=Society Now Based upon Man's Economic Leadership.=--Any study of the
needs of the family in relation to the school, especially in relation
to the tax-supported, free, and compulsory educational system, must
take account of two outstanding facts: namely, first, that the whole
arrangement of society as we have inherited its condition is based
upon the economic leadership of the husband and father in the home
partnership. This continues to be the rule even in social strata
where the sense of justice gives both parties a common purse and where
finest quality of affection and of comradeship makes it a negligible
matter which one makes the larger contribution to the united treasury.
=Women Socially Drafted for Motherhood.=--The second fact which must
have its recognition in any study of education in relation to the
family, is that no married woman is exempt from all demands of
motherhood unless some "selective draft," more delicate in its
evaluation than any we have yet evolved, shall indicate her right to
exemption, and that if marriage is to continue on anything like its
present basis commonplace women cannot have all its advantages without
paying some adequate price.
=Father-office and Mother-office Still Differ.=--We are now in the
midst of a social order in which the father-office and the
mother-office do differ essentially in their requirements in the vast
majority of families. The father-office leads directly toward
specialization and achievement in some one calling. To be a good
father is, in ordinary family conditions, not so much to give constant
personal attention to his children as to do something well which the
world wants done and will pay for and by which he may maintain and
improve the economic and social standing of his family. To "give
hostages to fortune in wife and child" may, indeed often does, hamper
a man's idealistic relation to his vocation and oblige him to work for
money when he wants to work for fame or for higher usefulness, but it
serves almost always to keep him steady to his job. For the average
mother this is not the case. Where there is a family of children more
than large enough to make good the parent's share in life's ongoing
stream, or where physical, mental, or moral peculiarities demand
special attention to one child or more, or where aged, delicate, or
incompetent members of the family circle call for special
consideration, or where the environment does not provide, or the
income cannot pay for elaborate aids to domestic comfort from without,
the average conscientious housemother must give the best of strength
and the most of time in the service of the private family for many
years of life. That is to say, getting a group of children up to adult
independence and saving the community most of the intimate duties of
care of the aged and of the weak, while it calls upon the man-head of
the family for greater activity in his special line, calls upon the
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