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Family, Sexuality, and Social Relations in Past Times
The explanation of ideology: Family structures and social systems
English, French (translation)
240 pages, Hardcover
First published October 3, 1985
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627 people want to read
About the author
Emmanuel Todd
68 books177 followersEmmanuel Todd is a French historian, anthropologist, demographer, sociologist and political scientist at the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris. His research examines the different types of families worldwide and how there are matching beliefs, ideologies and political systems, and the historical events involving these things.
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July 21, 2021
What features distinguish countries that embraced communism from countries that resisted?
Why did Islam spread rapidly for a century and a half, then see relatively few changes in its boundaries for more than a millennium?
Todd's answer is that the structure of the family is a good deal more stable than ideologies and religions, and different family structures create different constraints on what ideologies and religions will be accepted. Published in 1983, it still seems little-known.
Maybe this neglect is most pronounced in the English-speaking parts of the world, where one family structure is overwhelmingly popular, and alternatives are often dismissed as primitive relics. France seems more conducive to Todd's insights, since France has four different family structures, each dominating in various regions.
Here are the main dimensions that he uses to categorize family structures:
* Exogamous: marriages between cousins are heavily discouraged, versus endogamous: marriages between cousins are common.
* Nuclear versus community: Are children expected to move away from the parental home upon marriage?
* Equal versus unequal. Beware that this is a nonstandard meaning, focused on relations between brothers, especially on whether inheritances are split equally. Todd says this is inversely correlated with sexual equality. He seems willing to accept sexual inequality as not worth trying to eliminate ("male dominance, a principle ... which is in practice much more universal than the incest taboo").
* Liberty versus authority. This is mostly about parental authority over children.
Here are his categories, listed in roughly descending order of how many Europeans practice them (this is Todd's order; the book is a bit Eurocentric).
Exogamous Community
This system is equal, authoritarian, and universalist. It mostly coincides with countries that adopted communism at some point, plus Finland and northern India.
It is relatively unstable, tending to produce features such as communism, which wages war on the family, and urbanization, which pushes toward a more nuclear family. But then why is it the most populous family system (41% of the world population when the book was written)? Todd does not ask. Some of it might be due to generating population growth, but that can't be a full explanation. It seems unlikely to be due to people especially enjoying it, as it has the highest suicide rate of any family system.
Why is Cuba, with its apparently Western culture, the sole country in the New World that's fertile for Communism? Todd doesn't have direct evidence of Cuba's family system, yet he maintains it's an exogamous community system. After some hand-wavy talk of other sources of Cuban culture, he pieces together hints from the suicide rate and census data. The census data does suggest that married children have some tendency to live with parents (but is that due to a housing shortage more than to culture?). The suicide rate provides some sort of evidence, but there's a lot of noise in that signal. He apparently provides more evidence in his 2011 book (French only), according to this paper, and his 2019 book.
Authoritarian
This system is unequal, and intermediate between nuclear and community: the only child to remain with his parents after marriage is the son who is the primary heir.
The exogamous and endogamous versions are apparently not worth distinguishing. The endogamous version seems uncommon - maybe it's only found in non Ashkenazi Jews?
These isolationist cultures resist assimilation more than do most other family systems. That produces fairly small, homogeneous countries, or fragmented groups. Examples are Germany, Sweden, Japan, Korea, Scotland, Catalans, and Jewish culture.
Egalitarian Nuclear
This system is exogamous, non-authoritarian, and universalist. It includes nearly all of the Catholic regions of Europe and South America.
Absolute Nuclear
This system is non-authoritarian, exogamous, and weakly unequal. It's weakly isolationist. It's fairly similar to the Egalitarian Nuclear type.
It's found in Anglo-Saxon countries, Holland, and, surprisingly, Denmark is in this category, in spite of the cultural features it shares with Sweden.
Where did he get the label "absolute" from? I'll suggest replacing it with libertarian.
Endogamous Community
This is found mainly in the Muslim parts of the region that extends from northern Africa to the western tips of India and China. It's equal and universalist.
Its strict religious rules about inheritance result in unusually weak parental authority. Todd considers it authoritarian, but in a sense that's very alien to the European understanding of that word. Authority in this case is embodied in custom and in the Koran, not in humans or human-designed organizations.
It has unusually good fraternal bonds, and low tension within the family. Suicide ratesare were less than 1/20 of the European average, and illegitimate births are rare.
Henrich mentioned that Protestant culture caused an increase in suicide rates compared to Catholic culture, due to trade-offs that made it more likely to produce a Tesla or a Google, at the cost of making people lonelier. Todd implies that the exogamous community system is further in the direction of less loneliness, likely at a cost of less innovation.
The split between Christianity and Islam was due, according to Todd, to differences over exogamy. Christianity became more hostile to cousin marriage due to increasing influence of northern regions that more strongly opposed cousin marriage. Islam imposed some incest restrictions on cultures that had none, but tolerated incest more than did Christianity, so it was more welcome in regions that were committed to cousin marriage. Islam was also sometimes tolerated by the next two categories of family systems, although they don't fully accept all of the Koran's rules.
Endogamous systems in general reject state authority. Todd attributes this to their reluctance to create bonds of kinship with strangers. Whereas the exogamous systems provide a role model for creating a strong relationship with non-kin. This reasoning sounds suspect to me. I prefer Henrich's way of reaching a similar result.
Asymmetric Community
This system is endogamous, with marriage encouraged between children of a brother and a sister, but with a prohibition on marriage between children of two brothers, or children of two sisters.
It's found mostly in southern India.
It's egalitarian in the narrow sense of equality between brothers, but it supports large inequalities outside of the family (e.g. the caste system). This seems to weaken Todd's message elsewhere that equality within the family tends to generate egalitarian political forces.
Some unusual variants of this family system support a form of communism that's more laid-back than we expect from communism (Stalinists, Maoists, and sometimes Trotskyites cooperate well).
They are found in Sri Lanka and the Indian state of Kerala. These variants are distinguished by polyandry being common, often with brothers sharing a wife. They're either matrilineal, or intermediate between matrilineal and patrilineal.
Anomic
Todd calls this a "faulty nuclear" system, with few rules, or rules that are often ignored. It has some overlap with the Absolute Nuclear family, but it oscillates between communitarianism and mild individualism.
It's seen in parts of southeastern Asia, some indigenous South American cultures, the Incan empire, ancient Egypt.
It tends to produce strong village solidarity.
It often produces strong but informal grouping by class, with marriage being mostly within a class. The topmost class looks powerful, and commands slaves to build displays of power such as pyramids. Yet the lack of discipline means that power is fragile, and easily destroyed by outside forces.
It fits well with the ambiguous deity of Buddhism.
Todd makes some weird claims about the massacre of Indonesian communists in 1965-6: it was substantially a grass-roots uprising, partly from within the communist movement, and eliminated communism, even in regions where communists had gotten a majority of the votes. That fits with Todd's claims that this family system is undisciplined and anti-authoritarian, unwilling to attach strongly to an ideology. But it's moderately inconsistent with Wikipedia's account.
African / Unstable
Sub-Saharan Africa is noted for systems with shorter-duration polygynous marriages. Todd hints at a lot of diversity within these regions, but documents little of it.
Islam has had difficulty penetrating these regions because its strict taboo on inheriting wives conflicts with a standard feature of these family systems.
Conflicts with Henrich?
I found this book via Policy Tensor, which points to some tension between Henrich's The WEIRDest People and Todd's belief that family structures are very hard to change. Actually, Policy Tensor claims to have evidence that Henrich is flat out wrong, but Policy Tensor presents way too little evidence to justify that claim.
I see some hints that Todd's 2011 book has more detail on the early history of family systems, possibly with clear evidence against Henrich.
Todd tells us that when there's a change in what family structure dominates a region, it's mostly due to a subpopulation becoming more dominant. It's not too hard to imagine that some of Europe's increasing prohibitions on cousin marriage under the early Christian church were due to increased influence from northern cultures, which apparently were more firmly against cousin marriage than the southernmost European cultures. And most of the correlations that Henrich reports could have been due to pre-existing local and regional cultures influencing what religious doctrines were accepted, rather than religions altering the culture.
I don't see much evidence on whether family systems are too persistent for Henrich's claims of Christianity causing exogamy to be plausible. Todd wants us to assume that family systems persist over many centuries, but he also notes that they do sometimes change, e.g. that urbanization erodes community and authoritarian systems.
The most important conflict I see between Henrich and Todd is that Henrich describes the marital rules for Christianity as a whole, seemingly taking it for granted that European Christianity had a fairly uniform culture at any one time. Whereas Todd wants us to assume that cultural change in Rome would tell us almost nothing about changes in London, and that we should presume (in the absence of clear evidence) that London's culture was mostly a continuation of its pre-Christian culture. Henrich tests many different hypotheses about what might cause the correlation between culture and exposure to Christianity, but he seems biased towards hypotheses for which he found good data, and he likely didn't find much data for the geographical distribution of culture circa 500 CE.
Henrich and Todd agree on a number of important points that others neglect. Henrich still looks mostly right, but there's plenty of complexity that he's sweeping under the rug. Henrich overstates the effect of the church on culture, and overstates the novelty of WEIRD culture.
Here's Todd partly supporting Henrich:
Both authors seem to agree that different systems are good at achieving different goals. They'd mostly say that Muslim culture in the year 1500 looked more successful than British culture of the time, and that was partly due to the strengths of the endogamous family system. They'd also agree that modest changes after 1500 in British culture brought out the strengths of the exogamous nuclear families. So it's a bit confusing to try to classify cousin marriage as a sign of a backwards or an advanced culture.
Evaluating predictions
With many books, I check for mistakes by following references. I didn't try that here, partly because he rarely connects specific claims to specific sources. Instead, enough time has passed that it's appropriate to judge him based on well-known changes since the book was published.
Where would communism spread or recede?
Todd sounded pretty confident that communism would not spread further in the New World, and his reasoning also applies to most non-communist states other than Finland, with a bit of uncertainty about Italy and India.
It may be hard for many of you to recall, but in 1983 many people were concerned about the trend of expanding communism, and few people were forecasting a collapse of communism in anything other than vague and distant timelines.
Todd firmly predicted that Ethiopia would resist Soviet attempts to turn it communist. He wrote at a time when that prediction bucked a moderately clear trend. Soviet influence seems to have peaked about when the book was published, and in about 4 years Ethiopia started a clear move away from communism.
Todd's thesis suggests that communism was more likely to be rejected in places where communism was imposed by force on a family system that doesn't support it:
* Poland
* Romania
* North Korea
* Cambodia
* Laos
* the six Muslim Soviet republics
I see no clear evidence that these places rejected communism more than did those with exogamous community families, so I count this as a failed implied prediction.
Todd predicted further decline in the French communist party, and it looks like that happened.
Some of this might be due to his prediction (made elsewhere) that the Soviet Union would collapse, which doesn't seem to directly follow from the claims in the book.
Given Todd's ideas, it becomes painfully obvious that that the US attempt at installing a Western-style government in Iraq would thoroughly fail.
An influential political faction thought that the US could accomplish in Iraq something like what it did with Germany and Japan after WWII. Those two countries looked different enough culturally to provide what looked like medium-quality evidence that Western-style governments could be imposed in many countries.
Had that faction believed Todd, they'd have known that their evidence only covered one type of family structure, and that the difference between exogamous and endogamous marriage practices would make an enormous difference. I'm referring not just to details such as the willingness of Iraqis to accept democracy, but more basic issues like their reluctance to respect features such as nations, or civil authority.
Todd's beliefs imply some predictions about which European countries are likely to have the most conflict with Muslim immigrants. E.g. the book led me to expect more tension in Germany and Sweden than in Poland and Spain. Tables 2 to 5 of this report mostly confirm that prediction, but this survey of attitudes shows the opposite pattern. So I'm confused as to whether there's a stable pattern.
In sum, his predictions were clearly better than what a random pundit of the time would have made, but not good enough that I'd bet much money on his beliefs.
Conclusion
This is one of the rare books that is shorter than I wanted.
The book's claims are unlikely to be more than 60% correct, but they're still quite valuable for focusing attention on topics which are both important and neglected. Whenever I try to understand differences between cultures, I'll remember to ask whether family structures explain patterns, and I'll likely often decide it's hard to tell.
I've become frustrated at how little attention sources such as Wikipedia pay to what I now see as the most important features of a culture.
I'm pretty sure that the patterns that he describes are much more than mere coincidences, but I don't trust his guesses about the causal mechanisms.
PS. - Parts of the book are much too Freudian for me. E.g. a section on witch-hunts (which happen mainly in authoritarian family societies) is titled "Killing the mother".
Why did Islam spread rapidly for a century and a half, then see relatively few changes in its boundaries for more than a millennium?
Todd's answer is that the structure of the family is a good deal more stable than ideologies and religions, and different family structures create different constraints on what ideologies and religions will be accepted. Published in 1983, it still seems little-known.
Maybe this neglect is most pronounced in the English-speaking parts of the world, where one family structure is overwhelmingly popular, and alternatives are often dismissed as primitive relics. France seems more conducive to Todd's insights, since France has four different family structures, each dominating in various regions.
Here are the main dimensions that he uses to categorize family structures:
* Exogamous: marriages between cousins are heavily discouraged, versus endogamous: marriages between cousins are common.
* Nuclear versus community: Are children expected to move away from the parental home upon marriage?
* Equal versus unequal. Beware that this is a nonstandard meaning, focused on relations between brothers, especially on whether inheritances are split equally. Todd says this is inversely correlated with sexual equality. He seems willing to accept sexual inequality as not worth trying to eliminate ("male dominance, a principle ... which is in practice much more universal than the incest taboo").
* Liberty versus authority. This is mostly about parental authority over children.
Here are his categories, listed in roughly descending order of how many Europeans practice them (this is Todd's order; the book is a bit Eurocentric).
Exogamous Community
This system is equal, authoritarian, and universalist. It mostly coincides with countries that adopted communism at some point, plus Finland and northern India.
It is relatively unstable, tending to produce features such as communism, which wages war on the family, and urbanization, which pushes toward a more nuclear family. But then why is it the most populous family system (41% of the world population when the book was written)? Todd does not ask. Some of it might be due to generating population growth, but that can't be a full explanation. It seems unlikely to be due to people especially enjoying it, as it has the highest suicide rate of any family system.
Why is Cuba, with its apparently Western culture, the sole country in the New World that's fertile for Communism? Todd doesn't have direct evidence of Cuba's family system, yet he maintains it's an exogamous community system. After some hand-wavy talk of other sources of Cuban culture, he pieces together hints from the suicide rate and census data. The census data does suggest that married children have some tendency to live with parents (but is that due to a housing shortage more than to culture?). The suicide rate provides some sort of evidence, but there's a lot of noise in that signal. He apparently provides more evidence in his 2011 book (French only), according to this paper, and his 2019 book.
Authoritarian
This system is unequal, and intermediate between nuclear and community: the only child to remain with his parents after marriage is the son who is the primary heir.
The exogamous and endogamous versions are apparently not worth distinguishing. The endogamous version seems uncommon - maybe it's only found in non Ashkenazi Jews?
These isolationist cultures resist assimilation more than do most other family systems. That produces fairly small, homogeneous countries, or fragmented groups. Examples are Germany, Sweden, Japan, Korea, Scotland, Catalans, and Jewish culture.
Egalitarian Nuclear
This system is exogamous, non-authoritarian, and universalist. It includes nearly all of the Catholic regions of Europe and South America.
Absolute Nuclear
This system is non-authoritarian, exogamous, and weakly unequal. It's weakly isolationist. It's fairly similar to the Egalitarian Nuclear type.
It's found in Anglo-Saxon countries, Holland, and, surprisingly, Denmark is in this category, in spite of the cultural features it shares with Sweden.
Where did he get the label "absolute" from? I'll suggest replacing it with libertarian.
Endogamous Community
This is found mainly in the Muslim parts of the region that extends from northern Africa to the western tips of India and China. It's equal and universalist.
Its strict religious rules about inheritance result in unusually weak parental authority. Todd considers it authoritarian, but in a sense that's very alien to the European understanding of that word. Authority in this case is embodied in custom and in the Koran, not in humans or human-designed organizations.
It has unusually good fraternal bonds, and low tension within the family. Suicide rates
Henrich mentioned that Protestant culture caused an increase in suicide rates compared to Catholic culture, due to trade-offs that made it more likely to produce a Tesla or a Google, at the cost of making people lonelier. Todd implies that the exogamous community system is further in the direction of less loneliness, likely at a cost of less innovation.
The split between Christianity and Islam was due, according to Todd, to differences over exogamy. Christianity became more hostile to cousin marriage due to increasing influence of northern regions that more strongly opposed cousin marriage. Islam imposed some incest restrictions on cultures that had none, but tolerated incest more than did Christianity, so it was more welcome in regions that were committed to cousin marriage. Islam was also sometimes tolerated by the next two categories of family systems, although they don't fully accept all of the Koran's rules.
Arab socialism is a unique attempt to build socialism without the state, or to be more precise and less derisive, an effort to construct socialism in a culture without any special aptitude or a tradition of centralized, bureaucratic administration.
Endogamous systems in general reject state authority. Todd attributes this to their reluctance to create bonds of kinship with strangers. Whereas the exogamous systems provide a role model for creating a strong relationship with non-kin. This reasoning sounds suspect to me. I prefer Henrich's way of reaching a similar result.
History is made by individuals in nuclear family countries, by the government (a parental symbol) in authoritarian systems. It is defined by custom and thus eliminated in the case of endogamous anthropological systems. Islam's historical passivity can be seen to derive from its fundamental anthropological mechanism.
The Muslim father is too easy-going to be hated or rejected, either in human or divine form. The Islamic god is too forgiving for anyone to want to annihilate him.
Asymmetric Community
This system is endogamous, with marriage encouraged between children of a brother and a sister, but with a prohibition on marriage between children of two brothers, or children of two sisters.
It's found mostly in southern India.
It's egalitarian in the narrow sense of equality between brothers, but it supports large inequalities outside of the family (e.g. the caste system). This seems to weaken Todd's message elsewhere that equality within the family tends to generate egalitarian political forces.
Some unusual variants of this family system support a form of communism that's more laid-back than we expect from communism (Stalinists, Maoists, and sometimes Trotskyites cooperate well).
They are found in Sri Lanka and the Indian state of Kerala. These variants are distinguished by polyandry being common, often with brothers sharing a wife. They're either matrilineal, or intermediate between matrilineal and patrilineal.
Anomic
Todd calls this a "faulty nuclear" system, with few rules, or rules that are often ignored. It has some overlap with the Absolute Nuclear family, but it oscillates between communitarianism and mild individualism.
It's seen in parts of southeastern Asia, some indigenous South American cultures, the Incan empire, ancient Egypt.
It tends to produce strong village solidarity.
It often produces strong but informal grouping by class, with marriage being mostly within a class. The topmost class looks powerful, and commands slaves to build displays of power such as pyramids. Yet the lack of discipline means that power is fragile, and easily destroyed by outside forces.
It fits well with the ambiguous deity of Buddhism.
Todd makes some weird claims about the massacre of Indonesian communists in 1965-6: it was substantially a grass-roots uprising, partly from within the communist movement, and eliminated communism, even in regions where communists had gotten a majority of the votes. That fits with Todd's claims that this family system is undisciplined and anti-authoritarian, unwilling to attach strongly to an ideology. But it's moderately inconsistent with Wikipedia's account.
African / Unstable
Sub-Saharan Africa is noted for systems with shorter-duration polygynous marriages. Todd hints at a lot of diversity within these regions, but documents little of it.
Islam has had difficulty penetrating these regions because its strict taboo on inheriting wives conflicts with a standard feature of these family systems.
Conflicts with Henrich?
I found this book via Policy Tensor, which points to some tension between Henrich's The WEIRDest People and Todd's belief that family structures are very hard to change. Actually, Policy Tensor claims to have evidence that Henrich is flat out wrong, but Policy Tensor presents way too little evidence to justify that claim.
I see some hints that Todd's 2011 book has more detail on the early history of family systems, possibly with clear evidence against Henrich.
Todd tells us that when there's a change in what family structure dominates a region, it's mostly due to a subpopulation becoming more dominant. It's not too hard to imagine that some of Europe's increasing prohibitions on cousin marriage under the early Christian church were due to increased influence from northern cultures, which apparently were more firmly against cousin marriage than the southernmost European cultures. And most of the correlations that Henrich reports could have been due to pre-existing local and regional cultures influencing what religious doctrines were accepted, rather than religions altering the culture.
I don't see much evidence on whether family systems are too persistent for Henrich's claims of Christianity causing exogamy to be plausible. Todd wants us to assume that family systems persist over many centuries, but he also notes that they do sometimes change, e.g. that urbanization erodes community and authoritarian systems.
The most important conflict I see between Henrich and Todd is that Henrich describes the marital rules for Christianity as a whole, seemingly taking it for granted that European Christianity had a fairly uniform culture at any one time. Whereas Todd wants us to assume that cultural change in Rome would tell us almost nothing about changes in London, and that we should presume (in the absence of clear evidence) that London's culture was mostly a continuation of its pre-Christian culture. Henrich tests many different hypotheses about what might cause the correlation between culture and exposure to Christianity, but he seems biased towards hypotheses for which he found good data, and he likely didn't find much data for the geographical distribution of culture circa 500 CE.
Henrich and Todd agree on a number of important points that others neglect. Henrich still looks mostly right, but there's plenty of complexity that he's sweeping under the rug. Henrich overstates the effect of the church on culture, and overstates the novelty of WEIRD culture.
Here's Todd partly supporting Henrich:
Developed in France and England, the individualist model was offered to the world. ... In the middle ages, the individual did not exist. He emerged in the West during the Reformation and the French Revolution.
Both authors seem to agree that different systems are good at achieving different goals. They'd mostly say that Muslim culture in the year 1500 looked more successful than British culture of the time, and that was partly due to the strengths of the endogamous family system. They'd also agree that modest changes after 1500 in British culture brought out the strengths of the exogamous nuclear families. So it's a bit confusing to try to classify cousin marriage as a sign of a backwards or an advanced culture.
Evaluating predictions
With many books, I check for mistakes by following references. I didn't try that here, partly because he rarely connects specific claims to specific sources. Instead, enough time has passed that it's appropriate to judge him based on well-known changes since the book was published.
Where would communism spread or recede?
Todd sounded pretty confident that communism would not spread further in the New World, and his reasoning also applies to most non-communist states other than Finland, with a bit of uncertainty about Italy and India.
It may be hard for many of you to recall, but in 1983 many people were concerned about the trend of expanding communism, and few people were forecasting a collapse of communism in anything other than vague and distant timelines.
Todd firmly predicted that Ethiopia would resist Soviet attempts to turn it communist. He wrote at a time when that prediction bucked a moderately clear trend. Soviet influence seems to have peaked about when the book was published, and in about 4 years Ethiopia started a clear move away from communism.
Todd's thesis suggests that communism was more likely to be rejected in places where communism was imposed by force on a family system that doesn't support it:
* Poland
* Romania
* North Korea
* Cambodia
* Laos
* the six Muslim Soviet republics
I see no clear evidence that these places rejected communism more than did those with exogamous community families, so I count this as a failed implied prediction.
Todd predicted further decline in the French communist party, and it looks like that happened.
Some of this might be due to his prediction (made elsewhere) that the Soviet Union would collapse, which doesn't seem to directly follow from the claims in the book.
Given Todd's ideas, it becomes painfully obvious that that the US attempt at installing a Western-style government in Iraq would thoroughly fail.
An influential political faction thought that the US could accomplish in Iraq something like what it did with Germany and Japan after WWII. Those two countries looked different enough culturally to provide what looked like medium-quality evidence that Western-style governments could be imposed in many countries.
Had that faction believed Todd, they'd have known that their evidence only covered one type of family structure, and that the difference between exogamous and endogamous marriage practices would make an enormous difference. I'm referring not just to details such as the willingness of Iraqis to accept democracy, but more basic issues like their reluctance to respect features such as nations, or civil authority.
Todd's beliefs imply some predictions about which European countries are likely to have the most conflict with Muslim immigrants. E.g. the book led me to expect more tension in Germany and Sweden than in Poland and Spain. Tables 2 to 5 of this report mostly confirm that prediction, but this survey of attitudes shows the opposite pattern. So I'm confused as to whether there's a stable pattern.
In sum, his predictions were clearly better than what a random pundit of the time would have made, but not good enough that I'd bet much money on his beliefs.
Conclusion
This is one of the rare books that is shorter than I wanted.
The book's claims are unlikely to be more than 60% correct, but they're still quite valuable for focusing attention on topics which are both important and neglected. Whenever I try to understand differences between cultures, I'll remember to ask whether family structures explain patterns, and I'll likely often decide it's hard to tell.
I've become frustrated at how little attention sources such as Wikipedia pay to what I now see as the most important features of a culture.
I'm pretty sure that the patterns that he describes are much more than mere coincidences, but I don't trust his guesses about the causal mechanisms.
PS. - Parts of the book are much too Freudian for me. E.g. a section on witch-hunts (which happen mainly in authoritarian family societies) is titled "Killing the mother".
Read
October 2, 2023The theory this book proposes is one of the most reality-shifting yet convincing things I’ve ever understood. It's so profound that the world can be split between those who understand the theory and those who don’t. This can be grasped in the first section and then everything else you ever learn will go back to this.
August 31, 2025
One of those books that make you wish you have read them at the inception of your adulthood. One of those books that you wish that everyone knows about and talks about. A tour de force that passed under the radar of the Western civilization, for the most part, while comparably minor works like Jared Diamond's GG&S got lavish attention.
Let's read this, let's grow up. The author himself changed his views in the following decades. So, for example, he brought forward a theory of the origins of the origins of ideology, the world's family systems themselves.
Let's read this, let's grow up. The author himself changed his views in the following decades. So, for example, he brought forward a theory of the origins of the origins of ideology, the world's family systems themselves.
January 3, 2011
Review:
April 2007
A Brief Note on Anthropological Determinism
Most people, I really should stress the very few people, that have actually read Todd take him to be something of an anthropological determinist. But this is not entirely true. For instance, Todd, in writing of Anglo-Saxon individualism (the Absolute Nuclear Family) says:
"An egalitarian culture seeks equality between peoples. An inegalitarian culture tends to decree them superior or inferior. The absolute nuclear family is vague in its choices, a hypothesis confirmed by the history of the Anglo-Saxon world which has never aligned itself either with Russian and French universalism or with the German cult of difference. (p. 130)"
After discussing two 'choices' that were made by the 'Anglo-Saxons' -by choice Todd here means that the direction taken was not anthropologically determined- Todd says:
"Anglo-Saxon universalism is not a 'natural' tendency, as in France or Russia, and is not determined by a clear anthropological structure. It results from a conscious effort to recognize the equality of others. (p. 131)"
The two choices Todd was speaking of (pages 130-131) are the American Civil War and the Second World War. Anthropologically speaking, or so Todd maintains, Anglo-Saxon culture had no reason to prefer either universalism or particularity. In both these cases it chose universalism.
Anthropology is not destiny; but I would add that this 'freedom' comes at a price. Any course of action freely chosen can later be freely repudiated...
The anthropological structure, by the way, that gives the Anglo-Saxon world such flexibility is its indifference to inheritance rules. There is neither the universal solidarity engendered by egalitarian inheritance rules nor the particularism caused by rules that foster inequality between brothers, that is, the transfer of patrimony to one son. Curiously, the only other anthropological family that displays this indifference is what Todd calls the "Anomic Family", which is centered in south-east Asia.
Since this book is not readily available I include the Table of Contents (to my 1988 paperback edition):
Preface to the English Edition, vii;
Maps viii;
Introduction: democracy and anthropology, 1;
1. The Seven Families, 19;
2. Community, 33;
3. Authority, 55;
4. The two forms of individualism, 99;
5. Endogamy, 133;
6. Asymmetry, 155;
7. Anomie, 171;
8. African Systems, 191;
Conclusion, 196;
Bibliography, 200;
Index, 226;
--------------------------------------------------
Review:
September 2004
An Anthropological Explanation of Ideology?
An amazing book that is, unfortunately, very difficult to find. Todd provides an anthropological definition of family structures and shows how many ideological structures have mapped, with remarkable precision, to certain family structures. There are seven definable family types, which are defined by attitudes towards spouse selection, attitudes towards symmetry in family/social (inheritance & law) relations, and attitudes towards whether married children can live at home. Spouse selection within these families can be decided by custom - usually the preference is cousins - or parents, or the two getting married are free to decide. Laws of inheritance can be egalitarian, non-egalitarian or indifferent. That is the inheritance is either divided equally between all - in practice this usually means all sons, or divided unequally - one son only receives the patrimony, or any which way you please. These family types are defined as follows:
1. Absolute Nuclear Family:
a. Spouse selection: Free, but obligatory exogamy.
b. Inheritance: Indifference - no precise rules, frequent use of wills.
c. Family Home: no cohabitation of married children with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Anglo-Saxon world, Holland, Denmark.
e. Representative Ideology: Christianity, Capitalism, `Libertarian' Liberalism, and Feminism.
2. Egalitarian Nuclear Family:
a. Spouse selection: Free, but obligatory exogamy.
b. Inheritance: Egalitarian - equality between brothers.
c. Family Home: no cohabitation of married children with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Regions: northern France, northern Italy, central & southern Spain, central Portugal, Greece, Romania, Poland, Latin America, Ethiopia.
e. Representative Ideology: Christianity (Catholicism); the "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" form of Liberalism.
3. Authoritarian Family:
a. Spouse selection: Parents, little or no marriage between children of brothers.
b. Inheritance: Anti-Egalitarian - inequality between brothers, transfer of patrimony to one son.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of the married heir with his parents.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Bohemia, Scotland, Ireland, peripheral regions of France, northern (Basque) Spain, northern Portugal, Japan, Korea, Jews, Romany Gypsies.
e. Representative Ideology: Fascism, various separatist and autonomous (anti-universalist) movements.
4: Exogamous Community Family:
a. Spouse selection: Parents, no marriage between the children of two brothers.
b. Inheritance: Egalitarian - equality between brothers.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married sons with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Regions: Russia, Yugoslavia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland, Albania, central Italy, China, Vietnam, Cuba and north India.
e. Representative Ideology: Communism, Socialism.
5. Endogamous Community Family:
a. Spouse selection: Custom, frequent marriage between the children of brothers.
b. Inheritance: Egalitarian - equality between brothers.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married sons with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Arab world, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan.
e. Representative Ideology: Islam.
6. Asymmetrical Community Family:
a. Spouse selection: Custom, prohibition on marriages between the children of brothers, but a preference for marriages between the children of brothers and sisters.
b. Inheritance: Egalitarian - equality between brothers.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married sons with their parents.
d. Representative Regions: southern India.
e. Representative Ideology:
7: Anomic Family:
a. Spouse selection: Free, but without obligatory exogamy; consanguine marriage possible and sometimes frequent.
b. Inheritance: Indifference - uncertainty about equality between brothers, inheritance rules egalitarian in theory but uncertain in practice.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married children with parents rejected in theory but accepted in practice.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions:
e. Representative Ideology: Buddhism, Christianity, and Communism, but potentially anything.
This translation dates from 1985 though it was published earlier in that decade in France. He predicts the fall of the Soviet Union because the satellite states (like Poland) and internal (Moslem) `satellite states' will prove non-absorbable. He also predicts that the USA + Islam were heading towards conflict because of, in large part, Anglo-Saxon feminism. The predictive power of this anthropological approach is also visible in the deep anti-universalism of the authoritarian family. The gypsies, for instance, refuse to be absorbed by other cultures even though they have no identifiable ideological commitments. Naturally, in this short note I cannot bring out all the insights, originality and subtlety of the text, though he does leave the impression that family structure can explain everything - it can't. ...Still, this text is well worth hunting down.
April 2007
A Brief Note on Anthropological Determinism
Most people, I really should stress the very few people, that have actually read Todd take him to be something of an anthropological determinist. But this is not entirely true. For instance, Todd, in writing of Anglo-Saxon individualism (the Absolute Nuclear Family) says:
"An egalitarian culture seeks equality between peoples. An inegalitarian culture tends to decree them superior or inferior. The absolute nuclear family is vague in its choices, a hypothesis confirmed by the history of the Anglo-Saxon world which has never aligned itself either with Russian and French universalism or with the German cult of difference. (p. 130)"
After discussing two 'choices' that were made by the 'Anglo-Saxons' -by choice Todd here means that the direction taken was not anthropologically determined- Todd says:
"Anglo-Saxon universalism is not a 'natural' tendency, as in France or Russia, and is not determined by a clear anthropological structure. It results from a conscious effort to recognize the equality of others. (p. 131)"
The two choices Todd was speaking of (pages 130-131) are the American Civil War and the Second World War. Anthropologically speaking, or so Todd maintains, Anglo-Saxon culture had no reason to prefer either universalism or particularity. In both these cases it chose universalism.
Anthropology is not destiny; but I would add that this 'freedom' comes at a price. Any course of action freely chosen can later be freely repudiated...
The anthropological structure, by the way, that gives the Anglo-Saxon world such flexibility is its indifference to inheritance rules. There is neither the universal solidarity engendered by egalitarian inheritance rules nor the particularism caused by rules that foster inequality between brothers, that is, the transfer of patrimony to one son. Curiously, the only other anthropological family that displays this indifference is what Todd calls the "Anomic Family", which is centered in south-east Asia.
Since this book is not readily available I include the Table of Contents (to my 1988 paperback edition):
Preface to the English Edition, vii;
Maps viii;
Introduction: democracy and anthropology, 1;
1. The Seven Families, 19;
2. Community, 33;
3. Authority, 55;
4. The two forms of individualism, 99;
5. Endogamy, 133;
6. Asymmetry, 155;
7. Anomie, 171;
8. African Systems, 191;
Conclusion, 196;
Bibliography, 200;
Index, 226;
--------------------------------------------------
Review:
September 2004
An Anthropological Explanation of Ideology?
An amazing book that is, unfortunately, very difficult to find. Todd provides an anthropological definition of family structures and shows how many ideological structures have mapped, with remarkable precision, to certain family structures. There are seven definable family types, which are defined by attitudes towards spouse selection, attitudes towards symmetry in family/social (inheritance & law) relations, and attitudes towards whether married children can live at home. Spouse selection within these families can be decided by custom - usually the preference is cousins - or parents, or the two getting married are free to decide. Laws of inheritance can be egalitarian, non-egalitarian or indifferent. That is the inheritance is either divided equally between all - in practice this usually means all sons, or divided unequally - one son only receives the patrimony, or any which way you please. These family types are defined as follows:
1. Absolute Nuclear Family:
a. Spouse selection: Free, but obligatory exogamy.
b. Inheritance: Indifference - no precise rules, frequent use of wills.
c. Family Home: no cohabitation of married children with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Anglo-Saxon world, Holland, Denmark.
e. Representative Ideology: Christianity, Capitalism, `Libertarian' Liberalism, and Feminism.
2. Egalitarian Nuclear Family:
a. Spouse selection: Free, but obligatory exogamy.
b. Inheritance: Egalitarian - equality between brothers.
c. Family Home: no cohabitation of married children with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Regions: northern France, northern Italy, central & southern Spain, central Portugal, Greece, Romania, Poland, Latin America, Ethiopia.
e. Representative Ideology: Christianity (Catholicism); the "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" form of Liberalism.
3. Authoritarian Family:
a. Spouse selection: Parents, little or no marriage between children of brothers.
b. Inheritance: Anti-Egalitarian - inequality between brothers, transfer of patrimony to one son.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of the married heir with his parents.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Bohemia, Scotland, Ireland, peripheral regions of France, northern (Basque) Spain, northern Portugal, Japan, Korea, Jews, Romany Gypsies.
e. Representative Ideology: Fascism, various separatist and autonomous (anti-universalist) movements.
4: Exogamous Community Family:
a. Spouse selection: Parents, no marriage between the children of two brothers.
b. Inheritance: Egalitarian - equality between brothers.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married sons with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Regions: Russia, Yugoslavia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland, Albania, central Italy, China, Vietnam, Cuba and north India.
e. Representative Ideology: Communism, Socialism.
5. Endogamous Community Family:
a. Spouse selection: Custom, frequent marriage between the children of brothers.
b. Inheritance: Egalitarian - equality between brothers.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married sons with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Arab world, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan.
e. Representative Ideology: Islam.
6. Asymmetrical Community Family:
a. Spouse selection: Custom, prohibition on marriages between the children of brothers, but a preference for marriages between the children of brothers and sisters.
b. Inheritance: Egalitarian - equality between brothers.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married sons with their parents.
d. Representative Regions: southern India.
e. Representative Ideology:
7: Anomic Family:
a. Spouse selection: Free, but without obligatory exogamy; consanguine marriage possible and sometimes frequent.
b. Inheritance: Indifference - uncertainty about equality between brothers, inheritance rules egalitarian in theory but uncertain in practice.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married children with parents rejected in theory but accepted in practice.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions:
e. Representative Ideology: Buddhism, Christianity, and Communism, but potentially anything.
This translation dates from 1985 though it was published earlier in that decade in France. He predicts the fall of the Soviet Union because the satellite states (like Poland) and internal (Moslem) `satellite states' will prove non-absorbable. He also predicts that the USA + Islam were heading towards conflict because of, in large part, Anglo-Saxon feminism. The predictive power of this anthropological approach is also visible in the deep anti-universalism of the authoritarian family. The gypsies, for instance, refuse to be absorbed by other cultures even though they have no identifiable ideological commitments. Naturally, in this short note I cannot bring out all the insights, originality and subtlety of the text, though he does leave the impression that family structure can explain everything - it can't. ...Still, this text is well worth hunting down.
May 24, 2025
I’ve mentioned Todd’s Explanation of Ideology in several others reviews, so I thought it was time to do a re-read and write a review. I still consider this one of the most important books I’ve read in terms of understanding how the world really works. Once you grasp the concepts presented in this book, everything else that touches on the subjects of anthropology, ethnology, history, politics, or religion, will seem incomplete without this as a foundation.
Before I even try to summarize the concepts I’ll first address the most likely hesitation anyone would have in wanting to read this, because if that is not said at the outset potential readers may simply give this book a pass. Many might dismiss it because it was written in 1985 and surely so much has happened in the world since then that this thesis is no longer relevant? First there was the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, then the communications revolution with the internet, then the advent of social media and instant interconnectedness with smart phones with social media apps. So, the world is a different place, right? Wrong.
Todd’s thesis builds upon work first done by French economist and sociologist Frederic de Play in the mid-1800’s regarding the influence of family structure on the labor workforce and political tendencies among citizens. (Friedrich Engels also had a go of it in his Origin of Family, Private Property, and State.) But Le Play (and Engel) only looked at European countries. Todd expanded the scope of research to include the entire world throughout history and added several critical components that now put the thesis into focus. Namely, it is the nature of family structure that determines not only the type of political, religious, and cultural structures likely to be favored, but also the degree of autonomy for gifted individuals to flourish and develop their creative impulses.
Keep in mind these are statistical probabilities - even dominant characteristics - in nearly all homogeneous societies today, with the notable exception of the most libertarian-influenced Western countries. In the United States, for example, individual psychology does play more of a role – but not enough to disregard the thesis altogether. This is because individuals (even the most extreme statistical outliers) still have to function within the structure of the larger society.
Even in libertarian societies (like the U.S.) blocs of voters who were raised Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish, tend to vote along the lines of family-structure as outlined in Todd’s book. It is this underlying worldview which subliminally cultivates the type of religion and governance that will be favored, and in the case of the West, Left or Right are just two sides of the same coin.
Todd identifies seven primary family archetypes based on various combinations of these key factors: whether the family stays together after the children marry, thus forming a generational ‘vertical’ hierarchy, or whether (as in America) children “leave the nest” as soon as they marry and start their own family. There is the matter of whether marriages are exogamous or endogamous, and the issue of how accumulated family wealth and resources are dispersed upon the death of the family head.
By the end you will understand how this all ties in with political and religious tendencies, and the evidence is borne out by numerous historical developments profiled in the book. Consider that families with a strong paternal head in a “vertical” hierarchy will be much more likely to accept authoritarian governance from the state. Or, consider how all the countries that fell sway to communism – Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba – are all part of the exogamous community archetype. Poland, Russia’s next-door neighbor, and closely related in terms of race and linguistics, fought against communism because the family archetype is different.
Continuing on this theme, with historical examples that still hold to this day, we learn why the rapid spread of Islam was suddenly quailed: Islam quickly subsumed the immense Persian and Byzantine Empires (same family archetype), but was stymied by resistance from tiny states like Armenia and Northern Spain (different family archetypes). As Todd says: “Islam defeated giants but capitulated before dwarfs.”
Or, concerning the raging civil wars in western Africa we learn about family structures where the father’s numerous wives are passed along to the eldest son as inheritance. Or the fact that only the eldest son can marry and the younger sons are not supported in having their own families; hence the throngs of listless men eager to enlist with warlords who act as surrogate families.
Family archetypes act as a social infrastructure. “It reproduces itself generation to generation; the unconscious imitation of parents by their children is enough to ensure the perpetuation of the anthropological system [which] like the genetic cycle of DNA-RNA does not depend on self-consciousness. Its power derives precisely from its lack of consciousness and visibility, for it cannot be questioned.”
Here’s the part that directly refutes Jared Diamond’s entire hypothesis in Guns, Germs, and Steel: “Furthermore, it is completely independent of its economic and ecological environments. Many family systems exist simultaneously in areas whose climate, relief, geology and economy are completely different. It is impossible to perceive any global coincidence at all between ecological or economic factors and family types.”
Family archetypes have served as a societal infrastructure for Anglo-Saxon liberalism, communism, Muslim fundamentalism, socialism, Buddhism, and other forms. Todd concludes by saying that external factors don’t count for much: “This is a difficult conclusion for historians and sociologists to accept, for they have made determinism an article of faith, devoting themselves to the search for causes.”
With all of this in mind, as I write in 2025, it seems that globalism is an unrealistic dream. This is why the Arab Spring was doomed from the get-go (the flash mobs didn’t have the power base, money, or the support of the established family-culture), and why it is so asinine for the West’s leaders to assume that the rest of the world wants what the West wants. They don’t. They don’t share the same core values. And it all starts out with what kind of a family a child grows up in.
Summary: The average reader (in my opinion) will not need to remember the exact configuration of the seven family-society types, nor (excepting the major global powers) which countries tend to fall into this type or that. The main point is that humankind is a long way away from achieving a unified voice. Economic policies that favor fair trade rather than exploitation are usually a good means to bridge differences between cultures, but coercion through force or threat of force only creates resentment. Our ambassadors and diplomats need to be aware of lifestyle preferences outside of their own ideological bubbles.
Before I even try to summarize the concepts I’ll first address the most likely hesitation anyone would have in wanting to read this, because if that is not said at the outset potential readers may simply give this book a pass. Many might dismiss it because it was written in 1985 and surely so much has happened in the world since then that this thesis is no longer relevant? First there was the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, then the communications revolution with the internet, then the advent of social media and instant interconnectedness with smart phones with social media apps. So, the world is a different place, right? Wrong.
Todd’s thesis builds upon work first done by French economist and sociologist Frederic de Play in the mid-1800’s regarding the influence of family structure on the labor workforce and political tendencies among citizens. (Friedrich Engels also had a go of it in his Origin of Family, Private Property, and State.) But Le Play (and Engel) only looked at European countries. Todd expanded the scope of research to include the entire world throughout history and added several critical components that now put the thesis into focus. Namely, it is the nature of family structure that determines not only the type of political, religious, and cultural structures likely to be favored, but also the degree of autonomy for gifted individuals to flourish and develop their creative impulses.
Keep in mind these are statistical probabilities - even dominant characteristics - in nearly all homogeneous societies today, with the notable exception of the most libertarian-influenced Western countries. In the United States, for example, individual psychology does play more of a role – but not enough to disregard the thesis altogether. This is because individuals (even the most extreme statistical outliers) still have to function within the structure of the larger society.
Even in libertarian societies (like the U.S.) blocs of voters who were raised Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish, tend to vote along the lines of family-structure as outlined in Todd’s book. It is this underlying worldview which subliminally cultivates the type of religion and governance that will be favored, and in the case of the West, Left or Right are just two sides of the same coin.
Todd identifies seven primary family archetypes based on various combinations of these key factors: whether the family stays together after the children marry, thus forming a generational ‘vertical’ hierarchy, or whether (as in America) children “leave the nest” as soon as they marry and start their own family. There is the matter of whether marriages are exogamous or endogamous, and the issue of how accumulated family wealth and resources are dispersed upon the death of the family head.
By the end you will understand how this all ties in with political and religious tendencies, and the evidence is borne out by numerous historical developments profiled in the book. Consider that families with a strong paternal head in a “vertical” hierarchy will be much more likely to accept authoritarian governance from the state. Or, consider how all the countries that fell sway to communism – Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba – are all part of the exogamous community archetype. Poland, Russia’s next-door neighbor, and closely related in terms of race and linguistics, fought against communism because the family archetype is different.
Continuing on this theme, with historical examples that still hold to this day, we learn why the rapid spread of Islam was suddenly quailed: Islam quickly subsumed the immense Persian and Byzantine Empires (same family archetype), but was stymied by resistance from tiny states like Armenia and Northern Spain (different family archetypes). As Todd says: “Islam defeated giants but capitulated before dwarfs.”
Or, concerning the raging civil wars in western Africa we learn about family structures where the father’s numerous wives are passed along to the eldest son as inheritance. Or the fact that only the eldest son can marry and the younger sons are not supported in having their own families; hence the throngs of listless men eager to enlist with warlords who act as surrogate families.
Family archetypes act as a social infrastructure. “It reproduces itself generation to generation; the unconscious imitation of parents by their children is enough to ensure the perpetuation of the anthropological system [which] like the genetic cycle of DNA-RNA does not depend on self-consciousness. Its power derives precisely from its lack of consciousness and visibility, for it cannot be questioned.”
Here’s the part that directly refutes Jared Diamond’s entire hypothesis in Guns, Germs, and Steel: “Furthermore, it is completely independent of its economic and ecological environments. Many family systems exist simultaneously in areas whose climate, relief, geology and economy are completely different. It is impossible to perceive any global coincidence at all between ecological or economic factors and family types.”
Family archetypes have served as a societal infrastructure for Anglo-Saxon liberalism, communism, Muslim fundamentalism, socialism, Buddhism, and other forms. Todd concludes by saying that external factors don’t count for much: “This is a difficult conclusion for historians and sociologists to accept, for they have made determinism an article of faith, devoting themselves to the search for causes.”
With all of this in mind, as I write in 2025, it seems that globalism is an unrealistic dream. This is why the Arab Spring was doomed from the get-go (the flash mobs didn’t have the power base, money, or the support of the established family-culture), and why it is so asinine for the West’s leaders to assume that the rest of the world wants what the West wants. They don’t. They don’t share the same core values. And it all starts out with what kind of a family a child grows up in.
Summary: The average reader (in my opinion) will not need to remember the exact configuration of the seven family-society types, nor (excepting the major global powers) which countries tend to fall into this type or that. The main point is that humankind is a long way away from achieving a unified voice. Economic policies that favor fair trade rather than exploitation are usually a good means to bridge differences between cultures, but coercion through force or threat of force only creates resentment. Our ambassadors and diplomats need to be aware of lifestyle preferences outside of their own ideological bubbles.
October 10, 2024
This was one of the most captivating works of non-fiction that I have read in a long time. Todd conjures a surprisingly cohesive thesis that has aged remarkably well. I was utterly shocked to discover halfway through reading it that it was forty years old because it's so far ahead of its time. The way Todd is able to tie together vast amounts of seemingly unrelated data is crazy too. I highly recommend this book.
October 26, 2024
Truly a mind blowing read.
October 7, 2025
Absolutely fantastic book
September 22, 2024
I am giving this 5 stars just to boost any attention for Emmanuel Todd’s general work in the Anglo speaking world. Much of his work is fairly inaccessible, either not officially translated or very expensive and out of print. This work, which contains the basics of his immense theories of 7 primary family structures across the world, is well-worth the free read on the internet archive.
January 2, 2024
Although political implications of particular family structures sometimes seem too far-fetched, this book is a great study on diversity of family structures throughout the world. The biggest problem of Todd and anthropologists alike is that they are ideologically motivated blank slatists. However, when the author's findings are complemented by evolutionary approach everything makes perfect sense.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews