This age knows that man does not live by bread alone.  Interest in child-welfare is for the sake of the child himself, not for the sake of his clothes or his physical condition.  Concern about soap and sanitation, hygiene and the conveniences of life grows because these all go to make up the soil in which the person grows.  There is danger that our emphasis on child-welfare may be that of the tools instead of the man; that we may become enmeshed in the mechanism of well-being and lose sight of the being who should be well.  To fail at the point of character is to fail all along the line.  And we fail altogether, no matter how many bathtubs we give a child, how many playgrounds, medical inspections, and inoculations, unless that child be in himself strong and high-minded, loving truth, hating a lie, and habituated to live in good-will with his fellows and with high ideals for the universe.  Modern interest in the material factors of life is on account of their potency in making real selfhood; we acknowledge the importance of the physical as the very soil in which life grows.  But the fruits are more than the soil, and a home exists for higher purposes than physical conveniences; these are but its tools to its great end.  Somehow for purposes of social well-being we must raise our thinking of the family to the aim of the development of efficient, rightly minded character.  The family must be seen as making spiritual persons.

Sec. 4.  THE COST OF A FAMILY

Taking the home in religious terms will mean, then, conceiving it as an institution with a religious purpose, namely, that of giving to the world children who are adequately trained and sufficiently motived to live the social life of good-will.  The family exists to give society developed, efficient children.  It fails if it does not have a religious, a spiritual product.  It cannot succeed except by the willing self-devotion of adult lives to this spiritual, personal purpose.

A family is the primary social organization for the elementary purpose of breeding the species, nurturing and training the young.  This is its physiological basis.  But its duties cannot be discharged on the physiological plane alone.  This elementary physiological function is lifted to a spiritual level by the aim of character and the motive of love.  Families cannot be measured by their size; they must be measured by the character of their products.  If quality counts anywhere it counts here, though it is well to remember that it takes some reasonable quantity to make right quality in each.

The family needs a religious motive.  It demands sacrifice.  To follow lower impulses is to invite disaster.  The home breeds bitterness and sorrow wherever men and women court for lust, marry for social standing, and maintain an establishment only as a part of the game of social competition.  To sow the winds of passion, ease, idle luxury, pride, and greed is to reap the whirlwind.  Moreover, it is to miss the great chance of life, the chance to find that short cut to happiness which men call pain and suffering.