H

CHAPTER XX

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN FAMILY EGOISM

AND IDEALISM

USBAND and wife may be actuated by one of three contradictory motives, the motive so to treat other members of the family as to satisfy self; or impulsively to sympathize with, and seek the satisfaction of the family before that of self; or to seek the self-realization of the family with a view to its necessary contribution to the public welfare. They may be selfishly rigorous in their treatment of children; or may so pamper them that they become useless as citizens; or, regardless of the satisfaction of the moment, they may rear their children with a view to their self-development as men and women and their obligations as citizens.

Family egoism begins with the impulsive attachment of wife to husband or husband to wife or parent to child. An impulsive attachment tends to be exclusive. Such an attachment may be due to a variety of impulses, to the attraction of beauty or power, to mutual sympathy, or to intellectual compatibility. The attachment is strong because of its strong impulsive basis, and because of the intimate relation whereby each is constantly susceptible to the suggestions of the other. Hence the tendency of each is to become absorbed in the other, to the exclusion of outside interests. Each becomes partial to the fancies, whims, ideas, and attitudes of the other and the horizon of both is limited thereby. This family egoism is intensified by the rivalrous disposition, which causes each to regard the other as a part of his or her prestige outfit, to magnify the good qualities, cleverness, or other pride-causing characteristics of the other, and to ignore or deny the other's defects. Thus each magnifies the other as the centre of social suggestion for himself or herself, and thereby excludes influences outside the family that ought to exert an influence on behaviour. Each prides himself or herself on the exclusive devotion of the other to his or her beliefs, ideals, and personality, and on his or her exclusive devotion to the other.

This family egoism may be still further intensified by the absorption of parents in a child or children. In her fondness for her child, the mother is susceptible to its every cry of annoyance. It must have what it wants. The mother accepts without question her own child's account of trouble with a neighbour's child, and thus encourages the child to falsify, because it knows its falsehood will be believed. She even will conceal the moral defects of a child from the public and from herself if possible, and resents any honest intimation of such defects from teachers. Exonerated by her it comes to believe in its blamelessness and exemplary conduct. Praised by her it comes to believe in its superior brightness and courage. A natural brightness and courage may thus become a conceited cleverness and a tendency to bulldoze. The basis is laid for an egoistic character which is destined not only eventually to create another egoistic family but also to become a centre of egoistic influence in industrial or professional, and in political relations.

1

Family egoism is still further intensified by the reaction of the public indiscriminately to members of a family. This causes each member to desire all other members so to act as to "be a credit to the family." This indiscriminate reaction of the public is one of those superficial processes of social judgment which are an extension of the psychological processes of association by contiguity and by superficial resemblance of the individual mind. As these superficial processes have to be corrected by the proper training of the individual mind, so training is necessary to develop the faculty of judging each individual as such and not merely from his or her family connections. Lacking such training the tendency is for the judgments of the public to be indiscriminate. This causes one member of a family to share the credit gained by another member, as well as the blame incurred by another. Children early learn this tendency of the public. They see themselves shunned or flattered according as their family is contemned or highly regarded by the community, regardless of their own individual deserts. They see the children of a distinguished family excused for bad conduct, and extravagantly praised for any little achievement, while the children of a contemned family are unduly accused and contemned. As children grow to manhood and womanhood it becomes increasingly evident to them that the public is incapable of an analytical and strictly just estimate of the worth of the individual. For this reason the impulse is to seek to attain 1 Thorndike, The Psychology of Learning. Educational Psychology, II: 28-30.

creditable group memberships. The youth who thinks of establishing a family finds those girls attractive whose qualities, he thinks, will give his family a standing in the community; and girls are attracted to youths from the same motive. This is one reason for the importance given property considerations in marriage. After marriage the family works and strives as a unit. The egoism of each member becomes a group egoism.

The importance of property considerations in marriage is seen in the history of the American family from the beginning. These were less important when all families were poor, but essential in the motivation of the individualistic family was rivalry with other families of the community in the accumulation of property, and this rivalry affected family relations. As legal owner of the family property, the father directed the rivalry. "The father ruled his family rigorously, often harshly, priding himself on the amount of work his wife could do and the amount he could 'get out of his boys." These family relations survive to the present day. The husband does not usually acknowledge a right of the wife to a part of the family income. He does not recognize the money value of her work in the house and discuss with her how their joint earnings shall be spent for the best interests of the family. Such a relation requires an exercise of intelligence on the part of the husband and the wife. In many cases the wife is apt to be incapable of understanding and desiring such a relation because, as a school girl, she received no instruction therein, and, as a working girl, her first impulse was to spend her wages on dress and other things for herself. If not a working girl, her habitual impulse in many cases was to spend her allowance for dress or otherwise selfishly. And, when married, her first thought continues to be for self. In her childhood home she was more or less jealous of brothers or sisters lest they should receive more from the parents than she received, and her attitude to her husband, in connection with the family expenditures, continues to be one of jealousy instead of intelligent fairmindedness. She is chiefly intent on getting as much out of the family income for herself as he gets for himself. Her egoism is due to her girlhood training or lack of training, and to lack of a proper education. Public

2 Williams, An American Town, 229. See also Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, 200-210. In European communities the position of the father is much like this. See Stern, Geschichte der öffentlichen Sittlichkeit in Russland, II: 293; Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, 94, 501; Hupka, Uber Entwicklung der westgalizischen Dorfzustande, 368-371.

education does not touch these points. In just the same way the boy lacks the training necessary to convert his egoism into a capacity for intelligent behaviour in domestic relations. As a husband he insists on his sexual and property rights, and uses the latter to enforce the former, and uses his natural advantage as a wage-earner to enforce his property rights.

In the analysis of the relations of the egoistic family we find at least four different possibilities: (1) they may be both uncongenial and unsympathetic; (2) they may be congenial without being sympathetic; (3) they may be sympathetic without being congenial; (4) they may be both congenial and sympathetic. An uncongenial and unsympathetic relation is one in which both husband and wife are egoistic but egoistic in different ways, as when one is impulsively for "saving" and the other for "spending." A congenial but unsympathetic relation is one in which both are for saving or for spending but with little sympathy for one another. A sympathetic but uncongenial relation is one in which one is for saving and the other for spending but both have a strong enough imimpulse for the satisfaction of the other to control the impulse to save and the impulse to spend in a way that is fairly satisfying all around. A sympathetic and congenial relation is one in which both are either for saving or for spending and, in the one or the other, consider primarily each other's satisfaction.

3

The members of a family may be sympathetic and congenial and yet the family may be egoistic. The family sympathy may be absorbing. The intimacy of family relations intensifies the annoyance caused by conflicts of egoistic impulses, and it fosters sympathetic behaviour. In those face-to-face relations, annoyance on the faces of others is very annoying and satisfaction very pleasing. For the same reason people "don't want to have any trouble" with their neighbours. The relation is too intimate. But very much more intimate is the relation between members of the same family. Wherefore, a member of a family may surrender altruistic ideals because it annoys the egoistic members. Through following his sympathetic impulse not to annoy others he comes to find their egoism congenial and so encourages and confirms the family egoism. Thus sympathetic family relations may be so satisfying as to weaken a family's sense of obligation to the community and the nation.

The effects of family egoism are pronounced in the training of 8 Bosanquet, The Family, 250-251.

children. From their earliest years children hear their parents magnify their good qualities, because superior children raise the family standing. What shall be taught and what not taught children in the home is a good deal determined by this motive. "Parents . . . often encourage their children in their attempts to be 'exclusive' and to mimic their elders in forming secret societies, attending theatres, balls, and the like. They refuse to co-operate with teachers in their efforts to keep the high-school life simple and wholesome." Children are trained in this way until they get an exalted idea of their own importance. They are told to aim high, that the family expects great things of them, and the family sacrifices in order to train the bright boy or girl for that position of superiority in which the whole family will find satisfaction.

The egoistic family often seeks education for its children in order to make good social inferiority in some other line. Families which lack wealth superiority are apt to take a special pride in the education of their children, and those which have wealth superiority aim by a display of it to cover up deficiencies in education. Because wealth is pre-eminently the symbol of superiority wealthy families often contemptuously regard education, inferiority in that line being, in their view, more than made good by their superior wealth. Other families, not satisfied with wealth superiority, lay a great emphasis on a fashionable education. Egoistic families of the middle class seek superiority by sending their children to colleges where sons and daughters of superior families attend, in the hope that they will distinguish themselves among socially superior people and enter circles which will be a credit to the family. The teaching in some of those colleges is supervised with a view to preventing the dissemination of ideas which are contrary to the prejudices of the socially superior. An education for public welfare interests will conflict with the attitudes of the egoistic family, and the college must devote a large part of its time to correcting those attitudes. And because the student so frequently returns to the family and its influence, his or her education experiences repeated set-backs. The effectiveness of an institution of learning should increase as its trained graduates found idealistic families, which send their children to the institution.

The impulse for family superiority affects not only education but

O'Shea, Social Development and Education, 339; Lewis, Democracy's High School, 15-16.