Note 63 — Chapter III

In its essence this form of the family has been maintained down to the present day. The modifications it has undergone may be reduced to the two following.63 In the first place, in consequence of her improved position as wife, the mother has obtained a greater influence over the education of her children, though her power is, under the law, still subordinated in every way to that of her husband. In the second place the state manifests a continually increasing tendency to exert an influence over the relations between parents and their children. To begin with, the state imposes upon married parents the task of supporting and bringing up their children, and prohibits by the penal law slaying or abandoning them. The origin of these requirements must be found in the fact that the state is interested in having the children cared for, in order that the population may be as numerous as possible. (The state being once formed, while the causes of infanticide among primitive peoples have almost disappeared, the law has no occasion to make any great change in the existing situation.) If the married parents were not forced by the state to support and bring up their children64 it would be necessary to impose this task upon other institutions which do not exist in our present society. The state is not an institution for the public well-being; it is chiefly a means of maintaining the external order in the disorder which results from the complicated and muddled system of capitalistic production; it is before all a system of police. If it were otherwise, the state would consider it as one of its first duties to deprive parents of their rights over their children, if they did not perform their task, or did it badly, and would itself undertake the care and training of these children, as well of those whose parents were dead or otherwise absolutely unable to care for them. For society as a whole, as well as the children themselves, has a very great interest in this matter.