Joint family

“ 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." ”

“ The primitive weak sense of union between husband, wife, and children gradually grew into a strong bond of association, whose strength was added to by the possession of a separate family property, which increased in value with the development of society. Thus in the heart of the old vague social group there grew up intimately associated family groups of increasing size and importance. ”

“ In time, however, through the marriage of the daughters—for in savage life the young men usually roam off and take wives elsewhere, while the young women stay at home—instead of the original single family, we have the grown daughters, with their husbands, living still with their parents and rearing children, thus forming a group of families, closely united by kinship. ”

“ Without this easy, natural spontaneous confidence, the family union is like a rope of sand, that will fall to pieces and disappear at the first touch of any thing that can attract and draw off its loose and unbound particles. ”

“ For if the grandchildren of the first pair, being now able to choose their cousins for wives, married their sisters, then it would no longer be only two but three relationships that were held by one man, while each of these relationships ought to have been held by a separate individual, so as to bind together by family affection a larger number. ”

“ Family ties have their own particular sancity, and the marriage relation, its omnipotent, heaven-inspiring, all-embracing love; but friendship, independent of family ties, recognizing no external bond of union,—the spontaneous out-gushing of kindred spirits towards each other, breathes in an atmosphere peculiarly its own. ”

“ And for such a view there is this to be said: that our family system does unquestionably take the natural bond between members of the same family, which, like all natural bonds, is not too tight to be borne, and superimposes on it a painful burden of forced, inculcated, suggested, and altogether unnecessary affection and responsibility which we should do well to get rid of by making relatives as independent of one another as possible. ”

“ It is hardly conceivable that in any society, however primitive, there were not some real families—even when custom ran otherwise—in which marriage meant love and kindness and the mutual sharing of responsibilities. And these families, today as always, are the creators and preservers of the spiritual gains of the human race. It has been beautifully said of the family in such a form, that "it is greater than love itself, for it includes, ennobles, makes permanent, all that is best in love. ”

“ She has great control of the terms on which he is accepted, and she and her kin can drive him away again, if they see fit. The children will be hers and will remain with her. The property will remain hers, while her husband must abandon his property when he comes to her. The next male friend of a woman will be her brother, not her husband, and the next male guardian of a child will be his mother's brother, not his father. Words of relationship, address, etc., must all conform to the fundamental notion which rules the family. ”

“ It seems clear, then, that they constitute his family on earth, as the angels arc of his family in bliss. Can there be shown, then, why the same affection and interest in each other of the family on earth, should not exist as it does in the family in heaven? It is regarded as a very unhappy state where divisions exist in families; and we view it as truly deplorable where there are alienations and separations, and every virtuous and order-loving man regards it in that light. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every relationship recognized under the system is thus explained from the nature of the consanguine family, founded upon the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, own and collateral, in a group. Relationships on the father’s side are followed as near as the parentage of children could be known, probable fathers being treated as actual fathers. Relationships on the mother’s side are determined by the principle of affinity, step-children being regarded as actual children. ”

“ Marriage converts an attachment between man and woman into a deliberate, permanent, responsible, intimate union for a common end of mutual good. Modern society requires that the husband and wife contemplate lifelong companionship, and the affection between husband and wife is enriched by the relation of parents to the children which are their care. The end of the family is not economic profit but mutual aid and the continuance and progress of the race."—Professor Tufts, in Ethics, by Dewey and Tufts. ”

“ Books on filial piety and the domestic relations recommend sons not to leave their parents when married, but to live together lovingly and harmoniously as one family. This theory is carried out in practice to some extent, in most instances. In the division of property some regard is had to primogeniture, but different sons share nearly equally. The eldest simply has a somewhat larger portion and certain household relics and valuables. ”

“ If we examine our terms of relationship, we find that those applied to individual persons and those used in a narrow and well-defined sense are just those in which the family is intimately concerned. The terms father, mother, husband and wife, brother and sister, are limited to members of the family of the speaker, and the terms father-, mother-, brother-, and sister-in-law to the members of the family of the wife or husband in the same narrowly restricted sense. ”

“ The home is the family, to which all the members should belong in a sense far more spiritual than the average. The truly mated couple belong to the family forever and to the children, until the latter marry and make families of their own. ”

“ We have only one term used with anything approaching the wide connotation of classificatory terms of relationship, and this term is used for a group of relatives who have as their chief feature in common that they are altogether outside the proper circle of the family and have no social obligations or privileges. They are as eligible for marriage as any other members of the community, and only in the very special cases I considered in the first lecture are they brought into any kind of legal relation. ”

“ At a later stage of human development, when the foundations of society were more securely settled, circumstances seem to have permitted something in the nature of a relaxation of the restrictions on family ties and family affections, the exogamic rules becoming less strict or less far-reaching and the family becoming more firmly knit together ”

“ Thus the family circular, once a month, goes from each extreme to all the members of a widely-dispersed family, and each member becomes a sharer in the joys, sorrows, plans, and pursuits of all the rest. ”

“ Now if we consider that one or more brothers may each become the husband of separate wives by virtue of having each paid a dower, and that younger brothers as they grow to age of maturity, and other brothers as they become widowed, may each either take separate wives or purchase shares in those already in the family, we can at once understand that any degree of complication in perfectly lawful wedded life may be met with, from the sample of the single man living with a single wife to that of the group of relatives married to a group of wives. ”

“ In our society the meal unites the members of the family; but the sacrificial repast has nothing to do with the family. Kinship is older than family life; the oldest families known to us regularly comprised persons who belonged to various bonds of kinship. The men married women of strange clans and the children inherited the clan of the mother ”

“ He's even taken to adopting people into his family so that they can help him. In almost every city in the world now, he has an adopted brother or sister or relative of some sort, and sometimes children not much bigger than you, ask to be counted as members of his family. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Page 330 "Again, the family system gives too much power to relatives and leads to disagreeable interference. In the case of a marriage being proposed between family A and family B, the families related to A or B who will be brought into closer connection by the marriage may object. ”

“ In very small communities the family life is deepened and intensified by isolation. Families intermarry, and it comes to be thought a scandal that any one should marry out of the clan. The result is seen in a certain rough loyalty of all who are so connected to one another, in a storing-up of family traditions, and in an enhanced self-respect. ”

“ The monogamous family is distinguished from the pairing family by the far greater durability of wedlock, which can no longer be dissolved at the pleasure of either party. As a rule, it is only the man who can still dissolve it and cast off his wife. ”

“ In considering these literate definitions, we can see that they apply to the situation of the current traditional family as well, in which father and mother both work, in which a child may live with and be cared for by a parent's second or third spouse, in which distance from or lack of blood relations calls for ad hoc relatives. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Or rather not the proposal too singular to be forgotten? for all wives and children were to be in common, to the intent that no one should ever know his own child, but they were to imagine that they were all one family; those who were within a suitable limit of age were to be brothers and sisters, those who were of an elder generation parents and grandparents, and those of a younger children and grandchildren. ”

“ Perhaps when the work has been thus lightened and made less coarse, families may find "help," in the true sense, among their relatives, or others in need of a home, who would be members of the family circle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the relations implied in the names husband and wife, [228] father and mother, parents and children, brothers and sisters, we have the truth of the family. We know the family and can only know the family through these relations. Take the relations away, and you take the family away. There cannot be a husband without a wife, a father without a mother, parents without children, and children without a father and a mother. Abiding in these relations, which make up the truth of the family, wrapt up with them and growing out of them, are the laws of right which the will is to obey. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of the various associative links which we have enumerated as being those of most frequent occurrence—mental or physical characteristics, age, circumstances of life, past history, family relationship etc., the last named is apt to play an especially important part in cases of arrested or regressive development. The displacement of love from parent to brother or sister may probably, as we have seen, be regarded as a Displacement depending on family relationship
Brother and sister normal transitory phase. ”

“ On the other hand, it is perhaps necessary to emphasise the advantages to be derived from the formation, by each individual member of the family, of his own friendships and companionships as distinct from those which are, so to speak, found for him by his family. Thus, it is far from desirable that members of the same family should always accompany one another to social gatherings, places of entertainment or instruction, or on visits to friends. ”

“ Fitness of circumstances, means, and age should be also considered. Am I able to support a family? Can I discharge the duties of a household? Where there is ignorance of household duties, indolence, the want of any visible means of supporting a family, no trade, no education, no energy, and no prospects, there is no reason to think there can be a proper marriage. Thus, then, mutual love, adaptation of character, of means, of circumstances, of position, and of age, should be considered, in the formation of a marriage alliance. ”