ABSTRACT
The family has ceased—except in comparatively few cases—to be an occupational unit in which the children are active partners, and the effect on the parents has been almost as disastrous as on the children. Instead of being leaders the parents have become possessors, the occupational partnership has given place to an emotional dictatorship. Most of the family occupations which made the partnership of the primitive family possible are provided by the State in one form or another. The water, which the children used to fetch from the spring, is available by turning on a tap in the scullery; the food which had to be hunted and skinned is brought to the door in a tin, and the same applies to the fuel, the bread, and the fruit. The profound changes in the status of the family have affected parents, children, and society as a whole.
