Marriage and Family Life

84:1.1Mar­riage was not founded on sex re­la­tions; they were in­ci­den­tal thereto. Mar­riage was not needed by prim­i­tive man, who in­dulged his sex ap­petite freely with­out en­cum­ber­ing him­self with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of wife, chil­dren, and home.

84:1.2Woman, be­cause of phys­i­cal and emo­tional at­tach­ment to her off­spring, is de­pen­dent on co-op­er­a­tion with the male, and this urges her into the shel­ter­ing pro­tec­tion of mar­riage. But no di­rect bi­o­logic urge led man into mar­riage—much less held him in. It was not love that made mar­riage at­trac­tive to man, but food hunger which first at­tracted sav­age man to woman and the prim­i­tive shel­ter shared by her chil­dren.

84:1.3Mar­riage was not even brought about by the con­scious re­al­iza­tion of the obli­ga­tions of sex re­la­tions. Prim­i­tive man com­pre­hended no con­nec­tion be­tween sex in­dul­gence and the sub­se­quent birth of a child. It was once uni­ver­sally be­lieved that a vir­gin could be­come preg­nant. The sav­age early con­ceived the idea that ba­bies were made in spir­it­land; preg­nancy was be­lieved to be the re­sult of a woman’s be­ing en­tered by a spirit, an evolv­ing ghost. Both diet and the evil eye were also be­lieved to be ca­pa­ble of caus­ing preg­nancy in a vir­gin or un­mar­ried woman, while later be­liefs con­nected the be­gin­nings of life with the breath and with sun­light.

84:1.4Many early peo­ples as­so­ci­ated ghosts with the sea; hence vir­gins were greatly re­stricted in their bathing prac­tices; young women were far more afraid of bathing in the sea at high tide than of hav­ing sex re­la­tions. De­formed or pre­ma­ture ba­bies were re­garded as the young of an­i­mals which had found their way into a woman’s body as a re­sult of care­less bathing or through malev­o­lent spirit ac­tiv­ity. Sav­ages, of course, thought noth­ing of stran­gling such off­spring at birth.

84:1.5The first step in en­light­en­ment came with the be­lief that sex re­la­tions opened up the way for the im­preg­nat­ing ghost to en­ter the fe­male. Man has since dis­cov­ered that fa­ther and mother are equal con­trib­u­tors of the liv­ing in­her­i­tance fac­tors which ini­ti­ate off­spring. But even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury many par­ents still en­deavor to keep their chil­dren in more or less ig­no­rance as to the ori­gin of hu­man life.

84:1.6A fam­ily of some sim­ple sort was in­sured by the fact that the re­pro­duc­tive func­tion en­tails the mother-child re­la­tion­ship. Mother love is in­stinc­tive; it did not orig­i­nate in the mores as did mar­riage. All mam­malian mother love is the in­her­ent en­dow­ment of the ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its of the lo­cal uni­verse and is in strength and de­vo­tion al­ways di­rectly pro­por­tional to the length of the help­less in­fancy of the species.

84:1.7The mother and child re­la­tion is nat­u­ral, strong, and in­stinc­tive, and one which, there­fore, con­strained prim­i­tive women to sub­mit to many strange con­di­tions and to en­dure un­told hard­ships. This com­pelling mother love is the hand­i­cap­ping emo­tion which has al­ways placed woman at such a tremen­dous dis­ad­van­tage in all her strug­gles with man. Even at that, ma­ter­nal in­stinct in the hu­man species is not over­pow­er­ing; it may be thwarted by am­bi­tion, self­ish­ness, and re­li­gious con­vic­tion.

84:1.8While the mother-child as­so­ci­a­tion is nei­ther mar­riage nor home, it was the nu­cleus from which both sprang. The great ad­vance in the evo­lu­tion of mat­ing came when these tem­po­rary part­ner­ships lasted long enough to rear the re­sul­tant off­spring, for that was home­mak­ing.

84:1.9Re­gard­less of the an­tag­o­nisms of these early pairs, not­with­stand­ing the loose­ness of the as­so­ci­a­tion, the chances for sur­vival were greatly im­proved by these male-fe­male part­ner­ships. A man and a woman, co-op­er­at­ing, even aside from fam­ily and off­spring, are vastly su­pe­rior in most ways to ei­ther two men or two women. This pair­ing of the sexes en­hanced sur­vival and was the very be­gin­ning of hu­man so­ci­ety. The sex di­vi­sion of la­bor also made for com­fort and in­creased hap­pi­ness.