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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 84
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE
84:0.1
MATERIAL necessity founded marriage, sex hunger
embellished it, religion sanctioned and exalted it, the
state demanded and regulated it, while in later times
evolving love is beginning to justify and glorify
marriage as the ancestor and creator of civilization's
most useful and sublime institution, the home. And home
building should be the center and essence of all
educational effort.
84:0.2
Mating is purely an act of self-perpetuation associated
with varying degrees of self-gratification; marriage,
home building, is largely a matter of self-maintenance,
and it implies the evolution of society. Society itself
is the aggregated structure of family units. Individuals
are very temporary as planetary factors -- only families
are continuing agencies in social evolution. The family
is the channel through which the river of culture and
knowledge flows from one generation to another.
84:0.3
The home is basically a sociologic institution. Marriage
grew out of co-operation in self-maintenance and
partnership in self-perpetuation, the element of
self-gratification being largely incidental.
Nevertheless, the home does embrace all three of the
essential functions of human existence, while life
propagation makes it the fundamental human institution,
and sex sets it off from all other social activities.
1. PRIMITIVE PAIR ASSOCIATIONS
84:1.1
Marriage was not founded on sex relations; they were
incidental thereto. Marriage was not needed by primitive
man, who indulged his sex appetite freely without
encumbering himself with the responsibilities of wife,
children, and home.
84:1.2
Woman, because of physical and emotional attachment to
her offspring, is dependent on co-operation with the
male, and this urges her into the sheltering protection
of marriage. But no direct biologic urge led man into
marriage -- much less held him in. It was not love that
made marriage attractive to man, but food hunger which
first attracted savage man to woman and the primitive
shelter shared by her children.
84:1.3
Marriage was not even brought about by the conscious
realization of the obligations of sex relations.
Primitive man comprehended no connection between sex
indulgence and the subsequent birth of a child. It was
once universally believed that a virgin could become
pregnant. The savage early conceived the idea that
babies were made in spiritland; pregnancy was believed
to be the result of a woman's being entered by a spirit,
an evolving ghost. Both diet and the evil eye were also
believed to be capable of causing pregnancy in a virgin
or unmarried woman, while later beliefs connected the
beginnings of life with the breath and with sunlight.
84:1.4
Many early peoples associated ghosts with the sea; hence
virgins were greatly restricted in their bathing
practices; young women were far more afraid of bathing
in the sea at high tide than of having sex relations.
Deformed or premature babies were regarded as the young
of animals which had found their way into a woman's body
as a result of careless bathing or through malevolent
spirit activity. Savages, of course, thought nothing of
strangling such offspring at birth.
84:1.5
The first step in enlightenment came with the belief
that sex relations opened up the way for the
impregnating ghost to enter the female. Man has since
discovered that father and mother are equal contributors
of the living inheritance factors which initiate
offspring. But even in the twentieth century many
parents still endeavor to keep their children in more or
less ignorance as to the origin of human life.
84:1.6
A family of some simple sort was insured by the fact
that the reproductive function entails the mother-child
relationship. Mother love is instinctive; it did not
originate in the mores as did marriage. All mammalian
mother love is the inherent endowment of the adjutant
mind-spirits of the local universe and is in strength
and devotion always directly proportional to the length
of the helpless infancy of the species.
84:1.7
The mother and child relation is natural, strong, and
instinctive, and one which, therefore, constrained
primitive women to submit to many strange conditions and
to endure untold hardships. This compelling mother love
is the handicapping emotion which has always placed
woman at such a tremendous disadvantage in all her
struggles with man. Even at that, maternal instinct in
the human species is not overpowering; it may be
thwarted by ambition, selfishness, and religious
conviction.
84:1.8
While the mother-child association is neither marriage
nor home, it was the nucleus from which both sprang. The
great advance in the evolution of mating came when these
temporary partnerships lasted long enough to rear the
resultant offspring, for that was homemaking.
84:1.9
Regardless of the antagonisms of these early pairs,
notwithstanding the looseness of the association, the
chances for survival were greatly improved by these
male-female partnerships. A man and a woman,
co-operating, even aside from family and offspring, are
vastly superior in most ways to either two men or two
women. This pairing of the sexes enhanced survival and
was the very beginning of human society. The sex
division of labor also made for comfort and increased
happiness.
2. THE EARLY MOTHER-FAMILY
84:2.1
The woman's periodic hemorrhage and her further loss of
blood at childbirth early suggested blood as the creator
of the child (even as the seat of the soul) and gave
origin to the blood-bond concept of human relationships.
In early times all descent was reckoned in the female
line, that being the only part of inheritance which was
at all certain.
84:2.2
The primitive family, growing out of the instinctive
biologic blood bond of mother and child, was inevitably
a mother-family; and many tribes long held to this
arrangement. The mother-family was the only possible
transition from the stage of group marriage in the horde
to the later and improved home life of the polygamous
and monogamous father-families. The mother-family was
natural and biologic; the father-family is social,
economic, and political. The persistence of the
mother-family among the North American red men is one of
the chief reasons why the otherwise progressive Iroquois
never became a real state.
84:2.3
Under the mother-family mores the wife's mother enjoyed
virtually supreme authority in the home; even the wife's
brothers and their sons were more active in family
supervision than was the husband. Fathers were often
renamed after their own children.
84:2.4
The earliest races gave little credit to the father,
looking upon the child as coming altogether from the
mother. They believed that children resembled the father
as a result of association, or that they were "marked"
in this manner because the mother desired them to look
like the father. Later on, when the switch came from the
mother-family to the father-family, the father took all
credit for the child, and many of the taboos on a
pregnant woman were subsequently extended to include her
husband. The prospective father ceased work as the time
of delivery approached, and at childbirth he went to
bed, along with the wife, remaining at rest from three
to eight days. The wife might arise the next day and
engage in hard labor, but the husband remained in bed to
receive congratulations; this was all a part of the
early mores designed to establish the father's right to
the child.
84:2.5
At first, it was the custom for the man to go to his
wife's people, but in later times, after a man had paid
or worked out the bride price, he could take his wife
and children back to his own people. The transition from
the mother-family to the father-family explains the
otherwise meaningless prohibitions of some types of
cousin marriages while others of equal kinship are
approved.
84:2.6
With the passing of the hunter mores, when herding gave
man control of the chief food supply, the mother-family
came to a speedy end. It failed simply because it could
not successfully compete with the newer father-family.
Power lodged with the male relatives of the mother could
not compete with power concentrated in the
husband-father. Woman was not equal to the combined
tasks of childbearing and of exercising continuous
authority and increasing domestic power. The oncoming of
wife stealing and later wife purchase hastened the
passing of the mother-family.
84:2.7
The stupendous change from the mother-family to the
father-family is one of the most radical and complete
right-about-face adjustments ever executed by the human
race. This change led at once to greater social
expression and increased family adventure.
3. THE FAMILY UNDER FATHER DOMINANCE
84:3.1
It may be that the instinct of motherhood led woman into
marriage, but it was man's superior strength, together
with the influence of the mores, that virtually
compelled her to remain in wedlock. Pastoral living
tended to create a new system of mores, the patriarchal
type of family life; and the basis of family unity under
the herder and early agricultural mores was the
unquestioned and arbitrary authority of the father. All
society, whether national or familial, passed through
the stage of the autocratic authority of a patriarchal
order.
84:3.2
The scant courtesy paid womankind during the Old
Testament era is a true reflection of the mores of the
herdsmen. The Hebrew patriarchs were all herdsmen, as is
witnessed by the saying, "The Lord is my Shepherd."
84:3.3
But man was no more to blame for his low opinion of
woman during past ages than was woman herself. She
failed to get social recognition during primitive times
because she did not function in an emergency; she was
not a spectacular or crisis hero. Maternity was a
distinct disability in the existence struggle; mother
love handicapped women in the tribal defense.
84:3.4
Primitive women also unintentionally created their
dependence on the male by their admiration and applause
for his pugnacity and virility. This exaltation of the
warrior elevated the male ego while it equally depressed
that of the female and made her more dependent; a
military uniform still mightily stirs the feminine
emotions.
84:3.5
Among the more advanced races, women are not so large or
so strong as men. Woman, being the weaker, therefore
became the more tactful; she early learned to trade upon
her sex charms. She became more alert and conservative
than man, though slightly less profound. Man was woman's
superior on the battlefield and in the hunt; but at home
woman has usually outgeneraled even the most primitive
of men.
84:3.6
The herdsman looked to his flocks for sustenance, but
throughout these pastoral ages woman must still provide
the vegetable food. Primitive man shunned the soil; it
was altogether too peaceful, too unadventuresome. There
was also an old superstition that women could raise
better plants; they were mothers. In many backward
tribes today, the men cook the meat, the women the
vegetables, and when the primitive tribes of Australia
are on the march, the women never attack game, while a
man would not stoop to dig a root.
84:3.7
Woman has always had to work; at least right up to
modern times the female has been a real producer. Man
has usually chosen the easier path, and this inequality
has existed throughout the entire history of the human
race. Woman has always been the burden bearer, carrying
the family property and tending the children, thus
leaving the man's hands free for fighting or hunting.
84:3.8
Woman's first liberation came when man consented to till
the soil, consented to do what had theretofore been
regarded as woman's work. It was a great step forward
when male captives were no longer killed but were
enslaved as agriculturists. This brought about the
liberation of woman so that she could devote more time
to homemaking and child culture.
84:3.9
The provision of milk for the young led to earlier
weaning of babies, hence to the bearing of more children
by the mothers thus relieved of their sometimes
temporary barrenness, while the use of cow's milk and
goat's milk greatly reduced infant mortality. Before the
herding stage of society, mothers used to nurse their
babies until they were four and five years old.
84:3.10
Decreasing primitive warfare greatly lessened the
disparity between the division of labor based on sex.
But women still had to do the real work while men did
picket duty. No camp or village could be left unguarded
day or night, but even this task was alleviated by the
domestication of the dog. In general, the coming of
agriculture has enhanced woman's prestige and social
standing; at least this was true up to the time man
himself turned agriculturist. And as soon as man
addressed himself to the tilling of the soil, there
immediately ensued great improvement in methods of
agriculture, extending on down through successive
generations. In hunting and war man had learned the
value of organization, and he introduced these
techniques into industry and later, when taking over
much of woman's work, greatly improved on her loose
methods of labor.
4. WOMAN'S STATUS IN EARLY SOCIETY
84:4.1
Generally speaking, during any age woman's status is a
fair criterion of the evolutionary progress of marriage
as a social institution, while the progress of marriage
itself is a reasonably accurate gauge registering the
advances of human civilization.
84:4.2
Woman's status has always been a social paradox; she has
always been a shrewd manager of men; she has always
capitalized man's stronger sex urge for her own
interests and to her own advancement. By trading subtly
upon her sex charms, she has often been able to exercise
dominant power over man, even when held by him in abject
slavery.
84:4.3
Early woman was not to man a friend, sweetheart, lover,
and partner but rather a piece of property, a servant or
slave and, later on, an economic partner, plaything, and
childbearer. Nonetheless, proper and satisfactory sex
relations have always involved the element of choice and
co-operation by woman, and this has always given
intelligent women considerable influence over their
immediate and personal standing, regardless of their
social position as a sex. But man's distrust and
suspicion were not helped by the fact that women were
all along compelled to resort to shrewdness in the
effort to alleviate their bondage.
84:4.4
The sexes have had great difficulty in understanding
each other. Man found it hard to understand woman,
regarding her with a strange mixture of ignorant
mistrust and fearful fascination, if not with suspicion
and contempt. Many tribal and racial traditions relegate
trouble to Eve, Pandora, or some other representative of
womankind. These narratives were always distorted so as
to make it appear that the woman brought evil upon man;
and all this indicates the onetime universal distrust of
woman. Among the reasons cited in support of a celibate
priesthood, the chief was the baseness of woman. The
fact that most supposed witches were women did not
improve the olden reputation of the sex.
84:4.5
Men have long regarded women as peculiar, even abnormal.
They have even believed that women did not have souls;
therefore were they denied names. During early times
there existed great fear of the first sex relation with
a woman; hence it became the custom for a priest to have
initial intercourse with a virgin. Even a woman's shadow
was thought to be dangerous.
84:4.6
Childbearing was once generally looked upon as rendering
a woman dangerous and unclean. And many tribal mores
decreed that a mother must undergo extensive
purification ceremonies subsequent to the birth of a
child. Except among those groups where the husband
participated in the lying-in, the expectant mother was
shunned, left alone. The ancients even avoided having a
child born in the house. Finally, the old women were
permitted to attend the mother during labor, and this
practice gave origin to the profession of midwifery.
During labor, scores of foolish things were said and
done in an effort to facilitate delivery. It was the
custom to sprinkle the newborn with holy water to
prevent ghost interference.
84:4.7
Among the unmixed tribes, childbirth was comparatively
easy, occupying only two or three hours; it is seldom so
easy among the mixed races. If a woman died in
childbirth, especially during the delivery of twins, she
was believed to have been guilty of spirit adultery.
Later on, the higher tribes looked upon death in
childbirth as the will of heaven; such mothers were
regarded as having perished in a noble cause.
84:4.8
The so-called modesty of women respecting their clothing
and the exposure of the person grew out of the deadly
fear of being observed at the time of a menstrual
period. To be thus detected was a grievous sin, the
violation of a taboo. Under the mores of olden times,
every woman, from adolescence to the end of the
childbearing period, was subjected to complete family
and social quarantine one full week each month.
Everything she might touch, sit upon, or lie upon was
"defiled." It was for long the custom to brutally beat a
girl after each monthly period in an effort to drive the
evil spirit out of her body. But when a woman passed
beyond the childbearing age, she was usually treated
more considerately, being accorded more rights and
privileges. In view of all this it was not strange that
women were looked down upon. Even the Greeks held the
menstruating woman as one of the three great causes of
defilement, the other two being pork and garlic.
84:4.9
However foolish these olden notions were, they did some
good since they gave overworked females, at least when
young, one week each month for welcome rest and
profitable meditation. Thus could they sharpen their
wits for dealing with their male associates the rest of
the time. This quarantine of women also protected men
from over-sex indulgence, thereby indirectly
contributing to the restriction of population and to the
enhancement of self-control.
84:4.10
A great advance was made when a man was denied the right
to kill his wife at will. Likewise, it was a forward
step when a woman could own the wedding gifts. Later,
she gained the legal right to own, control, and even
dispose of property, but she was long deprived of the
right to hold office in either church or state. Woman
has always been treated more or less as property, right
up to and in the twentieth century after Christ. She has
not yet gained world-wide freedom from seclusion under
man's control. Even among advanced peoples, man's
attempt to protect woman has always been a tacit
assertion of superiority.
84:4.11
But primitive women did not pity themselves as their
more recently liberated sisters are wont to do. They
were, after all, fairly happy and contented; they did
not dare to envision a better or different mode of
existence.
5. WOMAN UNDER THE DEVELOPING MORES
84:5.1
In self-perpetuation woman is man's equal, but in the
partnership of self-maintenance she labors at a decided
disadvantage, and this handicap of enforced maternity
can only be compensated by the enlightened mores of
advancing civilization and by man's increasing sense of
acquired fairness.
84:5.2
As society evolved, the sex standards rose higher among
women because they suffered more from the consequences
of the transgression of the sex mores. Man's sex
standards are only tardily improving as a result of the
sheer sense of that fairness which civilization demands.
Nature knows nothing of fairness -- makes woman alone
suffer the pangs of childbirth.
84:5.3
The modern idea of sex equality is beautiful and worthy
of an expanding civilization, but it is not found in
nature. When might is right, man lords it over woman;
when more justice, peace, and fairness prevail, she
gradually emerges from slavery and obscurity. Woman's
social position has generally varied inversely with the
degree of militarism in any nation or age.
84:5.4
But man did not consciously nor intentionally seize
woman's rights and then gradually and grudgingly give
them back to her; all this was an unconscious and
unplanned episode of social evolution. When the time
really came for woman to enjoy added rights, she got
them, and all quite regardless of man's conscious
attitude. Slowly but surely the mores change so as to
provide for those social adjustments which are a part of
the persistent evolution of civilization. The advancing
mores slowly provided increasingly better treatment for
females; those tribes which persisted in cruelty to them
did not survive.
84:5.5
The Adamites and Nodites accorded women increased
recognition, and those groups which were influenced by
the migrating Andites have tended to be influenced by
the Edenic teachings regarding women's place in society.
84:5.6
The early Chinese and the Greeks treated women better
than did most surrounding peoples. But the Hebrews were
exceedingly distrustful of them. In the Occident woman
has had a difficult climb under the Pauline doctrines
which became attached to Christianity, although
Christianity did advance the mores by imposing more
stringent sex obligations upon man. Woman's estate is
little short of hopeless under the peculiar degradation
which attaches to her in Mohammedanism, and she fares
even worse under the teachings of several other Oriental
religions.
84:5.7
Science, not religion, really emancipated woman; it was
the modern factory which largely set her free from the
confines of the home. Man's physical abilities became no
longer a vital essential in the new maintenance
mechanism; science so changed the conditions of living
that man power was no longer so superior to woman power.
84:5.8
These changes have tended toward woman's liberation from
domestic slavery and have brought about such a
modification of her status that she now enjoys a degree
of personal liberty and sex determination that
practically equals man's. Once a woman's value consisted
in her food-producing ability, but invention and wealth
have enabled her to create a new world in which to
function -- spheres of grace and charm. Thus has
industry won its unconscious and unintended fight for
woman's social and economic emancipation. And again has
evolution succeeded in doing what even revelation failed
to accomplish.
84:5.9
The reaction of enlightened peoples from the inequitable
mores governing woman's place in society has indeed been
pendulumlike in its extremeness. Among industrialized
races she has received almost all rights and enjoys
exemption from many obligations, such as military
service. Every easement of the struggle for existence
has redounded to the liberation of woman, and she has
directly benefited from every advance toward monogamy.
The weaker always makes disproportionate gains in every
adjustment of the mores in the progressive evolution of
society.
84:5.10
In the ideals of pair marriage, woman has finally won
recognition, dignity, independence, equality, and
education; but will she prove worthy of all this new and
unprecedented accomplishment? Will modern woman respond
to this great achievement of social liberation with
idleness, indifference, barrenness, and infidelity?
Today, in the twentieth century, woman is undergoing the
crucial test of her long world existence!
84:5.11
Woman is man's equal partner in race reproduction, hence
just as important in the unfolding of racial evolution;
therefore has evolution increasingly worked toward the
realization of women's rights. But women's rights are by
no means men's rights. Woman cannot thrive on man's
rights any more than man can prosper on woman's rights.
84:5.12
Each sex has its own distinctive sphere of existence,
together with its own rights within that sphere. If
woman aspires literally to enjoy all of man's rights,
then, sooner or later, pitiless and emotionless
competition will certainly replace that chivalry and
special consideration which many women now enjoy, and
which they have so recently won from men.
84:5.13
Civilization never can obliterate the behavior gulf
between the sexes. From age to age the mores change, but
instinct never. Innate maternal affection will never
permit emancipated woman to become man's serious rival
in industry. Forever each sex will remain supreme in its
own domain, domains determined by biologic
differentiation and by mental dissimilarity.
84:5.14
Each sex will always have its own special sphere, albeit
they will ever and anon overlap. Only socially will men
and women compete on equal terms.
6. THE PARTNERSHIP OF MAN AND WOMAN
84:6.1
The reproductive urge unfailingly brings men and women
together for self-perpetuation but, alone, does not
insure their remaining together in mutual co-operation
-- the founding of a home.
84:6.2
Every successful human institution embraces antagonisms
of personal interest which have been adjusted to
practical working harmony, and homemaking is no
exception. Marriage, the basis of home building, is the
highest manifestation of that antagonistic co-operation
which so often characterizes the contacts of nature and
society. The conflict is inevitable. Mating is inherent;
it is natural. But marriage is not biologic; it is
sociologic. Passion insures that man and woman will come
together, but the weaker parental instinct and the
social mores hold them together.
84:6.3
Male and female are, practically regarded, two distinct
varieties of the same species living in close and
intimate association. Their viewpoints and entire life
reactions are essentially different; they are wholly
incapable of full and real comprehension of each other.
Complete understanding between the sexes is not
attainable.
84:6.4
Women seem to have more intuition than men, but they
also appear to be somewhat less logical. Woman, however,
has always been the moral standard-bearer and the
spiritual leader of mankind. The hand that rocks the
cradle still fraternizes with destiny.
84:6.5
The differences of nature, reaction, viewpoint, and
thinking between men and women, far from occasioning
concern, should be regarded as highly beneficial to
mankind, both individually and collectively. Many orders
of universe creatures are created in dual phases of
personality manifestation. Among mortals, Material Sons,
and midsoniters, this difference is described as male
and female; among seraphim, cherubim, and Morontia
Companions, it has been denominated positive or
aggressive and negative or retiring. Such dual
associations greatly multiply versatility and overcome
inherent limitations, even as do certain triune
associations in the Paradise-Havona system.
84:6.6
Men and women need each other in their morontial and
spiritual as well as in their mortal careers. The
differences in viewpoint between male and female persist
even beyond the first life and throughout the local and
superuniverse ascensions. And even in Havona, the
pilgrims who were once men and women will still be
aiding each other in the Paradise ascent. Never, even in
the Corps of the Finality, will the creature
metamorphose so far as to obliterate the personality
trends that humans call male and female; always will
these two basic variations of humankind continue to
intrigue, stimulate, encourage, and assist each other;
always will they be mutually dependent on co-operation
in the solution of perplexing universe problems and in
the overcoming of manifold cosmic difficulties.
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 insuring 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 insured 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 insure 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 one-half million 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 laborers.
84:7.13
2. They were old-age insurance.
84:7.14
3. Daughters were salable.
84:7.15
4. Family pride required extension of name.
84:7.16
5. Sons afforded protection and defense.
84:7.17
6. Ghost fear produced a dread of being alone.
84:7.18
7. Certain religions required offspring.
84:7.19
Ancestor worshipers 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.
84:7.27
In the present industrial and urban era the marriage
institution is evolving along new economic lines. Family
life has become more and more costly, while children,
who used to be an asset, have become economic
liabilities. But the security of civilization itself
still rests on the growing willingness of one generation
to invest in the welfare of the next and future
generations. And any attempt to shift parental
responsibility to state or church will prove suicidal to
the welfare and advancement of civilization.
84:7.28
Marriage, with children and consequent family life, is
stimulative of the highest potentials in human nature
and simultaneously provides the ideal avenue for the
expression of these quickened attributes of mortal
personality. The family provides for the biologic
perpetuation of the human species. The home is the
natural social arena wherein the ethics of blood
brotherhood may be grasped by the growing children. The
family is the fundamental unit of fraternity in which
parents and children learn those lessons of patience,
altruism, tolerance, and forbearance which are so
essential to the realization of brotherhood among all
men.
84:7.29
Human society would be greatly improved if the civilized
races would more generally return to the family-council
practices of the Andites. They did not maintain the
patriarchal or autocratic form of family government.
They were very brotherly and associative, freely and
frankly discussing every proposal and regulation of a
family nature. They were ideally fraternal in all their
family government. In an ideal family filial and
parental affection are both augmented by fraternal
devotion.
84:7.30
Family life is the progenitor of true morality, the
ancestor of the consciousness of loyalty to duty. The
enforced associations of family life stabilize
personality and stimulate its growth through the
compulsion of necessitous adjustment to other and
diverse personalities. But even more, a true family -- a
good family -- reveals to the parental procreators the
attitude of the Creator to his children, while at the
same time such true parents portray to their children
the first of a long series of ascending disclosures of
the love of the Paradise parent of all universe
children.
8. DANGERS OF SELF-GRATIFICATION
84:8.1
The great threat against family life is the menacing
rising tide of self-gratification, the modern pleasure
mania. The prime incentive to marriage used to be
economic; sex attraction was secondary. Marriage,
founded on self-maintenance, led to self-perpetuation
and concomitantly provided one of the most desirable
forms of self-gratification. It is the only institution
of human society which embraces all three of the great
incentives for living.
84:8.2
Originally, property was the basic institution of
self-maintenance, while marriage functioned as the
unique institution of self-perpetuation. Although food
satisfaction, play, and humor, along with periodic sex
indulgence, were means of self-gratification, it remains
a fact that the evolving mores have failed to build any
distinct institution of self-gratification. And it is
due to this failure to evolve specialized techniques of
pleasurable enjoyment that all human institutions are so
completely shot through with this pleasure pursuit.
Property accumulation is becoming an instrument for
augmenting all forms of self-gratification, while
marriage is often viewed only as a means of pleasure.
And this overindulgence, this widely spread pleasure
mania, now constitutes the greatest threat that has ever
been leveled at the social evolutionary institution of
family life, the home.
84:8.3
The violet race introduced a new and only imperfectly
realized characteristic into the experience of humankind
-- the play instinct coupled with the sense of humor. It
was there in measure in the Sangiks and Andonites, but
the Adamic strain elevated this primitive propensity
into the
potential of pleasure, a new and glorified form of
self-gratification. The basic type of
self-gratification, aside from appeasing hunger, is sex
gratification, and this form of sensual pleasure was
enormously heightened by the blending of the Sangiks and
the Andites.
84:8.4
There is real danger in the combination of restlessness,
curiosity, adventure, and pleasure-abandon
characteristic of the post-Andite races. The hunger of
the soul cannot be satisfied with physical pleasures;
the love of home and children is not augmented by the
unwise pursuit of pleasure. Though you exhaust the
resources of art, color, sound, rhythm, music, and
adornment of person, you cannot hope thereby to elevate
the soul or to nourish the spirit. Vanity and fashion
cannot minister to home building and child culture;
pride and rivalry are powerless to enhance the survival
qualities of succeeding generations.
84:8.5
Advancing celestial beings all enjoy rest and the
ministry of the reversion directors. All efforts to
obtain wholesome diversion and to engage in uplifting
play are sound; refreshing sleep, rest, recreation, and
all pastimes which prevent the boredom of monotony are
worth while. Competitive games, storytelling, and even
the taste of good food may serve as forms of
self-gratification. (When you use salt to savor food,
pause to consider that, for almost a million years, man
could obtain salt only by dipping his food in ashes.)
84:8.6
Let man enjoy himself; let the human race find pleasure
in a thousand and one ways; let evolutionary mankind
explore all forms of legitimate self-gratification, the
fruits of the long upward biologic struggle. Man has
well earned some of his present-day joys and pleasures.
But look you well to the goal of destiny! Pleasures are
indeed suicidal if they succeed in destroying property,
which has become the institution of self-maintenance;
and self-gratifications have indeed cost a fatal price
if they bring about the collapse of marriage, the
decadence of family life, and the destruction of the
home -- man's supreme evolutionary acquirement and
civilization's only hope of survival.
84:8.7
Presented by the Chief of Seraphim stationed on Urantia.
*
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