II.

History

Anthropologists and social scientists have developed several theories about how family structures and functions evolved. In prehistoric hunting and gathering societies, two or three nuclear families, usually linked through bonds of kinship, banded together for part of the year but dispersed into separate nuclear units in those seasons when food was scarce. The family was an economic unit; men hunted, while women gathered and prepared food and tended children. Infanticide and expulsion of the infirm who could not work were common. Some anthropologists contend that prehistoric people were monogamous, because monogamy prevails in nonindustrial, tribal forms of contemporary society.

Social scientists believe that the modern Western family developed largely from that of the ancient Hebrews, whose families were patriarchal in structure (see Patrilineage). The family resulting from the Greco-Roman culture was also patriarchal and bound by strict religious precepts. In later centuries, as the Greek and then the Roman civilizations declined, so did their well-ordered family life.

With the advent of Christianity, marriage and childbearing became central concerns in religious teaching. The purely religious nature of family ties was partly abandoned in favor of civil bonds after the Reformation, which began in the 1500s. Most Western nations now recognize the family relationship as primarily a civil matter.