Family council

“ In France, when the family fortune and the family honour are being imperilled by a member, a family council can be called, and can invoke the aid of the law to limit the powers of the offending individual. ”

“ Meetings of the family council are held in private, five of the members constituting a quorum. The council has power to appoint a guardian to the minor; to authorize marriage or oppose it; to audit the accounts and decide questions concerning the minor’s estate. ”

“ The Headship of the Father.—During the middle ages of our civilization and for centuries of our later past the headship of the family rested securely in the father. Now the ideal of "Two heads in council; Two beside the hearth; Two in the tangled business of the world" is working toward democratization of the family. This leads toward a legal status and an economic adjustment in which the relation of husband and wife may be equalized toward each other and toward their children. ”

“ They have a voice in the family council, but it is when mamma has already issued her dictum, and declared that such and such things shall be as she has decided it. They help to support the family establishment with the moneys which mamma declares they must contribute out of their heritage ”

“ Sons or daughters less than twenty-one years of age, who have no parents or grandparents, or only such as are in a condition which renders them incapable of giving consent, cannot marry without the consent of a family council. ”

“ The father's authority was held in veneration, and the utmost confidence reposed in guardians of his choice; but we do not find in the statutes any great development of the patria potestas. On the contrary, as in other cities, the marked characteristic of the family is their doing everything in common. All affairs of moment are settled412 by the family council, by an assembly of relations. Both law and custom continue to follow this course. In the family, the party-circle, or clique, and the association, the community of interests is sometimes carried to extraordinary lengths. ”

“ It can only exist when there is mutual toleration and respect. Each member may be acutely conscious of the shortcomings of the other and may discuss [Pg 306] them freely, but they all tend to unite against outside criticism, and if they are aware of each other’s demerits, they are equally sharp to recognise qualities which help to their advancement. So that while one member may be the head of the family, another may be the centre of the family. It is not always either the father or the mother that exercises most influence in the family council. ”

“ Patriarchal life in this manner becomes highly developed, and the family council consisting of all its male and all its unmarried female members can exercise considerable power over all private affairs within the scope of the family circle. Thus the expulsion of an unworthy relative can be arranged, and this inherent family rule is admitted and upheld by the hierarchy. A noble thus expelled forfeits his right to bear the family badge, and also has to relinquish the crimson cloak and tunic of his order. ”

“ If any unjustifiable act has been committed against the duty of the member of family council and there is any other improper reason, the court may, ex officio or upon the application of the person concerned, his or her agent by law, or any of the relatives of the person concerned pursuant to the provisions of Article 777, or the person interested, re- place or dismiss the responsible member of family council. ”

“ If it is impossible for family council to make a decision or family council fails to make a decision, the person who is entitled to demand the convocation of family council may apply to the court for a decision which will substitute for a decision of family council. ”

“ It is the duty of this council to collect and save all moneys due to any member of the family, to direct the business of their households, and to manage the family and its affairs so completely that the members of the family are like children under the guidance of a very careful parent; and when they come to this country, and are obliged to think and act for themselves, they are no more capable of doing so than they would be if they were really children. ”

“ Earlier and Better Use of Domestic Relations Court.—Another way by which society should undertake to supply in newer and more democratic forms the supervision, the control, and the support to the individual married couple and their children, which the older collective family organization sought to supply, is an earlier and a better use of the Domestic Relations Court, or of some advisory agency to prevent the breaking up of families. ”

“ It is an attack which, however mistaken, is ostensibly, and often honestly in intent, a movement for the protection and improvement of the family order. It is the effort to turn the history of that institution back upon itself and make the family again, as in the past, a legal unity with one representative, the husband and father, through whom alone the 39wife and children have distinct relationship to society-at-large. ”

“ But now that there has been such a change, especially in the United States, in the constitution of the family, when the child has taken into its own hands that authority which was once the prerogative of the parent, it is time that we should recognize the altered condition of things, and give to the children of the present day that assistance and counsel in the government and judicious training of their parents which was once so freely offered to the latter when their offspring held a subordinate position in the family and household. ”

“ There are also those, more serious in intent, who claim that the family as an inherited institution is by virtue of its inmost quality inimical to the personal freedom of its members, and hence that the state, which is now standardizing child-care, must undertake the practical duties involved and leave both parents free to change marital relationship at will before or after the birth of children and maintain their separate bachelor or spinster freedom. ”

“ The recognition of some of these needs of every child has been more general and intelligent than that of others. For example, the equal guardianship of the father and mother, their mutual responsibility for financial support when financially competent, their equal control over the family life and their common pledge 167to the community of parental care—this has not been recognized until recently, is not now in many of the States of the Union and perhaps not perfectly in any one. ”

“ For want of agreement, or at least of understanding of disagreement before marriage, many unions are shipwrecked.
In the old days there were no questions of this nature. Every woman must have as many children as nature allowed, and when she could bear no more must give way to a new wife and a step-mother to carry on the family life; and if there were more children in a family than the father and family friends could support, they had to be cared for by the community. The modern condition is the same in the case of those below a certain grade of intelligence and self-control. ”

“ The father of a family, who represents not only his own but also the interests of his wife and children, ought indeed to have a greater influence and a more decisive vote in a commonwealth, than the citizen who represents only his own interests. ”

“ And if at any time after they have become members of the association, the father or mother of a family should die or be otherwise separated from the community, and should leave their family behind, such family shall not be left orphans or destitute, but shall partake of the same rights and maintenance as before, so long as they remain in the association, as well in sickness as in health, and to such extent as their circumstances may require. ”

“ Over and over again, in books, in addresses, and by the example of the institutions which she managed herself, Mary Carpenter reiterated the lesson that if a child is to be rescued and reformed, he must be placed in a family; and that where it is necessary, for the good of society, to separate children on account of their own viciousness, or that of their parents, from their own homes, the institutions receiving them should be based on the family ideal so far as possible. ”

“ Children when they come swell the number, and thus we see the beginnings of complex social relations of subordination in the family itself. It involves three such distinct relations, that of husband and wife, that of parent and child, that of master and man. The family passes into the village community, partly by the tendency of several families of common descent to remain together under the direction of the oldest male member of the group, partly by the association of a number of distinct families for purposes of mutual help and protection against common dangers. ”

“ How can it be just that if neither policy nor merit justify the ordinance, the State should make one family superior in perpetuity in all the social incidents of precedence and rank to thousands of other families? It is affectation to deny that social circumstances of this nature are greatly valued. They influence the life and fortunes of the men and women of the ennobled families in a high degree. ”

“ Yet who doubts that among the rich as well as among the poor such judicial protection and care of the children, whom the broken family leaves without true parental care, is needed? To give children into the hands of either parent alone is in many such cases no fitting substitute for the normal home influence. In any case, there should be an external 242conscience and an external solicitude enlisted in the interest of every child whose parents have made such a failure of marriage and the home that the divorce court is the only refuge. ”

“ It can only exist, indeed, alongside of a slavery, which excludes masses of men from the right of forming a family. Nor does the wife, under a polygamous system, though she ostensibly marries, form a household, or become the co-ordinate head of a family, at all. The husband alone is head of the family and has authority over the children. ”

“ Present Demands of Kinship.—The existing statutes make it incumbent upon any man in receipt of income beyond his own immediate needs to do what is possible to prevent his near relatives 119from requiring aid from the general public. The custom of all charitable organizations when appealed to for aid for individuals, or for a family, is to ask, "What can your relatives do for you?" The pressure upon those connected even by marriage to help relatives privately, and so reduce public relief, is often very severe. ”

“ Legal separations and divorces have come to modify the quality and logical consequences of the bond. The rights of parent over the child have been even more completely qualified. The State has come in as protector and educator of the children, taking over personal powers and responsibilities that have been essential to the family institution ever since the dawn of history. ”

“ If, in further addition, the Domestic Relations Courts were changed with the supervisory care of all children whose parents were legally separated, and the well-being of those children made the chief legal concern even if it required the complete separation from both father and mother, more fathers and mothers would hesitate to place themselves where their parental control and their parental influence would be so minimized. ”

“ Although it frequently happens that the children belong to the kin which through one of the parents or otherwise exercises the supreme authority in the family, it is far from being the case that there is invariable agreement between the principles on which kinship and authority are determined. ”

“ This week, as we acknowledge the blessings of family life and the importance of stable, loving families to the life of our Nation, let us reaffirm our commitment to policies and programs that affirm the rights of parents and protect the interests of children. Let us also resolve to ensure that our own families are communities in which each member is respected and cherished. ”

“ Instead of this, God ordains that parents shall have a home of their own, where they can [56] have their children to themselves, to train them up in love and peace and plenty. And one main support of this blessed institution of family and home is, those domestics who are hired to do the chief labours of the family. Just take away from this country all the cooks, chambermaids, waiters, washers, and house cleaners, and what would be the result? The fathers could not leave their business to do the family work, the mothers would not have strength to do it, and the family state would be broken up. ”

“ The legal right of choice of domicile goes consistently with the legal obligation to "support," The law still makes it incumbent upon a husband to give financial support to his wife commensurate with his earnings or income and still more demands of the father the full support of minor children. Naturally, if he has these obligations to meet, a man must go where he can earn sufficient to meet them. ”

“ Under family law I group marriage, divorce, guardianship, and inheritance, and I shall assume, for the purposes of my forecast, that the family will continue to exist as an institution and may even be taken more seriously by the legislators of the future than by the legislators of to-day, whose collectivist bias has taken the form of trying to abolish every relationship of the individual except his relationship to the State as citizen. ”

“ Instead of the happy-go-lucky methods of the middle and lower class Anglo-Saxon, who will turn a family of sons and daughters loose upon the world with very little thought as to their future beyond the bare necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, the French parent regards it as his duty to see that [Pg 14] each daughter is provided with a dot suitable to her position, and the Civil Code requires a parent to leave a proportion of his property to each member of his family. ”