Domesticity

“ That man who cheerfully leads a life of domesticity in the observance of those duties, succeeds in sanctifying ten generations of his ancestors above and ten generations of descendants below. A householder, duly observing the duties of domesticity, obtains an end that yields felicity equal to what occurs in the regions attained by great kings and emperors. ”

“ This brings us to the point where we must consider those characteristics that make up domesticity and homekeeping. Early impressions and the consistent teaching of literature, stage, press and religion have given to the home a semi-sacred character, which is one of the great components of the desire to marry, especially for women. The home is, in the minds of most of those who enter into marriage, a place owned, peculiarly possessed, and it offers freedom from the restraints of society and the inhibitions of ceremony and custom. ”

“ They have an elaborate civilization, etiquette, and laws of their own; are the most rigid of monotheists, are decently clothed, build secluded and tolerably comfortable houses, and lead domestic lives after their fashion, especially where they are too poor to be polygamists, though I am of opinion that the peculiar form of domesticity which we still cultivate to some extent in England, and which is largely connected with the fireside, cannot exist in a tropical country. ”

“ The husband and wife make the Home: the Home is the Gibraltar of organized civilization; and the children are Posterity, in its beginning. Thus marriage, the home, and the children are the conservators of Society. ”

“ But the beauty of a household consists in the conjunction of man and wife who are united to each other by destiny, are consociated to the gods who preside over nuptials, births, and houses; and who accord, indeed, with each other, and have all things in common as far as to their bodies, or rather their souls themselves;—who exercise a becoming authority over their house and servants, are properly solicitous about the education of their children and pay an attention to the necessaries of life, which is neither expensive nor negligent, but moderate and appropriate. ”

“ I can but look with some degree of solicitude on the effect on civilization and on the home, of palatial hotels, and great school buildings, filled with heterogeneous masses of children, in which love, solicitude and sacrifices, each for all, have little opportunity for growth and development. The family seems to be the sacred unit of civilization and morality. ”

“ CHAPTER XXIII THE FAMILY 259. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FAMILY.—From whatever angle we approach society, the family is the ultimate unit and basis. The whole fabric of civilization, whether considered from an economic, a social, or a political standpoint, depends upon the integrity of the family, and upon the wholesomeness of the home life centering about the father, mother, and children. The home is the nursery of our fundamental institutions: it is the origin of our physical and mental inheritances; it is the center of our training for private and public life ”

“ We have three main forms of the family, corresponding in general to the three main stages of human development. For savagery group marriage, for barbarism the pairing family, for civilization, monogamy supplemented by adultery and prostitution. ”

“ Thoroughly domestic in all her tastes, with a love of gardening, and a practical knowledge of all the details of country life, which tend to make the home so comfortable, her unfailing sweet temper, ready wit and espièglerie, her powers of sympathy and strong common sense, caused her to be the life and center of her large household. ”

“ And in the event of the failure of such a family business as I have described, the head of the household, however firmly convinced he might be that the true and only sphere of woman is the home, would probably do his level best to obtain for his daughter a situation and means of livelihood outside her proper sphere. ”

“ The Economic Function of the Home.—Up to this point the domestic function of the family has been under consideration. Marriage and parenthood must hold first place, because they are fundamental to the family and to the welfare of the race. But the family has an economic as well as a domestic function. ”

“ The family serves many ends, but as the primary social instincts are to mate and to eat, so the principal functions of the family are the domestic and the economic. The normal adult desires to mate, to have and rear children, and to make a home. To this his sexual and parental instincts impel him; they are nature's provision for the perpetuation of the race. The sex instinct attracts the man and the woman to each other, and marriage is the sanction of society to their union ”

“ To the most innocent situation which can be imagined on earth, to that of a husbandman, he is, for the most part, united by similarity of occupation, as well as by equality in family relationships: he is a father, a master of a family, an agriculturist, and thus perfectly a member of the community. ”

“ One solitary old labourer, a dreary bachelor, inhabited, it is true, a corner of the old roomy house, calculated for the convenient accommodation of the patriarchal family of sons and daughters, men-servants and maid-servants, of which a farmer's household consisted in former days ”

“ It is that unitive power which {46} arises out of the manifold relations and associations of domestic life. The specific influence of husband and wife, of parent and child, of brother and sister, of teacher and pupil, united and harmoniously blended, constitute the home influence. ”

“ My home will be where my husband finds it for his interest to be, and there shall I be content and happy, provided I can have sheep and cows, and flax, and spinning and weaving enough to do, that I may carry my part of the load in the way mother brought me up from childhood. ”

“ The husbandman is the economist in agriculture. He is to the farm what the husband was to the household in old times. One is tempted to say also that the husbandman is he who marries the land. American farm land has suffered dishonor and degradation, but it has known all too little the affection which could be figuratively expressed in marriage. ”

“ One further possibility of domestic evolution remains. The last component to show itself among the feelings which hold the family together, the care of parents by offspring, is the one which has most room for increase. Absent in brutes, small among primitive men, considerable among the partially civilized, and tolerably strong among the best of those around us, filial affection is a feeling that admits of much further growth, which is needed to make the cycle of domestic life complete. ”

“ What are the original forms of the human family? Did man begin by being monogamous or polygamous, but, in either case, the master of his own home and the assured central point of his family relations? ”

“ The home is more than the family dwelling; it is the seat of the family life; and the family life stands to the life of the nation in the same relation as the index to the volume, or the expression of the countenance to the feeling of the heart. ”

“ In considering deductively the connections between the forms of domestic life and the forms of social life, and in showing how these are in each type of society related to one another because jointly related to the same type of individual character, it will be convenient to deal simultaneously with the marital arrangement, the family structure, the status of women, and the status of children. ”

“ If people would consider their domestics as sisters of the great human family, differing from them only in having, for the time being, a different use to perform in society—if they would have a tender regard to their health, a reasonable regard to their convenience, a friendly interest in their characters and plans—in a word, if they would perpetually acknowledge a reciprocity of duties—we should soon cease to hear complaints of the indifference and carelessness of domestics. ”

“ The wife no longer had a choice in marriage. Bought or captured, she was no longer wooed for a companion, but was valued according to her economic worth. As population pressed, the domestication of plants followed the taming of animals, but the agricultural settlement of the family only made the woman's lot harder, for she was the burden bearer on the farm. ”

“ Husband and wife on the farm are very close partners in all that concerns their welfare. It is the ideal family life of loving co-operation. To all the members of these ideal rural and suburban homes, the sweet home interests come first. Everything circles around home and mother. ”

“ One can imagine the discord and strife there is within a household where there are several sons who are married, each bringing his wife to his parents’ home. I knew a family of grandparents, parents, and children numbering thirty-eight, all living in one modest house. ”

“ DOMESTIC RELATIONS, a term used to express the legal relations subsisting between the various units that comprise the family or domestic group. Those units which go to build up the domestic structure of modern society are parent, child, husband, wife, master and servant. ”

“ Family education. No doubt the folkways about kinship are produced in connection with views about interests, and in connection with faiths about procreation, and impressions produced by experience. The mother and children live in constant contact and intimacy. The family grows into an institution which takes its nature from the traditional and habitual behavior of its members to each other in daily life. ”

“ So, too, in those families of public men or women or in those of the directors of industry or commerce who crush out [Pg vii] the true family life by bringing home their unrelaxing business manners and trying to regulate the family as they regulate the details of a great business house—the reading world has imbibed a sympathy for the rights of the home. ”

“ As industrial conditions have changed, the household has simplified, from the mediæval affair of journeymen, apprentices, and maidens who spun and brewed to the family proper; to those who love each other and live together in ties of affection and consanguinity. ”

“ The parts of household management correspond to the persons who compose the household, and a complete household consists of slaves and freemen. Now we should begin by examining everything in its fewest possible elements; and the first and fewest possible parts of a family are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. ”

“ The sons and daughters of the family are gentlemen and ladies by birthright—and were the former to be seen at the plough, or the latter at the churn, or the wash tub, the honour of the family would be stained, and the dignity of the house degraded. ”

“ Even in a single family there is division of labour: the husband ploughs, or cuts timber; the wife cooks, manages the house, and spins or weaves; the sons hunt or tend sheep; the daughters employ themselves as milkmaids. ”

“ Many volumes have been written upon the history of marriage, or rather of the family, since, as one historian justly puts it, "marriage has its source in the family rather than the family in marriage." [2] In all these studies the influence of law, of custom, of self-interest, and of economic pressure, is shown to have molded the institution of marriage into curious shapes and forms, some grievous to be borne. ”

“ We at home were bred up to believe that good-breeding mainly consists in a certain reserve,—a cautious deference not alone for the feelings, but even the prejudices of others; that you have no right to offend your neighbor's sense of respect for fifty things that you held cheaply yourself. ”

“ A great family was a great estate. It was augmented further by sheep, goats, asses, and cattle. This numerous household, bound together by personal authority and by common fortunes, was sufficient to carry on many rude industries. ”

“ Recognizing the fact that if we are fully to understand the higher forms of the family we must trace them up from those lowest forms accompanying the lowest social state, we saw how, in a small separated group of persons old and young, held together by some kinship, there was, under the circumstances of pastoral life, an establishing of male descent, an increasing of cohesion, of subordination, of coöperation, industrial and defensive ”

“ Any effort to determine the value and obligations of the family, whether urban or rural, requires first of all a clear statement of the significant places of irritation, where at present the family is meeting strain that makes readjustment necessary. ”

“ Here we find most marked the personal affection, the intimate companionship, the community of interests, the common responsibility and care for the children, which are the characteristics of the family. The related life of the group so formed constitutes domestic life. ”

“ In the great household of Nature, the farmer stands at the door of the bread-room, and weighs to each his loaf. It is for him to say whether men shall marry or not. Early marriages and the number of births are indissolubly connected with abundance of food ”

“ He who marries is further to consider, that one of the two houses in the lot is the nest and nursery of his young, and there he is to marry and make a home for himself and bring up his children, going away from his father and mother. ”

“ If there are discovered or discoverable rules for its control and best management in the interest of the race and so in the interest of the Creator they have not yet been announced. We hear of the duty of preserving the sanctity of the home, maintaining a wife and raising a family according to the monogamic theory. ”