the mother in the primitive family

(a chapter which may be omitted by the reader who has no interest in the customs of primitive peoples.)

“the clan exists on account of the struggle for existence, the family seeks for the enjoyment of that which they have obtained.”—starcke.

and now having finished my preliminary study of the maternal instinct in the making, having given examples of its varied manifestations in the animal kingdom, and made clear certain general ideas on parenthood and the family, i may hope to go on to consider human mothers and fathers with a surer knowledge and less misunderstanding. the fitting method of inquiry, and the one i should like to employ would be to begin with the lowest forms of the human family. i myself am always greatly attracted by the customs of primitive peoples, for i was born amongst them. i hold that some knowledge of the family and the domestic and social conditions still to be found among uncivilised races, in all parts of the world, is essential to a complete understanding of our own social and sexual problems.

in an earlier work, the age of mother-power,[64] i have given my views on the past history of the family. i have attempted to establish the existence of a mother-age civilisation,[142] the so-called matriarchate, described in detail the privileged position of the mother, and noted, with many examples, the family conditions, sex-customs and forms of marriage among primitive peoples. that book should form the historical section of this present work. it is, indeed, a necessary part of my inquiry. i am convinced that the only way to estimate the value of our present family system is to examine the history of that system in the past. we find suggestions of primitive customs in many directions; they are shadowed in certain of our marriage rites and direct many of our sex habits; they have left unmistakable traces on our literature, in our language and in our laws; indeed we may find their influence almost everywhere, if we know what to look for and how to interpret the signs. the close connection which links the present with the past cannot easily be neglected. we often say: this or that custom belongs to the present era: yet nine times out of ten the thing we believe to be new is in reality as old as the history of mankind. often what we think is a step forward is not so at all; we are going back to a custom and practices long discarded. we are less inventive and more bound than we know. no period stands alone, and the present in every age is merely the shifting ground at which the past and the future meet.

i would therefore ask all those among my readers who care to follow in detail the history of the family through the long, early, upward stages of its growth, at this point to leave this work in order to read the age of mother-power, therein to learn what i hold to have been the family conditions in the period known as the mother-age. but as such a course may be impossible, or be disliked, by[143] the reader, i will now for our present guidance re-state very briefly the main conclusions arrived at by that investigation.

and first it should be noted that the history of human parenthood from its earliest known appearance shows an orderly progress from the start to the end. there is no difficulty even in fixing the beginning. man, the gorilla, the orang and the chimpanzee had a common ancestor, and for this reason the parental stages of the great apes and of man have an almost startling resemblance. professor metchnikoff was so impressed by this likeness that he has suggested that the human race may have taken its origin from the precocious birth of an ape. we thus find no gap that has to be filled: we take up our inquiry of the family at the exact place at which we left it. there are, of course, changes to fit the parents and the young for their new stage of life; more and more instincts are modified by experiment and experience. intelligence grows. new habits afford possibilities of advance, and suggest the directions in which the family may move. there are, however, far fewer experiments, less sharp differences in the conduct of the different parents; the family shows less flexibility, and the maternal instincts settle down, as it were, to an average character, with average limitations and an average expression.

our most primitive ancestors, half-men, half-brutes, lived in small, solitary, and hostile family groups, composed of an adult male, his wife, or, if he were powerful, several wives and their children. in such a group the father is the chief or patriarch as long as he lives, and the family is held together by their common subjection to him. his interest in the family is confined to fighting[144] to drive off rivals, and, for this reason, he drives his sons from the home as soon as they are old enough to be dangerous to his interests: his daughters he adds to his wives, unless they are caught and carried off by some other male.

it was doubtless thus, in a family organisation similar to that of the great monkeys, that man first lived. here was the most primitive form of jealous government of the family by the male. such conduct, prompted by the egoistic desires of sex, mark the continuation of the degradation in fatherhood, which we noted as occurring among the mammals as soon as the father was freed from the duties of providing a home and the first feeding and tending of the young.

in the primitive families the idea of descent is feeble so that the groups are small and readily disrupted. but though originally without explicit consciousness of relationships, the members would be held together by a feeling of kin. such feeling would become conscious first between the mothers and their children, and in this way mother-kin must have been realised at a very early period. the father’s relationship, on the other hand, would not be forced into conscious recognition. he would be a member apart from this natural kinship.

such were the probable conditions in the primordial human family. the important thing to note is that in each family group there would be only one adult polygamous male, with several women of different ages, and the children of both sexes, all in more or less complete subjection to his rule.[65]

these customs of brute-male-ownership are still in great[145] measure preserved among the least-developed races. this may be called the pre-matriarchal stage of the family, and its existence explains how there are many rude peoples that exhibit no trace at all of mother-descent. in the lowest nomad bands of savages of the deserts and forests we still find these rough paternal groups, who know no social bonds, but are ruled alone by brute strength and jealous ownership. with them development has been very slow; they have not yet advanced to the social organisation of the maternal family clan.

from these first solitary families, grouped submissively around one tyrant-ruler, we reach a second stage, out of which order and organisation sprang. in this second stage the family expanded into the larger group of the communal clan. the change had to come. with the fierce struggle for existence, the solitary family-group became impossible, association was the only way to prevent extermination.

how did the change come?

now, it is part of my conviction that the earliest movements towards peace and expansion of the family came through the influence of women. i must state briefly my reasons for this view.

in the first place it certainly would be in the women’s interests to consolidate the home and the family, and, by means of union, to establish their own power. what we desire and fix our attention upon, as a rule, is what we do. in the early groups the mothers with their adult daughters and the young of both sexes would live on terms of association as friendly hearthmates. such is the marked difference in the position of the two sexes—the solitary jealous unsocial male and the united women.

[146]

the strongest factor in this association would arise from the dependence of the children upon their mothers, a dependence that was of much longer duration than among the animals on account of the pre-eminent helplessness of the human child, which entailed a more prolonged infancy. the women and the children would form the family-group, to which the male was attached by his sexual needs, but he remained always apart—a kind of jealous fighting specialist. the temporary hearth-home would be the shelter of the women. it was under this shelter that children were born and the group accumulated its members. whether cave, or hollow tree, or frail branch shelter, the home must have belonged to the women.

it is clear that under these conditions the female members of the group-family must necessarily have been attached to the home much more closely than the man, whose desire lay in the opposite direction, and whose conduct by constant jealous fights tended to the disruption of the home. moreover this home attachment would be present always and acting on the female members, as the daughters—unless captured by other males—would remain in the home as additional wives to their father; on the other hand, it could never arise in the case of the sons, whose fate was to be driven out from the hearth-home as soon as they were old enough to become rivals to their father. such conditions must, as time went on, have profoundly modified the female outlook, bending the desire of the women to a steady settled life, conditions under which alone the family could expand and social organisation develop.

again, the daily search for the daily food must surely have been undertaken chiefly by the women. for it is impossible that one man, however skilful a hunter, could have[147] fed all the female members and children of the group. further than this, we may, i think, conceive that much of his attention and his time would be occupied in fighting his rivals; also his strength as sole progenitor must have been expended largely in sex. it is, therefore, probable that the male was dependent on the food activities of his women.

the mothers, their inventive faculties quickened by the stress of the needs of their children, would try to convert to their own uses the most available portion of their own environment. it would be under their attention that plants were first utilised for food, seeds planted and nuts and fruit stored, birds would also be snared, fish caught, and animals tamed for service. primitive domestic vessels and baskets would be fashioned and clothes have to be made. all the faculties of the women, in exercises that would lead to the development of every part of their bodies and their minds, would be called into play by the work of satisfying the physical needs of the group.

in all these numerous activities the women of each group would work together. and through this co-operation must have resulted the assertion of the women’s power, as the directors and organisers of industrial occupations.

as the group slowly advanced in progress, such power, increasing, would raise the mother’s position; the women would establish themselves permanently as of essential value in the family, not only as the givers of life, but as the chief providers of the food essential to the preservation of the life of its members.

and a further result would follow in the treatment by the males of this new order. the women by obtaining and preparing food would gain an economic value. wives would become to the husband a source of riches indispensable[148] to him, not only on account of his sex needs, but on account of the more persistent need of food. thus the more women he possessed the greater would be his own comfort, and the physical prosperity of the group.

and again, a further result would follow. the greater the number of women in the group the stronger would become their power of combination. i attach great importance to this. working together for the welfare of all, the maternal instinct of sacrifice would be greatly strengthened in the women so that necessarily they would come to consider the collective interests of the family. can it be credited that such conditions could have acted upon the males, whose conduct would still be inspired by individual appetite and selfish inclination? i maintain such a view to be impossible.

another advantage, i think, would arise for the women. from the circumstances of the family their interest in sex must have been less acute in consciousness than that of the male. they must have gained freedom from being less occupied with love, and from being less jealously interested in the male than he was in them. doubtless each woman would be attracted by the male’s courageous action in fighting his rivals for possession of her, but when the rival was the woman’s own son such attraction would come into strong conflict with the deeper maternal instinct. thus the unceasing sexual preoccupation of the male, with the emotional dependence it entailed on the females, must, i would suggest, have given the women an immense advantage. they would come to use their sex charms as an accessory of success. and if i am right here, the husband would be in the power of his women, much more surely than they would be in his power.

[149]

from the standpoint of physical strength the male was the master, the tyrant ruler of the family, who, doubtless, often was brutal enough. but the women with their children, leading an independent life to some extent, and with their mental ingenuity developed by the conditions of their life, would learn, i believe, to outwit their masters by passive united resistance. the mothers and daughters may even have asserted their will in rebellion. i picture, indeed, these savage women ever striving for more privilege, and step by step advancing through peaceful combination to power.

such conditions as those i have briefly pictured could not fail to domesticate the women. they must have acted also in strengthening the bonds between the mothers and their children and in making more conscious the strong instinct of maternal sacrifice.

but mark this: i do not wish to set up any claim for, because i do not believe in, the superiority of one sex over the other sex. character is determined by the conditions of living. if, as i conceive, progress came through the mothers, rather than through the father, it was because the conditions were really more favourable to them, and drove them on in the right path. collective motives were more considered by women, not at all because of any higher standard of moral virtue, but because of the peculiar advantages arising to themselves and to their children—advantages of peaceful family association which could not exist in a group ruled by individual inclination.

during the development of the family, we may expect to find that the males will seek to hold their rights, and that the women of the group will exert their influence more and more in breaking these down; and this is precisely what[150] we do find. and for this reason the clan system, which developed from these solitary hostile families, must be considered as a feminine creation, which had special relation to motherhood.

the sexual egoism by which one male, through his strength and seniority, held marital rights over all the females of his group had to be struck at its roots. in other words, the solitary despot had to learn to tolerate the association of other adult males.

it is impossible for me here to follow step by step the means whereby this change was brought about. i would, however, assert my strong belief that it was the mothers, acting in the interests of their children, who tamed the jealous desires and domesticated the males. the adult sons, instead of being driven from the home by the father, were permitted to remain as members of the family group and to bring in young wives captured from other families. at a later stage, daughters received husbands, young males from other groups, who came first as temporary lovers, visiting their brides by night, but afterwards remained with them as permanent guests in the home of the mother. under these new conditions, the marital rights of the male members were restricted and confined. a system of taboos was established, which, as time advanced, was greatly strengthened by the use of sacred totem marks, and became of inexorable strictness.

in this way peace was established, and association between the jealous fighting males was made possible.

here, then, are the reasons which led to the formation of the maternal family and the communal clan. it depended, in the first place, on the development of mutual aid between mother and offspring, based on the much closer[151] relationship of the children to their mothers than to the father. as soon as the women of the family-group by combination were able to outwit and curb the jealous rule of the father, the matriarchal clan developed from the primitive patriarchal family.

the contrast between the family and clan seems to me of great importance. individual relationships became of less importance; the clan did not consist of groups of families but of individuals. i have stated that the sexual relationships between the young people began with the reception by the daughters of temporary lovers in the clan-home. a connection thus formed would tend under favourable circumstances to be continued and would be perpetuated as a marriage. thus it came to be the custom for the husband to live temporarily or permanently in the wife’s home and among her kindred. here he was compelled to work for the general good; he was without property or any recognised rights in the clan; he was not permitted a separate home, and was left with no—or very little—control over his wife and none over the children of the marriage. he occupied, indeed, the position of a more or less permanent guest in the maternal hut or tent.

under such an organisation the family—the first group of the father, wives and children—is swallowed up in the larger clan. the male has no position of mastery over the female. as time goes on, the clan becomes more and more a free association for mutual protection, ruled over by the ablest and most capable members. not only does the father not stand out as a principal person from the background of the familial clan; he has not even any recognised domestic rights in connection with his own wife and[152] children. this restriction of the husband and father was clearly dependent on the form of marriage.

the later modifications of the communal clan and the social customs that grew up, in most cases—and always, i believe, in the complete maternal form—were favourable to the authority of the mothers. kinship was reckoned through the mother, the totem name was taken from her, since in this way alone could the undivided family be maintained. the continuity of the clan thus depending on the women they were placed in a position of importance; the mother was at least the nominal head of the household, shaping the destiny of the clan through the aid of her kindred.

all the members of such a compound family were responsible for the offences of any individual member; and in the same way the clan exacted blood vengeance or compensation collectively for any offence committed against its members. but the men belonged to their own clans, that is, to the clans of their mothers; they did not belong to and had no rights in the clan of which their wife and children were members. as husbands and fathers they were without power. this is very important. the woman’s closest male relation was not her husband, but her brother, who acted as father to her children.

a pure type of matriarchal family fully preserved is rare. there are scattered tribes in different parts of the world where descent is still reckoned through the mother. some features favourable to women are found in one community, some in another. the sexual relationships, in particular, are interesting. the girl is frequently the wooer of the man, and in certain cases she or her mother imposes the conditions of the marriage. after marriage,[153] the free provisions for divorce (often more favourable to the wife than to the husband) are, perhaps, of even greater significance.

there are many traces of discipline exercised in the bringing up of children and more or less systematic training of boys in endurance, speed, courage, etc. this task falls to the mother’s brother. the daughters are instructed by the mothers and the matrons of the tribe in all that concerns their duties as wives and mothers.

the woman is subject to the authority of her eldest brother, and sometimes as well to that of her other brothers, her uncles and male relations. but descent being reckoned in the female line, and the fact that she is the conduit by which property passes to and from the men, gives the woman a position of very considerable, though varying, importance.

in all cases the power of the wife is clearly dependent on the maternal form of marriage. i must insist upon this. where this custom of the husband living in the home of the wife was practised for any long period, the women often established their own claims and all property was held by them; conditions which, under favourable circumstances, developed into what may literally be called a matriarchate. elder women among some tribes are the heads of kinsfolk, they even have a seat or voice in the tribal council, and there have been exceptional cases of female tribal chiefs. religion is in some periods in the hands of women, and goddesses are more reverenced than gods. here is certain proof of the favourable influence mother-descent may exercise on the authority held by women. in all circumstances the children’s position was dependent on the mother and her kindred.

[154]

such a system of inheritance may be briefly summarised as mother-right.

other forms of marriage are found; indeed, every possible experiment in family and sexual association has been tried and is still practised among barbarous races, often with very little reference to those moral ideas to which we are accustomed. it is, however, very necessary to remember that monogamy is frequent and indeed usual under the maternal system. when the husband lives with his wife in a dependent position to her family, he can do so only in the case of one woman. for this reason polygamy is much less deeply rooted under the conditions in which the communal life of the compound family is developed than in the single patriarchal family. polygamy is an indication, if not always a proof, of the subordination of women to the headship of the husband. in the complete maternal family it is never common and is even prohibited.

it was quite otherwise with polyandry, and though less usual than monogamy, this form of association is in some cases connected with the conditions of the maternal clan. i do not believe it can be regarded as due to a licentious view of the sexual relations, but arose as an expression of the communism which was characteristic of such an organisation.

the whole subject of primitive sexual relationships—which, of course, involves the family, the position of woman and the welfare of the children—is a very wide and complicated one. if i differ on several important points from learned authorities, whose knowledge and research far exceed my own, i do so only after great hesitation, and because i must. almost invariably the writers on these questions are men, and perhaps for this reason the position of[155] women has not received the attention that it claims. my own studies have convinced me that in the early beginnings of the human family women exercised a more direct and stronger influence than is usually believed. this is no fanciful idea of my own, as i claim to have proved in my earlier book,[66] where it was possible to bring forward in detail the evidence i have collected on the subject.

but even in this brief summary enough has been said to give in rough outline some picture of the family under the conditions of the maternal communal clan. we have marked the steady strengthening of the tie between the mother and the child, with the corresponding movement in the opposite direction in regard to the father’s position in the family. all the chances for success in parenthood rested with the mother, rather than with the father. the male was driven out from the holy circle of the family. this degradation of fatherhood is a fact that must be kept before our attention.[67]

there is, however, another side to the matter. in the face of what we have established, it must, i think, be accepted that women held considerable power in this period of mother-descent and under the maternal form of marriage. the mother was dominant in the family in this second stage of its development. this is still denied by[156] some authorities. there are many facts of the early power of women which the great world does not know.

how, then, are we to come to a decision? shall we look back to the maternal stage as the golden period of the family wherein were realised conditions of free motherhood, which even to-day have not been established? it is a question very difficult to answer, and we must not in any haste rush into mistakes. and unfortunately the limitation of my space can allow only the briefest consideration of the matter.

we find that the mother-age was a transitional stage in the history of the growth of society, and we can trace the stages of its gradual decline. there is nothing to show that the customs of maternal communism, dependent on descent traced in the female line and the maternal form of marriage, have ever been permanently maintained in any progressive society. the enlarged family of the maternal clan is thus proved to have been a less stable social system than the patriarchal single family which again succeeded it, or it would not have perished in the struggle with it. i think this must be accepted.

within the large and undivided group-family of the clan, the restricted family became gradually re-established by a reassertion of domestic interests. in proportion as the family gained in importance (which would arise as the struggle for existence lessened and the need of association was less imperative) the interests of the individual members would become separated from the group to which they belonged. as society advanced and personal property began to be acquired, each man would aim at gaining a more exclusive right over his wife and children; he would[157] not willingly submit to the bondage of the maternal form of marriage.

we find the husband and father moving towards the position of a fully acknowledged legal parent by a system of buying off his wife and her children from their clan-group. then the payment of a bride-price was claimed from the bridegroom by the bride’s relations, and an act of purchase was accounted essential before marriage; it was, however, regarded as a condition, not so much of the marriage itself, but of the transference of the wife to the home of the husband and of the children to his kindred. the change was, of course, effected slowly; often we find the two forms of marriage—the maternal form and the purchase-marriage—occurring side by side. what, however, is certain is that the purchase-marriage in the struggle was the one which prevailed.

this reversal in the form of the marriage brought about a corresponding reversal in the position of the woman in the sexual relationship. this is so plain. as the patriarchate developed, and men began to gain individual possession of their children by the purchase of their mothers, the father became the dominant power in the family. women no longer are the transmitters of property and of the family name, but are themselves property passing from the hands of their kindred to those of a husband. as purchased wives, they reside in the husband’s house and among his kin, where they occupy the same position of disadvantage in the family as the husband and father had done under the maternal marriage. the protection of her own kindred was the source of the wife’s privileged position. this now was lost. the change was not brought about without a struggle, and for long the old customs contended[158] with the new. but step by step the man became the father-master in the home.

it is, however, very necessary to remember that this reversal in the marriage custom may well have been brought about as much by the desire of the women as by the action of the men. i believe that the change to the individual family must have been regarded favourably by primitive women. an arrangement which would give a closer relationship in marriage and the protection of a husband for herself and her children may well have been preferred by the wife to the position of subjection in which she was frequently placed to the authority of her brother and her own relatives. nor do i think it unlikely that she, quite as strongly as the man, may have desired to live apart from her mother and her kindred in her husband’s home. we have to remember that the reassertion of the father within the family-group was a necessary step, and one that had to be taken. the mother is bound to the family by her children in a much closer way than the man ever can be bound. and for this reason any conditions which separate the father from the home and liberate him from his responsibilities to his children are certain not to act in the direction of progress. the male needs to be held to the family. this is a fact much too often forgotten.

the social clan organised around the mothers carried mankind a long way—a way the length of which we are only beginning to realise. but it could not carry mankind forward to the closer family ties and family life from which so much was afterwards to develop. the clan system was essential to the conditions of primitive life, owing to the fierce struggle to exist, and it could then limit and interfere with the family on every side. but as soon as life[159] was easier, men wanted to establish a home with wife and children and to enjoy the possession of property. and women wanted this too. it was not possible for the family to be permanently absorbed. i must insist upon this again. the individual family—that is, the trinity composed of father, mother and child—is the older and the more lasting institution.

i affirm, further, that of the two forms of the family, the individual limited form is the one that is the more natural and happy. special circumstances may make necessary the enlarged social family, but such conditions are not really a step forward.

with all the evils and restrictions that father-right and the individual family-group may, throughout the ages, have brought to women, we have got to remember that the woman owes the individual relationship in love and the protection of the man for herself and her children to the patriarchal system. the father’s right in his children (which, unlike the right of the mother, was not founded upon kinship, but rested on the quite different and insecure basis of property) had to be re-established. without this being done, the family in its fairness and complete development was impossible. the survival value of the patriarchal family consists in the additional gain to the children of the father’s to the mother’s care. i do not think this gain can ever safely be lost.