Thanks Lloyd,

I hope we can indeed discuss this posting reasonably, recognising that
there are always more than one interpretation and theoretical perspective
from which to address such evidence. I personally can not accept the single
dimension of psychosis to explain such obviously widely  and deeply
entrenched cultural and political practices. I would look at the evidence
which you present [about widespread infanticide] as the consequence of
patriarchal relations which require the reflection of dominant male power
in every area of life be it the public or the domestic. Feminists have
pointed out for generations that it is in the intimate relations of family
that patriarchy draws its strength.

Cathy


Lloyd responds:

In another section of my "Evolution of Childrearing" article on the website
<www.psychohistory.com> I give extensive primary source evidence that the
family was NOT patriarchal until early modern times, that it was in fact a
gynarchy:

"THE MISSING FATHER: CHILDHOOD IN THE GYNARCHY
        The problem with the overly monolithic conception of a "patriarchy"
wherein men dominate women both in society and in the family is that while
no Bachofen-style "matriarchal" society has been found,  there is little
evidence that until modern times fathers have been very much present in
historical families. In our promiscuous chimpanzee ancestors, fathers were
quite absent in child-rearing, so there are no "families,"  only
grandmothers and mothers moving about with their children.  It is also
likely that "there were no Neandertal families to begin with,"  since women
and children lived in separate areas from the males in caves. Although
Bachofen's "gynocratic state" is only slightly approximated in such tribes
as the Iroquois, the Navajo, the Ashanti, and the Dahomeans,  the families
themselves in preliterate cultures are usually run by women, who often live
in separate spaces from their husbands. In some, like the Ashanti, they
have a "visiting husband...in which the husband and wife live with their
respective mothers [and] at night the man 'visits' his wife in her
house..."  In others, men spend much of their time in their own cult
houses, and women in separate family or menstrual huts, "segregating
themselves of their own accord."  Even when men lived with their wives,
females always took care of the children, although cross-cultural studies
conclude that "in the majority of societies mothers are not the principal
caretakers or companions of young children...older children and other
female family members" mainly looking after them.  Matrifocal families
predominate in anthropological literature. Although in a few very simple
hunting tribes fathers are claimed to hold their infants, it turns out they
are only hallucinating being fused with their mothers, "fondling the child
as its mother does. He takes it to his breast and holds it there,"  or
sucks its face in the traditional "full-lipped manner,"  using the infant
as a breast substitute but not really caretaking. Even when the children
are somewhat older, fathers are generally not the ones that teach them
skills: "Among the Hadza, as a typical example, boys learn their
bow-and-arrow hunting knowledge and techniques and their tracking skills
mainly informally from other boys,"  not their fathers.
        The historical family, it turns out, cannot remotely be termed a
"patriarchy" until modern times. It is in fact a gynarchy, composed of the
grandmother, mother, aunts, unmarried daughters, wetnurses, female
servants, midwives, neighbors called "gossips" who acted as substitute
mothers, plus the children.  Fathers in traditional families may sometimes
eat and sleep within the gynarchy, but they do not determine its emotional
atmosphere, nor do they in any way attempt to raise the children. To avoid
experiencing their own domination, abuse and neglect during childhood by
females, men throughout history have instead set up androcentric political
and religious spheres for male-only group-fantasy activities, contributing
to the family gynarchy only some sustenance, periodic temper tantrums and
occasional sexual service.
        Evidence of fathers playing any real role in children's upbringing
is simply missing until early modern times. In antiquity, I have been
unable to find a single classical scholar who has been able to cite any
instance of a father saying one word to his child prior to the age of
seven.  Little children were occasionally shown as used by fathers as
sensuous objects-as when in Aristophanes' Wasps the father says he
"routinely enjoys letting his daughter fish small coins from his mouth with
her tongue" -but otherwise, scholars conclude, "In antiquity, women [and
children] lived shut away [from men]. They rarely showed themselves in
public [but] stayed in apartments men did not enter; they rarely ate with
their husbands...they never spent their days together."  In Greece, for
instance, "women had a special place. Larger houses at any rate had a room
or suite of rooms in which women worked and otherwise spent much of their
day, the women's apartments, the gynaikonitis, which Xenophon says was
"separated from the men's quarters by a bolted door."  In two-story houses,
the gynaikonitis would usually be upstairs."  The men's dining-room, the
andron, was located downstairs near the entrance, guarding the women's
quarters: "Here men in the family dined and entertained male
guests...Vase-paintings do not depict Greek couples eating together."  This
mainly vertical organization of most homes lasted well into the eighteenth
century, when a new "structure of intimacy" began to be built, with rooms
connected to each other on the same level.
The women's area held the grandmother, the mother, the concubines, the
mistresses, the slave nurses, the aunts and the children. Thus Herodotus
could assume his reader would easily recognize families where "a boy is not
seen by his father before he is five years old, but lives with the women,"
and Aristotle could assume his readers' assent that "no male creatures take
trouble over their young."  Ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish men had
all-male eating clubs where women and children were not welcome.  Plato has
Socrates suggest a possibly better home arrangement, with "dinners at which
citizens will feast in the company of their children....In general,
however, children ate with their mothers, not their fathers...Eating and
drinking, far from offering the whole family an opportunity for communal
activity, tended to express and reinforce cleavages within it."  Boys
tended to remain in the gynarchy of their own or others' homes until their
middle teens.
        The husband is usually missing from the homes of most earlier
societies, and not just during their frequent military service. Evelyn Reed
describes the early "matrifamily" as everywhere being ruled by mothers:
"The family in EgyptŠwas matriarchalŠThe most important person in the
family was not the father, but the mother. The Egyptian wife was called the
'Ruler of the House'Šthere is no corresponding term for the husband."  In
rural Greek villages even today the mother owns the house, passes it on to
her daughter as dowry, and continues to rule the house when her daughter
has children.  Indeed, the husband was rarely with his family in
antiquity-legislators sometimes suggest that in order to prevent population
decline it would be a good idea for husbands to visit their wives
occasionally and not just have sex with boys, as in Solon's law "that a man
should consort with his wife not less than three times a month-not for
pleasure surely, but as cities renew their agreements from time to time."
In antiquity, love had nothing to do with men's wives; it is reserved for
pederastic relations with boys. As Scroggs summarized Greco-Roman practice,
"To enter the 'women's quarters' in search of love is to enter the world of
the feminine and therefore is effeminate for a male."  Xenophon says "the
women's apartments [are] separated from the men's by a bolted doorŠ"  As
Plutarch wrote, "Genuine love has no connections whatsoever with the
women's quarters."  When Socrates asks, "Are there any people you talk to
less than you do to your wife?" his answer was, "Possibly. But if so, very
few indeed."  Men stayed in the thiasos, the men's club, with other men,
and had little to do with their children. Greek boys stayed in the gynarchy
of their own home until they at the age of about ten were forced to be
eromenos, sexual objects, in the andron of a much older man's home.  Greek
girls stayed in the gynarchy until they were about twelve, when they too
were raped by a much older man, a stranger chosen for them by their family
to be their husband. Brides went into marriages with large dowries, which
remained their property for life.  The husband might try to enforce an
occasional dominance in the gynarchy by beating the women and children-as
Seneca described his father doing, usually, he said, for the most "trivial
actions" -but normally it was the women of the household who wielded the
family whip on the children.
        The gynarchy ruled supreme in early homes. In Byzantium, women had
separate spheres with strict exclusion of men from the family, where "men
live in light and brightness, the palaestra; women live in the gynaecaeum,
enclosed, secluded."  This was even true of supposedly patriarchal Chinese
families. The Chinese gynarchy was described by visitors as living in
"women's apartments behind the high walls of their husbands' compounds,"
dominated by women who "are reputed to terrorize the men of their
households and their neighbors with their fierce tempers, searing tongues,
and indomitable wills...When father and son do work together, they have
nothing to say, and even at home they speak only when there is business to
discuss. [Otherwise] they mutually avoid each other."  Likewise, in
Indonesian families, "fathers are simply not present very much...the woman
has more authority, influence and responsibility than her husband..."  The
examples can easily be extended around the world and into the Middle Ages:

The female world was highly structured, like a little monarchy-that
monarchy wielded by the master's wife, the 'lady' who dominated the other
women in the house. This monarchy was often tyrannical. The chronicles of
French families at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the
thirteenth century paint a picture of shrews reigning brutally over
servants whom they terrorized, and over their sons' wives whom they
tormented...Indeed, a female power existed which rivaled that of men...Men
were afraid of women, especially their own wives, afraid of being incapable
of satisfying a being who was seen both as a devourer and as a bearer of
death...

Feminist historians have pioneered in uncovering the evidence revealing
families as gynarchies, saying "the need to keep women in line revealed
permanent high tension in men around a being with disquieting power."  Men
are shown as being excluded from the traditional "gynaeceum;"  the nursery,
the kitchen, the work bees, even the laundry: "No man would dare approach
the laundry, so feared is this group of women..."  Even in the knightly
class, "we see the male and female sections of the household staring at one
another in fascination and fright, occasionally joining together or
furtively communicating and interpenetrating."  Women are depicted as
ruling both their husbands and their children, who are often shown as
fearing them;  and while husbands are hopefully told in moralist's
instruction manuals about the "Duties of a Husband" to instruct their
wives, the sections on the "Duties of a Father" to care for their children
are nowhere to be found until modern times. "