because it is only under monogamy that we find aged parents cared for by
their children to any extent. Under polygyny the wife who has grown old
is discarded for a young wife, and usually ends her days in bitterness.
The father, too, under polygyny is rarely cared for by the children,
because the polygynous household has never given the opportunity for
close affections between parents and children. That monogamy, therefore,
helps to lengthen life through favoring care of parents by children in
old age is an element in its favor, for it adds not a little to the
happiness of life, and so to the strength of social bonds, that people
do not have to look forward to a cheerless and friendless old age.

In brief, the monogamic family presents such superior unity and harmony
from every point of view that it is much more fitted to produce a higher
type of culture. From whatever point of view we may look at it,
therefore, there are many reasons why civilized societies cannot afford
to sanction any other form of the family than that of monogamy.

The Relation of the Form of the Family to the Form of Industry.--As we
have already seen, the form of the family is undoubtedly greatly
influenced by the form of industry. This is so markedly the case that
some sociologists and economists have claimed that the form of the
family life is but a reflection of the form of the industrial life; that
the family in its changes and variations slavishly follows the changes
in economic conditions. That such an extreme view as this is a mistake
can readily be seen from a brief review of the causes which have
produced certain types of family life in certain periods. Thus, the
maternal type of the family cannot be said by any means to have been
determined by economic conditions. On the contrary, primarily the
maternal family, as we have seen, was determined by certain intellectual
conceptions, namely, the absence of knowledge of the physiological