The descriptions of travelers, of ethnologists and of historians made the first contributions to our knowledge of marriage, ceremonials, and family organization among primitive and historical peoples. Early students of these data devised theories of stages in the evolution of the family. An anthology might be made of the conceptions that students have formulated of the original form of the family, for example, the theory of the matriarchate by Bachofen, of group marriage growing out of earlier promiscuous relations by Morgan, of the polygynous family by Darwin, of pair marriage by Westermarck. An example of the ingenious, but discarded method of arranging all types of families observed in a series representing stages of the evolution is to be found in Morgan's _Ancient Society_. A survey of families among primitive peoples by Hobhouse, Ginsberg, and Wheeler makes the point that even family life is most varied upon the lower levels of culture, and that the historical development of the family with any people must be studied in relation to the physical and social environment. The evolutionary theory of the family has, however, furnished a somewhat detached point of view for the criticism of the modern family. Social reformers have used the evolutionary theory as a formula to justify attacks upon the family as an institution and to support the most varied proposals for its reconstruction. Books like Ellen Key's _Love and Marriage_ and Meisel-Hess, _The Sexual Crisis_ are not scientific studies of the family but rather social political philippics directed against marriage and the family. The interest stimulated by ethnological observation, historical study, and propagandist essays has, however, turned the attention of certain students to serious study of the family and its problems. Howard's _History of Matrimonial Institutions_ is a scholarly and comprehensive treatise upon the evolution of the legal status of the family. Annual statistics of marriage and divorce are now compiled and published by all the important countries except the United States government. In the United States, however, three studies of marriages and divorces have been made; one in 1887-88, by the Department of Labor, covering the twenty years from 1867-86 inclusive; another in 1906-7, by the Bureau of the Census, for the twenty years 1887-1906; and the last, also by the Bureau of the Census, for the year 1916.