This reversal in the form of the marriage brought about a corresponding reversal in the position of the woman in the sexual relationship. This is so plain. As the patriarchate developed, and men began to gain individual possession of their children by the purchase of their mothers, the father became the dominant power in the family. Women no longer are the transmitters of property and of the family name, but are themselves property passing from the hands of their kindred to those of a husband. As purchased wives, they reside in the husband’s house and among his kin, where they occupy the same position of disadvantage in the family as the husband and father had done under the maternal marriage. The protection of her own kindred was the source of the wife’s privileged position. This now was lost. The change was not brought about without a struggle, and for long the old customs contended with the new. But step by step the man became the father-master in the home. It is, however, very necessary to remember that this reversal in the marriage custom may well have been brought about as much by the desire of the women as by the action of the men. I believe that the change to the individual family must have been regarded favourably by primitive women. An arrangement which would give a closer relationship in marriage and the protection of a husband for herself and her children may well have been preferred by the wife to the position of subjection in which she was frequently placed to the authority of her brother and her own relatives. Nor do I think it unlikely that she, quite as strongly as the man, may have desired to live apart from her mother and her kindred in her husband’s home. We have to remember that the reassertion of the father within the family-group was a necessary step, and one that had to be taken. The mother is bound to the family by her children in a much closer way than the man ever can be bound. And for this reason any conditions which separate the father from the home and liberate him from his responsibilities to his children are certain not to act in the direction of progress. The male needs to be held to the family. This is a fact much too often forgotten.