so many other respects, we are approaching a higher kind of life at the cost of incidental demoralization. The modern family at its best, with its intimate sympathy and its discipline of love, is of a higher type than the family of an older _régime_. “I never,” said Thackeray, “saw people on better terms with each other, more frank, affectionate, and cordial, than the parents and the grown-up young folks in the United States. And why? Because the children were spoiled, to be sure.”[158] But where this ideal is not reached, there is apt to be a somewhat disastrous failure which makes one regret the autocratic and traditional order. Not merely is discipline lacking, but the affection which might be supposed to go with indulgence is turned to indifference, if not contempt. As a rule we love those we can look up to, those who stand for the higher ideal. In old days parents shared somewhat in that divinity with which tradition hedged the great of the earth, and might receive a reverence not dependent upon their personality; and even to-day they are likely to be better loved if they exact respect—just as an officer is better loved who enforces discipline and is not too familiar with his soldiers. Human nature needs something to look up to, and it is a pity when parents do not in part supply this need for their children. In short, the child, like the woman, helps to bear the often grievous burden of disorganization; bears it, among the well-to-do classes, in an ill-regulated life, in lack of reverence and love, in nervousness and petulance; as well as in premature and stunting labor among the poor. The opening of new careers to women and a resulting economic independence approaching that of men is another phase of “individualism” that has its worse and better aspects. In general it has, through the fuller self-expression of women, most beneficial reactions both upon family life and society at large, but creates some trouble in the way of domestic reluctance and discontent. The disposition to reject marriage altogether may be set aside as scarcely existent. The marriage rate shows little decline, though the average age is somewhat advanced. The wage-earning occupations of women are mostly of a temporary character, and the great majority of domestic servants, shop and factory girls, clerks, typewriters and teachers marry sooner or later. There is no reason to doubt that a congenial marriage continues to be the almost universal feminine ideal.