of
investigation of family life are typical of methods that may be employed
in the description of other forms of society. For that reason more
attention is given here to studies of family life than it is possible or
desirable to give to other and more transient types of social groups.

The descriptions of travelers, of ethnologists and of historians made
the first contributions to our knowledge of marriage, ceremonials, and
family organization among primitive and historical peoples. Early
students of these data devised theories of stages in the evolution of
the family. An anthology might be made of the conceptions that students
have formulated of the original form of the family, for example, the
theory of the matriarchate by Bachofen, of group marriage growing out of
earlier promiscuous relations by Morgan, of the polygynous family by
Darwin, of pair marriage by Westermarck. An example of the ingenious,
but discarded method of arranging all types of families observed in a
series representing stages of the evolution is to be found in Morgan's
_Ancient Society_. A survey of families among primitive peoples by
Hobhouse, Ginsberg, and Wheeler makes the point that even family life is
most varied upon the lower levels of culture, and that the historical
development of the family with any people must be studied in relation to
the physical and social environment.

The evolutionary theory of the family has, however, furnished a somewhat
detached point of view for the criticism of the modern family. Social
reformers have used the evolutionary theory as a formula to justify
attacks upon the family as an institution and to support the most varied
proposals for its reconstruction. Books like Ellen Key's _Love and
Marriage_ and Meisel-Hess, _The Sexual Crisis_ are not scientific
studies of the family but rather social political philippics directed
against marriage and the family.

The interest stimulated by ethnological observation, historical study,
and propagandist essays has, however, turned the attention of certain
students to serious study of the family and its problems. Howard's
_History of Matrimonial Institutions_ is a scholarly and comprehensive
treatise upon the evolution of the legal status of the family. Annual
statistics of marriage and divorce are now compiled and published by all
the important countries except the United States government. In the
United States, however, three studies of marriages and divorces have