Chapter V: Part 5

The immigrant brings with him to this country this tradition of the authority of the parent, with no thought of doing anything but maintaining it here. There are, however, forces at work in this country that tend to make this impossible. There are suggestions of a different tradition in the general atmosphere. Many immigrants absorb these suggestions unconsciously, as they absorb those of a wider freedom for women. More important, however, is the development of the child. Circumstances of his daily life force him to take the lead in many situations. This has been pointed out in a study of the delinquent child, where it is said:[44]

Obviously, many things which are familiar to the child in the
facts of daily intercourse in the street, or in the school,
will remain unknown or unintelligible to the father and
mother. It has become a commonplace that this cheap wisdom on
the part of the boy or girl leads to a reversal of the usual
relationship between parent and child. The child who knows
English is the interpreter who makes the necessary
explanations for the mother to the landlord, the grocer, the
sanitary inspector, the charity visitor, and the teacher or
truant officer. It is the child again who often interviews
the "boss," finds the father a job, and sees him through the
onerous task of "joining the union." The father and mother
grow accustomed to trusting the child's version of what "they
all do in America," and gradually find themselves at a great
disadvantage in trying to maintain parental control.

In the face of this situation the conduct of the immigrant parent generally follows along one of three very distinct lines: (a) he modifies his methods in family discipline little by little, himself unconscious of the implications, or (b) he stubbornly attempts to retain the old authority undiminished, or (c) he abandons the old system without having anything to put in its place. The first method of behavior is probably the most common; it usually leads to little difficulty within the family group if the parents' modifications are made as fast as the child becomes aware of the newer ideas. The attempt to maintain the old system in its entirety may also be accomplished without disturbance if the child is willing, and probably in most cases it is maintained without serious opposition on the part of the child.

Abandoning the old system without substituting something better is probably the least frequent reaction to the situation, but it is one that is especially dangerous in immigrant groups. The native-born parent who relaxes all discipline has this advantage over the foreign born; in general he can at will demonstrate his superior knowledge, and the child looks up to him and takes his advice, while the foreign-born parent is peculiarly helpless because the child thinks that his own knowledge, demonstrably superior in some things, extends to all fields.

The relative frequency of these different modes of reaction would be a difficult matter to determine. They were all evident from the facts about discipline obtained from the families visited in this study. To some extent the maintenance of the old system intact may be judged by the prevalence of corporal punishment as a method of enforcing obedience.

A doctor of a Lithuanian district said that one thing he was very anxious to see disappear was the strap, which could now be seen in almost every home. Fifty-four of the eighty-seven families from whom information was obtained said that they used whipping as a method of punishment. In most of the cases there was nothing to indicate with what the child was whipped, but in five it was definitely stated that a strap was used. In very few cases was there any attempt to punish the child in private. It was usually stated that the whipping was done before all the other members of the family. Two or three families stated that they did not whip the children on the street.

A significant fact was the frequently repeated assertion that the children were whipped because they were too young to understand anything else. An interesting state of transition was seen in some of the thirty-three families who had abandoned whipping but had not given up the idea of absolute obedience. It is evidenced in comments like the following: "They are not whipped. Father threatens with a strap." Or, "It [whipping] is not necessary. Father speaks, and children obey." Some families had relaxed the discipline sufficiently to be apparent to our investigators, who made such comments as "Children are making a terrible noise, but nobody seemed to mind."

It has already been said that whatever the reaction, the training of the children usually takes place without visible disaster to the family group. This is especially true while the children are young. As they grow older the dangers that are inherent in such a situation become more marked. The figures on juvenile delinquency show that an unduly large proportion of juvenile offenders are children of foreign-born parents. This subject will be discussed more fully at a later point in the chapter in connection with the problem of the older boy and girl. It is important to emphasize here that the foundation for later trouble is often laid while the children are young, and hence consideration of the effect of modern ideas on discipline and training should begin with the very young child.

LEARNING TO PLAY

One of the needs of the growing child that is much emphasized in modern ideas of child culture is an opportunity for wholesome play. The foreign-born mother, from a rural district in Europe, where children were put to work helping the parents as soon as they could be in any way useful, frequently does not recognize this need, and hence does not even do those things within her power to secure it. From some opportunities which she and the children might enjoy together, she is cut off by lack of knowledge of English. A Bohemian woman, for example, said that she did not go with her husband and the children to the moving pictures, as she could not read the English explanations and often did not understand the pictures.

Even when the need is recognized it is still a very difficult problem. In the old country, when the child was too little to work, he could play in the fields quite safe, in sight of his mother at her work. In the city, however, especially in the congested districts, which are the only ones known to immigrants when they first come, the child cannot play in his own yard, for there is nothing that can be called a yard. The alternatives are the city streets with their manifold dangers, or the public playground. From the point of view of physical safety as well as in giving a place for more wholesome play, the public playground is obviously the more desirable.

The provision of playgrounds, however, is everywhere inadequate, in some places much more so than in others. In Chicago, which is probably better equipped in this respect than most cities, there are large districts that have no easy access to a playground. Many of the women that were asked where their children played said that they played on the streets, not because the parents thought it safe, but because they could not go to a playground alone and the mother had not time to take them. It was interesting, too, to learn that some of the parents who preferred the playground, and whose children played there, did not think the children should be left there alone. In one Bohemian family the grandmother took the two little boys to the playground and stayed with them as long as they stayed.

In part, then, the problem of play space is a problem in housing reform. All the newer housing projects make provision for a space for this purpose, either by the individual yard or where the multiple house is used, by one playground for every three or four families. Housing reform, however, comes slowly and immediate relief could be given by the provision of many more public playgrounds. It is obvious that these must be so directed and supervised that children can be left with perfect safety.

It would also be necessary to see that the foreign-speaking mothers were informed of the advantages of the playground and convinced of its safety for their children. The supervision of children's play in streets and vacant lots could be greatly extended. The establishing during certain hours of "play zones," from which traffic is excluded and in which the younger children and their mothers could be taught simple games and dances, has been found successful.

PARENTS AND EDUCATION

In the matter of education the state has relieved the parent of a large part of the responsibility by legislation prescribing the ages during which the child must attend school, and in some states the grade he must reach before leaving school. In spite of this there still rests with the parent the responsibility of choosing the school, getting the child to school promptly and regularly, following his progress, deciding whether he shall go beyond the time prescribed by law.

The choice of the schools means for most immigrant groups, a choice between the public and the parochial school. In very large numbers of cases the parochial school is chosen. The reason for this is only in part the influence of the church, although this undoubtedly counts for a great deal. The people we have interviewed in this study have repeatedly pointed out that it is not only for religious education and training that the foreign-born parent sends his child to the parochial school, but that it is also because he wants him to learn the language of his parents, the history and traditions of the country from which he came, and to retain a respect for the experiences and associations that remain of great importance to the parents.

Another reason that has often been given for sending the children to the parochial school is the lack of discipline in the public schools. This has been especially emphasized by Italians, but it has also been spoken of by members of other groups. There can be no question that the parochial school, under the tradition of authority maintained by the church, is much nearer in its idea of discipline to the ideas the immigrant brings with him from the old country, than is the public school whose system of training the immigrant parent does not understand and has not had made clear to him.

The problem of the immigrant parent with regard to the education of his child is more difficult because of the change in the position of the child in this country, which he usually does not understand. At home the child was important, not as an individual, but as a member of the family group, and home decisions about the child took into account the needs of the family in the first place and only secondarily the welfare of the child.[45]

This reversal of emphasis is confusing to the immigrant parents. Taken in connection with the fact that many of the immigrants are from countries where education is not compulsory, it leads them to sacrifice the welfare of the child at many points. It seems of much greater importance, for example, that the work of the household should be done than the child should get to school every day. The study of the reasons for absence in two of the immigrant neighborhoods of Chicago[46] shows the frequency with which children are kept out of school because of the needs of the family. Thus, of 1,115 children who were absent from school during a certain period 131 were out to do work at home; 81 were kept at home because of sickness in the family; 42 stayed home to interpret or run errands.

One boy, for example, was kept to watch fires for a sick father while his mother "got a day's work"; another had stayed at home because his sister's baby was in convulsions and his mother had not been able to get him ready to go to school; John was staying at home because his mother had gone to see a doctor and wanted him to look after the children, who did not like to go to the day nursery; Bruno, aged twelve, was found at home helping his mother wash, but he explained that he had really stayed out to go "to tell the boss" that his father was sick; Genevieve, aged twelve, who had been absent fourteen half days and tardy twice within a month, was found alternately tending the shop and taking care of three younger children and of a sick mother, although her father was well able to hire some one to come in and help care for the family while the little girl was at school.

In the rural districts the failure to understand the necessity of complying with the compulsory education law is even more marked. In the Rolling Prairie group of Polish families many of the children were not sent to school until after two families had been fined for not sending them. There was the expense for clothes and books, and the extra work for the mother. The roads were bad, the children often had no shoes, even in winter, and, above all, the parents had no understanding of why they should go. After the prosecution, however, the school law was obeyed.

The parents' attitude toward the problem of keeping the child in school comes out quite naïvely in the answers given to visitors for this study. The following comments, given in the quaint but forceful English of our foreign-speaking investigators, show what is meant:

Mother (a Russian woman with three children) visited school
when teacher demanded her to send daughter to school when she
wished her at home to help.

Mother (a Polish woman with six children under fourteen)
feels that children study too much and ought to help their
parents more.

Father (Italian) thinks there should be laws for protection
of parents as well as child labor.

FOLLOWING SCHOOL PROGRESS

Following the child's progress at school is a difficult matter for parents who themselves have not had the benefit of education, or even for those who have been educated under a different system. It is, however, not impossible for them to do so; by means of reports in the language they can understand, by talking to the teachers or some one of the school authorities who knows about the child's work, they can keep closely enough in touch with his school record to enable them to give help at the point where it is most needed.

Many of them do this in spite of the inherent difficulties and in spite of difficulties which the school itself puts in their way. An Italian father in a little Illinois mining town brought out with pride the last report of his little girl and showed the visitor that she had an average of 90 per cent. In the families studied in Chicago a few were evidently trying to keep in touch with their children's schooling. Thus of one family it is said:

"Mother not only goes to school entertainments, but follows up the children's work with the teachers, consults them, and accepts their advice." This family is Bohemian, and both mother and father are well-educated leaders in progressive Bohemian circles in Chicago.

In another Bohemian family the parents were also making an effort in this direction, but, being less well equipped, their difficulties were greater. The schedule says:

Mother never visits school as she cannot understand English.
Parents are very much concerned about their boy who brought a
poor mark from school. After family consultation, daughter
visited teacher, who advised them to take the boy out of
Bohemian school (a nationalistic school to which he went
after school hours), because he might be overworked.

These are, however, exceptional cases in the families studied. Among the Bohemians and Slovaks, to be sure, a considerable proportion of the mothers visited the school occasionally or knew some of the children's teachers. Among the families of the more recent immigrants it was almost unheard of for the parents to visit the school. Of the eleven Russian families studied not one reported any visits to the school or contact with the teachers, and only two of the Ukrainian families. One of these visited only when the children did not behave. This mother said that she thought she should know more about her children's school work, but that she had felt so much in the way when she visited the school that she finally stopped going.

An almost inevitable consequence of this failure to make contacts with the school is that the parents remain quite unaware of what their children are learning there. An attempt was made in our study of selected families to get the parents' opinion of the work the children were given at school, but very few parents felt they knew enough about the work to express an opinion. A few to whom reference has already been made thought the children gave too much time to study and not enough to helping their parents, one or two spoke of the lack of discipline, a few others thought the schooling must be all right as the children learned to speak English. A Ukrainian mother of two children, the oldest eight, "believes that it must be good, for the children speak English and the oldest girl can read and write."

Sometimes the failure to understand what the children are doing brings unnecessary worry. A Hungarian mother, speaking of the education of her children, expressed regret that they were not taught carpentry. The visitor turned to the eleven-year-old boy and asked him if he didn't have manual training. He replied that he did, but "she doesn't understand."

A careful study of the answers to the questions in our attempt to get parents' attitude toward the children's schooling shows, then, that while a few exceptional parents have been able to follow their children's schooling, the great majority of them have not. It suggests that some of them are willing and ready to do it if only some of the obstacles were removed, and that there are also a large number who do not realize the necessity of it, and for whom something more must be done. The opportunity of the school, and various devices for rendering aid at this point, that have been tried, will be discussed in a later chapter.

The failure of the parents to understand not only means confusion and worry for them, but for the child lack of the help and sympathy at home that they might have. It becomes more serious as the child reaches the age when he is no longer compelled by law to attend school, and the decision as to whether or not he shall go on rests with his parents. When the parents have not known about the work he has been doing, and have no means of judging how much or how little he has learned, they are obviously in no position to make a decision about his further education.

There are many forces at work to influence the immigrant parent to put the child to work at once. There is, first of all, in many cases, economic pressure. Sometimes the child's earnings are actually needed to make up the family budget for current expenditures. In some families, however, his earnings are not so much needed as desired, to help in buying property more often than for any other reason. In these cases it seems clear that the attitude toward the child as a means of contributing to the welfare or prestige of the family is a very important factor. One Polish doctor with whom we conferred emphasized this point. He said that the Polish parent expected to stop work at an early age and live on the earnings of his children. Hence he took his children out of school as soon as the law allowed, and had them start work.

Another factor that undoubtedly plays an important part is the parent's own lack of education. Never having had any opportunity for more than the most elementary education, it is only natural that it should seem that a child who had spent seven years in school should be fairly well educated. This attitude is strengthened if he has succeeded without education or if the people whom he looks upon as successful have had little education. He is further confirmed in this attitude very often by his failure to realize the extent of the change in conditions and the ever-increasing complexity of the situation with which his child will have to deal. Thus he often fails to understand that an education that was quite adequate for the simple life in the old country is far from sufficient for life in this country to-day.

Some of the people with whom we conferred were of the opinion that many of the parents from groups oppressed in Europe failed to realize the full significance of the freedom here. There the higher positions and the professions had been closed to them on account of race or class, and many of them were not aware that here they would be open to their children if they could give them the necessary education and training.

There are, fortunately, forces at work to counteract this tendency to take the children out of school at the earliest possible moment. There is, too, among the foreign born, a very general desire to have their children do office work rather than manual labor, and an understanding that this means more than a grammar-school education. There is a certain naïve faith in the benefits of education even though they are not understood. This is particularly strong in people to whom the schools have been closed by a dominant race in Europe--the Jews from Russia, for example. And in proportion as the parents become educated so that they feel their own limitations, they appreciate education for their children and strive to give it to them. There is no doubt that all these influences are felt in the foreign-born groups, but they win out gradually against the force of the traditions by which the parent is guided in his decision to take the child out of school.

The American community could hasten their action by helping the foreign-born parents to understand. There have been some attempts to enlighten the parents. The work of the Vocational Guidance Bureau in Chicago should be mentioned in this connection. When a child wants to leave school to go to work they explain to the parents the importance of keeping the child in school, and suggest means by which this can be done. This happens, however, only after the decision and plans have been made to put the child to work. The bureau has been handicapped in dealing with foreign-born parents by its lack of foreign-speaking visitors.

An attempt of a different order has been made to reach the Bohemian farmers in Nebraska. A professor in the state university has for a number of years gone out to these farming communities, urging in public speeches given in Bohemian the necessity of higher education for the children, and especially for the girls.

THE REVOLT OF OLDER CHILDREN

The problem of the older boy and girl is by far the most difficult of the parents' problems. Reference has already been made to the fact that it is as the child grows older that the difficulties of maintaining the old system of parental authority become more apparent. It is at this time that the child sees that system is out of date, and then, if ever, he rebels against it. There is considerable evidence that the parents, on the other hand, feel the importance of maintaining their authority at that period of the child's life more than at any other. There are several reasons for this, among the more important being the fact that the child has reached an age when he can be economically helpful to the family group, and that the parents see dangers in his path. In other words, the maintenance of parental authority seems to be tied up with the control of the child's earnings and the maintenance of certain conventions regarding the association between young people of different sexes.[47]

The immigrant parent very generally asserts his legal right to the entire earnings of his minor child. In fact, the child often continues the practice of giving up his wages until his marriage. Out of forty-three families studied, in which there were children of working age, thirty-five parents took the entire earnings of the children. The amount that the parent should give back to the child is not fixed by law or by custom, and it is at this point that conflict between the child and the parents is likely to arise.

The parents frequently expect to continue to provide for the boy and the girl of working age as they did when they were younger, and to recognize their maturity only by giving them small sums weekly for spending money. In the case of girls even this slight concession is not made, and the girl has to ask her mother for everything she wants. In only four of the thirty-five families in which the children turned in all their earnings was an allowance of as much as $3 a week given. In the others the working child was given 25 cents, 50 cents, or 75 cents a week, usually on Sunday, or was given no fixed sum but "what he needs." In a Slovak family a girl of sixteen earning $13 a week, and one of fourteen earning $9 a week, were each given 50 cents each pay day; a boy of fifteen in a Slovenian family, earning $15 a week, received 50 cents on Sunday; two Slovak girls of eighteen and sixteen years, earning $45 and $80 a month, turned in all their earnings and got back "what they asked for."

It is not surprising that a boy or girl should chafe under the system even if the resentment stopped short of open rebellion. In the families studied in which there was no evidence of friction it seems to have been avoided either by such a firm establishment of the authority of the parents while the child was young, that the child had not yet questioned it, or by wise use of the child's earnings for the benefit of the child. In several instances it was reported that they gave the child "all she asks"; one girl was being given lessons on the violin, which she specially desired. In these cases the issue did not appear to have been raised, but we have no reason for thinking the children were satisfied with the arrangement.

In other families the beginnings of friction could already be seen. A Russian woman said that her two working girls, aged seventeen and fourteen, did not need money, and in the presence of the investigator refused the request of one for money for a picture show, telling her that men would pay her way. The eight parents who did not take all their children's earnings had not all changed their practices voluntarily. In some cases it was done because the children refused any longer to turn their earnings in.

When the parent takes the entire earnings of the child and continues to bear the burden of support, there is probably no question on which the ideas of the child and those of the parent are so likely to conflict as on the question of clothes, especially clothes for the girl. The chaotic and unstandardized condition of the whole clothing problem has been pointed out in an earlier chapter, and attention has been called to the fact that it is one of the causes of conflict between parent and child.

It is only natural that the young girl should want to look as well as possible, and it is to be expected that the girl of foreign-born parents should quickly learn at school or at work the prevailing opinion that to be well dressed is to be dressed in the latest fashion. She is also in a position to observe how quickly the fashions change, and thus early learns the unimportance of quality in modern clothing. She undoubtedly underestimates its importance because her models are not those on display at the highest-grade department stores, where the beauty of the quality occasionally redeems in slight measure the grotesqueness of form; she sees only the cheap imitations displayed in the stores in her own neighborhood.

In her main contention that if she is to keep up with the fashions she need not buy clothing that will last more than one season, she is probably right. It is natural also that this method of buying should be distressing to her mother, who has been accustomed to clothes of unchanging fashions which were judged entirely by their quality. When to her normal distress at buying goods of poor quality at any price there is added an outrage to her native thrift, because the price of these tawdry fashionable goods is actually greater than for goods of better quality, it is not surprising that she and her daughter should clash on the question of what to buy.

The question of shoes is said to be a special point of conflict. The girls insist on costly high-heeled, light-colored boots, while the mother sees that she could buy at less than half the price better shoes, more sensible, and of better quality. The conflict is more acute in proportion as the mother has lived an isolated life in this country and has not herself tried to keep up with American fashions. It is interesting to note that workers in the Vocational Guidance Bureau in Chicago state that this desire of the girls for expensive clothes is a leading motive in causing them to leave school to go to work.

RELATIONS OF BOYS AND GIRLS

The most serious of the problems in connection with the older boy and girl is that of the relations between the sexes. In the old country the situation was much more easily defined. The conventions were fixed, and had changed very little since the mother was young. In Italy, for example, daughters never went out with young men, not even after they were engaged. The same is said to be true in most of the other countries from which our immigrants have come. In Croatia, Serbia, and Bohemia it is unheard of for a young woman to go out alone with a young man.

Moreover, coming as so many of these people do from small villages or rural communities, they have been used to a single-group life which is impossible in a city. As one Italian woman has expressed it, work and recreation went hand in hand in the old country. During the day there was the work of both men and women in the fields in congenial groups, and in the evenings songs and dancing in the village streets. The whole family worked and played together with other family groups.

It is not intended to assert that there were no problems with young people in the old country, for undoubtedly there, as everywhere, some of the young would be wayward and indifferent to the conventions. The point is that there the mother knew what standards she was to maintain and had, moreover, the backing of a homogeneous group to help her. In this country not only is she herself a stranger, uncertain of herself, not sure whether to try to maintain the standards of her home or those that seem to prevail here, but the community of which she is a part is far from being a homogeneous group and has apparently conflicting standards. The immigrant mother, then, has to decide in the first place what standards she will try to maintain.

The old standards can scarcely be maintained in a modern community where the girls go to work in factories, working side by side with men, going and coming home in the company of men. It is manifestly impossible for the mother to watch her daughter at work. In the old country this was possible as long as she stayed on the farm. And when at school and at work she is constantly thrown with men, it is impossible to regulate her social hours by the old standards and to see that they are all spent under her mother's eye. Moreover, any attempt to do so is likely to provoke resentment, as a girl naturally thinks that if she can take care of herself at work she is equally well able to do so at play.

Furthermore, the character of the recreation has undergone almost as great a change as the character of the work. With the change from the country to the city, it has already been suggested that the old group life with its simple pleasures, which the whole family shared, has become impossible. If the mother then tries to see that her daughter has social life in which she herself may share, she either cuts her off from most of the normal pleasures of young people of her age, or the mother finds herself in places where she is not wanted, and where no provision has been made for her entertainment.

Most immigrant parents, except those from southern Italy, recognize the impossibility of maintaining the old rules of chaperonage and guardianship of the girls. One of the Slovak women with whom we conferred said that in all her circle of acquaintance there was only one mother who was attempting to bring her daughter up by the old standards and was not allowing her to go places in the evening where the mother might not accompany her. All the others were allowing their daughters more freedom than they thought desirable, but they did not know what else to do.

The Italian parents, on the other hand, try to guard their girls almost as closely as they did in Italy. It is not especially to be wondered at, for what the immigrant father or mother sees is usually the worst in American city life. If the daughter could not be trusted alone or unchaperoned in a village in which they knew most of the people and all the places of amusement, is she any more safe in a city in which, as one foreign-born mother says, "You don't know what is around the corner from you"?

Moreover, realizing only the danger to the girl, and not being able in his ignorance to explain to her or to protect her in any other way, the father often resorts to beating the girl to enforce the obedience which generations have taught him is due to him. The head of the Complaint Department of the Cook County Juvenile Court in Chicago said that while cases of immorality were very rare among Italian girls, the attention of the court was called to a great many who rebelled at this attempt at seclusion and ran away from home, often contracting hasty and ill-advised marriages.

While most parents of other nationalities see that the old standards cannot be maintained, there is a great deal of confusion as to what standards are to be considered right. This is illustrated by the following incident. A very intelligent Jugo-Slav woman, in discussing the problem, said that she did not know what she would do in her own family, as she hated to think of her girls adopting American standards. The matter had been brought to her attention recently by the conduct of two girls with a young Serbian officer who was visiting in this country. As he walked up one of the boulevards two girls, who were utter strangers to him, had flourished small feather dusters in his face by way of salutation. This woman was very much surprised to hear that the investigator disapproved of this; she had supposed it was just our "American freedom."

As long as the mother does not understand this tradition of freedom between the sexes nor realize its limits, it is natural that she should accept her daughter's dictum that everything she wants to do is "American" and that it is hopeless for the mother to try to understand. In many of the families visited in this study it was evident that the mother had completely given up trying to understand either the conditions under which her children work or how they get their recreation. One mother, for example, said that she knew where her daughter worked when it was a well-known place, but otherwise not. Another said that her children told her where they worked, but she never remembered the names, for she knew that they would mean nothing to her.

Several said they did not try to advise their children about their work, because they knew they didn't understand. One Russian mother was very much worried about the future of her two boys, aged seventeen and thirteen. The older was working as a cash boy, earning twelve dollars a week, and the younger was working outside of school hours, sewing caps. The mother said that their father had learned one trade and followed that, but that her children changed work every two or three months. She seldom asked why they changed, because she did not understand conditions in Chicago.

Most of the women confessed to being equally at sea with regard to their children's amusements. Some of them accepted with resignation the fact that they could not understand, saying, as one woman did, that she thought they had too much freedom, but that young people lived very differently here. Some of the mothers, on the other hand, while thinking that young people in general had too much freedom, thought that they did not need worry about their own children, because they had been able to make companions of their daughters. A few even were found who approved of the freedom allowed to young people, but thought children should be taught "more morality."

It is scarcely possible to say too much of the failure of the American community to assist the immigrant family at this point. It has neither tried to make the fathers and mothers understand modern American ways, nor has it exercised any community supervision so that the girl is in reality safe at work and at play. Furthermore, some of the agencies from whom the most help might have been expected have deliberately passed over the mother to educate the child, hastening the process by which the child becomes Americanized in advance of his parents.

The Church has had its share, as may be seen from the statement of one priest who holds a responsible position in the Church in Chicago. He believes that the parents are usually too advanced in years to assimilate or utilize whatever instruction is given them. In his opinion the ignorance of the parent is responsible for many bad tendencies in the children, but the difficulty can be corrected more surely and satisfactorily by dealing directly with the children.

The attitude of the public schools is illustrated by an interview with the principal of a public school in an immigrant neighborhood. He says that his contact has been only with the children. The foreign-born parents of the first generation are, in his opinion, "so incorrigibly stupid" that any attempts to educate them are a waste of time. The only possible way, he thinks, of reaching the parents is through the children.

THE JUVENILE COURT

We should not expect the Juvenile Court, dealing as directly as it does with problems resulting from the breakdown of family discipline, to be itself a cause of breakdown. Nevertheless, interviews with court officers show a certain lack of understanding and the use of methods which, instead of relieving the situation, only aggravate it. When the case of a delinquent girl, for instance, comes to court, the officers believe that it has usually gone too far for the court to do anything with the family. The child is often placed out in a family home, always an American family; and the probation officer supervises the child and the foster home, but pays no attention to the child's own home, where younger children may be growing up in the same way and to which, ultimately, the delinquent girl should be allowed and encouraged to return.

The probation officers know very little of the old-country background of the people with which they deal, and are often not clear as to the differences in nationality. The foreign-born parent's ignorance of laws and customs, and his inability to speak English, make him appear stupid to the officer. As a result, he may be ignored as quite hopeless.

In the absence of the court interpreter the child may be called upon to interpret to the parent the whole proceedings in court. While this is less common now than it was a few years ago, there is no reason to believe that the child is less used as interpreter between the probation officer and the parent at home.

From the records of the court proceedings it is often quite evident to the reader that the foreign-born parent has little idea of the reasons why he or his child should have been brought to court. In one Bohemian family studied the eldest boy, aged sixteen, was in the State School for Delinquent Boys. The parents seemed utterly unaware of the serious nature of the boy's offenses and of the blot on his record. They seemed to regard the school for delinquents somewhat as more prosperous parents are wont to regard the boarding school. In fact, they expressed regret that the boy was soon to be released. Yet this boy had been in the Juvenile Court three times; the first time for truancy, and the other two for stealing.

The attention of the community is usually called to the difficulties of the foreign-born parents only when a complete breakdown occurs, resulting in juvenile delinquency. This result is, however, comparatively rare. Most families work their way through without getting into a situation that calls public attention to their family affairs. There is no question, however, that there is often a lack of harmony in the home. Sometimes the child of working age leaves home, to board perhaps in the same neighborhood or to contract a hasty marriage.

Occasionally there are situations in which the ordinary relations of parent and child have been completely reversed, and the children have assumed responsibility for the management of the home and the family. For instance, the Juvenile Court was asked by the neighbors to investigate conditions in a Polish family, in which a six-year-old boy was said to be neglected. The investigation showed no real neglect from the point of view of the court, but a situation that needed supervision.

The mother was a widow and had, besides the six-year-old boy, two daughters aged seventeen and nineteen. Both girls were born in Austria. The father had preceded his family to the United States, and for five years the mother had worked and supported herself and the children in the old country before he was able to send for them. He seems not to have had a very good moral influence over the children, but had been dead several years. The daughters were both supporting the mother, who was doing one or two days' work a week. The daughters turned over all their earnings to the mother, but said that she was a poor manager and never had anything to show for it. They themselves had managed to buy new furniture and clothes for themselves. They said they were ashamed to go out with their mother, who remained unprogressive, would not dress as they liked, and would not manage the home as they wished. The girls told the officer that they did not take her out with them, but gave her money to go to the "movies." Yet she would do nothing but sit at home and cry.

At one time the boy was accused of stealing coal from a neighbor. The oldest girl wanted her mother to investigate, but the mother would not go near any of her American neighbors. The daughter herself found out that the child had really taken the coal from a neighbor, and whipped him. Gradually the daughters, especially the older one, have assumed entire control of the family. The mother can no longer discipline even the six-year-old boy. Since the daughter has undertaken to correct him, he pays no attention at all to his mother. The probation officer has tried to restore a more normal family relationship, and has tried to help the girls to understand their mother's position. She still speaks with pride of the five years in the old country when she supported them alone, and when she was really of some use to them.

The older daughter threatened for some time to leave home if her mother could not be more agreeable. When the court officer remonstrated, she said that of course she would leave her furniture, and could not be convinced that that would not entirely compensate. Later she did leave home, and took some of her furniture. The family are Catholics, but the mother no longer goes to church, and, though the girls go, the priest seems to have had no influence over them.

Although the great majority of the foreign-born parents succeed in bringing up their children without the children becoming delinquent, the minority who are not successful is large enough to cause grave concern. This has been shown in all figures in juvenile delinquency. A study of delinquent children before the Cook County Juvenile Court shows that 72.8 per cent of the 14,183 children brought to the court between July 1, 1899, and June 30, 1909, had foreign-born parents.[48] A special study of 584 of these, who were delinquent boys, showed 66.9 per cent with foreign-born parents.[49] A comparison of the nativity of the parents of children in the Juvenile Court with the proportion of each group in the married population of Chicago indicates that the number of parents of delinquent children in the foreign-born group is disproportionately large. That is, the foreign born form 57 per cent of the married population of Chicago, while "at least 67 per cent of the parents of delinquent boys of the court were foreign born, and there is reason to believe that the true percentage is above 67."[50]

This preponderance of children from immigrant homes must not be taken to mean that children of foreign-born parents are naturally worse than the children of American parents. It confirms the fact that immigrant parents have special difficulties in bringing up their children and are in need of special assistance. It suggests very forcibly the danger to the community in continuing to ignore their special needs.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] Breckinridge and Abbott, _The Delinquent Child and the Home_, p. 66.

[45] See Thomas and Znaniecki, _The Polish Peasant_, vol. i.

[46] Abbott and Breckinridge, _Truancy and Nonattendance in the Chicago Schools_, chap. viii, p. 129.

[47] See Jane Addams, _Twenty Years at Hull House_, chap. xi.

[48] Breckinridge and Abbott, _The Delinquent Child and the Home_, p. 57.

[49] _Ibid._, p. 61.

[50] Breckinridge and Abbott, _The Delinquent Child and the Home_, p. 62. See _U. S. Twelfth Census Population_, vol. ii, p. 314, Table XXXII.

VII

IMMIGRANT ORGANIZATIONS AND FAMILY PROBLEMS

In the former chapters an attempt has been made to set out some of the difficulties encountered by foreign-born families who attempt to establish themselves in the United States. The discussion has dealt with the problem as though the community were one factor and the immigrant family another factor, and as though the solution to be arrived at could be discovered by bringing them into new relations to each other. This treatment is justified, in view of the fact that even a slight analysis makes it clear that certain modifications in governmental and social machinery are highly desirable. When the limitations imposed by the war on freedom of migration have been removed, the possibility of dealing more wisely and more humanely with incoming family groups must be considered.

In a very real sense, during any period when the volume of immigration is considerable, the community _is_ one factor and the immigrant _is_ another factor, and a partial solution is to be found in a new treatment of the relationships between these two. But in another sense the discussion is inadequate and perhaps misleading. The relationship between the community and the immigrant is not mechanical, but organic. So soon as he is admitted, he is in fact a part of the community, and what will be done, what can be done, depends in part at least upon the extent to which that relationship is developed. The currents of the community life must flow through and both enrich and be enriched by the life of the newcomer. If these currents are obstructed, he neither shares nor contributes as he might.

These channels of intercourse, however, have often been so obstructed that contacts have been denied. That segregation and separation have characterized the life of many of the groups for considerable periods of time has become a commonplace, and it has been generally known that the life of these different foreign-born groups was separate from the general life of the community, and the life of one group separate from the life of other groups. But the fact that within these separate groups was developed often a fairly rich and highly organized life has not been so widely recognized.

SAFETY IN RACIAL AFFILIATIONS

During the war, for example, the community became aware of the fact that within these national groups there had developed more or less powerful and efficient organizations formerly active in behalf of political interests in the old country, capable, at least, of fostering a spirit of clannishness, of perpetuating the language, customs, and ideals of an alien population in the midst of American life, and of keeping alive in this country national and racial antipathies brought from Europe. Leaders in the European struggle came to these groups and obtained pecuniary support and political adherence. Recruiting for military service among the foreign born was successfully carried on.

Leaders of active societies among the different Slavic groups have stated quite freely that a spirit of unity and of nationality has been consciously fostered in America by these societies, so that, when the time came for the oppressed nation to strike for freedom in the European struggle, the representatives of the race in this country might stand solidly behind such efforts. It is impossible, after the exhibition of the generous support given among foreign-born groups during the war to the efforts of the United States, to raise the question of their loyalty; but their separateness has been far greater, their exclusion from many community efforts and activities far more complete, than the leaders among them had realized.

The leaders among the foreign born do not wholly blame the leaders of the "American" group; they seem to feel that immigrants who came at an earlier date are in part to blame. These earlier arrivals knew what immigration meant, and might have been expected to help open the way for those who came afterward, but were, in fact, chiefly concerned to get ahead and to leave old associations behind. This was the opinion expressed by a Bohemian business man prominent in both local and national organizations. He also said that the reason that had in the past led to the formation and support of these organizations had ceased to exist; but now that the European struggle against oppression had ended for his people, and leaders understood how separate the life of the foreign-born groups had been, these very societies could be used to establish a variety of contacts and to develop among the foreign born a wider interest in the United States and its problems. Particularly the ability to act together learned during the war should be used to develop effective co-operation.

As the organization of these societies is discussed in another volume in this series, they will not be described here, except as they affect the position of women and so exercise an influence upon the adjustment of family life.[51]

Possibly the most significant fact revealed in the course of the study has been the extent to which foreign-born groups have been inaugurating and developing educational and social movements, and establishing institutions and agencies, quite independent of the Federal, state, or local agencies at work along the same general lines. On the other hand, the national educational and welfare movements carried on by the "American people" have ignored the organization and leadership in the foreign-born community. This has been the case to an amazing extent, even when the public efforts have been ostensibly based upon studies of conditions existing in cities with a population that is largely of foreign birth.

When no channels of communication between the immigrant and the larger community seem to have been established, we have been concerned to inquire how such channels can be most effectively created. The barriers that through ignorance, indifference, and misunderstanding on either side have been allowed to grow up must be broken down. We have tried to follow up such avenues of communication as have opened naturally before us, after becoming acquainted with some of the leaders in the different groups.