History of the Family as Social and Educational Institution

This book marks an interesting stage in the rapid development of research and discussion concerning the family. It was only recently that this institution began to receive the attention which properly belongs to it. Already a very considerable body of literature exists, and Dr. Goodsell performs a real service by including in each chapter a bibliography of sources and secondary works with supplementary footnotes.
Dr. Goodsell’s book is published as one of the “Text Book Series,” edited by Paul Monroe, and it is frankly a textbook. The emphasis is properly upon the historical aspects, to which four hundred and fifty pages are devoted. Following these twelve chapters, which trace the family from primitive times through the nineteenth century, are chapters on “The Present Situation” and “Current Theories of Reform.”
It is a sign of the wholesome change which has taken place in the public attitude that the author describes with frankness certain conditions associated with the family, such as prostitution and social diseases, whose treatment has heretofore marked a book as unfit for general circulation and even for college students. Indeed, the chapter dealing with the evidences of maladjustment of the modern family to social conditions, causes of disharmony within the family, the problem of the marriage rate, and the problem of the birth-rate, might well be read and studied together by every young couple intending to enter upon marriage and to establish a family. Neither in this chapter nor in the concluding one, a most valuable one on current theories of reform, does the writer permit herself to thrust forward her personal views, but keeps, to an extraordinary degree, the historical and judicial attitude. Here and there a sentence, and at the close of the book an admirable paragraph, disclose the author’s independent opinions, and they are so fine and sane that the reader regrets that the apparent exigencies of textbook construction do not permit of greater fullness in this respect”. – Book review written by MARION TALBOT of UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, published in the Journal of Political Economy
Cosmo has published the complete Paul Monroe’s “Text Book Series”.