Whatever about the rare exceptions that may be found to Nock’s position, it is doubtful that any authority would disagree with Murstein’s suggestion that if marriage is not universal, at least 99% of the world’s population exists in cultures in which marriage, as defined in general terms, exists.81 He notes also82 the failure of many attempts to change marriage radically.
This position of Murstein holds if one defines marriage in general
terms. If one recognizes as marriage only a form that applies to the institution in the modern Western world, then it is not difficult to identify societies in which marriage does not exist.83 While granting that in our day marriage exists in all or nearly all cultures, some authors have speculated about a time when it did not exist. These speculations usually suggest the existence of times when children were raised by mothers without significant contributions by their fathers. Kreamer84 suggests that fatherhood is an invention of the agricultural revolution about 6,000 years ago.
Few authors would accept this, and
Kreamer himself hedges the suggestion, calling it “a likely tale”, and admits: “Anthropologists are nowadays wary of such speculations, but therapists, ancient and modern, cannot do without stories.” Eccles85, following Lovejoy86, goes so far as to maintain that the family, consisting of father and mother caring for children, goes back about three million years, a very long time before our human race appeared on the planet. For Eccles, it is hard to understand how human beings could prosper without the survival advantage provided by care not only by the mother but also by the father. He suggests that there is even physiological evidence of a brain centre associated with male-female bonding.
81
Murstein, Bernard, Love, Sex and Marriage through the Ages, New York, Springer, c1974, p. 9. Op. cit., Chapter Fifteen. 83 Such seems to be the basis for statements such as that by Anne Marie Plane (Colonial Intimacies: Indian Marriage in New England, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, c2000, p. 6). “Much scholarship has suggested that “marriage” is not a universally applicable analytic concept. It is more helpful (and less Eurocentric) to think instead about a continuum of male-female relationships in this or any society, some of which approximate the particularly Western concept of marriage.” 84 Kraemer, Sebastien, “The origins of fatherhood: an ancient family process” Family Process 30(1991) 377-392. 85 Eccles, John C., Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self, London, Routledge, c1989, p. 113. 86 Lovejoy, C. Owen, “The origin of man” Science 211(1981) 381. 82
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