118 REPRODUCTION 



place for sleep and rest and for companionship with 

 mates; conditions suitable for the protection and rearing 

 of the children. 



From the viewpoint of these studies we are chiefly 

 interested in the home as one of the factors in human 

 mating and reproduction. This long period of helplessness 

 in the human child makes it essential that the parents 

 remain together and work more or less as a unit in the 

 task of care and education. As society improves and the 

 child needs to know more in order to succeed, this need 

 becomes still more real. 



The increase in efficiency in homes makes it unnecessary 

 to produce so many offspring, since the better they are 

 cared for in the dangerous period of infancy, the more 

 will survive. Furthermore, those that do survive profit in 

 the effectiveness of their own life by the improved life and 

 attention of the parents. 



4. Development of Marriage. The various kinds of 

 relations that have existed between men and wome^n in 

 what we know of human history are closely related to this 

 matter of homes. The mother who bears the children and 

 nourishes them in infancy is naturally the very center of 

 the home. The parental instinct is proverbially strong in 

 her. Primitive man resorted often to violence to secure 

 a woman for his home. She was kept in a sort of slavery 

 or serfdom. She bore the children and did much of the 

 work for their support. As time went on, all sorts of 

 experiments in sex relationship were tried by the human 

 race, depending on the supply of food and on the social 

 and moral advancement of the people. For example, the 

 race has tried several husbands for one wife (polyandry), 

 several wives for one husband (polygamy), one husband 

 and one wife (monogamy), capture marriages, marriage 

 by consent of parents, marriage by consent of mates. 

 political marriages, religious marriages, romantic or love 

 marriages. 



