Note 55 — Chapter III

There is besides all this a very important difference between the marriages of the bourgeoisie and those of the proletariat as to their bases. The preponderating power of the man, which is strongly marked in bourgeois marriages, is less so in the proletarian, especially in those families where the woman provides for herself by paid labor. And private property, one of the “raisons d’être” of legal monogamy with the bourgeoisie, is lacking among the proletariat. This “raison d’être” is found with the latter in the necessity that the man should be charged with providing for the material needs of the children. Thus, in the proletariat the free union between a man and a woman generally meets with disapprobation only when there are offspring. The consequences are, first, that conjugal unions without legal sanction are not as much frowned upon by the proletarians as by the other classes; second, that the decision to dissolve the union, whether free or legal, is much more easily made among proletarians than among the bourgeoisie.55