^84:6.7 ¶ While the sexes never can hope fully to understand each other, they are effectively complementary, and though co-operation is often more or less personally antagonistic, it is capable of maintaining and reproducing society. Marriage is an institution designed to compose sex differences, meanwhile effecting the continuation of civilization and ensuring the reproduction of the race.

^84:6.8 Marriage is the mother of all human institutions, for it leads directly to home founding and home maintenance, which is the structural basis of society. The family is vitally linked to the mechanism of self-maintenance; it is the sole hope of race perpetuation under the mores of civilization, while at the same time it most effectively provides certain highly satisfactory forms of self-gratification. The family is man’s greatest purely human achievement, combining as it does the evolution of the biologic relations of male and female with the social relations of husband and wife.

7. THE IDEALS OF FAMILY LIFE

^84:7.1 Sex mating is instinctive, children are the natural result, and the family thus automatically comes into existence. As are the families of the race or nation, so is its society. If the families are good, the society is likewise good. The great cultural stability of the Jewish and of the Chinese peoples lies in the strength of their family groups.

^84:7.2 Woman’s instinct to love and care for children conspired to make her the interested party in promoting marriage and primitive family life. Man was only forced into home building by the pressure of the later mores and social conventions; he was slow to take an interest in the establishment of marriage and home because the sex act imposes no biologic consequences upon him.

^84:7.3 Sex association is natural, but marriage is social and has always been regulated by the mores. The mores (religious, moral, and ethical), together with property, pride, and chivalry, stabilize the institutions of marriage and family. Whenever the mores fluctuate, there is fluctuation in the stability of the home-marriage institution. Marriage is now passing out of the property stage into the personal era. Formerly man protected woman because she was his chattel, and she obeyed for the same reason. Regardless of its merits this system did provide stability. Now, woman is no longer regarded as property, and new mores are emerging designed to stabilize the marriage-home institution:

^84:7.4 1. The new role of religion — the teaching that parental experience is essential, the idea of procreating cosmic citizens, the enlarged understanding of the privilege of procreation — giving sons to the Father.

^84:7.5 2. The new role of science — procreation is becoming more and more voluntary, subject to man’s control. In ancient times lack of understanding ensured the appearance of children in the absence of all desire therefor.

^84:7.6 3. The new function of pleasure lures — this introduces a new factor into racial survival; ancient man exposed undesired children to die; moderns refuse to bear them.

^84:7.7 4. The enhancement of parental instinct — each generation now tends to eliminate from the reproductive stream of the race those individuals in whom parental instinct is insufficiently strong to ensure the procreation of children, the prospective parents of the next generation.

^84:7.8 ¶ But the home as an institution, a partnership between one man and one woman, dates more specifically from the days of Dalamatia, about 500,000 years ago, the monogamous practices of Andon and his immediate descendants having been abandoned long before. Family life, however, was not much to boast of before the days of the Nodites and the later Adamites. Adam and Eve exerted a lasting influence on all mankind; for the first time in the history of the world men and women were observed working side by side in the Garden. The Edenic ideal, the whole family as gardeners, was a new idea on Urantia.

^84:7.9 The early family embraced a related working group, including the slaves, all living in one dwelling. Marriage and family life have not always been identical but have of necessity been closely associated. Woman always wanted the individual family, and eventually she had her way.

^84:7.10 ¶ Love of offspring is almost universal and is of distinct survival value. The ancients always sacrificed the mother’s interests for the welfare of the child; an Eskimo mother even yet licks her baby in lieu of washing. But primitive mothers only nourished and cared for their children when very young; like the animals, they discarded them as soon as they grew up. Enduring and continuous human associations have never been founded on biologic affection alone. The animals love their children; man — civilized man — loves his children’s children. The higher the civilization, the greater the joy of parents in the children’s advancement and success; thus the new and higher realization of name pride comes into existence.

^84:7.11 The large families among ancient peoples were not necessarily affectional. Many children were desired because:

^84:7.12 1. They were valuable as labourers.

^84:7.13 2. They were old-age insurance.

^84:7.14 3. Daughters were saleable.

^84:7.15 4. Family pride required extension of name.

^84:7.16 5. Sons afforded protection and defence.

^84:7.17 6. Ghost fear produced a dread of being alone.

^84:7.18 7. Certain religions required offspring.

^84:7.19 ¶ Ancestor worshippers view the failure to have sons as the supreme calamity for all time and eternity. They desire above all else to have sons to officiate in the post-mortem feasts, to offer the required sacrifices for the ghost’s progress through spiritland.

^84:7.20 Among ancient savages, discipline of children was begun very early; and the child early realized that disobedience meant failure or even death just as it did to the animals. It is civilization’s protection of the child from the natural consequences of foolish conduct that contributes so much to modern insubordination.

^84:7.21 Eskimo children thrive on so little discipline and correction simply because they are naturally docile little animals; the children of both the red and the yellow men are almost equally tractable. But in races containing Andite inheritance, children are not so placid; these more imaginative and adventurous youths require more training and discipline. Modern problems of child culture are rendered increasingly difficult by:

^84:7.22 1. The large degree of race mixture.

^84:7.23 2. Artificial and superficial education.

^84:7.24 3. Inability of the child to gain culture by imitating parents — the parents are absent from the family picture so much of the time.

^84:7.25 ¶ The olden ideas of family discipline were biologic, growing out of the realization that parents were creators of the child’s being. The advancing ideals of family life are leading to the concept that bringing a child into the world, instead of conferring certain parental rights, entails the supreme responsibility of human existence.

^84:7.26 Civilization regards the parents as assuming all duties, the child as having all the rights. Respect of the child for his parents arises, not in knowledge of the obligation implied in parental procreation, but naturally grows as a result of the care, training, and affection which are lovingly displayed in assisting the child to win the battle of life. The true parent is engaged in a continuous service-ministry which the wise child comes to recognize and appreciate.