does the guarded relationship of monogamic marriage.

=The Inherited Family Order Demands New Social Adjustments.=--There
are, therefore, no reasons for welcoming the decline of the private
family. There are many that demand imperatively some adjustments in
inner comradeship and in mechanical arrangements surrounding the
household, in order to hold firm its spiritual values during changes
in social conditions. How far these changes of detail may go or what
will be the end of some present clearly outlined tendencies no one can
prophesy. The duty of the hour is, however, to set this treasure of
social inheritance in a clear light; to show its actual and potential
social value as at present perceived; and to try by all simple
measures open to our intelligence to aid in its evolution toward a
more perfect expression of the love of man and woman each for the
other and of the protection and care of both for the children of that
love. The basic test of all proposed changes in any inherited
institution is from henceforward, we must believe, that which inheres
in the spiritual essence of democracy. What is that essence of
democracy which must be applied as test within the family, as within
the state and within the industrial order? It is the fundamental
belief in the worth and dignity of every human being and the equal
right of each and all to personality. No man, as in the older days,
must be obliged to be husband and father, but may choose, if he deems
it essential to his own being, to remain in a solitary path outside
the current of the generations. No woman must be obliged to live
solely to serve a family. She, too, has right to self-development in
some chosen way. No married couple must be forced to add to the
children already here; they may justly be protected in living and
working together in some comradeship that has no family limitations
save those of mutual loyalty and mutual service. No child is to be
justly held so much under family control as to have his nature stifled
or warped, and no child shall be made a pecuniary asset to the family
regardless of his own needs. No family autonomy is henceforth to be
secured by fiat of law enthroning one "head" as the legal despot or
economic ruler. The family must be democratized in that sense in which
each individual within its bond shall be sustained in seeking and in
maintaining the conditions of personality. No one human being to live
solely for others' service or to have