Search

Facing crises like those of the present, neither the Greek nor the Roman civilization was able to survive. The modern Western world, unlike its cultural predecessors, has developed the essentials of a system of familial values and preserved them despite their detachment from the real situation. If the family is to endure, the literate minority must assume responsibility for inculcating family doctrine in the social conscience of the masses.

Religion is an institution upholding a system of “sacred” acts as contrasted with others called “worldly” or “profane.” All of them, from “primitive” to the most advanced types - such as Confucianism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and their numerous derivatives - have classified family relations as the most important of “sacred acts” of a wordly type. A true believer must not only love “God” but be very faithful in family obligations such as in carrying out the roles of husband, wife, parent, child or of kin. Thus religions institutionalize the quintessence of the basic mores. The religion is a “collective” and not an individual “fact.” Thus the family is only partly subservient to individual wishes. It is also a religious and legal-political institution. This may be called the “triple field” aspect of family sociology. When a couple join in matrimony the biological mating has religious and political significance. The moral and political rights, obligations and duties of the couple and their issue are also altered. Family, Society, and Civilization intertwine through religious beliefs. This system of interrelationships explains why times such as the present see a concurrent weakening of faiths, family relations and public order.

The data for this study were obtained from 357 farm families of Minnesota taken at random in groups of fifty from seven representative areas. The migration of females to the city in the third generation is distinctly higher than that of males. This study appears to show that migrants from the farm do not mount rapidly to the upper economic and social classes, 10.1 per cent of the migrants being in professions, including nursing, and 2.6 per cent in business as owners. The migration tends to be toward the larger cities, and the great majority travel only a short distance. Urbanization may be expected to increase in rate, with many serious problems, notably that of the support of the rural schools.

Nominalism and realism are defined as types of community integration. In the beginning the North American community was realistically integrated because it represented the transplanting of the medieval semifeudal village on our eastern coast. With the growth of the frontier and the mixing of peoples, Americanism and nominalist forms of community organization came to be almost identical. While pure realism or pure nominalism seldon exists in fact, a number of variables tend to emphasize one or the other. In America, age of settlement has been a constant factor promoting community realism. Mobility, low and differential fertility, urbanism, trade and commerce, and centralization of government and economic life have promoted community nominalism. On the whole, however, the evolution of the American community, after its first settlement, has been toward realistic integration. This process will probably move more rapidly in the twentieth than in the nineteenth century because the community-forming forces are g...

Hypotheses about the relation of various factors to the standard of living or to the standard obtaining in the social class under investigation may be classified into three groups: (1) utility hypotheses, including (a) relations between laws of supply and price and of the budget, (b) the law of diminishing returns or of rent, and (c) the marginal utility analysis; (2) the Engelian hypotheses which attempt to correlate the distribution of the budget with ideas of well-being; and (3) the Le Play hypotheses which attempt to correlate the family budget of expenditures with the social consequences of consumption, particularly in the field of social organization. Many of the ideas conflict; very few have been tested for complete validity under all conditions. Most of the laws have an economic bias, neglecting many of the fundamentals of the standard of living from the sociological viewpoint. The analyses have been largely biased by the assumption of an immediate reaction between an individual and his present co...

This study, based on 694 farm families of Minnesota, appears to show that children of successful farm families stay on the farms more often, while those of the less successful migrate to large industrial cities and enter the ranks of the wageearnig classes. Farm girls from the poorer class families migrate more often than any other group. Further study will be needed before these principles may be accepted as established.

Under rigidly controlled experimental conditions the work of children is more efficient under "individual" than "collective" remuneration; it is more efficient when the worker works for himself than when he works for his friends or other men; it is more efficient under "unequal" than "equal" remuneration; under overt competition than when it is lacking; "pure competition" without any pecuniary remuneration appears to be more stimulating than "equal" remuneration. Side by side by side with these general results the experimentation shows tangible individual differences among the children in regard to the success of the above methods of stimulation. The technique of the experimentation, the material used, the methodological principles involved, and other minor results are discussed in the paper itself.

This study discusses the use of budgetary analyses by the rural sociologists for the purpose of grasping and understanding some of the chief effects of urbanization or ruralization upon the behavior of social groups. Studies of budgetary behavior have been carried on with profit for more than two hundred and fifty years, yet much is still to be done. The works of Engel and LePlay suggest that an understanding of many effects of urbanization upon social behavior may be grasped through the use of budgetary analyses. Studies made by the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station suggest that the organization of the rural budget is primarily about their land and real property. On the other hand, urbanization increases the organization of the budget about the individualand adds to the number of choices and decisions that must be made. Further, a summary of some characteristics of living or budgetary behavior indicates that the value of such studies is increased by the use of intercorrelations of many fields of ...

This paper tests the hypothesis of chance selection in migration to cities from agriculture. The data used concern the economic and educational conditions among 477 city and farm families in Minnesota, and the migrations of 401 young adults. Farm families hold their children longer than urban families. All classes who keep children in agriculture give them less formal education than the children sent to the cities receive. Formal education may not be used as a measure of the quality of the population for purposes of testing selectivity. There is no evidence of a net selectivity unfavorable to agriculture, but some suggestions of assortative mating. The most important element in the urban upper classes was the children of the farmers; next was the children of the upper classes themselves; and, finally, the children of the lower urban classes. Occupations other than agriculture are composed out of the most heterogeneous groups. The first-born in agricultural families shows a preference for agriculture, whic...

Many sciences are taxonomic-then subject matter is classified into categories to each of which certain non-overlapping true statements may be made. This is not so in family sociology. With a few very broad exceptions, the basic concepts of family sociology are evaluative of the status of the families with regard to their strengths and weaknesses in relation to the controls over the individuals concerned and their implementation of social needs. Within this framework the same taxonomic classification (objectively speaking) can show wide ranges of strength or weakness and ability to carry out individual and social purposes. An examination of the main historical and contemporary concepts applied to groups of families shows this to be true. The same family or kindred groups can and do vary with time in their strengths and weaknesses. Hence the atomistic concept applied by Zimmerman to our contemporary Western family system is no more evaluative than any other family concept. With this in mind it is suggested that the atomistic family type with its weak controls over the individual is a current fact—not fiction. Thus the family system falls into the general category discussed by Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethic-its type depends upon its strengths and weaknesses, its minimums and excesses, and not on its taxonomic forms. This view clashes with the optimism of the ideas of the Ogburnian school and the existentialism of the Parsonian group of family sociologists.