The modern family in social‐anthropological perspective

Abstract

SYNOPSIS A review of what light social anthropology throws on the problems confronting the modern family serves to illustrate the part this discipline can play in the advancement of the social sciences as a whole, and to show its progressively closer association with general sociology. Many prevailing misconceptions about the nature of marriage and the family among non‐literate peoples may be traced to mid‐nineteenth‐century unilinear evolutionism, which, despite the advances made by modern social anthropology, still maintains a remarkable grip on the lay mind. The conceptual aids of social anthropology enable one to appreciate the contrasts that exist between the symmetrical, ‘multilineal’ kinship system of the English‐speaking nations and the markedly unilineal (i.e., patrilineal or matrilineal) systems of many non‐literate peoples. The former is associated with a highly symmetrical form of marriage which brings into being a type of elementary family that is potentially independent of its kinship matrix...