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Updated: June 15, 2025


These passages occur in his well-known Criticism of the Hypothesis of Promiscuity, and his whole argument is based on the assumption that mother-right arose through the tie between the father and the child being unrecognised. But mother-descent has no connection at all with uncertainty of paternity. I venture to think Dr.

The children, though belonging at first to the group, would remain attached to the mothers, and the blood-tie established between them would, as promiscuity gave place to more regulated sexual relationships, become developed into a system. All inheritance would pass through women only, and, in this way, mother-right would tend to be more or less strongly developed.

We have here what appears to be a much more reasonable explanation of mother-kin and mother-right than that of Bachofen. Yet many have argued powerfully against it. Westermarck especially, has shown that belief in an early stage of promiscuous relationship is altogether untenable. It is needless here to enter into proof of this.

Morgan affirms his acceptance of the Indian women’s authority, and says, after quoting this passage: “The mother-right and gynæcocracy among the Iroquois here plainly indicated is not over-drawn. The mothers and their children, as we have seen, were of the same gens, and to them the household belonged.

The subject of mother-right is dismissed as unworthy of serious attention. Such an attitude is surely instructive, and illustrates the failure, to which I have already pointed, in considering the woman’s side in these questions. There would seem to be a tendency to doubt as being possible any family arrangement favourable to the authority of women.

All that has been possible to me is to suggest an inquiry that any one can pursue for himself. It is the difficulty of treating so wide and fascinating a subject in briefest outline that so many things that should be noticed have to be passed over. The witness afforded by these folk-stories for mother-right cannot be neglected.

The Celtic population of Britain preserved the institution of the clan much longer than the other European races. In Wales and in Ireland, in particular, communism was strongly established. The clan was responsible for the crimes of its members, paid the fines, and received the compensations. There are numerous indications of mother-right.

In all cases the child’s position was dependent entirely on the mother and not on the father. Such a system of inheritance may be briefly summarised asmother-right.” There is another matter to notice. Every possible experiment in sexual association has been tried, and is still practised among various barbarous races, with very little reference to those moral ideas to which we are accustomed.

Women’s freedom was threatened on every side as the jealous ownership, which always arises wherever women are regarded as property, asserted itself. Mother-right passed away, remaining only as a tradition, or preserved in isolated cases among primitive peoples. The patriarchal age, which still endures, succeeded.

I failed to carry my inquiry far enough back. I accepted with too little caution an early period of promiscuous sexual relationships. I did not make clear the stages in the advance of the family to the clan and the tribe; nor examine with sufficient care the later transition period in which mother-right gave place to father-right. I have been sent back to examine again my own position.

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