Marriage and Family Life

84:3.1It may be that the in­stinct of moth­er­hood led woman into mar­riage, but it was man’s su­pe­rior strength, to­gether with the in­flu­ence of the mores, that vir­tu­ally com­pelled her to re­main in wed­lock. Pas­toral liv­ing tended to cre­ate a new sys­tem of mores, the pa­tri­ar­chal type of fam­ily life; and the ba­sis of fam­ily unity un­der the herder and early ag­ri­cul­tural mores was the un­ques­tioned and ar­bi­trary au­thor­ity of the fa­ther. All so­ci­ety, whether na­tional or fa­mil­ial, passed through the stage of the au­to­cratic au­thor­ity of a pa­tri­ar­chal or­der.

84:3.2The scant cour­tesy paid wom­ankind dur­ing the Old Tes­ta­ment era is a true re­flec­tion of the mores of the herds­men. The He­brew pa­tri­archs were all herds­men, as is wit­nessed by the say­ing, “The Lord is my Shep­herd.”

84:3.3But man was no more to blame for his low opin­ion of woman dur­ing past ages than was woman her­self. She failed to get so­cial rec­og­ni­tion dur­ing prim­i­tive times be­cause she did not func­tion in an emer­gency; she was not a spec­tac­u­lar or cri­sis hero. Ma­ter­nity was a dis­tinct dis­abil­ity in the ex­is­tence strug­gle; mother love hand­i­capped women in the tribal de­fense.

84:3.4Prim­i­tive women also un­in­ten­tion­ally cre­ated their de­pen­dence on the male by their ad­mi­ra­tion and ap­plause for his pug­nac­ity and viril­ity. This ex­al­ta­tion of the war­rior el­e­vated the male ego while it equally de­pressed that of the fe­male and made her more de­pen­dent; a mil­i­tary uni­form still might­ily stirs the fem­i­nine emo­tions.

84:3.5Among the more ad­vanced races, women are not so large or so strong as men. Woman, be­ing the weaker, there­fore be­came the more tact­ful; she early learned to trade upon her sex charms. She be­came more alert and con­ser­va­tive than man, though slightly less pro­found. Man was woman’s su­pe­rior on the bat­tle­field and in the hunt; but at home woman has usu­ally out­gen­eraled even the most prim­i­tive of men.

84:3.6The herds­man looked to his flocks for sus­te­nance, but through­out these pas­toral ages woman must still pro­vide the veg­etable food. Prim­i­tive man shunned the soil; it was al­to­gether too peace­ful, too un­ad­ven­ture­some. There was also an old su­per­sti­tion that women could raise bet­ter plants; they were moth­ers. In many back­ward tribes to­day, the men cook the meat, the women the veg­eta­bles, and when the prim­i­tive tribes of Aus­tralia are on the march, the women never at­tack game, while a man would not stoop to dig a root.

84:3.7Woman has al­ways had to work; at least right up to mod­ern times the fe­male has been a real pro­ducer. Man has usu­ally cho­sen the eas­ier path, and this in­equal­ity has ex­isted through­out the en­tire his­tory of the hu­man race. Woman has al­ways been the bur­den bearer, car­ry­ing the fam­ily prop­erty and tend­ing the chil­dren, thus leav­ing the man’s hands free for fight­ing or hunt­ing.

84:3.8Woman’s first lib­er­a­tion came when man con­sented to till the soil, con­sented to do what had thereto­fore been re­garded as woman’s work. It was a great step for­ward when male cap­tives were no longer killed but were en­slaved as agri­cul­tur­ists. This brought about the lib­er­a­tion of woman so that she could de­vote more time to home­mak­ing and child cul­ture.

84:3.9The pro­vi­sion of milk for the young led to ear­lier wean­ing of ba­bies, hence to the bear­ing of more chil­dren by the moth­ers thus re­lieved of their some­times tem­po­rary bar­ren­ness, while the use of cow’s milk and goat’s milk greatly re­duced in­fant mor­tal­ity. Be­fore the herd­ing stage of so­ci­ety, moth­ers used to nurse their ba­bies un­til they were four and five years old.

84:3.10De­creas­ing prim­i­tive war­fare greatly less­ened the dis­par­ity be­tween the di­vi­sion of la­bor based on sex. But women still had to do the real work while men did picket duty. No camp or vil­lage could be left un­guarded day or night, but even this task was al­le­vi­ated by the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of the dog. In gen­eral, the com­ing of agri­cul­ture has en­hanced woman’s pres­tige and so­cial stand­ing; at least this was true up to the time man him­self turned agri­cul­tur­ist. And as soon as man ad­dressed him­self to the till­ing of the soil, there im­me­di­ately en­sued great im­prove­ment in meth­ods of agri­cul­ture, ex­tend­ing on down through suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions. In hunt­ing and war man had learned the value of or­ga­ni­za­tion, and he in­tro­duced these tech­niques into in­dus­try and later, when tak­ing over much of woman’s work, greatly im­proved on her loose meth­ods of la­bor.