The family, though it has a biological origin, is in civilized communities a product of legal enactment. Marriage is regulated by law, and the rights of parents over their children are minutely determined. Where there is no marriage, the father has no rights, and the child belongs exclusively to the mother. But although the law means to uphold the family, it has in modern times increasingly intervened between parents and children, and is gradually becoming, against the wish and intention of law-makers, one of the chief engines for the break-up of the family system.
Source: Bertrand Russell :Marriage and Morals, 1929
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