Sociology and Modern Social Problems

history of the family among some single representative people in order that we may see the forces which have made and unmade the family life, and incidentally also to a great

s. The ancient Romans were among the earliest civilized of the Aryan peoples, and their institutions are, therefore, of peculiar interest to us as representing approximately the early Aryan type. What we shall say concerning Roman family life, moreover, will apply, with some modifications and qualifications, to the family life of other Aryan peoples, especially

he family seemed to have lost in part its character as a purely social institution and to have become specialized into a religious institution. At any rate, the early Roman family existed very largely for the sake of perpetuating the worship of ancestors. Of course, ancestor worship could have had nothing to do with the origin of the family life among

sons would be unhappy unless buried in tombs with suitable offerings, and that if left unburied, or without suitable offerings, the souls of these persons would return to torment the living, Inasmuch as in the patriarchal family only so

that in the earliest times the dead ancestors were buried beneath the hearth. At any rate, the hearth was the place where offerings were made to the departed ancestors, and the flame on the

us and were thought to be more powerful than the living, they were by far the more important element in the life of the family. The position of the house father, as representative of the departed ancestors, and as the link between the living and the dead, naturally made his authority almost divine. Hence, the house father was himself, then, almost a deity, having absolute power over all persons within the group, even to the extent of life and death. This

tors and were relatives in the full religious and legal sense. These were known as "agnates." Later, some relationship on the mother's side came to be recognized, but relatives on the mother's side were known as a "cognates," and for a long time property could not pass to them. Indeed, in the earliest times the property of

ate of manumission being given not unlike the manumission of the slave. After the bride had been released from the worship of her father's ancestors, the bridegroom and his friends brought her to his father's house, where a ceremony of adoption was practically gone through with, adopting the bride into the family of her husband. Th

aim upon those of her husband, and became, therefore, a social outcast. Under such circumstances it is not surprising that divorce was practically unknown. It is said, indeed, that for five hundred and tw

n in such cases was adoption. Younger sons of other families were adopted if no sons were born, and these adopted sons, taking the family name, became the same legally as sons by birth. Inasmuch as t

e position of women and children in the early Roman family was one of subjection, the family itself was nevertheless of a high type. But it was inevitable that it should decay, and this decay began comparatively early. Inasmuch as the early Roman family was based upon ancestor worship, a religion which was fitted for relatively small isolated groups, it was inevitable that the family life should decay with this ancestor worship. How early the decay of ancestor worship began it is impossible to say. Perhaps

he power of the house father. This took place very early-as soon as the Council of Elders, or Senate, was formed to look after matters

, but with the development of property and of a more complex economic life the house father was given the right to divide his property a

becoming property holders, their other rights in many respects began to increase. Originally the wife had no righ

reased along with the rights of wom

haps regard as good in themselves, but they nevertheless marked the disintegration of the patriarchal family. The deca

arriage became a private contract, whereas, as we have seen, in the beginning it was a religious bond. Many loose forms of marriage were developed, which amounted practically to temporary marriages. In all cases it was easy for a husband or wife to divorce each other for

, were free to do as they saw fit. Marriages were formed and dissolved at pleasure among cer

y that the Romans of the first and second centuries A.D. approached as closely

ruction of the domestic religion, namely, ancestor worship, through the growth of nature worship and skeptical philosophy. The destruction of the domestic religion necessarily shattered the foundations of the Roman family, since, as we have already seen, there was the closest connection between the family life of the early Romans and ancestor wo

entially to the pastoral stage of industry, and as soon as settled agricultural life, commerce, and manufacturing industry developed, this destroyed the isolated patriarchal groups, and so also in time affected even

welded into small cities and the authority of the patriarch was destroyed. Legislation designed to meet

become a cause at a later stage; and this was certainly the case with the growth of divorce and vice in Rome, in its effect upon the Roman family. Moreover, much of this came from Greece through imitation. The family life had decayed in Greece much earlier than it had in Rome, and when Rome conquered Greece it annexed its vice

eral; but there is nothing which warrants the sweeping generalization of Karl Marx and his followers, "that the method of the production of the material life determines the social, political, and spiritual life process in general." On the contrary, the evolution of the Roman family clearly shows moral and psychological factors at work quite independent of economic causes. The decay of ancestor worship, for example, cannot be wholly attributed to the change in the method of getting a living. The very growth of population and accompanying changes in political conditions probably had quite as much to do with the undermining of ancestor worship. Moreover, while religion may not be an original determining cause of social forms, it is, nevertheless, as w

d like explanations, are all found wanting when they are applied to the actual history of the family. It is not different with the theories of recent sociologists, who would strive to explain all social changes through a single principle. Professor Giddings' principle of "Consciousness of Kind" and Tarde's principle of "Imitation" will not go further in explaining the changes in the family life than some of the older principles that we have just mentioned. Human life

he family in any detail, still it is necessary, in order to avoid too great discontinuity, to n

arriage was simply a private contract. The result was, eventually, that marriage came to be regarded again as a religious bond, and the family life took on once more the aspect of great stability. After the church had come fully into power in the Western world, legal divorce ceased to be recognized and legal separation was substituted in its stead. Thus the church succeeded in reconstituting the family life upon a stable basis, but the family after being reconstituted, was of a semipatriarchal type. Nothing was more natural than this, for the church had no model to go by except the paternal family of the Hebrew and Greek and Roman civilization. Nevertheless, the place of women and children in this semipatriarchal religious family established by the church was higher on the whole than in the ancient patriarchal family. The church put an end to the exposure of children,

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