FEST Writing Group

This is a draft of an article and I would like advice on how to better integrate it.

The Social and Economic Side of Mating and Reproduction

The family is an economic unit as well as an emotional unit.  When two people become parents, they also become economic partners, adapting as the conditions for making a living change. In humanity’s time on earth, the economic conditions for raising a family have changed dramatically. 

In this overview of human social and economic evolution, Joanne Bowen writes:

Humans have lived on this Earth as foragers for eons, moving in family groups; then, beginning at the end of the Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, some groups took the revolutionary step to domesticate plants and animals.  As they did so, families settled down to plant and tend their crops, and societies evolved from nomadic to sedentary societies, a change that brought about a cascade of changes.  Land and its resources moved from collective to individual ownership; some families accumulated wealth; and societies became increasingly hierarchical with different forms of government.  As foraging societies underwent significant change, families struggled to form a coherent and sustainable relationship with the land and each other.  (J. Bowen. 2020. 306)

The changes that came with the advent of farming were indeed “revolutionary.”  Hunter-gatherers lived in small communities and moved around as needed to find resources.  With the advent of domestication of plants and animals, farmers gained a degree of control over the production of food and the ability to produce a surplus of food.  John Gowdy writes: “The transition from small cooperative groups to complex large scale societies was driven by the economics of surplus production” (Gowdy 2021, 75). The increase in production of food led to the “cascade of changes” noted by Joanne Bowen.  It was now possible to feed a larger number of people with the labor of only a percentage of the population, thus freeing others to pursue other kinds of work; the division of labor became increasingly complex while the roles of individuals became more specialized and narrower. 

Ian Morris writes of the changes in the nature of labor, and the impact of these changes on the roles of men and women:

In foraging societies, women usually did most of the plant gathering and men most of the hunting.  This sexual division of labor did not usually change very much in horticultural societies….  But as population grew, making land scarcer relative to labor, people worked more intensively, squeezing more output from each acre through the heavy labor of plowing, manuring, and even irrigating.  (Morris 2015, 58-59)

The physical labor of farming became primarily men’s work while women managed households that were centers of productivity. (Morris. 2015)  Farmwives had more babies than female foragers and at shorter intervals between births, so that most of their adult lives were spent pregnant and raising children.  Morris concludes: “Demography and the patterns of labor conspired to separate male/outdoor and female/indoor spheres” (Morris 2015, 59).

Flinn observed that the human family, different from other primates, is a multi-male group with an unusual level of cooperation among male kin.  It is not hard to see how the farming family would become a fertile ground for male kin to join in envisioning and developing opportunities to increase surplus production.  Fathers and sons, brothers, uncles and cousins, would become natural allies in the mission of creating family security and wealth.  When farmers were able to possess their wealth—crops, dwellings, animals—by demarcating and defending territory, new property rights were facilitated, giving farmers ownership of land and resources.  (Bowles and Choi. 2013) With the institution of inheritance, families were able to pass their wealth to the next generation. Family dynasties are well-known in history and in today’s stratified economic world, perpetuated by the bonds of kinship and the institutions of private property and inheritance.  The social, political, and economic landscape in countries around the world is marked by the names of families who reached dynastic levels of wealth and influence. 

Allen W. Johnson and Timothy Earle, in their textbook in anthropology, The Evolution of Human Societies, describe the patriarchal family that was a feature of regional polities, “the political institutions that organize human groups ranging in size from as few as one thousand people to modern day China with more than a billion.”  (Johnson and Earle 2000, 245) They write:

The complementary division of labor between husband and wife continues to underscore the economic independence at the base of marriage.  But among peasants in the regional polity, land and other wealth tend to be transmitted in the male line, residence is patrilocal, and there is a clear-cut ideology of male dominance.  These patterns are strongest in families with wealth, where an emphasis on producing male heirs places a premium on chaste daughters who will become fertile and faithful wives.  But the ideology of male dominance pervades all regions and classes. Newly married couples may strongly wish for a separate hearth and home of their own, yet this often comes into conflict with older parents’ desire to maintain patriarchal control of their sons’ household economies and to be cared for in old age. (Johnson & Earle 2000, 251)

Konner proposes that the advent of agriculture brought a decline in the quality of life for women:

 Increased childbearing and shortened life span were not the only reasons agriculture made life worse for women.  Even more it was because of men’s power politics—male coalitions out of control.  Life as a whole was no longer face-to-face; private and public spheres diverged, and every major aspect of social life—politics, economics, religion, defense—become detached from hearth and home” (Konner 2015, 159). 

  Women continued to be major contributors to family resources, but their economic and social status was now tied to their men.  Social rank became a factor in the relationships between men and women, a serious consideration in the choice of mates for both.  Common practice in some societies was for marriages to be arranged by fathers for their daughters, and in some cases for their sons as well.   Marriage became less a personal choice and more a transaction designed to forge alliances and consolidate assets between families and societies.

The society governed by the ideology of male supremacy became the world in which men and women adapted.  Women have often done so in ways that promote patriarchy as explained by Barbara Smuts in her classic study, “The Evolutionary Origins of Patriarchy.”  In her study of baboons and other nonhuman primates, she saw the way females unite, using social support and many other means to hold their own against male aggression.  She contrasts this behavior with that of human females:

In pursuing their material and reproductive interests, women often engage in behaviors that promote male resource control and male control over female sexuality. … It is not always in a female’s interest to ally with other females against males.  Often females do better by competing with other females and/or allying with males (Smuts 1995, 18).

Smuts cites behaviors to support this conclusion:  the preference shown by women the world over for marrying men with more resources; the compliance of women with customs that control women’s sexuality and teaching their daughters to also conform; the favoring of sons over daughters and brothers over sisters. (Ibid) From this perspective, we can see how patriarchy is based not only on the dominance of men over women but also on the reciprocity between men’s ambition to build wealth that will attract women and women’s preference for men who have wealth, both strategies operating in the service of reproductive success.

         Bowen offers a different way of thinking about dominance.  Viewing it as part of the emotional process in the family, he saw how often one partner in a marriage would take a more active, take-charge, position and the other a more passive, go-along, position as the couple made decisions and addressed the tasks of family life.  Using the terms, dysfunctioning and overfunctioning, he described this pattern on a continuum:

It is factual that dysfunctioning and overfunctioning exist together.  On one level this is a smooth-working, flexible, reciprocating mechanism in which one member automatically overfunctions to compensate for the dysfunction of the other who is temporarily ill.  Then there are the more chronic states of overfunctioning and dysfunction in which flexibility is lost.  (Bowen 1978, 155)

With increasing anxiety and loss of flexibility, both parties can get locked into these functioning positions: “The overadequate one sees self as being forced to take responsibility and the other as a shirker.  The inadequate one sees self as being “forced to submit and the other as “dominating.” (1978, 53) Using the language of dominance and submission reflects the subjectivity in the way the partners think about their dilemma.  A systems perspective sees it as a product of the emotional fusion in the marriage, a reciprocal process that develops over time, mostly out of awareness as people react and respond to one another, mutually influencing one another’s functioning.

              Bowen did not regard women as a subjugated group.  He saw that the mother’s central role in reproduction and childrearing tends to make her the “emotional nucleus” around which the father and the family organize.  Combining this with the power of female agency, their essential contribution to the resources needed to support the family, and their investment in the welfare of the family as well of their own, women have surely had a voice and made their positions known on important issues even if men were the public representatives and spokespersons.  Bowen wrote: “The dominant and adaptive positions are not directly related to the sex of the spouse. They are determined by the position that each had in their families of origin.  From my experience, there are as many dominant females as males, and as many adaptive males as females” (1978, 376).

              The social and economic world has been transformed in the past two centuries by the discovery of fossil fuels, the vast deposits of coal, gas, and oil buried under the Earth’s surface for millions of years.  Ian Morris writes: “Exploiting fossil fuels has set off an energy bonanza, transforming human societies and values” (2015, 93). Driven by the abundance of energy, the industrial revolution accelerated the combination of economic and population growth that had begun with the agrarian revolution.  Numbers tell the story:  in 1800 the world population was just under one billion and the twenty-first century saw it rise to over eight billion.  With billions of lives arriving on the planet came a bonanza of opportunities for progress as well as the challenge of adapting to so much change coming so fast.  An explosion in knowledge in science and medicine has given us a longer life span, reduced infant mortality, cures for diseases and ways to prevent them.  Technology has made this the information age, with more data available to more people than for all previous history.  An enormous middle class has been created able to buy goods and services that fossil fuel economics produce.  Slavery was legally abolished in the 1800s.  Organized social activism has expanded human rights and protections for many groups.  (Morris, 2015)

Women have made strides forward in education and economic autonomy.  Advances in science and education have given us the means of regulating reproduction.  It took a century of social activism to overcome deep-seated societal opposition, but we now have wide acceptance of birth control and family planning in our country and other parts of the world. There is a wide range of variation in women’s status in societies around the world, from those in which women are severely restricted and have little or no presence in public life to those in which women hold the highest positions of leadership. 

Frederick Baerwald views the family as an economic unit of production and consumption: “In the long experience of mankind the vast majority of families were also producer units, working together on the land and in small shops to earn the family income with their own productive assets. … Prior to the industrial revolution of the last two hundred years, most economic units in business and farming were centered around the family” (Baerwald 1955. 118). He goes on to describe the very different economic reality for families currently:

As industrialization and concentration within the economy proceed, more and more families are being cut off from direct control and ownership of productive economic units. The business of making a living is not only being transferred outside the home, but for the majority of families in this country at least it has to be carried out in the employ of others. As, economically speaking, the family is being reduced to a consumer unit, the home since it becomes merely a place for the joint consumption and use of material things and of mass-produced entertainment, has a tendency to become smaller” (Baerwald 1955,121).

With three generations no longer working together to make a living, there is more separation and reduced interdependence between the generations.  Adding to this the phenomenon of emotional cutoff that occurs to varying degrees in families, we see how our society has evolved to increasing numbers of people experiencing isolation and loneliness.  Many are vulnerable to poverty.  One of the most vulnerable positions economically and emotionally would be that of a single mother who is cutoff from family support and on her own to support children. 

 Nevertheless, as people have adapted to changing economic conditions, one thing remains constant: the family remains as it has always been the primary emotional, economic, and reproductive unit at the core of societies.