“THE Consanguine Family developed from the primitive state of promiscuous intercourse. Here only ancestors and progeny, and parents and children, are excluded from the rights and duties (as we should say) of marriage with one another. Brothers and sisters, male and female cousins of the first, second, and more remote degrees, are all brothers and sisters of one another, and precisely for that reason they are all husbands and wives of one another.

“The Punaluan Family (Punalua = companion, partner; with the husbands as a group addressing each other as Punalua and the wives also doing the same). If the first advance in organization consisted in the exclusion of parents and children from sexual intercourse with one another, the second was the exclusion of sister and brother. On account of the greater nearness in age, this second advance was infinitely more important, but also more difficult, than the first. It was effected gradually, beginning probably with the exclusion from sexual intercourse of own brothers and sisters (children of the same mother) first in isolated cases and then by degrees as a general rule ...and ending with the prohibition of marriage even between ... first, second, and third cousins. Thus emerged group marriage.

“In all forms of group family it is uncertain who the father of a child is; but it is certain who its mother is. Though she calls all the children of the whole family her children and has a mother’s duties towards them, she nevertheless knows her own children from the others. Therefore, in so far as group marriage prevails, descent can only be proved on the mother’s side and that therefore only the female line is recognized. This is called mother right.

“The Pairing Family emerged because gradually the gens developed and the classes of “brothers” and “sisters” between whom marriage was impossible became more numerous. At this stage, one man lives with one woman, but the relationship is such that polygamy and occasional infidelity remain the right of the men, even though for economic reasons polygamy is rare, while from the woman the strictest fidelity is generally demanded throughout the time she lives with the man, and adultery on her part is cruelly punished. The marriage tie can, however, be easily dissolved by either partner; after separation, the children still belong, as before, to the mother alone.

“Thus the evolution of the family in prehistoric times consists in the progressive narrowing of the circle, originally embracing the whole tribe, within which the two sexes have a common conjugal relation. The continuous exclusion, first of nearer, then of more and more remote relatives, and at last even of relatives by marriage, ends by making any kind of group marriage practically impossible. Finally, there remains only the single, still loosely linked pair.

“The pairing family, itself too weak and unstable to make an independent household necessary or even desirable, in no wise destroys the communistic household inherited from earlier times. Communistic housekeeping, however, means the supremacy of women in the house; just as the exclusive recognition of the female parent, owing to the impossibility of recognizing the male parent with certainty, means that the women — the mothers — are held in high respect. Among all savages and all barbarians of the lower and middle stages, and to a certain extent of the upper stage also, the position of women is not only free, but honourable.

“Gradually with the domestication of animals, introduction of cattle breeding, working up of metals, weaving and field cultivation, sources of wealth increased. The iron plough made it possible to cultivate larger tracts of land; for this and for other work slaves (taken from the vanquished foes, for example) came to be used more and more. In proportion as wealth (including the slaves) increased, it made the man’s position in the family more important than the woman’s, and on the other hand created an impulse to exploit this strengthened position in order to overthrow, in favour of his children, the traditional order of inheritance. This, however, was impossible so long as descent was reckoned according to mother-right. Mother-right, therefore, had to be overthrown, and overthrown it was. And this was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. This degraded position of the woman has gradually been embellished and glozed over, and sometimes clothed in a milder form; in no sense has it been abolished. Thus arose the patriarchal family based on paternal power.

Such a form of the family shows the transition of the pairing family to monogamy. In order to guarantee the fidelity of the wife, that is the paternity of the children, the woman is placed in the men’s absolute power; if he kills her, he is but exercising his right.