Kingsley Davis on Reproductive Institutions and the Pressure for Population

Abstract

principle around which concrete sentiments are clustered. Thus familistic systems motivate persons to bear and rear children within the kinship pattern. They occur only in rural-stable societies because it is only in such societies that the bulk of life can be organized on the basis of kinship. Urban-industrial-mobile society Modern society, characterized by a high degree of urbanization, based upon an elaborate industrial technology and maintained through a great amount of geographical and social mobility, is by its very nature destructive of the family. Its institutions not based on kinship and its dominant motif not familistic, the farther it moves in the direction of its own genius, the farther it moves away from the family. [296] Urbanism affects not merely the externals, such as size of the home, but also the very nature of the family. It forces individuals to cooperate 13 See Muller-Lyer, The Family (N.Y.: Knopf, 1931, trans.), chs. v-viii. The classic account of the evolution from primitive familism to civilized non-familism is Gustave Glotz, La solidarite de la famille dans le droit criminel en Grece (Paris, 1904). 1' No elaborate evolutionary sequence is suggested here. A culture, such as that of old China, may reach great complexity and yet retain a solidarity of extended kin. This is most likely, I think, where religion is mainly a family affair. Mediaval society was not completely familistic because the Church, though taking to itself the ideology of familism and ultimately giving marriage a sacramental character, was an inclusive group transcending the family. The Feudal hierarchy, however, presupposed a kinship organization and was to that extent familistic; and for the common peasant the family was practically all-sufficient. 15 W. Goodsell, The Family as a Social and Educational Institution (NY.: Macmillan, 1923), p. 185. Also Thomas and Znaniecki, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 87-302. Nora Waln, The House of Exile. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.221 on Sun, 06 Nov 2016 06:00:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms