Broken Homes | Page 6

heredity and an ineffective mother,
whom he was accustomed to seeing treated with abuse and disrespect,
it was felt important to remove the boy, who showed some promise, to
surroundings where he could be under firm discipline and learn decent
standards of family life.

Feeble-mindedness, closely connected as it usually is with industrial
inefficiency in the man, bad housekeeping in the woman, and lack of
self-control in both, is of course, a potent factor in non-support and
probably also in desertion.
2. Faults in Early Training.--To low ideals of home life and of personal
obligation, which were imbibed in youth, can be traced much family
irresponsibility. It is by no means the rule, however, for children
always to follow in the footsteps of weak or vicious parents; and it is
the experience of social workers that such children, taught by
observation to avoid the faults seen in their own homes, often make
good parents themselves. Perhaps even more insidious in its effect on
later marital history is the home in which no self-control is learned. The
so-called "good homes" in which children are exposed to petting,
coddling, and overindulgence--and these homes are not confined to the
wealthy--produce adults who do not stand up to their responsibilities. A
probation officer in Philadelphia tells of the mother of a young deserter
who could not account for her son's delinquency. "He ought to be a
good boy," she complained; "I carried him up to bed myself every night
till he was eleven years old."
3. Differences in Background.--Even though both man and wife come
from good homes, if those homes are widely different in standards and
in cultural background strains may develop in later life between the
couple. Differences in race, religion and age are recognized as having a
causative relation to desertion. Miss Brandt[9] found that, in about 28
per cent of the cases where these facts were ascertained, the husband
and wife were of different nationality. "In the general population of the
United States in 1900 only 8.5 per cent was of mixed parentage, and for
New York City the proportion was less than 13 per cent.... A difference
in nationality was more than twice as frequent among the cases of
desertion as among the general population of the city where it is most
common." Miss Brandt's figures for difference of religion are less
significant, but it existed in 19 per cent of the total number of cases for
which information on this point was available. In 27 per cent of the
families where age-facts were learned, there were differences of over
six years between the two; in 15 per cent the woman was older than the

man.
Other differences which should find mention under this heading are
those that arise when the environment is changed by immigration. The
man who precedes his wife by many years in coming to America has
often outgrown her when she finally joins him, even if he has formed
no other family ties. The handicap is not wholly overcome when the
couple come to this country together, for the much greater
opportunities of the man to learn American ways may drive a wedge
between him and his wife. On the other hand it is a popular saying,
particularly among young Italian immigrants, that girls who have been
in America too long do not make good wives, that when a man wants to
marry he had better send for a girl from the old country; and these
marriages seem on the whole to turn out well.
4. Wrong Basis of Marriage.--Included here should be hasty marriages,
mercenary marriages, marriages entered into unwillingly after
pregnancy had occurred, as well as marriages where coercion was a
factor for other reasons.[10]
When there have been sex relations before marriage, unless the custom
of the community sanctions such intimacy, there are likely to develop
jealousies, quarrels, and ill feeling. "He do be always castin' it up at me,
but sure, 'twas himself was to blame" is one version of the age-old
story.
There should also be included here those irregular unions called
"common law marriages," which are still permitted in many of our
states. The protection supposed to be afforded to the woman by this
institution is mainly fictitious, as it is practically impossible to secure
conviction for bigamy if one of the marriages was of the common law
variety. A common law husband who deserts, even if he admits his
wife's legal claim upon him, does not feel morally bound; and this fact
undoubtedly plays its part in the causation of such desertions.[11]
5. Lack of Education.--More is included under this title than scanty
"book-learning." Not only the morally undisciplined child but the
mentally undisciplined youth is handicapped as spouse and parent.

Ignorance of the physical and spiritual bases of married life