ADVERTISEMENTS:
Suggestions for reconstruction of Family: Better marriages and Mental adjustment!
From the discussion so far it is clear that the family has changed a good deal from what it was in the past and has assumed a new form presenting many social problems. “Our homes”, wrote Mr. Hoover, “are not the sanctuaries of family life they once were. We need homes where children learn respect for their parents, respect for law, respect for God and the religious principles which must be perpetuated if America is to survive as a great nation.”
ADVERTISEMENTS:
This is the opinion of many writers that the tendencies like divorce and domestic discord arising in the western families would bring about the downfall of civilization, if left unchecked. There is no point denying that the modern family faces problems of serious nature which need urgent solution to make it ‘home sweet home’.
The following programmes are suggested:
(i) Better marriages:
Inspite of the challenge of changing concepts, growing sense of individuality and economic independence of women, marriage still remains the most essential and important familial institution. With the responsibilities and restrictions which marriage entails, people voluntarily choose to live within the framework of the institution of marriage.
Therefore, in the reconstruction of family we should first arrange for better marriages. Marriage is an institution admitting men and women to family life. Poor marriages concluded hastily without careful and mature thought are one of the chief causes of family discords leading to divorce. Many young boys and girls seem to assume that marriage is not a serious affair and that they can take decisions themselves.
They fall in romantic love before marriage and after a short romance get married. They forget that love is blind and that the relation of lovers to one another is one thing, the relation of parents to children is another. When the thrill of romance subsides, they begin to feel family a burden and manage to get out of it.
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Therefore, it is necessary that romantic love should not be considered a true bond of marriage for romantic love by itself cannot normally sustain the family through the inevitable stages of the growth. While love gives the push that keeps a marriage moving, it does not give the direction which comes from understanding and co-operation. Marriage on short acquaintance too often proves a delusion.
Careful thought for a period of time, consideration of temperaments and family backgrounds are essential before making the choice of mate. The mates may themselves take the decision but the advice of sympathetic and experienced elders will prove them helpful.
It is also desirable that the marriage of persons of widely different ages, of persons with mental defectiveness or venereal diseases, or of persons with widely different cultural and racial backgrounds should be legally prohibited. But a legal prohibition is not enough. Legislation must be supported by public opinion.
Unless it is so supported it cannot improve the matter. As shown above family instability rests on lax marriage attitudes, and lax-marriage attitudes rest on lax public opinion. The reconstruction of family lies within the realm of human attitudes. Marriage is to be considered not as an expression of purely sexual urge but as a social safeguard. It is both a social institution and a bilateral man-woman relationship.
The family is to be considered not merely a partnership but an institution socially necessary and sacred. Educating the young men and women for marriage will remove family instability to a great extent. This education should include not only adequate information concerning the facts of sex but also an understanding about the means of securing successful marriages and stable family groups.
Here are the nine guideposts for a successful marriage:
(i) Building of a union that is just to both;
(ii) Decisions must be made on the basis of what is good for both not the selfish and narrow wish of either;
(iii) No demand should be made upon the mate that requires a drastic change of personality;
(iv) Too great concentration should be avoided;
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(v) There should be no holding on to the present or seeking to bring back the past. Each moment is good and new in itself;
(vi) There must be no cultivation of sensitiveness, no looking for hurt, but Instead a complete trust in each other;
(vii) There should be willingness to grow. Marriage is a life programme of going on together that requires maturity;
(viii) Instead of an adolescent type of blind love there should be mature affection;
(ix) Marriage is not merely sex-adjustment. What is essential is life adjustment of which sex is but a part. We consider this point below.
(ii) Mental adjustment:
Marital happiness is largely the result of mental adjustment between partners. Personality is the most crucial single factor in marital adjustment. Terman has tried to describe how the many different personality traits affect happiness in marriage.
He writes, “Our theory is that what comes out of marriage depends upon what goes into it and that among the most important things going into it are the attitudes, preferences, aversions, habit patterns, and emotional response patterns which give or deny to one the aptitude for compatibility.”
It must be frankly recognised that every disturbance of the mental relation, especially of its sexual aspect, is not a reasonable ground for the dissolution of the family. If family is not to suffer disorganization, every attempt must be made to bring about an adjustment of attitudes between the couple.
How the adjustments can be brought about, no hard and fast rule can be laid down. The problem admits of endless variations in individual cases. The point stressed here is simply that if mental discord and frustration are to be avoided, there must be greater general understanding of the realities of sex life and divorce should not be viewed as an automatic solution for every disharmony in the family.
The Harts have brought together a number of important suggestions to reduce marital conflicts. These are (i) elimination of needless annoyances, (ii) holding frank discussions but avoiding arguments over problems, (iii) being just and not expecting always justice, (iv) working out plans together, (v) giving special attention to enlarging areas of agreement, (vi) avoiding quarrels over non-essentials and overlooking petty differences, and (vii) playing the role of a good sportsman.
In other words it may be said that the family must be organised on a democratic basis. A democratic family is “one in which the husband and wife share the authority more or less equally and according to a prearranged division of labour. It is a group whose life is based not primarily on the fear and force of authority, but on the drawing power of mutual respect and affection. Rational love rules” Mutual self sacrifice is the principle of a democratic family. In it the members adjust naturally to each other’s need and to the sharing of each other’s problems.
If parents can be trained in the principles of democratic parenthood and youth in principles of rational marriages, then society will keep the family group as one of its stable institutions. Married life is serious business, but it is easier and at the same time more rewarding than single life. It is an inner bulwark against loneliness.
It is, however, to be remembered that although the modern family is faced with serious problems, it has, nevertheless, also gained in many directions. “The life of woman need no longer be exhausted in the toils of child bearing, sucking and the inadequate care of numberless offspring with its attendant morality, with the perpetual poverty which accompanied it. The responsibility and devotion of the family in the upbringing of children is more fully compensated by the satisfactions which they add to the life of the parents. Thus the demands of sex and the demands of procreation are both more fully harmonized with the whole complex of interests and needs which make up the existence of civilized man.”