Religious Education in the Family | Page 6

and meat--all
formerly home products for the use of the family producing them--now
were prepared in larger quantities, by mechanical processes, and were
brought back into the home. Woman's labor was lightened; the older
girls were liberated from the loom and they began to seek occupation,
education, and diversion according to their opportunities in life.
That last step made it possible for people to think of the communization
of home industry, to think of eating food cooked in other ovens than
their own, to think of one oven large enough for a whole village. Many
interesting experiments in co-operative living immediately sprang up.
But the next step came slowly and, even now, is only firmly established
in the cities, in the actual abandonment of the family kitchen for the

community kitchen in the form of the restaurant. In such families we
have unity only in the hours of sleep and recreation.
Along with abandonment of the separate kitchen there has proceeded
the abandonment of the parlor in the homes of the middle classes. To
lose the old, mournful front room may be no subject for tears, but the
loss of the evening family group, about the fireside or the reading-lamp,
is a real and sad loss. The commercialized amusements have offered
greater attractions to vigorous youth. The theater and its lesser satellites,
amusements, entertainments, lectures, the lyceum, and
recreation-by-proxy in ball games and matches have taken the place of
united family recreation. Of course this has been a natural development
of the older village play-life and has been by no means an unmixed ill.
Now, behold, what has become of the old-time home life! The family
that spent nearly twenty-four hours together now spends a scarce seven
or eight, and these are occupied in sleeping! Little wonder that the next
step is taken--the abandonment of this remainder, the sleep period,
under a domestic roof, as the family moves into a hotel!
Along with the tendency toward communal working and eating we see
the tendency to communal living by the development of the apartment
building. Since roof-trees are so expensive, and since in a practical age,
few of us can afford to pay for sentiment, why not put a dozen families
under one roof-tree? True we sacrifice lawns, gardens, natural places
for children to play; we lose birds and flowers and the charm of
evening hours on porches, or galleries, but think of what we gain in
bricks and mortar, in labor saved from splitting wood and shoveling
coal, in janitor service! The transition is now complete; the home is
simply that item in the economic machinery which will best furnish us
storage for our sleeping bodies and our clothes!
We are undoubtedly in a period of great changes in family life, and no
family can count on escaping the influence of the change. The one
single outstanding and most potent change, so far as the character of
family life is concerned, is, in the United States, the rapid polarization
of population in the cities. The United States Census Bureau counts all
residents in cities of over 8,000 population as "urban." In 1800 the

"urban" population was 4 per cent of the total population; in 1850 it
was 12.5 per cent; in 1870, 20.9 per cent; in 1890, 29.2 per cent; in
1900, 33.1 per cent; in 1910 it was estimated at 40 per cent.[2] Here is
a trend so clearly marked that we cannot deny its reality, while its
significance is familiar to everyone today.
However, the village type remains; there are still many homes where a
measure of family unity persists, where at least in one meal daily and,
for purposes of sleeping and, occasionally, for the evening hours of
recreation, there is a consciousness of home life. Yet the most remote
village feels the pressure of change. The few homes conforming to the
older ideals are recognized as exceptional. The city draws the village
and rural family to itself, and the contagion of its customs and ideals
spreads through the villages and affects the forms of living there.
Youths become city dwellers and do not cease to scoff at the village
unless later years give them wisdom to appreciate its higher values. The
standard of domestic organization is established by the city; that type of
living is the ideal toward which nearly all are striving.
The important question for all persons is whether the changes now
taking place in family life are good or ill. It is impossible to say
whether the whole trend is for the better; the many elements are too
diverse and often apparently conflicting. Faith in the orderly
development of society gives ground for belief that these changes
ultimately work for a higher type of family life. The city may be
regarded as only a transition