Broken Homes: A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment

nating nor, if the testimony of social case workers can be accepted, is it true. It is true, of course, that many of the causes of domestic infelicity which lead to divorce among the

show that a comparatively small number of first deserters make so complete a break in their marital relations that they are never heard from again, and that an even smaller number actually start new families elsewhere,

om tenement. Ten days later he disappeared suddenly, but reappeared some two weeks later in very much better health and ready to resume his occupation and the care of his family. His e

and that the patient's disappearance might have been avoided if the services of a good

amily social agency after an absence of a few months, with effusive thanks for the care of his family and the explan

ok essential facts about the nature of marriage. The permanence of family life is one of the foundation stones of their professional faith; yet they may fail to recognize certain manifestations of this permanence as part and parcel of the end for which they are striving. They would see no point in the practice adopted by a certain social agency which deals with many cas

knowledge than this. Not only what takes men away but what keeps them from going, what brings them back, what leads to their being forgiven and received into their homes again, are ma

ne some understanding of these questions. The theorist who maintains that marriage is purely economic, or that it is ent

he unusual instances. It is as true of human beings as of nations, that the happy find no chronicler. "Out of ... interest and joy in caring for children in their weakness and watching that weakness grow to strength, family life came into being and has persisted."[3] It is hardly conceivable that in any society, however primitive, there were not some real families-even when custom ran otherwise-in which marriage meant love and kindness and the mutual sharing of responsibilities. And these families, today as always, are the creators and preservers of the spiritual gains of the human race. It has been beautifully said of the family in such a form, that "it is greater than love itself, for it includes, ennobles, makes permanent, all that is best in love. The pain of li

factors-use and wont; pride in being able to show a good front to the neighbors; a feeling that it is unnatural to be receiving support from other sources. Just the mere desire to have his clothes hanging on the wall and the smell of his pip

where when you

to take

omehow haven't

not to be near her syphilitic husband from whom she had determined to separate, said,

and persistence of the family. And so the social worker who is enabled by experience or imagination to enter into the real meaning of family life is neither scornful nor amused when Mrs. Finnegan is found, on the mor

t certain possible next steps, both on the legal and on the social side. For lack of space, it will be impossible to consider the closely related problems of the deserting wife, the unmarried mother, or the divorced couple. It is assumed throughout that the reader is familiar with the general theory

TNO

t of the Philadelphia Society

a Social and Educational Institution,

ormal Family," Annals of the American Academ

e Family, p. 342. London

of Boston, p. 20. New Yor