solely to serve a family. She, too, has right to self-development in
some chosen way. No married couple must be forced to add to the
children already here; they may justly be protected in living and
working together in some comradeship that has no family limitations
save those of mutual loyalty and mutual service. No child is to be
justly held so much under family control as to have his nature stifled
or warped, and no child shall be made a pecuniary asset to the family
regardless of his own needs. No family autonomy is henceforth to be
secured by fiat of law enthroning one "head" as the legal despot or
economic ruler. The family must be democratized in that sense in which
each individual within its bond shall be sustained in seeking and in
maintaining the conditions of personality. No one human being to live
solely for others' service or to have his or her value estimated in
terms of contribution to other lives, but all to seek the utmost
perfection of individual life as a contribution to the common life;
this is the democratic ideal.
=The Family as an Aid to Spiritual Democracy.=--There seems to be no
other inherited institution in which this spiritual essence of
democracy can be so clearly and so well realized as it may be and
to-day often is in the private monogamic family. The permanent and
successful family offers a unique centre of personal development at
the heart of all other social groups. Founded as it is in selective
affection, and in aim at least permanently secure, it offers a refuge
in every distress and a help in every trouble of each of its members.
There was never a time when such a mutual resistance of a small and
intimate group to the complex pressure of the world upon each
individual life was more sorely needed. The confusing social currents
of this changing era set free from ancient moorings many who can find
no clear chart for newer voyaging in thought and action. These need
what the family more than any other inherited institution can still
give--something of the simplicity of the blood bond and something of
the strength of clan membership, and more of the partial affection
which sets each personality in its best light and gives each a chance
to better its own world achievement in the appreciation of its
dearest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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