Again, the view
that marriage was a private contract came to prevail among the mass of
the people, and even to be embodied in a great many of the constitutions
and laws of the nineteenth century. At the same time profound economic
changes tended largely to individualize society, and these were
reflected in the democratic movement toward forms of popular government,
which have tended on the whole to make the individual the political
unit. The nineteenth century was, then, in all respects a period of
great social change and unrest. Moreover, the growth of wealth has
favored, in certain classes at least, lower moral standards and
increasing laxity in family relationships. Thus it happens that we find
the family life at the beginning of the twentieth century in a more
unstable condition than it has been at any time since the beginning of
the Christian era. The instability of the modern family is, indeed, so
great that many have thought that the family, as an institution, in its
present form at least, of permanent monogamy, will pass away.
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