Abstract
Humanity survives by reproduction, which involves sexual relations1 between a man and a woman, followed by conception, gestation and the birth of a helpless infant. It is therefore a simple physical or biological truism that family relationships (whether they are strictly kinship groupings or socially sanctioned by marriage or not) underlie all societies and that the family (variously defined) is their basic unit. This does not mean that the traditional legal and social rules which the particular society has evolved to regulate these relationships are equally basic. Many of these social and legal rules are in fact habitually retained long after the conditions that were thought to justify them have disappeared.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
E.g. Peter Laslett (ed.), Household and Family in Past Time (1972), p. 126.
E.g. Peter Laslett (ed.), Household and Family in Past Time (1972), p. 156.
E.g. Laslett, ibid. p. 3, for the widespread conviction that most girls in England married in their teens in earlier times. Also P. Laslett; The World we have lost (1965).
M. R. Paulsen, in ‘Support rights and duties between husband and wife’, 9 Vanderbilt Law Rev., (1956) 709, emphasises the importance in American mythology of the idealised agricultural household.
E.g. Robin Fox, Kinship and Marriage (1967), p. 39: The basic unit is the mother and her child, however the mother came to be impregnated.’ He therefore prefers the term ‘conjugal unit’ for both parents and their children. See also the same author in The Family and its Future (CIBA Foundation Symposium, 1970), p. 2.
Also Jack Goody (ed.), Kinship (1971)
and John Bowlby, Child Care and the Growth of Love, 2nd ed. (Penguin 1965) and Attachment and Loss (1969).
E.g. F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, in the light of the researches of Lewis H. Morgan, with an introduction by Eleanor Burke Leacock (1972) pp. 97–101.
E.g. T. James, ‘The English law of marriage’, in A Century of Family Law, ed. R. H. Graveson and F. R. Crane (1957), p. 20.
See e.g. Kinship and Marriage in African Society, ed. Radcliffe-Brown and Ford (1950), and the complex variations there illustrated, less of prohibitions than of mating arrangements preferred for the royal family, and therefore cited as ideal, but rarely adopted, by the people generally.
But for example in the United States at the end of 1964 nineteen of the fifty States still had in their legislation some prohibition on so-called ‘miscegenous’ marriages. In Loving v. Virginia (1969) U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1817, the U.S. Supreme Court declared such prohibitions unconstitutional, but the decision did not wipe the State legislation from the statute book. See W. Wadlington, ‘The Loving case: Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute in historical perspective’, 52 Virginia Law Rev., (1966) 1189, and for results of exogamous breeding in the United States see Science (22 August 1969).
Thus Warrington L. J. in Napier v. Napier [1915] P. 184, 192–3 in the Court of Appeal said: ‘nullity, in its very nature, presupposes a cause existing at the date of the marriage. Wilful and persistent refusal, unless it results from incapacity, necessarily arises after the marriage’. See The Church and the Law of Nullity of Marriage (S.P.C.K., 1955), pp. 38
See e.g. A Survey of African Marriage and Family Life, ed. A. Phillips (1953), especially the introductory essay by the editor,
and African Marriage and Social Change by L. P. Mair (1969).
De Bello Gallico, Book V, Ch. 14. Polygyny may have been known among the Celts, but the Irish evidence shows that there was a single principal wife: T. G. E. Powell, The Celts (1958), p. 84.
E.g. L. T. Hobhouse, C. C. Wheeler and M. Ginsberg, The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples (1930).
Wachtel v. Wachtel [1973] Farn. 72 CA., discussed further in Chapter VII. Ormrod J. had held husband and wife equally entitled on divorce to the sole substantial asset, the matrimonial home. A decision of the Court of Appeal cutting the wife’s share from £10,000 to £6000 and maintenance for the daughter from £500 to £300 a year was reported under such headlines as ‘Great Women’s Lib. Breakthrough’ in the popular press. Only The Guardian correctly assessed the decision. Bagnall J. commented in Harnett v. Harnett [1973] Fam. 156, 162C: ‘If, therefore, it was a triumph, it was at least tinged with Pyrrhic characteristics.’
E.g. O. R. McGregor, Divorce in England (1957).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1977 Olive M. Stone
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Stone, O.M. (1977). Introduction. In: Family Law. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-86147-7_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-86147-7_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-19630-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-86147-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)