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Updated: May 18, 2025
There is less difficulty in recognizing that mother-descent was peculiarly favorable to the high status of women when we realize that even under very unfavorable conditions women have been able to exert great pressure on the men and to resist successfully the attempts to tyrannize over them.
This race has a special interest as a people who, in modern times, have preserved their independence and their ancestral customs through many centuries. We find mother-descent strictly practised, combined with great and even extraordinary rights on the part of the women.
Thus it need not cause surprise to find mother-descent combined with a fully established patriarchal rule. But among such peoples practices may often be met with that can be explained only as survivals from an earlier maternal system. Moreover, in other cases, we meet with tribes that have not yet advanced to the maternal stage.
It will be my aim to give a quite simple, and even commonplace, explanation of the rise of mother-descent and mother-right in place of the spiritual hypothesis of Bachofen. The History of Human Marriage, p. 105. It will be well, however, to examine further Bachofen’s own theory. It is his opinion that the first Amazonian revolt and period of women’s rule was followed by a second movement
I have examined the institution of the maternal family, both in the early communal stage and also under later social conditions, where, in certain cases, mother-descent has been maintained. In all the examples cited I have given the marriage customs and domestic habits of the people as they are testified to by authorities whose records cannot be questioned.
Here was the most primitive form of jealous ownership by the male, as he killed or drove off his rivals; his fights were the brutal precursors of all sexual restrictions for women. These customs of brute ownership are still in great measure preserved among the least developed races. This explains how there are many rude peoples that exhibit no traces at all of the system of mother-descent.
Everything tends to show that clan organisation and union in peace have arisen with mother-descent, which cannot thus be regarded as a survival from the earlier order, but as a later development a step forward in progress and social regulation.
I have cleared up many points that previously puzzled me. I am able now to accept the patriarchal theory, without at all shaking my faith in a subsequent period of mother-descent and mother-power. This book was mentioned to me in a letter from Mr. H. G. Wells. The discussion on this question is now half a century old.
The reasons for mother-descent have been altogether misunderstood by those who regard it as the earliest phase of the family, and connect the custom with sexual disorder and uncertainty of paternity. In all cases the clan system shows a marked organisation, with a much stronger cohesion than is possible in the restricted family, which is held together by the force of the father.
The Status of Woman The Historical Tendency Favoring Moral Equality of Women with Men The Theory of the Matriarchate Mother-Descent Women in Babylonia Egypt Rome The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries The Historical Tendency Favoring Moral Inequality of Woman The Ambiguous Influence of Christianity Influence of Teutonic Custom and Feudalism Chivalry Woman in England The Sale of Wives The Vanishing Subjection of Woman Inaptitude of the Modern Man to Domineer The Growth of Moral Responsibility in Women The Concomitant Development of Economic Independence The Increase of Women Who Work Invasion of the Modern Industrial Field by Women In How Far This Is Socially Justifiable The Sexual Responsibility of Women and Its Consequences The Alleged Moral Inferiority of Women The "Self-Sacrifice" of Women Society Not Concerned with Sexual Relationships Procreation the Sole Sexual Concern of the State The Supreme Importance of Maternity.
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