_American Journal of Sociology_, vol. 14, pages
668-675.

CHAPTER IV

THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY

33. =How the Family Came to Be.=--The modern family among civilized
peoples is based almost universally on the union of one man and one
woman. There is good reason to believe that this practice of monogamy
was in vogue among primitive human beings, but marriage was unstable
and it was only through long experimentation that monogamy proved
itself best fitted to survive. At first conjugal affection, which has
become intelligent and moral, was merely a sexual desire that led the
man to seek a mate and the maid to choose among her suitors. Unbound
by long-continued custom or legal and ceremonial restriction, the
primitive couple were free to separate if they pleased, but the
instinctive feeling that they belonged to each other, the habits of
association, adaptation, and co-operation, and jealousy at any
attention shown by another tended to preserve the relationship. The
presence of offspring sealed the bond as long as the children were
dependent, and strengthened the sense of mutual responsibility. The
children were peculiarly the mother's children since she gave them
birth, but the father instinctively protected the family that was
growing up around him, and procured food and shelter for its members,
though it is doubtful if he had any realization of his part in giving
life to a new generation.

During this period of social development, when the mother's presence
constituted the home and the children were regarded as belonging
primarily to her, descent was reckoned in the female line, the
children were attached to the maternal clan of blood relatives, and
such relatives began to move in bands, for the same reason that
animals move in packs and herds. Some writers speak of it as a
matriarchal period, but it does not appear that women governed; it is
more proper to speak of the family as metronymic, for the children
bore the mother's name and maternity outweighed paternity in social
estimate.

34. =The Patriarchal Household.=--When population increased and food
consequently became more difficult to obtain, the domestication of
animals was achieved, and nomadic habits carried the family from
pasture to pasture; rival clans wanted the same regions, wars broke
out, and physical superiority asserted its claims. The man supplanted
the woman as the important member of the household, reduced the others
to submissio