Discussion on question by Motig: Are fathers real?

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05:45

-1

There's this claim I have read recently: (this is my interpretation though, not exact citation) In early human civilizations (or groups), the whole concept of a father did not make sense because no one knew who the father was and no one cared. The concept of a father came later, when civilizati...

March Ho

Do you have any evidence this is a widely believed claim?

Motig

Huh? No. Do I have to?

March Ho

Yes

Motig

Ok I'll find the book and reference it.

fredsbend

How early are we talking here? If true, I'm betting prehistory.

Oddthinking

05:45

This really seems like two quite separate claims: 1) An anthropology question - was monogamy prevalent amongst early hominids, or is it a concept introduced with culture? 2) A psychology question: Does growing up without a father figure increase the risk of [some specific adverse effects]?

Either way, the title has to change!

jamesqf

@Oddthinking: Monogamy is not necessary for fatherhood, you know :-) Nor is it necessary for a "father figure" to be a biological parent.

DVK-in-exile

@jamesqf - ... and the answer for "primitive early hominids" may not necessarily meaningfully imply anything about wholly different social structures of modernity.

Oddthinking

@jamesqf: I am aware of both of those. I used them deliberately to get away from the meaningless 'Are father's real?'

@user5341: I understand that too, but monogamy is now a cultural phenomena, and one of the questions seems to be when was it invented. When we show a minority of primates use monogamy to support child-raising, we may see it was invented before we were humans, invalidating the claim.

jamesqf

@Oddthinking: Monogamy is not a phenomenon of all cultures. Indeed, it seems (like a number of other practices of modern Western culture) to be linked to the influence of Christian asceticism. And even in western culture, the legal system is often at odds with what people actually do.

DVK-in-exile

@jamesqf (and @odd) - more complicated than that. Monogamy isn't even unique to humans (or Homo) - wolves exibit it, for example, IIRC. I'm not certain there's any relationship to the claim.

Oddthinking

05:47

@jamesqf and @DVK-in-exile: I think I must have been unclear, sorry. We seem to be mainly agreeing. Let me list the statements I think we agree on, so we can focus on where there are disagreements, if any.

* Many modern human cultures practice monogamy (with exceptions). Some modern human cultures practice polygamy (especially polygyny).

* Many species of non-human animal, including primates, practice monogamy and polygamy. Some species will change over in certain situations. (I remember studying birds in particular, in first year Biology at uni.)

Now what has this got to do with the question?

The claim implies that "early human civilizations/groups" were not monogamous. In fact, it is much stronger than that. It implies that there wasn't any long-term pairing of mates, with the man taking part in the support of raising his own baby.

If we find that the early proto-humans practiced long-term pairing, with the man supporting child raising, we can reject the idea that "fatherhood" was merely an idea that occurred late in civilisation.

If we can find that early proto-humans practiced monogamy, we can safely infer (IMO) that the male was around to support child raising - i.e. the idea of fatherhood.

That's just the first part of the question.

The second part of the question is the age-old conservative versus liberal debate about whether growing up without a father is harmful to the child (with the ulterior question: are laws about restricting marriage justified).

We have a few of those questions already:

Q: Are children raised in single parent households more prone to sexual abuse?

This article in the Catholic Education Resource Center claims In the United States, the media and opinion makers have finally come to recognize that unwed pregnancy is a major source of social chaos in our culture. Every few weeks, some columnist in the newspaper or news journal writes an edi...

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Q: Do children raised by mothers who choose to conceive as single parents suffer relative to children of traditional nuclear familes?

As I side effect of my volunteer work, I run into many single mothers by choice (call them SMBC for now). These are single women who choose to conceive with the intent to raise the child as a single mother without a partner's support. I've seen lots of discussion about whether the children of S...

parenting

Q: Does child rearing by homosexual couples have any measurable negative effects?

There is a widespread belief that there are adverse effects on children reared in same-sex-parents households compared to male+female household (I can add random googled cites if necessary, but the existence of laws preventing homosexuals to adopt should be enough evidence for that belief). The...

psychology sexuality sociology

A: Does staying married "for the kids' sake" benefit the kids?

It's times like this, on issues like this, that I'm most saddened by the restriction of access to academic literature. Being privileged with access to such material, I'll provide at least some citations and quotes from this restricted pool of research. I will draw liberally from an excellent rev...

Now, based on the question, I assumed adoptive fathers living with the child were to be lumped in with nuclear-family fathers living with the child, as opposed to single mothers, so I chose the term "father figure". There may be a better one.

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