=The Monogamic Family Justifies Itself by Social Usefulness.=--In the
first place, one must accept the fact that it is presumptive evidence
of the continued worth and value of any inherited institution if it
can be proved that it has served vital social needs which still
operate and that no other existing institution is able or ready to
take its place for the special social service which it was designed to
render. To the present writer it seems clear that the monogamic family
holds its title clear to social preservation on both these points. The
family preceded individualistic marriage as we know it and was
developed for the purpose of giving to oncoming generations a share in
the race-life, whatever the ideals concerning that race-life may have
been at any period of social order. Even in its present undeveloped
form, with its cramping limitations of past autocracy and with its
crude attempts at an as yet half-understood democracy, we may well
count the private monogamic family as a priceless inheritance and work
toward its better organization and larger service to social life. No
other institution yet developed has shown in history or now shows in
present life a worthy substitute for its functioning in child-care and
child-development. Many also believe that no form of sex-association
secures such possibilities of moral discipline and personal
satisfaction as does the guarded relationship of monogamic marriage.
=The Inherited Family Order Demands New Social Adjustments.=--There
are, therefore, no reasons for welcoming the decline of the private
family. There are many that demand imperatively some adjustments in
inner comradeship and in mechanical arrangements surrounding the
household, in order to hold firm its spiritual values during changes
in social conditions. How far these changes of detail may go or what
will be the end of some present clearly outlined tendencies no one can
prophesy. The duty of the hour is, however, to set this treasure of
social inheritance in a clear light; to show its actual and potential
social value as at present perceived; and to try by all simple
measures open to our intelligence to aid in its evolution toward a
more perfect expression of the love of man and woman each for the
other and of the protection and care of both for the children of that
love. The basic test of all proposed changes in any inherited
institution is from henceforward, we must believe, that which inheres
in the spiritual essence of democracy. What is that essence of
democracy which must be applied as test within the family, as within
the state and within the industrial order? It is the fundamental
belief in the worth and dignity of every human being and the equal
right of each and all to personality. No man, as in the older days,
must be obliged to be husband and father, but may choose, if he deems
it essential to his own being, to remain in a solitary path outside
the current of the generations. No woman must be obliged to live
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