The Future of Marriage: Chapter 2
Chapter 2 of Blankenhorn's book has the title, "Prehistory." He begins the chapter this way: "What were the basic patterns of sexual behavior in our species before the emergence of marriage? How did these patterns lead to marriage? No one really knows, but the origins of marriage appear to coincide with the origins of human civilization" (23).
Noting that scholars have wondered and speculated about this for the last couple thousand years. He looks at Aristotle, Plutarch, and Lucretius from ancient Greece and then jumps to the period of the Enlightenment and considers what Hobbes and Locke thought, and finally moves to the nineteenth century and focuses briefly on the beliefs of Freud, Marx and Engels.
He then takes a brief survey of the biological foundation, if any, for marriage. The famous anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss referred to marriage as " a social institution with a biological foundation" (29). He wants to survey biological and anthropological data to see if, indeed, there is a biological base to marriage. Following are some of the observations that he makes:
1. Among primates, parenting really means mothering. Fathers are not involved, or are involved only slightly in the raising of offspring (30).
2. Pair-bonding among humans is primarily a social construction: it is not primarily instinctual (31).
3. Sexual intercourse is not a big deal for primates since females are only sexually active during estrus which occurs during short periods of time. "Copulation is typically a quick, perfunctory, and highly efficient act...In fact, among most primates, most of the time, sexual differences function primarily to keep the two sexes apart" (31).
4. Copulation for humans is very different: It "is the center point...of an entire way of living in which sexual differences function primarily to keep the two sexes together " (31).
5. The loss of estrus in human females transformed copulation for both females and males: "it transforms the male from an inseminator into a father" (33).
Blankenhorn, referring to the considered opinion of many anthropologists, states that to survive and succeed, "the human infant needs a father and the human mother needs a mate...It's the central reason why our species developed the unusual way of living that we would eventually call marriage" (35).
Noting that scholars have wondered and speculated about this for the last couple thousand years. He looks at Aristotle, Plutarch, and Lucretius from ancient Greece and then jumps to the period of the Enlightenment and considers what Hobbes and Locke thought, and finally moves to the nineteenth century and focuses briefly on the beliefs of Freud, Marx and Engels.
He then takes a brief survey of the biological foundation, if any, for marriage. The famous anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss referred to marriage as " a social institution with a biological foundation" (29). He wants to survey biological and anthropological data to see if, indeed, there is a biological base to marriage. Following are some of the observations that he makes:
1. Among primates, parenting really means mothering. Fathers are not involved, or are involved only slightly in the raising of offspring (30).
2. Pair-bonding among humans is primarily a social construction: it is not primarily instinctual (31).
3. Sexual intercourse is not a big deal for primates since females are only sexually active during estrus which occurs during short periods of time. "Copulation is typically a quick, perfunctory, and highly efficient act...In fact, among most primates, most of the time, sexual differences function primarily to keep the two sexes apart" (31).
4. Copulation for humans is very different: It "is the center point...of an entire way of living in which sexual differences function primarily to keep the two sexes together " (31).
5. The loss of estrus in human females transformed copulation for both females and males: "it transforms the male from an inseminator into a father" (33).
Blankenhorn, referring to the considered opinion of many anthropologists, states that to survive and succeed, "the human infant needs a father and the human mother needs a mate...It's the central reason why our species developed the unusual way of living that we would eventually call marriage" (35).
posted by UCC Medfield at 8:18 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home