Marriage and Family Life

84:7.1Sex mat­ing is in­stinc­tive, chil­dren are the nat­u­ral re­sult, and the fam­ily thus au­to­mat­i­cally comes into ex­is­tence. As are the fam­i­lies of the race or na­tion, so is its so­ci­ety. If the fam­i­lies are good, the so­ci­ety is like­wise good. The great cul­tural sta­bil­ity of the Jew­ish and of the Chi­nese peo­ples lies in the strength of their fam­ily groups.

84:7.2Woman’s in­stinct to love and care for chil­dren con­spired to make her the in­ter­ested party in pro­mot­ing mar­riage and prim­i­tive fam­ily life. Man was only forced into home build­ing by the pres­sure of the later mores and so­cial con­ven­tions; he was slow to take an in­ter­est in the es­tab­lish­ment of mar­riage and home be­cause the sex act im­poses no bi­o­logic con­se­quences upon him.

84:7.3Sex as­so­ci­a­tion is nat­u­ral, but mar­riage is so­cial and has al­ways been reg­u­lated by the mores. The mores (re­li­gious, moral, and eth­i­cal), to­gether with prop­erty, pride, and chivalry, sta­bi­lize the in­sti­tu­tions of mar­riage and fam­ily. When­ever the mores fluc­tu­ate, there is fluc­tu­a­tion in the sta­bil­ity of the home-mar­riage in­sti­tu­tion. Mar­riage is now pass­ing out of the prop­erty stage into the per­sonal era. For­merly man pro­tected woman be­cause she was his chat­tel, and she obeyed for the same rea­son. Re­gard­less of its mer­its this sys­tem did pro­vide sta­bil­ity. Now, woman is no longer re­garded as prop­erty, and new mores are emerg­ing de­signed to sta­bi­lize the mar­riage-home in­sti­tu­tion:

84:7.41. The new role of re­li­gion—the teach­ing that pa­ren­tal ex­pe­ri­ence is es­sen­tial, the idea of pro­cre­at­ing cos­mic cit­i­zens, the en­larged un­der­stand­ing of the priv­i­lege of pro­cre­ation—giv­ing sons to the Fa­ther.

84:7.52. The new role of sci­ence—pro­cre­ation is be­com­ing more and more vol­un­tary, sub­ject to man’s con­trol. In an­cient times lack of un­der­stand­ing in­sured the ap­pear­ance of chil­dren in the ab­sence of all de­sire there­for.

84:7.63. The new func­tion of plea­sure lures—this in­tro­duces a new fac­tor into racial sur­vival; an­cient man ex­posed un­de­sired chil­dren to die; mod­erns refuse to bear them.

84:7.74. The en­hance­ment of pa­ren­tal in­stinct—each gen­er­a­tion now tends to elim­i­nate from the re­pro­duc­tive stream of the race those in­di­vid­u­als in whom pa­ren­tal in­stinct is in­suf­fi­ciently strong to in­sure the pro­cre­ation of chil­dren, the prospec­tive par­ents of the next gen­er­a­tion.

84:7.8But the home as an in­sti­tu­tion, a part­ner­ship be­tween one man and one woman, dates more specif­i­cally from the days of Dala­ma­tia, about one-half mil­lion years ago, the monog­a­mous prac­tices of An­don and his im­me­di­ate de­scen­dants hav­ing been aban­doned long be­fore. Fam­ily life, how­ever, was not much to boast of be­fore the days of the Nod­ites and the later Adamites. Adam and Eve ex­erted a last­ing in­flu­ence on all man­kind; for the first time in the his­tory of the world men and women were ob­served work­ing side by side in the Gar­den. The Edenic ideal, the whole fam­ily as gar­den­ers, was a new idea on Uran­tia.

84:7.9The early fam­ily em­braced a re­lated work­ing group, in­clud­ing the slaves, all liv­ing in one dwell­ing. Mar­riage and fam­ily life have not al­ways been iden­ti­cal but have of ne­ces­sity been closely as­so­ci­ated. Woman al­ways wanted the in­di­vid­ual fam­ily, and even­tu­ally she had her way.

84:7.10Love of off­spring is al­most uni­ver­sal and is of dis­tinct sur­vival value. The an­cients al­ways sac­ri­ficed the mother’s in­ter­ests for the wel­fare of the child; an Es­kimo mother even yet licks her baby in lieu of wash­ing. But prim­i­tive moth­ers only nour­ished and cared for their chil­dren when very young; like the an­i­mals, they dis­carded them as soon as they grew up. En­dur­ing and con­tin­u­ous hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions have never been founded on bi­o­logic af­fec­tion alone. The an­i­mals love their chil­dren; man—civ­i­lized man—loves his chil­dren’s chil­dren. The higher the civ­i­liza­tion, the greater the joy of par­ents in the chil­dren’s ad­vance­ment and suc­cess; thus the new and higher re­al­iza­tion of name pride comes into ex­is­tence.

84:7.11The large fam­i­lies among an­cient peo­ples were not nec­es­sar­ily af­fec­tional. Many chil­dren were de­sired be­cause:

84:7.121. They were valu­able as la­bor­ers.

84:7.132. They were old-age in­sur­ance.

84:7.143. Daugh­ters were sal­able.

84:7.154. Fam­ily pride re­quired ex­ten­sion of name.

84:7.165. Sons af­forded pro­tec­tion and de­fense.

84:7.176. Ghost fear pro­duced a dread of be­ing alone.

84:7.187. Cer­tain re­li­gions re­quired off­spring.

84:7.19An­ces­tor wor­shipers view the fail­ure to have sons as the su­preme calamity for all time and eter­nity. They de­sire above all else to have sons to of­fi­ci­ate in the post-mortem feasts, to of­fer the re­quired sac­ri­fices for the ghost’s prog­ress through spir­it­land.

84:7.20Among an­cient sav­ages, dis­ci­pline of chil­dren was be­gun very early; and the child early re­al­ized that dis­obe­di­ence meant fail­ure or even death just as it did to the an­i­mals. It is civ­i­liza­tion’s pro­tec­tion of the child from the nat­u­ral con­se­quences of fool­ish con­duct that con­tributes so much to mod­ern in­sub­or­di­na­tion.

84:7.21Es­kimo chil­dren thrive on so lit­tle dis­ci­pline and cor­rec­tion sim­ply be­cause they are nat­u­rally docile lit­tle an­i­mals; the chil­dren of both the red and the yel­low men are al­most equally tractable. But in races con­tain­ing And­ite in­her­i­tance, chil­dren are not so placid; these more imag­i­na­tive and ad­ven­tur­ous youths re­quire more train­ing and dis­ci­pline. Mod­ern prob­lems of child cul­ture are ren­dered in­creas­ingly dif­fi­cult by:

84:7.221. The large de­gree of race mix­ture.

84:7.232. Ar­ti­fi­cial and su­per­fi­cial ed­u­ca­tion.

84:7.243. In­abil­ity of the child to gain cul­ture by im­i­tat­ing par­ents—the par­ents are ab­sent from the fam­ily pic­ture so much of the time.

84:7.25The olden ideas of fam­ily dis­ci­pline were bi­o­logic, grow­ing out of the re­al­iza­tion that par­ents were cre­ators of the child’s be­ing. The ad­vanc­ing ide­als of fam­ily life are lead­ing to the con­cept that bring­ing a child into the world, in­stead of con­fer­ring cer­tain pa­ren­tal rights, en­tails the su­preme re­spon­si­bil­ity of hu­man ex­is­tence.

84:7.26Civ­i­liza­tion re­gards the par­ents as as­sum­ing all du­ties, the child as hav­ing all the rights. Re­spect of the child for his par­ents arises, not in knowl­edge of the obli­ga­tion im­plied in pa­ren­tal pro­cre­ation, but nat­u­rally grows as a re­sult of the care, train­ing, and af­fec­tion which are lov­ingly dis­played in as­sist­ing the child to win the bat­tle of life. The true par­ent is en­gaged in a con­tin­u­ous ser­vice-min­istry which the wise child comes to rec­og­nize and ap­pre­ci­ate.

84:7.27In the pres­ent in­dus­trial and ur­ban era the mar­riage in­sti­tu­tion is evolv­ing along new eco­nomic lines. Fam­ily life has be­come more and more costly, while chil­dren, who used to be an as­set, have be­come eco­nomic li­a­bil­i­ties. But the se­cu­rity of civ­i­liza­tion it­self still rests on the grow­ing will­ing­ness of one gen­er­a­tion to in­vest in the wel­fare of the next and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. And any at­tempt to shift pa­ren­tal re­spon­si­bil­ity to state or church will prove sui­ci­dal to the wel­fare and ad­vance­ment of civ­i­liza­tion.

84:7.28Mar­riage, with chil­dren and con­se­quent fam­ily life, is stim­u­la­tive of the high­est po­ten­tials in hu­man na­ture and si­mul­ta­ne­ously pro­vides the ideal av­enue for the ex­pres­sion of these quick­ened at­tri­butes of mor­tal per­son­al­ity. The fam­ily pro­vides for the bi­o­logic per­pet­u­a­tion of the hu­man species. The home is the nat­u­ral so­cial arena wherein the ethics of blood broth­er­hood may be grasped by the grow­ing chil­dren. The fam­ily is the fun­da­men­tal unit of fra­ter­nity in which par­ents and chil­dren learn those lessons of pa­tience, al­tru­ism, tol­er­ance, and for­bear­ance which are so es­sen­tial to the re­al­iza­tion of broth­er­hood among all men.

84:7.29Hu­man so­ci­ety would be greatly im­proved if the civ­i­lized races would more gen­er­ally re­turn to the fam­ily-coun­cil prac­tices of the And­ites. They did not main­tain the pa­tri­ar­chal or au­to­cratic form of fam­ily gov­ern­ment. They were very broth­erly and as­so­cia­tive, freely and frankly dis­cussing ev­ery pro­posal and reg­u­la­tion of a fam­ily na­ture. They were ide­ally fra­ter­nal in all their fam­ily gov­ern­ment. In an ideal fam­ily fil­ial and pa­ren­tal af­fec­tion are both aug­mented by fra­ter­nal de­vo­tion.

84:7.30Fam­ily life is the pro­gen­i­tor of true moral­ity, the an­ces­tor of the con­scious­ness of loy­alty to duty. The en­forced as­so­ci­a­tions of fam­ily life sta­bi­lize per­son­al­ity and stim­u­late its growth through the com­pul­sion of ne­ces­si­tous ad­just­ment to other and di­verse per­son­al­i­ties. But even more, a true fam­ily—a good fam­ily—re­veals to the pa­ren­tal pro­cre­ators the at­ti­tude of the Cre­ator to his chil­dren, while at the same time such true par­ents por­tray to their chil­dren the first of a long se­ries of as­cend­ing dis­clo­sures of the love of the Par­a­dise par­ent of all uni­verse chil­dren.