Family conflict

“ As far as possible the family regulates its affairs within itself without appealing to the community and thus subjecting itself to gossip. Situations arising within the family where members are not in agreement, where a conflict of wishes is involved, are defined through argument, ordering and forbidding, remonstrance, reproof, entreaty, sulking, tears, and beatings. But as a last resort a member of a family may provoke gossip, appeal to the community. In case No. 32 the woman defines the situation to her deserting husband publicly. ”

“ At home there was ever some scene of dispute, or unkindness, to call forth the stern look, or the harsh command of their parents—abroad, the mingled remains of vexation and self-reproach, caused by their own conduct or that of others, made them hard to be pleased—and so the cloud thickened about them, and with all outward means for being happy, loving and beloved, they were a wretched family. ”

“ After all, who is to say that either mother or daughter was right or wrong? There is but One who can read and judge their hearts! And how often does He wreak His vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time children as His instruments against their mothers, and fathers against their sons, raising up peoples against kings, and princes against peoples, sowing strife and division everywhere? ”

“ I must now return to the affairs of my wife’s family, and to my mother-in-law, who had become at length reconciled to me as a member of the family, and almost looked upon me as a son. It appears to be a kind of law in nature or society, that one individual of a family must be sacrificed, in one way or another, for the benefit of the rest. ”

“ If the principle be a right one, of course it extends to all the immediate members of one's own family. We know that the brutal passions of some of the lowest order of mankind are capable of overleaping even the natural barriers which exist between parent and child, between brother and sister. ”

“ And these conflicting passions arise where one has a right to expect peace and goodwill. The author introduces us to a divided family, and we see the husband rise against his wife, the son against his father, and the brother against the sister. ”

“ It is hardly possible to be mistaken in taking this fight to be a ceremonial, if playful, assertion of the claim of the mother's kinsfolk to the child as one of themselves, and the father's payment to be the quieting of their claim and the securing of his own position as head of his own family. ”

“ A daughter-in-law will drown or hang herself to get free from, and also to avenge, the tyranny or cruelty of her husband's mother. These acts lead at once to family feuds, which sometimes end in bloodshed; more often in money compensation; and the known risk of such contingencies operates as a wholesome check upon aggressive treatment of the weak by the strong. ”

“ To illustrate by a figure once before used in this volume—that of a divorce suit between man and wife—it is easy enough to see how the children, taking the side of the father, might charge those who took the side of the mother with disloyalty to the family, and how those taking the side of the mother might retort by saying that else, the mother was quite as much a part of the family as the father, and that those who opposed her were more disloyal to the family than themselves. ”

“ The result of this system of family life was that where the children of different mothers but of the same father discovered one another’s presence there were feuds and much fighting, especially as it was the children of the latest affection who were generally the recipients of his favour to the chagrin and anger of the less favoured children and families. ”

“ The attempt fails, but the father, who sees to what extremities his children will go, sees also that the forewoman cannot live under his roof, and that, in consequence of this attempt, all family bonds are broken. ”

“ Small table-skirmishes are put to an untimely end by mamma’s hurrying the unlucky belligerents out of sight and sound of their outraged sire, and the one Medo-Persic law of the family is at all risks to rescue the father from every inconvenience and annoyance from the children. The kind, devoted woman shuts them carefully up within her own precincts. ”

“ Does a family exist for the sake of a home, or a home for the sake of a family? I know of many instances in which the former of these suppositions is true. The father toils and wears himself out, often gambles—speculating, some call it—and not unfrequently cheats and steals outright in order to keep up his establishment. The mother works and worries, smooths her wrinkled brow to curious visitors, burdens her soul with innumerable deceits, and enslaves herself that her house and its belongings may be as good or a little better than her neighbor's. ”

“ There are very many families where father [Pg 300] and mother work together with unwearied effort to ennoble home life, but these individual efforts, these aspirations and patient endeavours, although indispensable as a foundation, are isolated and scattered; they are continually overpowered by the evil influences existing outside the family. ”

“ It must be remembered that when you take away the father and supporter of a family you leave them without the means of support; and if the mother happens to be a sick and weakly person, what is to become of them? ”

“ In the common course of human affairs families are separated, and parents removed by death; but so long as brothers and sisters live, they might, if bound by true affection, remain to be a blessing and a help to each other; and should their parents be spared to them beyond the usual period of family union, what richer harvest could they reap, what more entire fulfilment of their hopes, what reward more precious for "all their sorrows, all their cares," than to see their children happy in them, and in each other? ”

“ My Connie, you must remember this—it's a cruel law in our social life—that parents care much for their children, but children less for their parents; that the family-bonds become still looser between brothers and sisters; and that those bonds gradually become wholly loosened between uncles and aunts and nephews and nieces and cousins. Family-life may have existed in the days of the old patriarchs, who went into the wilderness with sons and daughters and herds, but it has ceased to exist in our modern days. ”

“ You consider the individual—we think only of the family."
"Why don't you take care to preserve it, then?"
"Ah, that's what we do; in spite of every aberration of the individual. And so, when we saw it was impossible that my brother and his wife should live together, we simply transferred our allegiance to the child—we constituted him the family." ”

“ Just as many aunts and uncles, and some papas and mammas, too, are occasionally criticised by those younger members of the family who are prone to be very caustic as to the mode certain burdens are borne, the weight of which has never distressed their own shoulders. And this, not from any deficiency of affection, but simply through a habit which, in the levity of our day, has become popular, and taught us to think little of the ties of parentage, and call a father a Governor. ”

“ And you see in a family—who has not seen it?—an amount of restless, anxious, watching, to try and prevent the ill-temper creeping over this one whose temper is of such importance to the whole family circle. And do we not constantly see that most unjust tyranny which the ill-tempered or ill-controlled member of the family has over the rest? ”

“ Early widowed, the young mother herself may have to earn her children's bread. Or the husband may become crippled, or an invalid, or he may turn out a drunkard and a spendthrift. In any of these circumstances, the responsibility and the burden of supporting the entire family usually falls upon the wife. ”

“ When the head of a household is taken away ere his work is done, and the wife is left alone to provide for a family of young children, the struggle is necessarily one of hardship and is attended with much of privation and trial. ”

“ The plan for the future of a fifteen-year-old boy which was made by a society for family social work was markedly modified when it was discovered that not only his father but his grandfather had been a man of violent and abusive temper, who drank habitually and neglected their family obligations. ”

“ The hostility which a parent may harbour towards his child or children from the causes we have been considering Parent-child hostility in later life will, under happy conditions of individual and family development, tend naturally to diminish as time passes and permits of adjustment to the new circumstances occasioned by the existence of the children. ”

“ Husbands and wives set one another free, they made exchanges of partners, they brought friends into their homes, who were in reality substitute husbands or wives; there were companions and secretaries and governesses and cousins who played such roles—and when the children found it out, they were in position to put pressure on their parents, a kind of informal family blackmail, good for motor-cars and fur-coats and strings of pearls, and most precious of all, the right to have your own way. ”

“ It is as an outcome from these emotions that the family exists; it is through these emotions that the most deadly wounds may be inflicted upon her morality and self-respect. In the majority of cases, if through her error, or that of others, the family is a failure, the woman of the family is a failure also. ”

“ Why should you hesitate between the claims of the social selfishness which irritates you, and the purely personal selfishness which craves satisfactions—”
“The family, monsieur—does such a thing exist? I decline to recognize as a family a knot of individuals bidden by society to divide the property after the death of father and mother, and to go their separate ways. A family means a temporary association of persons brought together by no will of their own, dissolved at once by death. ”

“ There is, however, a good deal of spurious family affection. There is the clannishness that will make a dozen brothers and sisters who quarrel furiously among themselves close up their ranks and make common cause against a brother-in-law or a sister-in-law. ”

“ For example: how often do we see whole families entirely ruined by the improper conduct of a husband or father, who, through giving way to some predominant vice, at once overwhelms the whole of his family in ruin and distress, or, at least, the female part of it, who, not being able to defend themselves, or seek redress, are liable to every misfortune. ”

“ Remedies for the Divorce Evil.—That the instability of the family and divorce, so far as it is an expression of that instability, is an evil in society is implied in all that has thus far been said concerning the origin, development, and functions of the family as an institution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nickleby stamp, your brother a dissipated wretch, and your sister a professional shop-lifter, while your husband combines the worst characteristics of the entire family—but as long as you pretend to be on speaking terms with them, stand up for them against all the rest of the world ”

“ It is simply that in such a society the government, in dealing with the family, deals with something almost as permanent and self-renewing as itself. There can be a continuous family policy, like a continuous foreign policy. In peasant countries the family fights, it may almost be said that the farm fights. ”

“ It is therefore not only necessary to the peace and tranquillity of the family that his duties should be defined as clearly as possible, but this assistance is due to him as a mark of that filial affection which should not be permitted entirely to die out, simply because the parent has voluntarily assumed a position of inferiority and subjection. ”

“ But wherever the citizen becomes insensible to the interests of his fellow-citizen, the husband will contract feelings of cold indifference to the wife, and the father of a family towards the members of his household. ”

“ Domestic Relations Courts.—When the history of cases coming before either Children's Courts or Domestic Relations Courts is studied, certain facts of social condition stand out prominently as causes for juvenile delinquency. First of all, the broken family, one in which there has been separation of father and mother, is a cause of child-neglect and consequent wrong-doing. ”

“ Chief among the evils resulting from the laxity of our divorce laws is their active warfare against society. The family, as known among us, is a creation of the church wrought out through the indissolubility and sacredness of marriage. ”

“ All men and women, whatever be their shortcomings in other directions, have this impulse, this faculty, in a degree. It takes shape in family ties: makes clumsy and unfortunate work of them in perhaps two cases out of three,--wives tormenting husbands, husbands neglecting and humiliating wives, parents maltreating and ruining children, children disobeying and grieving parents, and brothers and sisters quarrelling to the point of proverbial mention; but under all this, in spite of all this, the love is there. A great trouble or a sudden emergency will bring it out. ”

“ The family, which the fiercest blasts of the revolutionary tempest in the last century had left untouched, is, in our day, radically assailed in its two essential foundations, marriage and inheritance. ”

“ Thus the family were divided upon the education of the son, and from being often thwarted in his measures about him, the father lost his authority, and for the peace of his family winked at the faults which the good man saw it his duty to correct. ”