Chapter 5

BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND NEXT OF KIN

"The members of the ancient family were united by something more powerful than birth, affection, or physical strength; this was the religion of the sacred fire and of dead ancestors. This caused the ancient family to form a single body, both in this life and in the next,"--DE COULANGES, in _The Ancient City_.

"Land belonged to the clan and the clan was settled upon the land. A man was thus not a member of the clan because he lived upon or even owned the land, but he lived upon the land and had interest in it because he was a member of the clan."--HEARN, in _The Aryan Household_.

"Three things if possessed by a man make him fit to be a chief of kindred: that he should speak in behalf of his kin and be listened to; that he should fight in behalf of his kin and be feared; that he should be security on behalf of his kin and be accepted."--WELSH TRIADS (cited by Seebohm).

"I cannot choose but think upon the time When our two loves grew like two buds; School parted us; we never found again That childish world where our two spirits mingled Like scents from varying roses that remain one sweetness. Yet the twin habit of that earlier time Lingered for long about the heart and tongue. We had been natives of one happy clime And its dear accent to our utterance clung. And were another childhood world my share, I would be born a little sister there." --GEORGE ELIOT, in _Brother and Sister_.

"When love is strong it never tarries to take heed Or know if its return exceed Its gift; in its sweet haste no greed, No strife belong. It hardly asks if it be loved at all, to take So barren seems, when it can make Such bliss, for the beloved's sake, Of bitter tasks."--H.H.

=Ancient Kinship Bond.=--The relation of brothers and sisters in the family group has passed through many changes and must at times have caused much confusion and difficulty in the home. For example, in that state of familial association in which all the brothers of a certain relationship were considered as husbands of all sisters within a certain bond there must have been some heart-burnings and several kinds of family unpleasantness. We have some hints of these from many historical sources. In the era of complete subjection of the individual to the community such unpleasantness may have counted only for negligible unhappiness on the part of a few social rebels, but the custom alluded to did not prove to work well enough to become permanent.

Again, the form of family bond which demanded that a man take to wife the widow of his dead brother and "raise up children to the name" of the deceased had a long but not a permanent life. In the well-known passage from Deuteronomy, the 25th chapter, the faithful are commanded that "if brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no son, the wife of the dead shall not be married without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall ... take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother unto her. And the first-born ... shall succeed in the name of his brother that is dead, that his name be not blotted out of Israel." The same passage shows that while it was doubtless at first an imperative social law, there came a time when the living brother had a choice as to whether or not he should take to wife the widow of one who had died. Perhaps there might have been an economic pressure that made it difficult to perform this ancient duty. Perhaps there might have been objection from the wife or wives already in command of the household matters. Perhaps the widow was sometimes of a type to make the brotherly and family duty seem very hard. At any rate, there came a time when, as the writer in Deuteronomy says, "If the man like not to take his brother's wife" he could refuse the family service. It cost him, however, in such cases a severe ordeal. He could be haled before the elders on the complaint that he "refused to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel." The widow "could loose his shoe from his feet and spit in his face" and say "so shall it be done unto the man that doth not build up his brother's house."

The large requirement for the brother, thus indicated, passed outward to the next of kin in certain circumstances. There are many deeply interesting accounts of readjustment of family life through the taking over by the living of duties once undertaken by the dead. The lovely idyl of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz, shows this widely spreading brother-duty. Here the mother-in-law, so sweet and so wise that her sons' wives loved her deeply, shrewdly manages a contact between Ruth and Boaz to the lasting service of her son's inheritance of name and land. The whole story is redolent of the finer side of ancient forms of familial duty, the man being rich and generous enough to take on his more remote relative's responsibilities, the young widow being sweet and charming enough to capture the interest of the rich man even before he knows who she is, and the mother-in-law showing statesmanship of the highest order in managing the affair, together with such fine character of her own that all respect and love her.

To-day we have left in law and custom but the shadow of these ancient demands upon brothers in the family. That shadow is limited to the purely economic aspect of brotherly responsibilities. The old law of inheritance made the sons the preferred heirs. Only when there was no son could the daughter inherit if at all. The responsibility of that heir, however, was often made commensurate with his inheritance. He must financially care for the near relatives--the father and mother first, the sister and brother next, the uncles and aunts and cousins not to be forgotten.

=Present Demands of Kinship.=--The existing statutes make it incumbent upon any man in receipt of income beyond his own immediate needs to do what is possible to prevent his near relatives from requiring aid from the general public. The custom of all charitable organizations when appealed to for aid for individuals, or for a family, is to ask, "What can your relatives do for you?" The pressure upon those connected even by marriage to help relatives privately, and so reduce public relief, is often very severe. In those of English ancestry the disgrace of having a near relative, even so distant as a great-uncle or great-aunt or sister-in-law, "come upon the town" is felt keenly. The sacrifices of many people of limited means to prevent such a catastrophe would make a long and heavy list of discomforts and privations. The duty of brothers, sisters, and next of kin to help provide for the poorer members of the family connection is thus still held firmly by social ideals. That all people, however, pay this debt of family responsibility or that as many struggle to do it as used to do so cannot be affirmed. On the contrary, many charitable societies make it a serious business to discover and hold to responsibility shirking members of families in which there is great discrepancy in financial condition.

There is now, however, no recognized social responsibility for giving support to poorer members of the family within one household. There is no pressure to bring those needing material relief tinder the roof of the well-to-do of the family circle. Even parents cannot claim residence with adult children, although they can claim by law some support commensurate with their children's income. It is seen now that the duty of aid does not carry with it the obligation for personal association. That is, on the whole, a gain, especially in cases where there is temperamental incompatibility.

The whole relationship of brothers, sisters, and next of kin is simplified and placed more securely on bases of affection and ethical ideal in modern life, and people are good brothers and sisters or good family relatives in proportion as they are unselfish and useful in all their other social relationships. There is a real family tie, however, which still holds. We see it in the Family Reunions, in the listing of relationships in those devoted to genealogy, and in the patriotic societies that indicate by membership what ancestors fought in the Revolution or held office in Colonial days. There is the permanent tie of blood that makes a peculiar bond unlike that of friendship and unlike that of marriage--a tie sometimes carried to extremes, as in the case of the woman who, angry with her husband for a breach of etiquette, declared she "was glad that he was no relation of hers!" On the whole, in reasonable moderation, one of the best ways we have to-day of helping a group is by means of the generosity of the more successful members of that group.

=Special Burdens of Women in Family Obligations.=--Brothers, usually, marry and have their own households to take care of. The unmarried sisters, coming from a long line of women who were supposed to work entirely for the family, with no commercial value placed upon their household service, feel a call to duty from ancient times to carry family burdens. The sons, however, do not escape the parental call for help and have often in the immediate past (when women ceased to have a large economic value in the home and had not yet acquired the capacity or desire for self-support) borne a heavy burden of financial aid for unmarried sisters. The tables are well-nigh turned now, however, and the number of self-supporting women who have relatives of varied nearness and ages dependent or partially dependent upon them, is much larger than that of spinsters care-free and independent. In all cases, however, whether of men or women, those who respond loyally to the needs of those kin to them are the unselfish and capable. The slogan of socialism, "To all in the measure of their need; from all in the measure of their capacity," may never be accepted by society in general, but it is now the rule in the family relation.

=Disadvantages of the Only Child.=--In the individualistic family of the modern monogamic type the chief need is for every child to have brothers and sisters or at least a brother or sister. The "one-child" plan, which places a solitary little creature as sole recipient of money, affection, and care of the household, is one that shows poverty of condition for the child concerned, no matter how rich the parents. Such a child lacks a chief aid in its development. Nature sometimes sends, even in a large family, all boys or all girls and makes coeducation at the start difficult. Usually, however, when there are two, three, four, or more children they are mixed in due and helpful proportion. When the family is too large, as it so often was in the older days, it must subdivide according to ages and tastes, and in many old-fashioned families some brothers and sisters were near in sympathy and love and others wide apart. In the moderate-size modern family, however, where there is enough companionship within the home for family good times and not enough to cause breakage into groups within the group, we have the ideal conditions for child development. For the only child there are happily some substitutes for this home companionship in the "residential school," or the school with long days of group relationship of like age and condition, but it is not the same and seldom as good as the home circle of the right size and variety.

The modern conditions make the old ties seem less important to many. In the United States, where people move about so freely across the vast spaces of our continent, and where in the large cities so many move each year to try vainly to better themselves in hired houses, the ties of family outside of the immediate circle seem remote and to be easily set aside. It is not, however, a sign of advanced social spirit which makes a young girl declare "she has no use for her relations; she cares only for her chosen friends," and it is often of the essence of social danger that a young man wants to give up all connection with his family. The fact is that one can understand better how one came to be what one is by knowing something of one's forbears and one's living relatives.

=Permanent Value of the Family Bond.=--The feeling that one belongs to a blood group, the feeling so old and so wonder-working in the past, gives at least one ideal of permanence in a world of affairs whirling in such rapid change that the common mind becomes dizzy and the common idealism confused. On the other hand, it is cause for gratitude unspeakable that the old bondage of the family life is relaxed, never to be tightened again to such oppression as once prevailed. The fact that inheritance is now seen to be so varied and so unpredictable that one child in a family may "take back" to one ancestor and another to a different one to ends of complete divergence of character and capacity, shows that the old attempt to keep them together, whether they could love each other or not, was a social mistake. To-day we are more reasonable. We even say that fathers and mothers may not be taken into the home of their children if it best serves the mutual happiness for them to have separate homes. We seldom now in enlightened families make the mistake of holding to "living together" when living apart is clearly the wiser thing.

The old sense of family responsibility is, however, happily not lost and in its new ways of working often gives a finer representation of mutual aid than was common of old. The will of one rich man which included many gifts to sisters, cousins, and nieces, and left directions to the principal heirs to find out if there were any relatives of the same nearness left out and if so to make them equal sharers, is but a type of many who, with or without large means, share generously with all their name and kin.

On the other hand, we have examples of those who, in the effort to leave a large fortune for some specific object of education or of public charity, wholly neglect, often with cruel indifference, the needs of some member or members of their own family. One man of conspicuous gift to education left a sister and her two daughters without means for comfortable living while piling up money for his pet scheme. Many men skimp themselves and also their wives, children, and still more their parents and more remote kin, to hoard a monster sum for some charity to be forever called by their name. These, however, are unusual examples of losing sight of the near in the remote. The average man and woman has in mind a series of concentric circles, those nearest to be helped first, those next beyond to share next, and the world outside to have what is left when these inner claims upon love and generosity are fully met.

If it were not for this general tendency society-at-large would have far more responsibility for all sorts of care of the aged, of the incapable, of the unsuccessful, of the invalid, of the defective, of the insane, of the "cranky" and of the lonely. Finally, without this innate tendency to feel a sense of responsibility for those nearest related by family ties much of the discipline toward social usefulness would be lacking in the lives of average people. We learn the larger duty through faithful response to the nearer and closer obligation. For this reason the family holidays and reunions, the family birthday celebrations which include all the relatives within reach, the pressure of the law and of custom upon those able to care for those less strong and competent within the kinship bond, are all socializing influences which it is well to keep warm and consciously active.

The lovely spirit of Mrs. Hodgson Burnett's "Tembarom" when he finds a "real relative" is duplicated by many immigrants who after years of loneliness greet one of the family on the shores of the new country; and the member of the eastern family "gone west" is the most hospitable of all relatives to the visitor from the old home who has the same family tree.

The gratitude of the ancient poet that "God has set the solitary in families" is not a sentiment to be outgrown. Those who feel that it is, lose something precious from the basis of human affection. The adjustment of this old bond to the new individualistic life is not yet made even in the Western world, while in the Eastern the vital problems of family adjustment press in supreme unrest. The one principle that should guide us in this as in all inheritance from the past is surely this, that while the sacredness of personality of any one member of any group, even of the family, shall not be wholly sacrificed to the needs and demands of any other member, yet "they that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak" in the old spirit of unselfish service.

QUESTIONS ON BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND NEXT OF KIN

1. In the monogamic system of the family what, in general, has been the legal responsibility toward blood kin?

2. Is the inherited legal and social responsibility for the care and well-being of relatives lessened at the present time? If so, is that for good or for ill in the wider social fabric?

3. How far should accepted obligations toward near relatives be met in ways to bring under one roof more than the fathers and mothers and children of a given generation?

4. Should natural kinship weigh heavily in considering arrangements for material relief in poverty? In the care of orphans and half-orphans? And in provisions for aid to the aged, the sick, and those out of work?

5. What special conditions make appeal to family feeling difficult in a population like that of the United States with many immigrants and great mobility in industrial relations?

6. Is there any way of strengthening family feeling without attempting return to older forms of family autonomy?