What are the elements of family life which among the changes of today we
need most carefully to preserve in order to maintain efficiency in
character development? In days when the outer shell of domestic
arrangements changes, when readjustments are being made in the
organization of the family, what is there too precious to lose, so
worthy and essential that we waste no time when seeking to maintain it?


§ 2. POTENCIES TO BE PRESERVED--SOCIAL QUALITIES

The first great element to be preserved in all family life is that of
the power of the small group for purposes of character development. The
infant's earliest world is the mother's arms. In order to grow into a
man fitted for the wider world of social living, he must learn to live
in a world within his comprehension. A child's life moves through the
widening circles of mother-care, family group, neighborhood, school,
city, state, and nation into world-living. He must take the first steps
before he is able to take the next ones. He must learn to live with the
few as preparation for living with the many. In earliest infancy he
takes his first unconscious lessons in the fine art of living with other
folks as he relates himself to parents and to brothers and sisters.

Secondly, the family life affords the best agency for social training.
The family is the ideal democracy into which the child-life is born.
Here habits are formed, ideals are pictured, and life itself is
interpreted. It is an ideal democracy, first, because it is a social
organization existing for the sake of persons. The family comes nearer
to fulfilling the true ideal of a democratic social order than does any
other institution. It is founded to bring lives into this world; it is
maintained for the sake of those lives; all its life, its methods, and