Paterfamilias

“ Generally she is the mother of the paterfamilias, sometimes only his mother-in-law, at others merely an aged female relative who wants a home and is willing to undertake the housekeeping in return for one. ”

“ It is in respect of the 'fatherhood’ of the children in these cases of non-fraternal polyandry that we meet with the most interesting feature of Toda social regulations. When the wife of two or more husbands (not own brothers) becomes pregnant, it is arranged that one of the husbands shall perform the ceremony of giving the bow and arrow. The husband who carries out this ceremony is the father of the child for all social purposes; the child belongs to the clan of this husband if the clans of the husbands differ and to the family of this husband if the families only differ. ”

“ Although the person made king must be of the royal family, yet a son seldom succeeds, but usually a brother by the same mother, or a son of a sister, also of the same mother. Such a person is certainly a relative, while from circumstances growing out of the system of polygamy, the son of from fifty to two hundred wives might not be the child of the husband. ”

“ In direct opposition to the Roman law of hereditary claims which established the degree of relationship according to the number of actual descendants, so that father and son were counted as related in the first degree to one another, brothers and sisters as in the second degree, uncle and niece or nephew as in the third, brothers’ or sisters’ children as in the fourth degree, the canon law on hindrances to marriage begins this reckoning after the withdrawal of the common parents, so that brother and sister are related in the first degree, uncle and niece in the second, etc. ”

“ It is a much more extended group than the modern family, embracing under the headship of the eldest valid male parent all agnatic descendants and all persons united to it by adoption, as well as slaves, clients, and other dependents. [12] The power of the house-father is most despotic, though exercised during his entire lifetime over the unmarried daughters and over even the married sons and their wives and children. Thus originally, it is said, the Roman pater familias has power of life and death, vita necisque, over his children. ”

“ From this passage we learn that a man is expected to marry his cross-cousin, the daughter of his mother's brother, in the lifetime of his uncle, and that on his uncle's death he is expected to marry the widow, his mother-in-law. Thus once more we are informed, on the best authority, that marriage with a mother-in-law, the widow of a mother's brother, follows as a consequence from a previous marriage with a cross-cousin, her daughter. ”

“ But the quality of son may be acquired otherwise than by community of blood. Thus a husband may, as we have seen, have his sterile wife fertilised by his younger brother. The child thus conceived is reputed to be son of the husband; nevertheless, in the succession, he is given the share of an uncle only, and not the double share to which he would have had a right if he had been the real son [1077] by flesh and blood. If a man has the great misfortune to have only daughters, he can obviate this by charging his daughter to bear him a son. ”

“ It must be carefully noticed, on the other hand, that the marriage of a son did not make him a pater familiās or relieve him in any degree from the patria potestās: he and his wife and their children were subject to the same Head of the House as he had been before his marriage. On the other hand, the Head of the House could not number in his familia his daughter's children: legitimate children always followed the father, while an illegitimate child was from the moment of birth in himself or herself an independent family. ”

“ Impediments.—No man shall marry his mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, stepmother, sister, grandfather’s wife, son’s wife, grandson’s wife, wife’s mother, wife’s grandmother, wife’s daughter, wife’s granddaughter, brother’s daughter, sister’s daughter, father’s sister or mother’s sister.
No woman shall marry her father, grandfather, son, grandson, stepfather, brother, grandmother’s husband, daughter’s husband, granddaughter’s husband, husband’s father, husband’s grandfather, husband’s son, husband’s grandson, brother’s son, sister’s son, father’s brother or mother’s brother. ”

“ If your aunt-in-law is your aunt, your sister-in-law must be your sister.
No man may ally himself with any "that is near of kin to him."
A sister is a near kinswoman v. 12, 13.
Near kinswomen of the wife are expressly prohibited v. 17.
The reason against marrying a wife's daughter or granddaughter is, that they are her "near kinswomen." So is her sister. Marriage with a brother's wife or an uncle's wife is pronounced "an unclean thing."
How then can marriage with a sister's husband be clean? How can you prove any difference between the relationships? ”

“ A daughter becoming on marriage a part of her husband’s family ceases to be a member of her own, and her descendants are no benefit to it, unless, perchance, having no brothers, one of her sons is adopted by her father. ”

“ Here, again, it is plain that marriage with the widowed mother-in-law follows, and does not precede, marriage with her daughter; a man first marries his cousin and takes up his abode with her parents; afterwards, when his father-in-law dies, he marries the widow, his mother-in-law.
(5) Further, Major A. Playfair, in treating of inheritance among the Garos, writes as follows:
"Although a man cannot inherit property, his machong [motherhood] assumes a right to control what his wife has brought him. ”

“ And if there be a lack of kinsmen in a family extending to grandchildren of a brother, or to the grandchildren of a grandfather's children, the maiden may choose with the consent of her guardians any one of the citizens who is willing and whom she wills, and he shall be the heir of the dead man, and the husband of his daughter. ”

“ Where there are no children, nor son's children, and only one brother or sister, the mother will take one-third with a widow or widower, if she have a grandfather to share with, instead of a father; but a third of the remainder only, after the shares of the widow or widower have been satisfied; if there be a father to share with her.
35. Grandfathers can never take any share of the property where there is a father.
36. Where there is a son of the deceased or son's son, how low soever, and no father, the grandfather will take one-sixth. ”

“ There being no male heir, it might be that a son would be adopted in early life to grow up as the heir, or he might be adopted with the idea of his marrying one of the daughters later, or there might be no formal adoption but a young man would marry a daughter and give up his own name and take that of the family and thus become the [Pg 146] heir. The childless wife, if not divorced, would often care for the adopted child as if her own, which care would be reciprocated by the adopted son in her old age. ”

“ It is indeed a curious plea which leads you to assert that your grand-daughter is not connected with your son, her uncle, by any close bond, merely because they have no relationship by the father’s side248. As if an uterine brother and sister, born that is, of the same mother but by a different father, would be united together when of a different sex, for as much as they have no relationship by the father’s side249, but are only united to each other by the mother’s side250. ”

“ If a man have fifty wives the knowledge of the father is as distinct as the knowledge of the mother. It is not destroyed, therefore. The great principle of parentage on the part of the husband, on the part of the father, is preserved. Therefore it is more consistent, more reasonable, first for procreation, and secondly for obtaining a knowledge of parentage, that a man should have a plurality of wives than that a woman should have a plurality of husbands. ”

“ What cannot be disputed is, that always and everywhere peoples who are in process of civilisation have adopted the paternal family, according even excessive powers to the father of the family. What is probable is, that in the majority of cases paternal filiation has succeeded to maternal filiation and to more or less confused familial forms. Is this paternal or even patriarchal family the final term of familial evolution? Has evolution, never as yet arrested in its course, said its last word in regard to marriage and the family? ”

“ It must be remembered that as soon as a woman has left her father's roof and passes under the care of her husband—or rather of her husband's parents, if they are still alive—her father's family have no longer any legal control over her. Her husband's father and brothers become to all intents and purposes her own father and brothers: and to her father-in-law she owes the complete obedience that before marriage she owed to her father. ”

“ Every relationship recognized under the system is thus explained from the nature of the consanguine family, founded upon the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, own and collateral, in a group. Relationships on the father’s side are followed as near as the parentage of children could be known, probable fathers being treated as actual fathers. Relationships on the mother’s side are determined by the principle of affinity, step-children being regarded as actual children. ”

“ In some there were four families—the grand-parents, the parents, the eldest son with his wife and family, and a daughter or two with their husbands and children. The eldest son, who inherits the house and land, almost invariably brings his wife to his father's house, where she often becomes little better than a slave to her mother-in-law. ”

“ The marriage of a son or daughter with relatives of the mother who belong to the same clan is not allowed in the case of maternal descent. The son, for example, may not marry a sister of his mother, nor the daughter a brother of the mother, etc. Since it is maternal descent that is dominant in the case of unlimited exogamy, the most important result of the latter is doubtless its prevention of the marriage of brother and sister, in addition to that of a son with his mother. ”

“ Through the cross-cousin marriage the relationships of mother's brother, father's sister's husband and father-in-law will be combined in one and the same person, and the relationships of father's sister, mother's brother's wife and mother-in-law will be similarly combined. ”

“ Surely, now, these are the same for the woman, She cannot marry her uncle, either by blood or affinity. Her aunt's husband is as much her uncle by marriage as her father or mother's brother is by blood. ”

“ Patriarchate.—Individual polygamous marriage is most frequently allied to a new form of affiliation, that of kinship through males, which, in its turn, is rooted in the constitution of property and the subordination of woman to man. In the matriarchate the natural protector of the child and the family is the mother’s brother; in the patriarchate his place is taken by the father, who extends the right of property not only to include the mother, but also the children ”

“ The Naïr husbands are reduced to the modest rôle of progenitors; and it is to the wife that the fortune of the family belongs. It is not, however, the mother who governs the family, but her brother. To this brother belongs the duty of bringing up his nephews, of protecting them, and of mourning for them, if they happen to die; in reality, he is an avuncular father, and when he dies his nephews inherit his personal property. ”

“ Cousins were allowed to marry but not nearer relatives. As a rule a widow was not permitted to remarry except a brother of her deceased husband and in case she had children by the first marriage, then it was the duty of the brother-in-law to marry her that the children might not be without the care and protection of a father. ”

“ The male member of the family inherits, but he does so only as the son of a female member of the family through whom he may justly claim kinship, or, to put it in another form, a man's natural heir is not his son, or his brother's son, or the descendant of a common male ancestor, but his sister's, or his sister's daughter's son, or the descendant of a common female ancestress. ”

“ A wife and her lineal descendants who are not her husband’s blood relatives shall be re-entered into her native family register or establish a new family by the effect of annulment of marriage or divorce. ”

“ If a woman's husband die, and leave her without children, let his brother marry her, and let him call the son that is born to him by his brother's name, and educate him as the heir of his inheritance, for this procedure will be for the benefit of the public, because thereby families will not fail, and the estate will continue among the kindred; and this will be for the solace of wives under their affliction, that they are to be married to the next relation of their former husbands. ”

“ The mother is always the most important member of the household, and the grandmother is treated with veneration. The presence of the mother-in-law is coveted by their sons-in-law, who look on them as the guardians of the virtue of their wives. The paternal uncle is a much nearer tie than with us; while men look on their first cousins on the father’s side as their most natural wives. ”

“ In cases where the marriage rites have not been duly completed before a child is born, provided the couple might otherwise marry, the father is often required to acknowledge formally the paternity of the child, which is then allowed to live. ”