Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

MARRIAGEforward from time to time. Simultaneously,it must beadded, our marriage system actually has undergone modifications.If we compareits state today with the conditionsin Hinton's time, many changes may be observed,and often in the direction he desired. Divorce is easier;women have gained greater legal and social independence;illegitimacy is viewed with somewhat less severity, themethods of birth control have become widely known, andin all civilized coun-greater freedom between the sexes istries admitted.At the same time, in the exact and precisesense of theterm, monogamy is today as firmlyestablished as it hasever been, and even more so. By imparting to it a greaterflexibility we to a considerable extent relieve it of theabuses to which in the former more rigid form it wassubject.Confusion has been introduced, it must be made clear,by using the word "monogamy" in the wrong sense. Itis, for instance, common to say that one sex is more"monogamic" than the other sex, especiallythat men are"polygarnic" while women are "monogamic." Strictlyspeaking, such statements are meaningless. At the outsetit is obvious that since the sexes are born nearly equalin number (with at the start a preponderance of males)the natural order in a civilized society cannot work outas two wives for every male, and in the societies whichrecognize polygamy it is only practiced by a small wealthyclass. But it is incorrect to assert that in our civilizationmen (rare exceptions aside) ever desire two wives,whether in the same home or in separate homes; thereare various considerations of different orders which makesuch an arrangement undesirable for the majority ofmen; while, for a woman, to carry on two families, with[281]