Based on last week lesson there was a mention of how the monogamous relationship care about, rather i think it was a question asked by the professor. I did not hear much people respond to that question so i decided to say my bit in the blog since i am very she and do not like to speak in class.
I learned sometime ago in a sociology of gender course in the university in my home country that the monogamous family had started back in the primitive day of barbarianism and savagery.It is said that the idea of family came about when men found out the they could domesticate animals to help with labor in the ages of hunters and gathers. with the domestication of these animals came unexpected wealth as they were producing surplus in there crops. This surplus gave them the need to secure and protect this newly acquired wealth as well as the need for larger work for to manned the animals as well as other aspect of cultivation. they therefore decide to organised the children and female into what is called a family today but back then women and children were just property the same way the animals were.
This idea brought about the Consanguine family. In this family all the male and female were husband and wife of each other. therefore all the children were brothers and sisters. The men still had concern about the security of the wealth and decided to make the family a little smaller by changing some of the rules ,such as prohibiting sexual intercourse with some family members. this down sizing formed the Punaluan family.
In the Punaluan family sexual intercourse was prohibited between parents and children and between brothers and sisters. because of this limit set by the barbarism the savages were not very comfortabe with the idea but the barbarian insisted as the became concern with who will inherit their wealth upon their passing. this was because inheritance were only done through the mother rights order. this was so as it could not be proven who were the father of the children but it was obvious who the mothers were. In the event of the death of the owner of a herd, his herd would be passed on to his brothers and sisters and to his sisters children or his mothers sisters. his own children would be disinherited. The Barbarian were more concerned with this idea as they did not want to leave their inheritance to the women because the women had children my many other fathers who would enjoy this inheritance. but rather wanted to come up with a way for only their children the inherit their wealth. out of this came the Pairing Family.
The pairing family is consisted of one man and one woman. this made the man's role in the family became more important than that of the women it also on the other hand created exploitation of women and the strengthening of the overthrow of mother rights other of inheritance. At this stage the men took command of the family, the home as well as the women and children. The women was degraded and reduced to servitude and became the slave of the mans lust. women were then seen as only an instrument of production of children, for larger work force.Hence the start of the patriarchal family. Therefore this idea of the origin of the monogamous family causes many to believe that monogamous relationship is a means of control which the men use to control and own women as property.
Very interesting post. Exclusive heterosexual monogamy is a relatively recent concept that is so often taken to be the default, the "natural" way of relationships. As a student in the U of T Sexual Diversity Studies program, this is one of the topics that comes up frequently in many of my classes. There are lots of human cultures which have not practiced the same kind of familial relationships. And most animal species are not monogamous or exclusively heterosexual either. Bonobos, our closest primate relatives tend to live in polyamorous, bisexual, matriarchal groups. http://www.unl.edu/rhames/bonobo/bonobo.htm
ReplyDeletehttp://sexuality.spaceandmotion.com/primate.htm