THE SUCCESSIVE STAGES OF THE FAMILY INSTITUTION
lewis Henry Morgan, an American lawyer of the last century, after having observed the life of the Iroquois Indians at length, devoted himself to anthropology. Having reconstructed with great precision the different stages through which the family institution would have passed, he found traces of almost all these stages in numerous populations living in his time.
According to him. There would have been, at the origin, abolished promiscuity, without any prohibition. Subsequently, sexual relations between parents and children would have been prohibited; then, between brother and sisters.
the second moment of evolution would correspond to the PUNALUAN FAMILY, or family by group, which existed in Morgan's time among certain American Indian peoples, in particular the Irish, and is found today, in a primitive form, in a few groups of Australian Aborigines. In this family system, the men of one group are considered from birth as the husbands of the women of another group: two whole groups are married to each other.
the PAIRED FAMILY, or syndromic, would succeed the family by the group. It would be characterized by the common domestic economy, in which the woman plays a predominant role, several couples, united separately, cohabiting under the matriarchal authority.
The distribution of tasks, which became clearer with the development of agriculture. is at the origin of the PATRIARCHAL FAMILY, which constitutes the fourth stage of the development described by Morgan. This system, some traces of which can be observed today, appears in the Semitic tribes, where it is founded on the principle of the absolute authority of the head of the family. Finally, the last phase of evolution would be the MONOGAMIC FAMILY of restricted type of current Western civilization.
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OTHER THEORIES
Although this rigid classification is now abandoned, it has undoubtedly exerted a great influence on sociological theories relating to the family until the present day. in order to try to discover the family strictures that were the most answered in the past, it is therefore not possible to trust the reconstructions, brilliant but arbitrary, of the evolutionists.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF ARCHEOLOGY
The reference to many other theories does not help to solve this problem anymore, whether they are the hypotheses that affirm the existence of a constant matrix, of the same initial kernel, and consider the various forms of the family institutions as more or less complex aggregates, or whether they are those which attribute to all family forms a single-origin such as the patriarchal family of the Hebrew type.
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ancient writings up to the present day are often rich in detail. Unfortunately, their usefulness is relative, because they refer, most often, only to the higher classes such as the aristocracy or the nobility. They can, however, provide valuable information on matrimonial rites, the choice of spouses, structures and kinship ties, the formation of imperial dynasties, without, however, always distinguishing history from mythology. But what standards did most of the population meet? Nothing proves that she imitated the models of the privileged social classes. It is therefore advisable to beware of excessive generalizations. It is, for example, only to remember the rule which required the pharaohs and the Inca emperors to marry a close relative. This rule had a very specific purpose: to maintain privileges within a very small group and to oppose any outside influence. The people, on the contrary, were not subject to this law, and marriage between relatives was often prohibited.
The lack of historical information does not only affect research in the field of the family. Almost all of man's past has in fact been reconstructed from chronicles which concerned only important figures and heroes, without relating the events of everyday life.
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