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The Equalitarian Family as a Fundamental Invention1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

C. W. Topping
C. W. Topping*
Affiliation:
The University of British Columbia
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Extract

There is a popular impression that the contemporary family has lost that position of dominance which it held in the days of our forefathers. Many have come to regard the family as an institution with a great and historic past but with a dark and uncertain future. Meyer F. Nimkoff has assembled some of the evidence in support of this position. “Some students,” he writes, “think they see the eventual demise of the family in the growing restlessness of large numbers of people over the limitations of conventional family life.” He draws attention to the trend towards unconventional sex arrangements as revealed in recent studies of sexual phenomena, to changing public opinion as shown in the changed attitudes towards the family of representative modern novelists, to statements concerning the evolutionary supersession of the family made by scholars such as Müller-Lyer, to increase of childlessness, and to the possibilities of ectogenesis. Though of qualified significance, he might have cited statistics on divorce.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , November 1942 , pp. 595 - 605
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1942

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Footnotes

1

This paper was read at the Round Table on Sociology at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association at Toronto, May 26, 1942. It has been revised in the light of criticisms and suggestions.

References

2 Nimkoff, Meyer F., The Family (Cambridge, 1934), p. 244.Google Scholar

3 See studies by L. M. Terman, Dr. R. L. Dickinson, Bromley and Britton.

4 Pruette, L., “The Family and the Modern Novel” (The Family, vol. IX, 04, 1928, pp. 46–50).Google Scholar

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10 New York Times, Sept. 29, 1935. Quoted in Baber, Ray E., Marriage and the Family (New York, 1939), p. 500.Google Scholar

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12 Baber, , Marriage and the Family, p. 502.Google Scholar

13 Groves, E. R. and Ogburn, W. F., American Marriage and Family Relationships (New York, 1928), p. 346 Google Scholar; Stouffer, S. A. and Spencer, Lyle M., “Recent Increases in Marriage and Divorce” (American Journal of Sociology, vol. XLIV, 01, 1939, 551–4).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Groves and Ogburn, American Marriage and Family Relationships, passim.

15 Ibid., passim; of fourteen marriages contracted in 1887, one would have ended in divorce twenty years later.

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18 The general trend was upwards with slight decreases in specific years.

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20 Ibid. Provincial statutes are based on English law as existing at the date of the creation of the province, or at the date of entry of the province into Confederation, e.g. Ontario as at Oct. 15, 1792, British Columbia as at Nov. 19, 1858. The Quebec practice is as at the date of the consolidation of the Civil Code, 1866.

21 Canada Year Book (Ottawa, 1926), p. 966.Google Scholar

22 Canada Year Book (Ottawa, 1940), p. 121.Google Scholar To these totals must be added divorces granted to Canadians temporarily resident in the United States.

23 Worked out on the basis of Census Reports and divorces reported for census years. The rates for 1939 and for 1940 have been given as well as for the census years. See Divorces Granted in Canada (Dominion Bureau of Statistics, annual bulletin), also preliminary estimates of the census for 1941 and divorces for 1941.

24 Nimkoff, , The Family, p. 244.Google Scholar

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31 Mowrer, , Family Disorganization, p. 110.Google Scholar

32 Chapter XXXI.

33 New York, 1930, p. 73; quoted in Sait, , New Horizons for the Family, p. 140.Google Scholar

34 Tokyo, 1937.

35 Ibid., pp. 6-9.

36 Mowrer, Family Disorganization, p. 111.

37 In the accomodation groups studied in the city of Vancouver.

38 Statement of member of field staff of McGill University.

39 Yamada, , The Social Status of Japanese Women, p. 17.Google Scholar

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41 Chiefly in the New York World.

42 New York, 1906, pp. 348-9; quoted in Lichtenberger, , Divorce, p. 437.Google Scholar

43 The Companionate Marriage (with Evans, Wainwright) (Garden City, 1929), p. v.Google Scholar

44 Baber, , Marriage and the Family, p. 551n.Google Scholar

45 Mowrer, , Family Disorganization, p. 111 Google Scholar; see also Zorbaugh, Harvey W., The Gold Coast and the Slum (Chicago University, 1929), chap, VGoogle Scholar; and Hayner, Norman S., “Hotel Life and Personality” (American Journal of Sociology, vol. XXXIII, 03, 1928, 784–96).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Lippmann, Walter, A Preface lo Morals (New York, 1929), p. 298.Google Scholar

47 Knight, M. M., “The Companionate and the Family” (Journal of Social Hygiene, vol. X, 05, 1924, p. 267).Google Scholar

48 Popenoe, Paul, “Cooperation in Family Relations” (Journal of Home Economics, vol. XXVI, 10, 1934, 483).Google Scholar

49 Mowrer, , Family Disorganization, p. 111.Google Scholar

50 See Local Community Fact Book, 1938 (Chicago Recreation Commission, 1938)Google Scholar for details on seventy-five Chicago local communities. In the Loop 85.42 per cent of the families are childless and probably emancipated in type.

51 Sait, , New Horizons for the Family, p. 621n.Google Scholar

52 Eubank, Earle E., “When Marriage Fails” The World Tomorrow, (vol. X, 06, 1927, pp. 274–7)Google Scholar; see also Topping, C. W., “The Dynamic Family” (Vancouver Sun, special supplement, 02 28, 1941).Google Scholar