Chapter 10 - The Family Is A Group

Young people can find a lot of material on how to get married but very little on how to stay married. In these words a shrewd student once characterized the current literature on the family. There is much truth in this observation. Nowhere do our efforts to promote successful family life fail more conspicuously than in the lack of emphasis upon the family as a project in group living, and the effort to find and encourage techniques in family group living. The scattered attempts that have been made in this direction tend to be specialized, and carry with them little implication of their larger importance.

Perhaps we should begin by defining our term. It is a commonly used one, but just what does the word group mean? Is it a mere collection of individuals taken together, in our thoughts or in their activities, for the time being? A group is that, yet more. As we shall use the term, it means two or more persons who bear an explicit relationship to each other, of such duration and nature that the persons involved, and those who regard them, are aware of that relationship. For the members of a group, it means thinking, and being thought of, as a group. Its basis is the continuing sharing of common interests and common unifying experiences.

It is in this sense that we conceive of marriage as the establishment of a project in group living. It is one of our contentions that the stability of family life depends upon its successesful operation as a group rather than as a loose collection of individuals, and that for successful family living it is necessary to think and plan and act in terms of the family as a group. What is perhaps more constructive and to the point, we believe that there are techniques in group living which are helpful in this connection and which can be consciously cultivated.

The Family Has a History

Most persons, in looking forward to the establishment of a family, think of it in terms of their immediate interests and desires. These concern marriage with the chosen mates, living with them, and finding the necessary quarters to do so. Frequently their thoughts do not go beyond this point. And yet, this is merely the first of a series of stages of family living. It is the subsequent stages that underscore the family as a group project.

Family life has a history. The normal continuing family passes through a number of stages which have come to be known as the family cycle. Students of the family differ somewhat in the number and nature of the stages they identify, dependent on their particular interests. We accept a fivefold classification which includes the following: (1) Married-pair living, when the newly wedded pair is concerned primarily with its relations to each other. (2) Child-bearing. In the small family system of modern times, this is the period when the married pair is occupied with matters of conception, pregnancy, birth, child survival, and size of family. (3) Child-rearing, covering the years when the children are growing up and when their parents are wrestling with problems of child development—habit formation, discipline, parent-child relations, and the like. (4) Child-launching. In this stage the parents tend to be engrossed in the establishment of their children —in jobs, at college, in marriage, and in homes of their own. (5) Grandparents and the empty nest, when the children leave home and are concerned with their own families, and the grandparents nurse mingled feelings of relief, emptiness, disappointment, and/or pride.

The Individualizing of Family Life

When one thinks of families in this lengthened perspective, it is clear that they consist of more than husbands and wives, although many books dealing with the family seem to assume that this is so. They consist often of more than parents and children, although many studies of child behavior do not appear to think so. Taking the country as a whole, at any one time, only a minority of families (about 12 per cent) consist of just husband and wife; another minority (about 35 per cent) include only father, mother, and children.

The composition of many families includes in the course of the family cycle a wide variety of people of both sexes and differing ages—parents, children, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, great-aunts, great-uncles, servants, nurses, boarders, roomers, family friends, and the like—thrown together into a series of continuing, incisive, and intimate relationships. Truly the family is a project in group living, and the individualizing factors in modern society, to which we now turn, make it all the more important to emphasize this group idea.

Various aspects of modern life make such emphases of particular importance today. One of these is the declining necessity for the family to function as a group economically in order to survive in the struggle for existence. For many centuries the family was held together as a compact group, so much so that the larger society was but an enlarged clan or kinship group. Common tasks, common dangers, common needs, combined with the limited opportunities for contacts on the outside, kept the family members closely knit together. Let the reader visualize what his own family would have been like, two centuries ago, on a 640-acre farm, in a sparsely settled and undeveloped area, or if it had huddled with its kinsfolk at some advantageous spot along a river or at a waterhole, and he may be the better able to appreciate the family unity of earlier centuries.

Today life is different in so many ways, and other forces are playing upon the family, many of which make for the individualizing of the lives of its members. We have spoken of the individualistic attitudes and values which many persons now bring to their marriage, and the forces which we have in mind tend to encourage and reinforce these attitudes and values. One of these is the diversification in jobs of the members of the family. Instead of all the members engaging in the common tasks of farming, for example, the different members separate each working day to follow different, and often very different, pursuits, as the following cases will show.

A. The Smith family. Mr. Smith drives an interstate truck. Frequently he is away from home for two or three days and nights. His wife is a waitress. One daughter is employed in a nearby "dime" store. A son is breaking in with a plumbing company.

B. The Jones family. Mr. Jones is an accountant. His wife is a teacher. Both of their sons are employed—one as a news reporter, the other as messenger for a firm of architects.

C. The Brown family. Mr. Brown is breaking into the real-estate business. His wife works in an employment agency. Mrs. Brown's mother lives with them and takes care of their three-year-old son.

Cases of this kind have become commonplace, now that approximately three out of every ten married women are working away from home. Also, married women now constitute approximately one-half of all women in the labor force. To be sure, women have always worked, but women employed away from home are working under circumstances so completely different as to constitute a major revolution in their age-old experience.

Whenever the effects of these changes upon family life are considered, certain ones are quickly identified. Obviously the financial status of the family is improved, although present income tax laws make it necessary for most wives to earn two for each one dollar that is actually added to the family exchequer. Families usually are quick to point out the many ways in which the family's plane of living is raised because of this additional income. Also the varied interests that result from the diversity of jobs among family members are said to increase the richness of the family's cultural background. Wives, too, are "emancipated" from dependence upon their husbands, from the doldrums of housekeeping, and are made to feel important in the cosmic scheme of things. "Now that both my children are in school," a young matron recently told us, "I feel that I want to do something important." "Like punching the keys of a typewriter?" we asked.

What has been given less consideration are the following kinds of questions. Do different jobs and out-of-the-home experiences make for different interests, leading members in different directions, and thus weakening the hold of the family as a group? Does this foster the personal development of each member at the expense of family solidarity? Do different jobs, different occupational interests and contacts lead husband and wife to think as individuals rather than as a family? What if the wife earns more than her husband? Suppose she is promoted sooner and oftener than he is? Suppose her job is steadier than his? Suppose he loses his job once or twice, and she does not? These are pertinent questions, and the consequences can scarcely be answered in statistical tables.

The increasing application of the democratic principle tends in certain ways to reinforce the individuation of the family. We cannot talk constantly about democracy in our political life, in industry, in international relations, and then omit its incorporation into family life. But democracy has been interpreted and emphasized largely in terms of individual freedom and civil rights, with only an occasional reference to the self-imposed disciplines that must be a complementary part. Thus the democratic family, of which one hears so much, is a family in which the individual nature, rights, and development of each member is stressed, to the exclusion or oversight often of complementary group requirements and values.

There are other factors—such as the small family system, the shrinking area of the modern home, the increasing mechanization of housekeeping, and the nature of suburban living—which have their individualizing effects upon the family. So prevalent are these factors, so obvious are their consequences, that one is tempted to accept the whole resultant pattern as inevitable, and to counsel the wisdom of acceptance. Modern life is individualizing the family, we must face the realities of life, and adjust to them. This is a common response.

It is exactly this attitude of acceptance which leads many students to make dire predictions concerning the future of the family. Pitirim Sorokin, Harvard University sociologist, in his Social and Cultural Dynamics, forecasts the continued disintegration of the family as a sacred union, and the continued decline of its socio-cultural functions until the home becomes a mere overnight parking place mainly for sex relationships. Similarly the British Royal Commission, to which we referred previously, reported recently, after a long study of family behavior, that its members had grave misgivings about the continuance of the family as a permanent union.

How do people respond to these individualizing influences and the philosophies which they call forth? This, after all, is the crucial question. For those who wish to resist the trend, seeking to strengthen defenses against existing dangers to the values which they accept, how shall we counsel them? What are the things which families so minded can do? What techniques can be cultivated to contribute to the ends they seek?

The Family Meal

For more than twenty years, we have been interested in the family meal as an integral part of family life. During this time, we have gathered in several different ways many transcripts of family table talk, usually without the knowledge of all but one of the family members. Much of the verbal interchange thus recorded is rather trivial, consisting of phrases like "pass the potatoes," "let me have the butter," or "salt, please." Much, however, is more vital, and, taken as a whole reveals the family in action, often in its most relaxed mood.

Our studies have led us to agree with other students that the dining-room and the living-room are the two chief places where the family gets together as a group. The relative importance of these two varies, but it seems safe to say that for most American families the dining-room takes first place. It is particularly true in lower-class families that the dining-room is the social center of the household. It is here that the family members meet regularly, repeatedly, and in intimate interaction with each other.

From this it follows that the family meal is a recurrent and fundamental aspect of the family's life. And what happens in its course is more than a dietary procedure. It is while seated around the dining-room table that the family may be at its greatest ease, both physically and psychologically; that it is held together for definite periods of time; that it becomes engrossed in common objectives; and that it has fewer distractions than at most other times.

Five common types of family meals identify themselves in our firsthand studies. First are the hurried kind, which appear to be regarded by the family personnel 2s unavoidable periods of family refueling. Food tends to be served as though eating were a mere physiological compulsion, and gulped down as though the time required were a wasteful form of biological maladjustment. Conversation is scant, blunt, and direct, heavily sprinkled with "yes," "no," "uh-huh," "salt," "bread," "more," etc. Over and over, as one studies these recordings, there arises the picture of a number of half-snarling dogs cleaning out a trough. In both cases the gathering breaks up with the last morsel of food.

A second type is those family meals which are devoted largely to recurrent domestic warfare. Squabbling is a habit, often it is a family trait, and mealtime offers such families full scope for its expression. The children are taken to task for past and present misdeeds, parents quarrel with each other, the food is criticized or its preparation is depreciated. Often there is constant nagging about table manners. These families do constitute a definite type, and they have few meals together without a family quarrel, or without some member of the family leaving the table in tears, anger, or disgrace.

There is a third group of families whose critical conversation is turned outward. They are "talking about" someone all the time. The Smiths down the block drive a car they cannot afford. The neighbor's child is a brat. Mrs. Jones's coat looks shabby. That Brown girl runs around with a fast crowd. Policeman Brady is not honest. The teacher plays favorites. Here we have a distinct family pattern of depreciation— "always belittling."

Fourth are the family meals which abound in interesting conversation. Information on all kinds of topics is exchanged. Members of the family tell of their experiences during the day. Choice bits of news are saved for mealtime. Young Bill tells about the new teacher, Mary refers to a "mountain of homework," Ellen compares her old coat to the neighboring girl's new one, mother talks about the price of meats, and daddy brings home a funny story he heard at luncheon that day. The personal trials, triumphs, disappointments, and/or pleasantries of the day are described and commented upon. Public issues may be discussed. One of the most interesting of our case records comes from the home of a well-known public figure who habitually propounded at the beginning of each meal a topic of public interest to the members of his large family. Each participated in the discussion, which continued until near the end of the meal when father summarized the points brought out and the conclusions that might have been reached. While few families are likely to formalize their discussion of public issues in this way, many of this type do devote some time to family table talk of this kind. Then, too, there are family programs, projects, and problems which tend to be considered in some systematic manner by the families in this group. These, then, are the families that engage in group conversation and develop patterns of group thinking, with each one—even the children—being encouraged to take part and contribute to the common fund of thought.

Many of these families further enrich their common experience through the entertainment of guests. Homes of this kind are a delight to visit, mealtime with them is a treat, and the guests' contributions to the general process may become a wholesome addition or an intriguing experience by way of contrast to the family's normal patterns. We have been impressed by the frequency with which authors of autobiographies who write of their own family lives, either of childhood experiences or of the marital relations of their parents or themselves, devote much space to the subject of guests in their homes.

Finally, there are the family meals which become occasions for family rituals. These tend to be characterized by order and impressive decorum. Prayers may be said by way of prelude or cocktails may be served by way of preface. Candles gleam on the table and the surrounding surfaces. All may stand until mother is seated. Various other conventionalities are observed. There may be servants to serve the food, or younger children take their turn to do so. There may be coffee in the living-room. The family here becomes a sort of private communion for its members.

The reader may get the idea from what has just been said that we are describing here primarily upper-class family meals.

This is far from true. Various first- and second-generation immigrant groups, living at low-income levels, retain the strong family devotion of their forbears in the Old World, and continue to maintain their mealtime rituals. Jerre Mangione, writing some time ago of life among the American-Sicilians in Rochester, New York, tells how a meal among them was more than a meal. "It was a ritual," he says. Especially interesting is his description of the Sunday night meal ritual, when children were allowed to talk and interrupt and ask all kinds of questions, against a background of adult indulgence and gaiety.*

What the family meal is like in any particular home is a matter both of circumstance and of choice. In one respect, it is the product of the kind of people that compose the family— their occupations, their preoccupations, their attitudes toward life and toward each other; but in many ways the family meal becomes a factor which determines the foregoing. Families make family meals what they are, but it is equally true that family meals make families what they are. It may be more than a mere coincidence that modern individualistic-minded families choose to buy homes without dining-rooms. Two current housing vogues—no dining-room and separate bedrooms—may not be unrelated.

* Jerre Mangione, Mount Allegro (New York: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1942), pp. 18 ff.

If the nature of the family meal has any importance at all for family life, then conscious effort in its systematic cultivation becomes important. And this, of course, involves many things. First the physical setting of the family meal is important. It may be served now in the dining-room, or on the lawn in summertime, or beside a flower box in the back yard, or on a card table before an open fire or window. Various details, if given a bit of attention, can make the family meal more impressive. Candlelight adds a soft and mellowing glow, which may even calm ruffled feelings. Colorful china is not expensive, nor are other colorful additions. Giant food markets usually carry gay bunches of flowers for the price of a package of cigarettes. Particular occasions (such as anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays) may be observed with special meals and at special places. Even one candle on a cupcake is a step in the right direction. Finally, there is the matter of "atmosphere," with attention to the observance of etiquette. These, assuredly, are available to everyone. But they do need to be worked at; they are not included in pay envelopes, dividend returns, family allowances, or social security checks.

Family Projects

If most contemporary families no longer work together in the common task of operating a farm or small business, there are many leisure-time projects in which they may engage as family groups. Modern life is rich with the variety of such projects that are available, and the automobile combines with the shortened working day and week to make feasible participation in them. The list of such projects is endless—building a vacation shack, a family orchestra, a trailer or camping trip in summer, a family basketball team, a vacant-lot garden, a family art exhibit, barber-shop harmony around the piano, father-son workshops in the basement, a family reading circle, the breeding of dogs or other animals, church activity, a golfing foursome, family games, a flower garden, or a small business as a side issue.

Merely as one example we might cite the active flying model clubs in existence in so many areas of the United States, and the busy flying that occurs as a result. The building of models can become an alluring winter project, and for the entire family. A family friend of ours, selecting models for construction that have a feminine appeal, enlists the cooperation of the entire family in his model projects. Even his six-year-old is now "working with Daddy." Recently one of their models won a handsome cash prize, which is incidental to what it is doing for the emotional unity of the family.

What the particular project may be depends naturally on the abilities, circumstances, and interests of the particular family, and in this connection is of somewhat incidental importance. What is important is that the family plans, works, thinks, laughs, succeeds, or even fails together. It is the family in action as a group.

We incline strongly to the idea that one excellent way of getting a family to think in group terms is through the medium of common possessions. These need not be gold Cadillac’s nor atomic-powered yachts; they may be as simple as a cocker spaniel. The prime requisite is that they are commonly owned, and that this in turn reflects a common interest. The acquisitive sense is deeply rooted in man. Most times it is fostered and finds expression in individual ownership, so that things become mine and yours, even in the family. It is true that every family does have some common possessions, which are spoken of as ours, but the relative number in each category varies a great deal from one family to another. In our studies of family life we have noted the use of my and ours, and the variations are marked. Our venerable sage insists that he can always spot the trouble family, and the degree of trouble, by noting the relative percentages in their use of possessive pronouns.

Family Rituals

In our efforts to study family life from within, as it were, our attention came to focus some years ago upon certain forms of family behavior which were so recurrent as to suggest the term habit and yet which had additional aspects or features not usually associated with that term. They were habits, plus. Upon close examination, the plus included two things. First, the repetition had to be exact. It isn't enough to do the thing about or approximately the same way each time; it has to be done exactly the same way. Second, this exact repetition is accompanied by a definite sense of approval. This is the right, the proper, way. We came finally to designate these habits plus as family rituals, and we defined them as patterns of family life, noticeable for their precise repetition, even to the point of becoming quite rigid, like a rite or ceremony in religious worship. Obviously, too, they had an end in view; that is to say, the pattern had a purpose in the life of the family-such as bringing its members together, having a family conference, cementing family relationships, or solving a problem. Perhaps the most unique trait about these rituals, as we called them, was the sense of propriety which they seemed to generate, amounting often to a sense of near righteousness. It is these last characteristics in particular which distinguish ritual from habit. To do differently is wrong, it breaks the spell, the rapport, the rhythm of the procedure.*

* For an extended discussion of family rituals, the reader is referred to James H. S. Bossard and Eleanor Stoker Boll, Ritual in Family Living (rev. ed., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957).

Perhaps a brief description of one of the favorite rituals in our collection will serve to illustrate the nature of family rituals. It is called The Night Before Christmas Ritual.

When Kay was three years old, her father held her on his lap and read to her, on Christmas Eve, Clement Moore's well-known poem, "The Night Before Christmas." Each Christmas Eve thereafter, this has been repeated. When Kay was five years old, her sister Jane was born, and during the succeeding years the reading of this poem on Christmas Eve became more and more of a ceremonial event. As the two daughters became older, they would sit on either side of their father on the family sofa, and mother and other relatives would be present. After the reading, refreshments came to be served, and talk would follow about Christmas celebrations of former years. As time went on, the ceremony became more and more elaborate. Candles were lit while other lights were extinguished; the conversational aftermath lengthened. Nothing ever deterred Kay and Jane from being at home on Christmas Eve; dates with boys, even after their engagements had been announced, were not made; once Kay did not accept an invitation to a much-desired trip so that she might be at home for "the reading." After Kay's marriage, she and her husband came to her parents' home on Christmas Eve in order to be present for the event.

This practice has been continued down to the present time, both by Kay and her husband and by Jane and her husband. Last year, "father" read to both daughters, their husbands, three grandchildren and grandmother.*

Rituals are of many different kinds. They grow out of the family's collective experience, and may develop in connection with almost any aspect of family life. Most of them, however, cluster around holidays, anniversaries, meals, vacations, religious worship, entertainment, and group ways of using leisure time. Often they are a heritage from the preceding generation, modified perhaps to fit into altered circumstances.

We have gathered information on rituals from approximately five hundred families, covering almost one hundred years. This proved to be a pleasant and easy research project, first because most continuing families had developed rituals, and second because they seemed willing and pleased to talk about them. For the earlier years in the span of our study, we used autobiographical accounts of family life.

*By permission from The Sociology of Child Development, rev. ed., by James H. S. Bossard, p. 292. Copyright, 1954, Harper & Bros., New York.

Our study made it quite clear that rituals constituted an integral part of family life during the entire period covered. More than that, there was every indication that they had increased through the years, in spite of an apparent decline of the ceremonial in human relations in recent decades. What probably may create the impression of a declining importance has been the passing of many of the older rituals, such as those of a religious or semi-religious nature. A counterbalancing development, however, has been the emergence of new rituals, particularly of a secular nature. Thus while family prayer and Bible-reading may have declined, a family gathering around the television set to view selected programs represents a new ritual. Thinking in terms of ritual, sherry before dinner or coffee in the living-room afterward fits our definition just as much as the saying of grace at mealtime.

One of the most interesting features of our study was the way family rituals varied on a social class basis. Dr. Boll, the junior author of this volume, gathered extensive material from (1) debutantes and Junior Leaguers, (2) a middle-class suburban neighborhood, and (3) a large-city area surrounding a social settlement house, in which most of the mothers were employed in domestic service. A total of 156 families were included in this part of the study.

The material assembled clearly indicated that rituals existed at each of these three levels, although it seemed equally clear that they increased in number, variety, and sense of group cooperation as one moved upward in the social scale. Also rituals differed in character from one class to another. Those at the lowest level were rituals of expediency, to keep the home going, for example; at the middle-class level, they were forward-looking, indicating a cooperative desire to move ahead through family "togetherness"; at the upper-class level, there was more of an interest in maintaining traditions, to safeguard a way of life that was desirable through the serious recognition of the social symbols which represented it.

Of particular interest in our findings were the ways in which rituals changed in the course of the family cycle. After marriage, for example, the new couple may establish its own rituals, retaining some from the families in which they were reared, rejecting some, adjusting others, and developing new ones. There are families, of course, in which one or both partners sneer at family rituals, and develop negative patterns in turn. What so many of our bright young intellectuals forget is that "I don't believe" may become as ritualistic as "I believe."

The next step follows the coming of children, when rituals appropriate to the new family activities are selected. These now begin to look toward family continuity. Then, as the children grow older, rituals centering around child-rearing take form, often on a trial-and-error basis and changing as the children's age and the family problems change. Older families, especially of the "empty nest" kind, may return to the rituals of their youth, or find appropriate ones around the lives of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

This historical review of how rituals may change through the years focuses attention upon the purposes which they serve in the life of the family. Often they begin when some casual act at a critical moment strikes the common fancy and/or seems to secure an impressive result. Always they arise out of the family's experience, seek to serve its group needs, maintain its continuity, and further its group aims and ambitions.

If one wants to know specifically how important rituals are for group life and continuity, let him consult the history of religion, an area in which ritual is best known and has been most frequently observed. Every abiding religion has developed its own rituals; in fact, it seems safe to say that the more ritualistic a religion or church becomes, the greater are the allegiance and devotion of its members. This will be even more apparent if we remember that the simple and self-imposed procedure of the Quaker Meeting House is just as much a ritual as the priestly celebration of the Mass in a Roman Catholic or High Episcopal church.

Perhaps no one has analyzed more adequately the importance of ritual in all aspects of life than Emile Durkheim, a noted French sociologist. He pointed out that rituals serve four very useful purposes in life. First is a preparatory purpose, by which persons are subjected to a kind of disciplinary prelude for common activities, and in a rather painless way. Broadly speaking, rituals serve to discipline people for social living. Second, rituals have a unifying function. They bring people together in a common observance, which is highly important, since men can be held together only by doing things together. Rituals, then, are ways by which groups of persons reaffirm themselves periodically. A third purpose which rituals serve, according to Durkheim, is a vitalizing one. Common participation in rituals reminds a group of its common heritage. Traditions are perpetuated, faith is renewed. A large number of rituals have the object of recalling the past and doing so in a dramatic manner. Finally, rituals serve to establish pleasant feelings of group well-being. Naturally such feelings have their value at all times, but they are particularly important at a time of actual or threatened crisis.

Ritual appears to us as a relatively reliable index of family integration, partly because we find its presence or absence to correlate with family happiness or unhappiness, partly because so many of the emotionally binding aspects of family life lend themselves to ritualistic observances, and partly because its very repetition tends to foster the like-mindedness that produces it. Here is one of those circles of causation that some scientists have spoken of: rituals make for the integration of the family members into one harmonious whole, and an integrated family evolves and practices rituals. Just as ritual develops from a common faith, so a common faith is cemented by ritualistic observance.

Ritual in the sex life of the married pair might be cited as an intriguing illustration. Among most men and women, a certain amount of erotic play in preparation for coitus prevails. The extent of it and the attitude toward it vary from one culture to another, and within the same society from one social level to another. Now that the sex act in marriage is looked upon more and more as a part of the entire emotional relationship between man and wife, increasing attention is given to the erotic play which precedes it. The preparatory role of pre-coital petting, the concrete details which it includes, studied techniques for its improvement, all are being elaborated in current marriage manuals. Moreover, as if to give it prestige and the stamp of modernity, the Kinsey studies show its increasing favor as one moves upward in the socio-educational scale and toward the younger age brackets of those married.

An illustration of the ritualizing of this aspect of married life is found in the following case. One rainy evening, about the second year of their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Brett were playing cribbage. As the game went on in a desultory sort of way, the conversation between them took an intimate turn, followed also by various little intimate acts, such as playfully touching each other. Finally, as the regular bedtime hour approached, Mr. Brett suggested sex relations, to which Mrs. Brett acquiesced with more than customary willingness. In the following weeks, several more cribbage games culminated in this manner. In each of these cases, the sexual act had been very satisfactory to both husband and wife. Then followed the experience of several sex relationships without the cribbage preliminary. Soon, without any deliberate planning or formal agreement, the cribbage game came to be the regular preliminary to sex relationships. Gradually, additions came to be made. Mr. Brett brought home Mrs. Brett's favorite flowers, and placed them in a vase near the cribbage table. Then Mrs. Brett suggested a highball, to be sipped toward the end of the cribbage game. Since she preferred Scotch whiskey, Mr. Brett bought the best Scotch brand, which was reserved for their own use on these cribbage nights. Gradually, each step leading to sex relations between the Bretts has come to be ritualized around the cribbage game, ranging from the first shy references to cribbage to the final consummation. At the time this information was given by the Bretts, fifteen years had passed since the beginning of the cribbage ritual. They say that there are times when sex relations occur without this particular preliminary, but agree that it does not "seem so right" as when they lead up to it via the ritual route.

Or there is the experience of Mr. and Mrs. Black. Early in their marriage, one particular night of the week came to be a sure time for sex relations. Soon Mrs. Black would go to the beauty parlor on the afternoon of that day. Mr. Black in turn began to bring home flowers that day, adroitly placing some on the night table in their bedroom. After dinner, and after their son was in bed, they would don their pajamas "to relax." Mr. Black might read from one of his wife's favorite books. Later they would listen to one of their favorite radio programs, with some kissing during the half-hour program. Now the lights were turned off, and more ardent and intimate petting. Soon the whole process of sex relations became ritualized, and it was only when each step followed in its prescribed order that complete satisfaction resulted.

It is the lack of this kind of procedure that is stressed so often in the complaints of marital partners, particularly of wives, and that marriage counselors and manuals have come to prescribe under the heading of preparatory techniques. We prefer rather the term ritual as having a deeper and richer meaning than the word technique.

Rituals may develop, as we have already pointed out, in any area of family life. In a study of one hundred families with six or more living children which we completed recently, we were particularly impressed with the variety and richness of family rituals, as well as the important role they seemed to serve in the promotion of family happiness. The happy large families literally teemed with rituals in connection with birthdays, family reunions, winter evening recreation, summer vacations, and holidays.*

The Family Council

The term family council is used to mean a more or less formalized meeting of a family group in order to discuss matters of common interest to its members, to advise, deliberate, and make decisions which shall have the weight of group judgment.

The idea is an old one, perhaps as old as the human family. Especially is this true if we remember that the word family for many centuries did not mean the immediate unit of parents and children that it now does, but was used in a more extended sense of including the entire kinship group. This meant the blood and law relatives up to a certain variable limit, such as the fourth or fifth degree of relationship. In earlier times, individuality as we now know it did not exist. The unit of life was not the person but the group, and the group was an enlarged family. Kinship, real or fictitious, was the bond that held society together. The family council thus tended to be society in operation.
* James H. S. Bossard and Eleanor Stoker Boll, The Large Family System (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1956).

Long after civil society as we now know it came into being, the family council continued as an intermediary and advisory body, standing between the family and the state. The civil code of law in most European countries recognized its functions and gave it a definite status. As a rule, its vitality varies inversely with the strength and centralization of governmental powers. When immigrants came from these countries to the United States, they brought the family council with them. This was conspicuously true of the French who migrated to Louisiana. There it was known as the Family Meeting, and was given legality in the civil code of the state, where it remained until 1934.

Families using the council idea show considerable variation in the formality of their procedure. The Blank family with which we are familiar hold formal sessions once a week at a designated time and place. Special sessions may be called if necessary. A presiding officer is elected, usually one of the older children. Definite rules of procedure have been established. Minutes of the meetings are kept. Decisions are reached by majority vote.

The Tiffin family, by way of contrast, get together over coffee after the evening meal whenever any issue or problem arises. Any member can bring up such an item of business. There is discussion, but no formal vote is taken. Usually a definite group feeling crystallizes. Perhaps the manner of procedure is incidental to the essential fact, which is that of discussion and functioning as a group, with full opportunity for individual participation.

The family council is made to order for the contemporary family. This is particularly true of the urban family. In it, the autocratic, authoritarian father of the past is curiously out of place. The smaller size of the present-day family makes council procedure easy, the prevailing democratic spirit makes it acceptable and natural, the diversity of tasks and interests of its members makes it necessary for group rapport. Obviously decisions reached through conference and supported by consensus are not only a more effective and pleasant manner of family operation but make for a group feeling and loyalty that cements the family into an organic whole.*

* For a more complete analysis of the family council and the functions it serves, consult the senior author's chapter in Morris Fishbein and Ernest W. Burgess, Successful Marriage (rev. ed.; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1955), pp. 404-16.

The Need for Conscious Effort

The devices mentioned in this chapter constitute in themselves no guaranty of family happiness. They are means that may be utilized to achieve an end. But the end must be desired, and worked at. Perhaps no one has expressed our central thought here more than Plutarch did centuries ago. "No man," he said, "ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune."

This need for conscious effort in the promotion of family happiness impressed us most strongly in our recently completed study of one hundred large families, each with six or more living children. A large family, to be sure, is a complicated situation, and we studied with particular care those which were reported as happy families. Our clearest conviction was that these families were happy because they worked at it. The parents were described as making efforts consistently to organize the family members for group activities, to furnish facilities for group activities, and to train their children in group participation. Happy group participation apparently is something that one can learn.* We are encouraged that our conclusions here agree so largely with those of the late Dr. Alfred Kinsey who wrote in his book, The Sexual Behavior of the Human Female, that "there seems to be no single factor which is more important for the maintenance of marriage than the determination, the will that that marriage shall be maintained." The techniques mentioned in this chapter will help in this learning process for the simple reason that they get the members of the family to do things together, and people can best be held together by doing things together. The widely used slogan, "the family that prays together stays together" is based upon this fact. The important word is together.

A Postscript

After these pages were written, we found in some old papers a letter from a happy, intelligent mother of eight with this concluding statement about her own family life. Because it says so well what we have tried to say in this chapter, and what we have had in mind all through the writing of this book, we reproduce it in its entirety. She writes:

I think the aspect of "togetherness" should be emphasized in any family study. It is this banding together of its members that makes for closeness in family life. We have worked consciously to develop this in our own family life and have found that it results in wonderful dividends of happiness.

*Bossard and Boll, The Large Family System.

We always try to have dinner together around our big dining-room table. It used to be that I fed the children before their father came home and then sat down to a peaceful, leisurely dinner alone with him. As time went on, we came to see that it was important that we eat together to develop good family feeling, good conversation, and good table manners.

We pray together. Our meals are preceded by "grace before meals" and our dinner is usually followed by the family rosary. We always start and end our motor trips with a short prayer, and when we are on the road, we pray together once daily. We go to church together.

We work together, as my husband is a great believer in family enterprises. He and the boys have painted the house inside and out and he helped the boys establish a profitable paper-collecting and -selling business. Last year we made Christmas ornaments which the boys sold. This year there has been much talk of a Christmas-tree-selling project for the family. We have a much more ambitious project in mind now and we are busy now working out the details.

We go places together in our family car, which has three rows of seats and a luggage rack on top. This car, which was a lucky bargain find, has taken us from Florida to Canada and all over the Great Lakes area. Our recollection of these trips are happy memory treasures for all of us.

We play together, and have our own little family customs or rituals that we carry out as such. These include present sessions on everyone's birthday, a lining up together by age on Christmas morning to make a joint grand entrance to the living-room containing the Christmas tree, our own Easter egg hunt, and enthusiastic "cake and ice creams."

We feel that in doing all of these things together we have drawn bonds of close affection around our family that will endure through the years and serve as an inspiration and guide to our children in the development of their own family lives.

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