The family : an ethnographical and historical outline with descriptive notes, planned as a text-book for the use of college lecturers and of directors of home-reading clubs / by Elsie Crews Parsons.

  • Parsons, Elsie Worthington Clews, 1874-1941.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The family : an ethnographical and historical outline with descriptive notes, planned as a text-book for the use of college lecturers and of directors of home-reading clubs / by Elsie Crews Parsons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    94/430 (page 60)
    ê LECTURE IV PARENTAL POWER Parental ownership or control PARENTAL mastery, ownership, or control is the usual accompaniment of filial dependence. In many communities, the parents or parent (commonly the father) have unrestricted possession of offspring. The child is their chattel to kill at birth or in later life, devour, sell or pawn, give away, make work, offer up in blood sacrifice or in lifelong dedication to deity, abuse, etc., at pleasure. In other communities, on the other hand, this parental absolutism is limited in many ways.^ Restrictions of par- We have already seen how the practices of infanti- cide and foeticide may be restricted or wholly con- on power over life dcmncd, ОГ prohibited. The right to kill, sell, or pawn offspring may be allowed only under circumstan¬ ces of filial misbehaviour, or of poverty or indebtedness On selling or pawn- оп the part of the parent. Repeated sale of offspring may entitle the latter to freedom from parental con¬ trol. Let us note at this point that, although the obligation to pay the debts or fines of parents, or to > Here as elsewhere in the study of the family we must consider our subject in relation to the other conditions that prevail in a given group. In groups where economic or juridical ideas or practices are undeveloped, paternal masters will be very different from the paternal ownership of more advanced groups. Let us not fall into the error of Sir Henry Sumner Maine in believing that Úíe patria potestas of the Romans is necessarily our type of the primeval paternal authority.—Ancient Law, 1870, p. 138. 60 ing (■t- •• '