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Illegitimacy and Other Purported Family Universals

Southern Illinois University-Carbondale

Various features of the family have been argued to be universal among the world's societies. These include marriage and the family itself, male dominance and the division of labor by sex, incest taboos and exogamy, and the distinction between legitimate and illegiti mate birth. Each of these features except illegitimacy has a long history of theoretical and comparative investigation. The author argues that illegitimacy underlies each of the other family univer sals, in the sense that it is a given in their theoretical accounts. Hence it is more basic to family and kinship, and more primordial, than the others. Theoretical and comparative work on illegitimacy as a social norm and value is sorely needed, for without understand ing illegitimacy in this way, we cannot fully account for the other purported universal features of the family.

Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 27, No. 3-4, 212-231 (1993)
DOI: 10.1177/106939719302700303


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