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Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 3. Jg 1933, Heft 3 |
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fondness shown, which is quite characteristic, and contrasts with the indifference or irritation commonly exhibited by the civilised male as regards young children. But that sentiment is, to an even more pronounced extent than is the case with maternal behaviour, directed towards all young children irrespectively of bonds of kinship, so much so that it would be inexact to refer to it as a parental sentiment. Marked fondness and devotion is commonly shown by men to children of their sexual associate by a different father. The remark of an Iroquois to Father Le Jeune expresses well the contrast between savage and civilised sentiment in this respect: "You love only your own children", the Indian said, "we love all the children of the tribe[1]". Everyone who has been familiar with uncultured societies will readily recognise the difference of attitude described. It is impossible to tell, in most lower cultures, from the behaviour of a man towards children whether they are his own offspring or not. Professor Malinowski speaks of a "tenderness and affection… mysteriously associated with fatherhood", but he gives no evidence for the discovery of a mystery entirely unknown to either savage or civilised psychology. It is equally news that in the lowest cultures the father is the "guardian of the woman during her pregnancy[2]", in view of the very general rule that the woman is ritually separated from her husband during the greater part of pregnancy and suckling and that no association of any kind between a man and a woman is established until after the birth of the child.
There are several ethnographical instances of men complaining of the hardship of matrilinear rules of kinship, and expressing the wish that their own children might be related to themselves by juridic kinship instead of belonging, as they do, to the clan of their mother. In some parts of Africa, as among the southern Taureg and the Felatah, that hardship is commonly circumvented by raising children from purchased concubines, and thus regarding "illegitimate" offspring as the true offspring. But it is to be noted that in all those instances the cause of complaint against matrilinear rules arises out of the question of the disposal and transmission of property. What the father desires is not a son, but an heir, and his desire arises from anxiety that his property should remain in his own family instead of going to his sister's family.
This brings us to the process of differentiation which has taken place and is traceable in social sentiments, from those stages
Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 3. Jg 1933, Heft 3. Librairie Felix Alcan, Paris 1933, Seite 369. Digitale Volltext-Ausgabe bei Wikisource, URL: https://de.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Seite:Zeitschrift_f%C3%BCr_Sozialforschung_Jahrgang_2_Heft_3.pdf/51&oldid=- (Version vom 8.6.2022)
