Broken Homes | Page 8

place before he could be found. It proved impossible to
get in communication with him, and finally he stopped writing and
disappeared.
9. Ill Health: Physical Debility.--All social workers agree that physical
condition plays a part, though usually only indirectly and secondarily,
in causing desertion. In the man, it may lower his vitality, cause
irregular work, and superinduce a condition of despondency and
readiness to give in. In the woman, it brings about careless
housekeeping, loss of attractiveness, and disinclination to marital
intercourse--all factors which contribute directly to desertion.
Continued ill health of the wife brings burdens, financial and other,
which may help through discouragement to break down the husband's
morale.
There should be included here some consideration of one of the most
puzzling types of abandonment--the "pregnancy desertion." Attempts
have been made to explain it on the ground of the instinctive aversion
of the male sex for domestic crises. But the impulse that causes the
prosperous householder to move to his club when house-cleaning time
arrives will hardly serve to explain such a custom, and as a matter of
fact other domestic crises, such as illnesses of the children, do not have
any such effect upon the man who habitually absents himself from
home before the birth of each child. Other possible reasons for it are the
well-known irritability and "difficulty" of women in this condition, and
their aversion to sexual intercourse. Some pregnancy deserters take the
step in the hope that their wives will bring about an abortion; but this is
a modern and sophisticated development and the institution of
"pregnancy desertion" is one of undoubted antiquity. Its prevalence
among certain European immigrants would almost point to its being a
racial tradition. Ethnologists who have studied strange marriage
customs, such as the "couvade," ought to turn their attention to

discovering the causes of this other and socially more important marital
vagary.
10. Temperamental Incompatibility.--It is difficult to catalogue and
appraise the causal factors in desertion that lie in personality. They are
closely related to differences in background and are intimately involved
with the sex relations of the pair. We cannot, however, admit that they
are identical with the latter, as some students of the subject claim; or
that the only incompatibility in marriage is sex incompatibility. Indeed,
two people may be so incompatible as to find in sex their only common
ground.
The commonest of these temperamental differences center about
standards of right and wrong or proper and improper conduct.
Especially is this manifested in the bringing up of the children. Extreme
self-righteousness on the part of one or the other, nagging and petty
criticism, unreasonable jealousy, "sulking spells," violent quarrels, are
some of its manifestations. The idea of possession exercised by either
of the couple, and especially a tendency to dominate or try to control on
the part of the woman, may be a causal factor in desertion. The lack of
a saving sense of humor in one or both is often a complicating factor.
These comparatively minor differences take on a serious complexion in
the minds of the couple; and it is surprising how often a deserting man
will give promptly and with every appearance of feeling justified some
cause for his desertion which falls clearly under this head. "People
forgive each other the big things; it's the little things they can't forgive."
11. Sex Incompatibility.--There comes under this heading a wide range
of causative factors which play an important part in marital discord.
Some of them are better understood by the social worker than was
formerly the case; but many of them are obscure even to the
practitioner of mental medicine, to whom their results come daily.
Distasteful as the task may be, the social worker should familiarize
herself, through reading or through instruction by a qualified physician,
in the commoner forms of these maladjustments. This is not urged
because it is part of the social worker's task to make detailed inquiry
into such matters or to pass judgment upon them, but because they

often clamor for attention and need to be recognized by the first
responsible person to whose notice they are brought. Unless she knows,
for instance, what constitutes excess in sex relations, a worker may
misunderstand the situation described to her and condemn a man for
being a selfish brute, when the trouble is really sexual anæsthesia in the
wife. It is well known that this single cause operates disastrously to
disrupt many marriages or else to render them insupportable. The
warning should be added, however--and it cannot be added too
emphatically--that the social worker must scrupulously refrain from
making diagnoses in these cases, even tentatively; she must refer such
data as come to her either to the general practitioner or to the
psychiatrist, selecting one or the other as the symptoms presented may