Marriage and Family Life

84:5.1In self-per­pet­u­a­tion woman is man’s equal, but in the part­ner­ship of self-main­te­nance she labors at a de­cided dis­ad­van­tage, and this hand­i­cap of en­forced ma­ter­nity can only be com­pen­sated by the en­light­ened mores of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion and by man’s in­creas­ing sense of ac­quired fair­ness.

84:5.2As so­ci­ety evolved, the sex stan­dards rose higher among women be­cause they suf­fered more from the con­se­quences of the trans­gres­sion of the sex mores. Man’s sex stan­dards are only tardily im­prov­ing as a re­sult of the sheer sense of that fair­ness which civ­i­liza­tion de­mands. Na­ture knows noth­ing of fair­ness—makes woman alone suf­fer the pangs of child­birth.

84:5.3The mod­ern idea of sex equal­ity is beau­ti­ful and wor­thy of an ex­pand­ing civ­i­liza­tion, but it is not found in na­ture. When might is right, man lords it over woman; when more jus­tice, peace, and fair­ness pre­vail, she grad­u­ally emerges from slav­ery and ob­scu­rity. Woman’s so­cial po­si­tion has gen­er­ally var­ied in­versely with the de­gree of mil­i­tarism in any na­tion or age.

84:5.4But man did not con­sciously nor in­ten­tion­ally seize woman’s rights and then grad­u­ally and grudg­ingly give them back to her; all this was an un­con­scious and un­planned episode of so­cial evo­lu­tion. When the time re­ally came for woman to en­joy added rights, she got them, and all quite re­gard­less of man’s con­scious at­ti­tude. Slowly but surely the mores change so as to pro­vide for those so­cial ad­just­ments which are a part of the per­sis­tent evo­lu­tion of civ­i­liza­tion. The ad­vanc­ing mores slowly pro­vided in­creas­ingly bet­ter treat­ment for fe­males; those tribes which per­sisted in cru­elty to them did not sur­vive.

84:5.5The Adamites and Nod­ites ac­corded women in­creased rec­og­ni­tion, and those groups which were in­flu­enced by the mi­grat­ing And­ites have tended to be in­flu­enced by the Edenic teach­ings re­gard­ing women’s place in so­ci­ety.

84:5.6The early Chi­nese and the Greeks treated women bet­ter than did most sur­round­ing peo­ples. But the He­brews were ex­ceed­ingly dis­trust­ful of them. In the Oc­ci­dent woman has had a dif­fi­cult climb un­der the Pauline doc­trines which be­came at­tached to Chris­tian­ity, al­though Chris­tian­ity did ad­vance the mores by im­pos­ing more strin­gent sex obli­ga­tions upon man. Woman’s es­tate is lit­tle short of hope­less un­der the pe­cu­liar degra­da­tion which at­taches to her in Mo­hammedanism, and she fares even worse un­der the teach­ings of sev­eral other Ori­en­tal re­li­gions.

84:5.7Sci­ence, not re­li­gion, re­ally eman­ci­pated woman; it was the mod­ern fac­tory which largely set her free from the con­fines of the home. Man’s phys­i­cal abil­i­ties be­came no longer a vi­tal es­sen­tial in the new main­te­nance mech­a­nism; sci­ence so changed the con­di­tions of liv­ing that man power was no longer so su­pe­rior to woman power.

84:5.8These changes have tended to­ward woman’s lib­er­a­tion from do­mes­tic slav­ery and have brought about such a mod­i­fi­ca­tion of her sta­tus that she now en­joys a de­gree of per­sonal lib­erty and sex de­ter­mi­na­tion that prac­ti­cally equals man’s. Once a woman’s value con­sisted in her food-pro­duc­ing abil­ity, but in­ven­tion and wealth have en­abled her to cre­ate a new world in which to func­tion—spheres of grace and charm. Thus has in­dus­try won its un­con­scious and un­in­tended fight for woman’s so­cial and eco­nomic eman­ci­pa­tion. And again has evo­lu­tion suc­ceeded in do­ing what even rev­e­la­tion failed to ac­com­plish.

84:5.9The re­ac­tion of en­light­ened peo­ples from the in­equitable mores gov­ern­ing woman’s place in so­ci­ety has in­deed been pen­du­lum­like in its ex­treme­ness. Among in­dus­tri­al­ized races she has re­ceived al­most all rights and en­joys ex­emp­tion from many obli­ga­tions, such as mil­i­tary ser­vice. Ev­ery ease­ment of the strug­gle for ex­is­tence has re­dounded to the lib­er­a­tion of woman, and she has di­rectly ben­e­fited from ev­ery ad­vance to­ward mo­nog­amy. The weaker al­ways makes dis­pro­por­tion­ate gains in ev­ery ad­just­ment of the mores in the pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion of so­ci­ety.

84:5.10In the ide­als of pair mar­riage, woman has fi­nally won rec­og­ni­tion, dig­nity, in­de­pen­dence, equal­ity, and ed­u­ca­tion; but will she prove wor­thy of all this new and un­prece­dented ac­com­plish­ment? Will mod­ern woman re­spond to this great achieve­ment of so­cial lib­er­a­tion with idle­ness, in­dif­fer­ence, bar­ren­ness, and in­fi­delity? To­day, in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, woman is un­der­go­ing the cru­cial test of her long world ex­is­tence!

84:5.11Woman is man’s equal part­ner in race re­pro­duc­tion, hence just as im­por­tant in the un­fold­ing of racial evo­lu­tion; there­fore has evo­lu­tion in­creas­ingly worked to­ward the re­al­iza­tion of women’s rights. But women’s rights are by no means men’s rights. Woman can­not thrive on man’s rights any more than man can pros­per on woman’s rights.

84:5.12Each sex has its own dis­tinc­tive sphere of ex­is­tence, to­gether with its own rights within that sphere. If woman as­pires lit­er­ally to en­joy all of man’s rights, then, sooner or later, piti­less and emo­tion­less com­pe­ti­tion will cer­tainly re­place that chivalry and spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion which many women now en­joy, and which they have so re­cently won from men.

84:5.13Civ­i­liza­tion never can oblit­er­ate the be­hav­ior gulf be­tween the sexes. From age to age the mores change, but in­stinct never. In­nate ma­ter­nal af­fec­tion will never per­mit eman­ci­pated woman to be­come man’s se­ri­ous ri­val in in­dus­try. For­ever each sex will re­main su­preme in its own do­main, do­mains de­ter­mined by bi­o­logic dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and by men­tal dis­sim­i­lar­ity.

84:5.14Each sex will al­ways have its own spe­cial sphere, al­beit they will ever and anon over­lap. Only so­cially will men and women com­pete on equal terms.