SOCIAL CONTROL AND THE FUNCTION OF THE FAMILY 



BY GEORGE ELLIOTT HOWARD 



[George Elliott Howard, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science and Sociology, 

 University of Nebraska, b. Saratoga, New York, 1849; A.B. University of 

 Nebraska, 1876; Ph.D. ibid. 1894; student of history and Eoman Law, Univer- 

 sities of Munich and Paris, 1876-78. Professor of History, University of Ne- 

 braska, 1879-91 ; Professor of History and Head of History Department, Leland 

 Stanford Jr. University, 1891-1901; Professor of History, Cornell University, 

 summer term, 1902 ; Professorial Lecturer in History, University of Chicago, 

 1903-04; Professor of Institutional History, University of Nebraska, 190406. 

 Member of American Historical Association; American Political Science Asso- 

 ciation; and American Sociological Society. Author of Local Constitutional 

 History of the United States (1889); Development of the King's Peace (1891); 

 Modern English History and Biography, in New International Encyclopaedia 

 (1902); History of Matrimonial Institutions (3 vols., 1904); Preliminaries of the 

 American Revolution (1905).] 



IT is needful in the outset to mark the differentiation and to 

 observe the close interrelations of the family, marriage, and the 

 home. The problems of the family are necessarily involved in those 

 of the home and marriage. The three forms of development are 

 distinct in concept, but in their life or functions they constitute a 

 trinity of interdependent institutions. Westermarck has suggested 

 that in its origin marriage rested more on family than the family 

 upon marriage. Biologically, of course, marriage comes first in the 

 union of the sexes; yet it is certain that the culture-types of 

 marriage have been determined less by the sex-motive than by the 

 economic needs of the family, the bread-and-butter problem in the 

 struggle for existence. To-day this fact is decidedly true. In our 

 age of social self-consciousness, of dynamic sociology, the reformer 

 who would act wisely will not seek help in definitions but in a com- 

 prehension of the economic and spiritual needs of the family and 

 those of the individuals which compose it. As in other cases, there 

 must be an adjustment of functions to the environment. The 

 social uses of the family and still more those of the home are too 

 often neglected while speculating on the nature of wedlock and the 

 ethics of divorce. 



Accordingly the fundamental question which confronts the student 

 of this trinity of institutions is the problem of social control. In the 

 Western world the extension of the sphere of secular legislation 

 practically to the whole province - - the whole outward or legal 

 province of marriage is a fact of transcendent interest. In this 

 regard the Reformation marks the beginning of a social revolution. 

 Luther's dictum that " marriage is a worldly thing " contained 

 within it the germ of more history than its author ever imagined. 

 The real trend of evolution has not at all times been clearly seen or 

 frankly admitted; but from the days of Luther, however concealed 



