Broken Homes | Page 5

by finding excuses and justifications in
the conduct of others. Even when the fault is all his, he usually
succeeds in making himself believe that his wife is more to blame than
he for his having left home.[7] The social worker who attempts to deal
with the situation the deserter creates should know this attitude in
advance and be prepared, through some simple rule-of-thumb
psychology, to attack the obsession and bring him, first of all, to see
and face squarely his own responsibility.
Many blanket theories have been developed to explain desertion--that it
is due to economic pressure; that it is the result of bad housekeeping;
that its causes can all be reduced to sex incompatibility. All these
factors: undoubtedly have their bearing on the problem, but there is no

one cause or group of causes underlying breakdowns in family morale.
The ratio of desertions has been observed to decrease rather than to
increase in "hard times";[8] moreover, it is a matter of common
observation that not all slovenly and incompetent wives are deserted,
and that many married couples in all walks of life whose sex
relationships are unsatisfactory, nevertheless maintain the fabric of
family life and support and bring up their children with an average
degree of success. None of these three factors alone will serve,
therefore, as a fundamental causation unit in desertion. Many statistical
attempts have been made to study the causes of desertion, and to assign
to each its mathematical percentage of influence. The report of a court
of domestic relations gives such an analysis of over 1,500 cases, listing
25 causes, and carefully calculating the percentage of cases due to each.
A summary of these percentages grouped under five heads is as
follows:
Percentage 1. Distinct sex factors 39.03 2. Alcohol and narcotic drugs
37.00 3. Temperamental traits 15.40 4. Economic issues 6.27 5. Mental
and physical troubles 2.30 ------ 100.00
It would be easy to criticize the foregoing on the score of grouping.
Can alcoholism and drug addiction be separated from mental and
physical disorders? And how distinguish infallibly between sex factors,
temperamental traits, and mental disabilities? But the main defect in
such statistical studies is that they assume in each case one cause, or at
least one cause sufficiently dominant to dwarf the rest; and few of the
causes listed are really fundamental. The mind instinctively begins to
reach back after the causes of all these causes. The social worker who
made the sweeping assertion that there are two great reasons for marital
discord--"selfishness in men and peevishness in women,"--came a good
deal nearer to an accurate statement of fact with infinitely less trouble.
Looked at from the point of view of the social worker, desertion is
itself only a symptom of some more deeply seated trouble in the family
structure. The problem presented, if it could have been recognized in
time, is not essentially different from what it would have been before
the man's departure. Without attempting, therefore, any statistical
analysis of the causes of desertion, we may nevertheless be able to

examine one by one a number of possible contributory factors in
marital unhappiness and therefore in desertion. No attempt will be
made in the list that follows to distinguish between primary and
secondary causes, nor to arrange them in any order of importance. An
effort to get from case workers lists so arranged resulted only in
confusion, each person emphasizing a different set of factors. The
groupings here given, therefore, are no more than a placing of the more
obviously related factors together and a leading from past history up to
the present.
Considering first the personal as distinguished from the community
factors in desertion, these may be listed as follows:
CONTRIBUTORY FACTORS IN THE MAN AND WOMAN
1. Actual Mental Deficiency.--Character weaknesses such as were
spoken of earlier in this chapter grade down by degrees into real mental
defect or disorder, and not even the psychiatrist can always draw the
line.
A physician connected with the Municipal Court in Boston gives as his
opinion that while the percentage of actually insane or feeble-minded
among deserters is no higher than among other offenders they are
extremely likely to present some of the phenomena of psychopathic
personality. Such people have to be studied by the social worker and
the psychiatrist, and not from the behavior side only, but with a view to
discovering what sort of equipment for life was handed down to them
from their family stock.
The plan for the future of a fifteen-year-old boy which was made by a
society for family social work was markedly modified when it was
discovered that not only his father but his grandfather had been a man
of violent and abusive temper, who drank habitually and neglected their
family obligations. With this sort of