The Family and Democratic Society
- Author:
Joseph Kirk Folsom, Professor of Sociology, Vassar
College, U.S.A., with chapters in collaboration with Marion Bassett. Routledge & Kegan Paul. 30s.
The quality of this book is very variable. Professor Folsom has sought to write a comprehensive summary of the family, a source book covering all its aspects, and has drawn his data from a wide number of fields?psychology, economics, religion, anthropology and sociology. It follows that many of the sections are but brief summaries of the work of others, a compression of the subject matter of books into a few lines, as in the 30-page section on a world survey of family patterns. This gives to the book an air of superficiality, a breathless feeling and often a tabloid quality.
But I know of no other book which seeks to cover all the varied subjects mentioned in this one. There are sections on primitive family life and on the theory of its origin, the influence of modern social change, the measurement and prediction of marital happiness, causes and treatment of marital frustrations, the comparative legal status and demography of marriage, mate selection, housing, trends in ” home making” and education for family life, to mention but a few of the main ones. The bringing together of all this information, often a work of collation, is very useful and many a university student will find his burden of reading lightened by a perusal of this book. Professor Folsom in his psychological approach to these problems uses mainly the behaviouristic one and is non-psycho-analytical. Thus, the source of mental ill-health is to be found in the conditioning of the patient to annoyances and irritations of particular situations and places. Relief depends on a ” reconditioning ” of the disliked objects by placing them in other more pleasurable contexts, thus creating new habits. Hence the importance Professor Folsom places on frustration in the development of personality. In sociological and anthropological matters, the book is written under the influence of the Linton-Kardiner school. The theory is that each culture, through its primary institutions, attitudes, and patterns of behaviour, gives to the individual a basic personality structure which is characteristic of that culture. The personality is built ” round the pattern of reaction to the frustration of purposes arising from several causes in the culture “. The essential problem of such culture, as Folsom notes, lies in the plurality of their ethical systems which often gives rise to a conflict between these different values.
In his discussion of the stage reached by society in its development today, the Muller-Lyer analysis is accepted which finds that the values centre round the person. The essence of this analysis is that a person centred society is dualistic in nature, ” it has a structure of places, which must be filled, of jobs and duties which must be carried out. Alongside of this is a network of free developing persons and personal relations which shift about with considerable independence from the formal structure Institutional structures and the living individual are ” kept distinct and the needs of the person have a chance to influence the institutional structure “. It is with this in mind that the word ” democracy ” is included in the title.
At this point, however, Professor Folsom leaves the scientific field to become political and thus blunts the sharpness of his scientific acumen. It would appear that much of this section of the book was written in the days of Stalingrad, and the author is torn between his admiration for Russia fighting fascism and his fear of communism. There is, however, no such conflict in his abounding admiration of the American way of life seen through the tinted spectacles of a laissez-faire liberal of the nineteen hundreds.
The book was clearly written for an American audience and, judging by its many picturesque, sentimental and romantic metaphors (the Oedipus situation being described as a ” family romance “), for an audience of blushing school girls, whose delicate sensibilities need protecting. A graver fault for the non-American reader is the paucity of references to the European family or to the present trends in family structure in England or on the Continent. Russia is mentioned in terms of what Soviet policy set out to do, and there is no scientific analysis of the family there. The family in Sweden is more adequately dealt with, perhaps because Mydral has written such an excellent book about it. On other matters in Europe the book lags behind the times; thus, Veblen’s statement that on the Continent rank depends on occupation rather than upon scale of living is fully accepted. This was certainly true of 1906 Germany but it is doubtful if it holds true to-day. Or again, the French family is seen as dominated by the father which is only true at a very superficial and external level. Likewise it is inaccurate to say that the French woman does not vote.
For students of American life and for all who are curious, the information contained in these 700 pages will have many items of interest. The array of facts is considerable, the range of topics discussed wide, and both facts and topics deal with problems of vital importance to us all to-day. P.M.T.
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