RIAGE, HISTORY OF.
The Origin and Social Function of the In the sense of a more or less per manent group of parents and offspring, the family exists to a considerable extent in the animal world below man. Thus it is found beginning with some of the higher fishes, is common among the birds, the higher carnivora and the primates. Strictly speaking, we have a family group only when both parents unite in the care of the offspring. Animal family life apparently owes its origin (1) to the produc tion of °child* or immature forms that need more or less prolonged parental care, and (2) to the parallel development of parental in stincts which keep male and female together for care of the offspring. The same general statement holds true regarding the origin of human family life. In other words, the family group is due not to sex, though that is a neces sary condition:, but to parental care. Both in the animal and in the human world family life is essentially a device for the preservation of through a more or less prolonged immaturity.
Modern sociologists generally agree that in the development of human society and of civili zation the family has played a very large part because it is one of the primary social groups. In it are found most of the essential forms of social relationship between individuals. It is characterized by intimate, face-to-face associa tion and by the presence of both sexes and all ages. The family group is usually, therefore, more or less self-sufficing under simple condi tions of life, and in all stages of civilization ex hibits social life at its maximum intensity. For these reasons, some of the older sociologists, such as Comte, regarded the family rather than the individual as the unit of social organization. While this view is no longer held by modern sociologists, the family in human society must be regarded as the primary social structure, and from both a cultural and moral standpoint as the most important of human institutions.
In present society this primary group per forms the following important functions: (1) It continues the life of the species. It deter mines thereby the child's physical heredity and furnishes the child with physical care and nur ture until maturity is reached. (2) It preserves and conserves social possessions. It transmits property from generation to generation and thus furnishes the child largely with his eco nomic equipment for life. More important, however, is its preservation and transmission of the immaterial possessions of society. It is the chief institutional vehicle of tradition in the sociological sense; that is, it is the chief medium of handing down from generation to generation knowledge, standards, values along every cultural line. The child gets, for exam ple, his ideas and standards on government, law, religion and morality largely from the family.
(3) The family is the chief generator of altruis tic sentiments and ideals in human society. This primary group furnishes the basis upon which such primary ideals as fatherhood, brotherhood, love, service and self-sacrifice have been built up into moral and social traditions. It is, in other words, the chief means of socializing both the child and the adult, and forms, as Comte said, a sort of natural transition from the egoism of the individual to the high degree of service and altruism demanded by civilized society.
The Primitive Form of Human Family Life,-.There has been much debate about the primitive form of the family in human society. Bachofen, a Swiss writer, in 1861 put forward the theory in his book called (Mutterrecht) that the original form of sex relation among human beings was that of complete promiscuity. This position was later endorsed by Sir John Lubbock, J. F. McLennan, a Scotch writer, Louis H. Morgan, an American ethnologist, and, with some modification, by Herbert Spen cer. This theory of the primitive form of the family is generally rejected by recent sociolo gists, (1) because a well-developed family life is found among some of the anthropoid apes, man's nearest relative in the animal world; (2) because promiscuity is not found to exist gen erally among the peoples lowest in point of culture; (3) because the feeling of jealousy in the male would make a condition of pro miscuity improbable among early men; (4) because the practice of promiscuity is found to interfere with female fertility and to lessen the birth rate; (5) because the upright attitude of man makes it necessary for the male parent to care for both mother and child before and after the birth of offspring if both are to have the best chance of survival. For these reasons the consensus of sociologists and anthropologists at present is that a primitive stage of promiscu ity never existed in the human species, but that the primitive form of human family life was that of a simple pairing monogamy, such as is found among birds, several of the higher animals, and especially among the most man-like of the higher apes, the chimpanzee. By °simplex' we mean that the union was instinctive and without the legal, moral and religious sanctions of later ages ; by °pairing') we mean that this primitive monogamy was not necessarily of a permanent type, but, as among many animals, lasting often merely through the rearing of offspring. The moralized monogamy of later ages should not be confused with this primitive pairing type of family life, which even yet very generally pre vails among the lowest savages, such as the Bushmen of South Africa, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Andaman Islanders and the Fuegians.