The family in historical and psychological aspects

Within the framework of a group family, cohabitation in pairs took place for one period or another, which gradually led to the formation of a more or less stable paired family. However, this family, which united one married couple, was not an economic unit of society. In the era of the primitive tribal community (Late Paleolithic and Neolithic), the level of development of production, the technical armament of man in his struggle with nature were still too low for a paired family to farm independently. The economic unit of society remained the clan or, later, its large subdivision – the maternal extended family, which covered 4-5 generations of female relatives (men and women with offspring) and was headed by an older woman. The ethnographic data of the 19th and 20th centuries speak about the economic independence of a paired family within such a collective. about the archaic tribes of America, Melanesia, and Southeast Asia.

Initially, the couple did not even settle together, continuing to live in their ancestral groups (a dislocated settlement) and meeting occasionally. Later, with the flourishing of the maternal family and the transition to matrilocal marriage, the husband moved to live in the wife's family, but the spouses' personal property remained separate, and often for damage caused to the wife's property, the husband's family had to settle with her family. Under these conditions, the union of spouses in a paired family was very fragile and easily dissolved; the children belonged only to the mother and her family. The remnants of a group family were widely and firmly preserved: sorority, cohabitation of a woman with her husband's brothers and, in fact, polyandry (polyandry).

A classic example of a paired family (according to L. G. Morgan) is the Iroquois family in the 17th century. The paired family occupied a separate room in the huge communal house of the maternal family – Ovachira. She did not run a separate household; she did not have her own allotment in the land of her mother's large family, supplies were stored in a common pantry, food was cooked in several common boilers. The women in this house were the owners, the children belonged to their family, the men were considered guests. The Melanesians had similar orders; The surviving maternal extended family has been preserved for a long time in Indonesia (for example, in Minangkabau), in India (among the Nayars), in Africa (among the Ashanti).

At the beginning of the Bronze Age, increased productive forces created certain conditions for the economic life of collectives numerically smaller than the tribal community. The emergence of the first social division of labor, the formation of separate family ownership, the increase in the economic role of men led to the disintegration of the maternal family and its transformation into a paternal one, the formation of a patriarchal large family. Such a family represented a transitional form from a paired and large matriarchal family of a developed tribal system to a monogamous family of a class society.

The transition to the patriarchal family was marked by the approval of the paternal account of kinship, patrilocal marriage and monogamy, the firm union of spouses with each other and with their offspring, the establishment of the husband's power over children and wife, for which a special ransom was now paid (Veno – among the Slavs, Kalym – among the Turkic peoples, Lobola – among the peoples of Ventoux in Africa). Polygamy (polygyny) arose as a side form, which was the privilege of rich men. However, a separate married couple was still not an economic unit of society, such was a large patriarchal family consisting of 3-4 generations of close relatives with their wives, children, and married sons. This often included patriarchal slaves. The patriarchal family was based on collective ownership of the means of production, collective labor and consumption; in the personal property of family members there were only items of individual use – clothing, weapons, etc. Depending on the specific historical conditions, the internal organization of the big S. it could be more or less democratic, but the general trend of its development was to strengthen the role of the head of the family (usually grandfather, father, older brother).

Patrilineality, also known as male lineage or agnatic kinship, is a form of kinship system in which a person's family affiliation stems from his or her father's ancestry. This usually includes inheritance of property, rights, names or titles by persons related through male-line kinship.