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Page 5
Looked at from the point of view of the social worker, desertion is
itself only a symptom of some more deeply seated trouble in the family
structure. The problem presented, if it could have been recognized in
time, is not essentially different from what it would have been before
the man's departure. Without attempting, therefore, any statistical
analysis of the causes of desertion, we may nevertheless be able to
examine one by one a number of possible _contributory factors_ in
marital unhappiness and therefore in desertion. No attempt will be made
in the list that follows to distinguish between primary and secondary
causes, nor to arrange them in any order of importance. An effort to get
from case workers lists so arranged resulted only in confusion, each
person emphasizing a different set of factors. The groupings here given,
therefore, are no more than a placing of the more obviously related
factors together and a leading from past history up to the present.
Considering first the personal as distinguished from the community
factors in desertion, these may be listed as follows:
CONTRIBUTORY FACTORS IN THE MAN AND WOMAN
1. Actual Mental Deficiency.--Character weaknesses such as were spoken
of earlier in this chapter grade down by degrees into real mental defect
or disorder, and not even the psychiatrist can always draw the line.
A physician connected with the Municipal Court in Boston gives as his
opinion that while the percentage of actually insane or feeble-minded
among deserters is no higher than among other offenders they are
extremely likely to present some of the phenomena of psychopathic
personality. Such people have to be studied by the social worker and the
psychiatrist, and not from the behavior side only, but with a view to
discovering what sort of equipment for life was handed down to them from
their family stock.
The plan for the future of a fifteen-year-old boy which was made by
a society for family social work was markedly modified when it was
discovered that not only his father but his grandfather had been a
man of violent and abusive temper, who drank habitually and
neglected their family obligations. With this sort of heredity and
an ineffective mother, whom he was accustomed to seeing treated with
abuse and disrespect, it was felt important to remove the boy, who
showed some promise, to surroundings where he could be under firm
discipline and learn decent standards of family life.
Feeble-mindedness, closely connected as it usually is with industrial
inefficiency in the man, bad housekeeping in the woman, and lack of
self-control in both, is of course, a potent factor in non-support and
probably also in desertion.
2. Faults in Early Training.--To low ideals of home life and of
personal obligation, which were imbibed in youth, can be traced much
family irresponsibility. It is by no means the rule, however, for
children always to follow in the footsteps of weak or vicious parents;
and it is the experience of social workers that such children, taught by
observation to avoid the faults seen in their own homes, often make good
parents themselves. Perhaps even more insidious in its effect on later
marital history is the home in which no self-control is learned. The
so-called "good homes" in which children are exposed to petting,
coddling, and overindulgence--and these homes are not confined to the
wealthy--produce adults who do not stand up to their responsibilities. A
probation officer in Philadelphia tells of the mother of a young
deserter who could not account for her son's delinquency. "He _ought_ to
be a good boy," she complained; "I carried him up to bed myself every
night till he was eleven years old."
3. Differences in Background.--Even though both man and wife come from
good homes, if those homes are widely different in standards and in
cultural background strains may develop in later life between the
couple. Differences in race, religion and age are recognized as having a
causative relation to desertion. Miss Brandt[9] found that, in about 28
per cent of the cases where these facts were ascertained, the husband
and wife were of different nationality. "In the general population of
the United States in 1900 only 8.5 per cent was of mixed parentage, and
for New York City the proportion was less than 13 per cent.... A
difference in nationality was more than twice as frequent among the
cases of desertion as among the general population of the city where it
is most common." Miss Brandt's figures for difference of religion are
less significant, but it existed in 19 per cent of the total number of
cases for which information on this point was available. In 27 per cent
of the families where age-facts were learned, there were differences of
over six years between the two; in 15 per cent the woman was older than
the man.
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