Page:Alexandra Kollontai - Communism and the Family (1920).djvu/9

 are spent at hard labor, cannot even spend a few minutes with their children! It was quite different formerly; the mother, mistress of the house, remained at home, occupied with her household duties and her children, whom she did not cease to watch with her attentive eye—to-day, from early in the morning until the factory whistle blows, the working woman hastens to her work, and when evening has come, again, at the sound of the whistle, she hurries home to prepare the family's soup and to do the most pressing of her household duties; after an ail too scant sleep, she begins on the next day her regular grind. It is a real workhouse, this life of the married working woman! There is nothing surprising, therefore, in the fact that under these conditions the family ties loosen and the family itself disintegrates more and more. Little by little all that formerly made the family a solid whole is disappearing, together with its stable foundation. The family is ceasing to be a necessity for its members as well as for the State. The ancient forms of the family are becoming merely a hindrance.

What was it that made the family strong in the days of old? In the first place, the fact that it was the husband and father who supported the family; in the second place, that the home was a thing equally necessary to all the members of the family; and in the third and last place, that the children were brought up by the parents. What is left of all this to-day? The husband, we have just seen, has ceased to be the sole support of the family. The wife, who goes to work, has become the equal of her husband in this respect. She has learned to earn her own living and often also that of her children and her husband. This still leaves us as thefunction of the family the bringing-up and