Page:Olive Malmberg Johnson - Woman and the Socialist Movement (1908).djvu/10



Marriage and family life have not always been what they are to-day. In fact monogamy is a rather modern institution, and as far as its ideal attainment is concerned, humanity has even now a long way to travel.

When man lived in wild herds sexual intercourse was promiscuous. In the course of development, a form of group marriage and blood relationship was instituted under which all men of one group were the husbands of all the women of another group and vice versa. This system of marriage was one of humanity's great inventions, as by it interbreeding was prevented. This was a most important step in the progress of the race. It improved the health and strength of the tribe and when once established there sprung from it moral concepts, high for that status of development. In these stages of the family, it was a matter of course that descent was traced in the female line.

During primitive communism, a form of pairing family developed. One man and one woman only were husband and wife. Polygamy was of course neither abolished nor forbidden, much less did they have our moral concept about it. However, it was seldom practiced. Food was hard to procure and it was man's bounden duty to provide for the woman with whom he lived, and as man went into the family of his wife, or wives, it was the women who saw to it that he fulfilled this duty. If he utterly failed, he was bluntly ousted from the house. That was the barbaric, plain and unsophisticated method of divorce. The man was then free to pair with another woman and the woman could choose another