Other forms of marriage are found; indeed, every possible experiment in family and sexual association has been tried and is still practised among barbarous races, often with very little reference to those moral ideas to which we are accustomed. It is, however, very necessary to remember that monogamy is frequent and indeed usual under the maternal system. When the husband lives with his wife in a dependent position to her family, he can do so only in the case of one woman. For this reason polygamy is much less deeply rooted under the conditions in which the communal life of the compound family is developed than in the single patriarchal family. Polygamy is an indication, if not always a proof, of the subordination of women to the headship of the husband. In the complete maternal family it is never common and is even prohibited. It was quite otherwise with polyandry, and though less usual than monogamy, this form of association is in some cases connected with the conditions of the maternal clan. I do not believe it can be regarded as due to a licentious view of the sexual relations, but arose as an expression of the communism which was characteristic of such an organisation. The whole subject of primitive sexual relationships—which, of course, involves the family, the position of woman and the welfare of the children—is a very wide and complicated one. If I differ on several important points from learned authorities, whose knowledge and research far exceed my own, I do so only after great hesitation, and because I must. Almost invariably the writers on these questions are men, and perhaps for this reason the position of women has not received the attention that it claims. My own studies have convinced me that in the early beginnings of the human family women exercised a more direct and stronger influence than is usually believed. This is no fanciful idea of my own, as I claim to have proved in my earlier book,[66] where it was possible to bring forward in detail the evidence I have collected on the subject. But even in this brief summary enough has been said to give in rough outline some picture of the family under the conditions of the maternal communal clan. We have marked the steady strengthening of the tie between the mother and the child, with the corresponding movement in the opposite direction in regard to the father’s position in the family. All the chances for success in parenthood rested with the mother, rather than with the father. The male was driven out from the holy circle of the family. This degradation of fatherhood is a fact that must be kept before our attention.[67]