Perhaps an even more efficient cause, however, of the maternal system
was the fact that the mother in primitive times was the stable element
in the family life, the constant center of the family. The husband was
frequently away from home, hunting or fighting, and oftentimes failed to
return. Nothing was more natural, therefore, than that the child should
be reckoned as belonging to the mother, take her name and belong to her
kindred or clan. Moreover, after the custom of naming children from
mothers and reckoning them as belonging to the mother's clan was
established, it could not be displaced by the mere discovery of the
physiological connection between the father and the child. On the
contrary social habits, like habits in the individual, tend to persist
until they work badly. We find, therefore, the maternal system
persisting among peoples who for many generations had come fully to
recognize the physiological connection of father and child. Indeed, the
maternal system could never have been done away with if social evolution
had not brought about new and complex conditions which caused the system
to break down and to be replaced by the paternal system.
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