Something else, however, came to man in and through the patriarchal system. Society, that gave him liberty to rule the family, rigidly required of him that such rule should be in the social interest, as that interest was then understood. It was obviously for the interest of society that women should be chaste, in order not only that a man might know his own children but that the family line and inheritance should be preserved from insecurity. A man's infidelity to the marriage vow might seem to do no perceptible harm if practised outside the family circle, but woe to him if he trespassed upon the family ownership of another man. There might be more than one wife acknowledged as secondary in status or a mere concubine slave to help in domestic duties while giving pleasure to the head of the family, but there was early a social demand for one chief wife whose offspring should inherit the family power. Although even in this fixed demand there were loopholes of "legal fiction of adoption" by which some favorite child not of the actual line of inheritance might be given the place of honor and control. Again, if the father under the patriarchal system was the recognized economic master he was also legally held to the financial support of wife and child. In the collective family life his obligation extended far through the line of kinship and of alliance by marriage, and to-day in many Oriental countries the father may be bound to poverty as the responsible support of a large company of dependent pensioners. It must also be remembered that if the ancient father, as head of the family, held the permission of society to discipline wife and child even to severity of corporal punishment he was also charged with the task of insuring their obedience to whatever social laws were in force and was himself legally liable to punishment if he did not keep his family law-abiding. That moral responsibility for the behavior of his family, early outlined in detail, was increasingly eased by the growth of personal relationship of women and youth to society. That was shown in the laws that defined the extent of punishment allowed the father-head. Although he might be secure in his legal right and duty to bestow on wife or apprentice "moderate castigation," an old Welsh law limited him to "three blows only with a broomstick on any part of the person except the head;" and another ancient law allowed the use only of "a stick no longer than the husband's arm and no thicker than his middle finger" in the case of the wife; while Blackstone's well-remembered restriction was to "a stick no bigger than his thumb." The moral responsibility of the father for his children, carrying with it as it did the liability of prison or even death for the misbehavior of sons, was governed by various statutes which show in the Middle Ages a growth toward freeing children from parental control and placing upon them when "of age" a definite and personal legal bond and penalty.