Theories of the Origin of the Family

John Ferguson McLennan

McLennan proposed a sequence beginning with promiscuity, in which he located the practice of female infanticide, producing a scarcity of women, hence polyandry, hence uncertainty of paternity, hence descent through the mother. He also coined the terms endogamy and exogamy used in [Forms of Marriage], and explained exogamy by the practice of marriage by capture, taking wives from other groups.

Friedrich Engels

Engels took Morgan's sequence and gave it a materialist explanation, which is the part that matters for Module IV.

His argument runs: in the earliest form there was no private property and descent was traced through the mother. The domestication of animals and the growth of herds created a surplus and with it property, which was controlled by men. A man with property wanted his own children to inherit it, and that required certainty of paternity, which required the sexual fidelity of one woman to one man. So monogamy was instituted to secure legitimate heirs, and with it came the subordination of women, which Engels called the world historical defeat of the female sex.

Whatever the merits of the history, the argument's structure is important and defensible on its own: the form of the family follows the form of property, and the monogamous family and the law of inheritance appeared together. A law student should be able to state that proposition even while doubting the anthropology, and it returns in [Marx: Historical and Dialectical Materialism].

The anti-evolutionary answer

Edward Westermarck

Westermarck denied the whole sequence, and modern opinion has broadly gone with him.

His argument: the human infant is dependent for an exceptionally long period, and its survival requires the prolonged care of both parents; therefore a durable pairing bond is adaptive and must be primeval, not a late achievement. He found no reliable evidence of any society living in promiscuity, and argued that the reports relied on were misunderstandings of institutions, ritual licence, sexual freedom before marriage, or forms of polygamy, that are not promiscuity at all.

He added the psychological proposition met in [Forms of Marriage], that persons raised in close proximity from early childhood develop a sexual indifference towards one another, which explains the incest prohibition without needing a stage of unregulated mating for it to have been imposed upon.

Other objections to the evolutionary theories

1. No evidence of a promiscuous stage. None has ever been observed, and the reported cases dissolved on examination.
2. Kinship terminology is unreliable evidence of past marriage forms.
3. Matriarchy in the strong sense is unproved. Societies tracing descent through the mother, matriliny, certainly exist, as do societies where a couple live with the wife's kin, matrilocality. Neither is rule by women, and the evolutionists conflated all three.
4. Unilinear sequences are unsupported. As in [The Evolutionary Perspective], the assumption that all societies pass through the same stages in order is not borne out.
5. The scheme is ethnocentric, since it places nineteenth century European monogamy at the summit and treats every other arrangement as an earlier stage of it.

The theories compared

The modern position, and how to state it

The safest and best answer says four things.

1. The evolutionary theories are historically important and are not accepted as history. They were the first serious attempt to treat the family as a subject of scientific study.
2. No stage of promiscuity has ever been established, and Westermarck's objection has largely prevailed.
3. Matriliny and matrilocality are real; universal matriarchy is not proved.
4. The family's origin is not recoverable, because it predates any record. What can be studied is variation among observed societies and change within recorded history, which is what the rest of this module does.

Engels's contribution survives the anthropology because of its structural claim, that the form of the family varies with the form of property, and that claim can be tested against societies we can actually observe.

A worked example

Morgan noticed that in some societies a child uses the same term for the father and the father's brother. He reasoned that a word records a relationship, that this word records the same relationship to two men, and that therefore both men must once have stood in the same relation to the child, which implies a form of group marriage.

The reasoning is not absurd, and it is worth setting out because it shows how an entire evolutionary sequence was deduced from language.

Why it fails. A kinship term can be extended for reasons entirely unconnected with marriage: because the two men owe the child the same duties; because the society classifies kin by generation and side rather than by biological distance; or because the usage is respectful. And a term can survive a change in practice by centuries. The inference from a present word to a past practice needs an assumption that is not available, and once it is withdrawn the sequence has nothing under it.

Quick revision

1. Evolutionary camp: Morgan, Bachofen, McLennan, Engels. Sequence from promiscuity or group marriage to monogamy.
2. Morgan's five forms: consanguine, punaluan, syndyasmian (pairing), patriarchal, monogamian. Evidence: kinship terminology.
3. Bachofen: hetaerism, then mother-right, then father-right. Matriarchy before patriarchy.
4. McLennan: promiscuity, female infanticide, polyandry, mother-descent; coined endogamy and exogamy; explained exogamy by marriage by capture.
5. Engels: monogamy was instituted to secure legitimate heirs once property appeared; the world historical defeat of the female sex.
6. Westermarck: the pairing family is primeval, because the human infant's long dependence requires both parents; no promiscuous stage ever existed.
7. Modern position: the sequence is not accepted; no promiscuity established; matriliny is real but universal matriarchy is not proved; the origin is not recoverable. Engels's structural claim survives.

Test yourself

1. State Morgan's sequence of family forms and the evidence he used. Consanguine, founded on the intermarriage of brothers and sisters; punaluan, the intermarriage of several sisters with each other's husbands and several brothers with each other's wives; syndyasmian or pairing, a man with a woman without exclusive cohabitation; patriarchal, one man with several wives organised around lineage and property; and monogamian, one man with one woman. His principal evidence was kinship terminology, from which he inferred earlier forms of marriage.

2. State Engels's account of the origin of monogamy. That in the earliest societies there was no private property and descent was traced through the mother; that the domestication of animals produced a surplus and with it property controlled by men; that a man with property wished his own children to inherit it, which required certainty of paternity and therefore the fidelity of one woman to one man; and that monogamy was accordingly instituted to secure legitimate heirs, bringing with it the subordination of women.

3. State Westermarck's objection to the evolutionary theories. That the pairing family is primeval rather than a late achievement, because the human infant is dependent for an exceptionally long period and its survival requires the prolonged care of both parents, so a durable bond between them is adaptive and must always have existed. He found no reliable evidence of any society living in promiscuity, and argued that the reports relied on were misreadings of ritual licence, pre-marital freedom or polygamy.

4. Why is kinship terminology weak evidence of past marriage forms? Because a kinship term may be extended to several persons for reasons unconnected with marriage: because they owe the child identical duties, because the society classifies relatives by generation and side rather than by biological distance, or as a form of respect. Terms also survive long after the practices around them change, so the inference from a present word to a past practice requires an assumption that cannot be independently supported.

5. What is the modern position on the origin of the family? That the classical evolutionary sequences are important in the history of the discipline but are not accepted as history; that no stage of general promiscuity has ever been established; that matrilineal descent and matrilocal residence are real while universal matriarchy is unproved; and that the family's origin is not recoverable, since it predates all record, so what can be studied is variation between observed societies and change within recorded history.