Max Weber wrote:
While abandoning any attempt to systematically classify the various kinds of groups according to the structure, content and means of social action — a task which belongs to general sociology — we turn to a brief elucidation of those types of groups which are of the greatest importance for our exposition. Only the relationship of the economy to “society" — in our case, the general structures of human groups — will be discussed here … Contents and directions of social action are discussed only insofar as they give rise to specific forms that are also economically relevant. The resulting boundary is no doubt quite fluid. At any rate, we shall be concerned only with certain universal types of groups. What follows is only a general characterization …
… The relationships between father, mother and children, established by a stable sexual union, appear to us today as particularly “natural" relationships. However, separated from the household as a unit of economic maintenance, the sexually based relationship between husband and wife, and the physiologically determined relationship between father and children are wholly unstable and tenuous. The father relationship cannot exist without a stable economic household unit of father and mother; even where there is such a unit the father relationship may not always be of great import. Of all the relationships arising from sexual intercourse, only the mother-child relationship is “natural”, because it is a biologically based household unit that lasts until the child is able to search for means of subsistence on his own.
Next comes the sibling group, which the Greeks called homogalaktes [literally: persons suckled with the same milk]. Here, too, the decisive point is nor the fact of the common mother but that of common maintenance. Manifold group relationships emerge, in addition to sexual and physiological relationships, as soon as the family emerges as a specific social institution. Historically, the concept of the family had several meanings, and it is useful only if its particular meaning is always clearly defined.
Although the grouping of mother and children must be regarded as (in the present sense) the most primitive sort of family, it does not mean — indeed, it is unimaginable — that there ever were societies with maternal groupings only. As far as it is known, wherever the maternal grouping prevails as a family type, group relationships, economic and military, exist among men as well, and so do those of men with women(both sexual and economic). The pure maternal grouping as a normal, but obviously secondary, form is often found precisely where men’s everyday life is confined to the stable community of a "men's house," at first for military purposes, later on for other reasons. Men's houses can be found in various countries as a specific concomitant and a resultant of militaristic development.
One cannot think of marriage as a mere combination of sexual union and socialization agency involving father, mother, and children. The concept of marriage can be defined only with reference to other groups and relationships besides these. Marriage as a social institution comes into existence everywhere only as an antithesis to sexual relationships which are not regarded as marriage. The existence of a marriage means that (i) a relationship formed against the will of the wife's or the husband's kin will not be tolerated and may even be avenged by an organization, such as in olden times the kinsmen of the husband or of the wife or both. (2) It means especially that only children born of stable sexual relationships within a more inclusive economic, political, religious, or other community to which one or both parents belong will be treated, by virtue of their descent, as equal members of an organization — house, village, kin, political group, status group, religious group; while descendants who are a product of other sexual relationships will not be treated in such a manner. This and nothing else is the meaning of the distinction between birth in wedlock and out of wedlock. The prerequisites of a legitimate marriage, the classes of persons not allowed to enter into stable relationships with each other, the kinds of permission and kinds of kinship or other connections required for their validity, the usages which must be observed — all these matters are regulated by the "sacred" traditions and the laws of those groups. Thus, it is the regulations of groups other than mere sexual groupings and sibling communities of experience which endow the marriage with its specific quality. We do not intend to expound here the anthropologically very significant development of these regulations, since it is only their most important economic aspects which concern us.
Sexual relationships and the relationships between children based on the fact of their common parent or parents can engender social action only by becoming the normal, though not the only, bases of a specific economic organization: the household.
The household cannot be regarded as simply a primitive institution. Its prerequisite is not a "household" in the present-day sense of the word, but rather a certain degree of organized cultivation of soil.
The household does not seem to have existed in a primitive economy of hunters and nomads. However, even under the conditions of a technically well-advanced agriculture, the household is often secondary with respect to a preceding state which accorded more power to the inclusive kinship and neighborhood group on the one hand, and more freedom to the individual vis-a-vis the parents, children, grandchildren, and siblings on the other hand.
The almost complete separation of the husband's and wife's means and belongings, which was very frequent especially where social differentiation was low, seems to point in this direction, as does the occasional custom according to which man and wife were seated back to back during their meals or even took their meals separately, and the fact that within the political group there existed independent organizations of women with female chieftains alongside the men's organizations. However, one should not infer from such facts the existence of an individualistic primitive condition. Rather, conditions that are due to a certain type of military organization, such as the man's absence from the house for his military service, lead to a "manless" household management by the wives and mothers. Such conditions were residually preserved in the family structure of the Spartans, which was based on the man's absence from the home and separation of belongings.
The size and inclusiveness of the household varies. But it is the most widespread economic group and involves continuous and intensive social action. It is the fundamental basis of loyalty and authority, which in turn is the basis of many other groups. This "authority" is of two kinds: (1) the authority derived from superior strength; and (2) the authority derived from practical knowledge and experience.
It is, thus, the authority of men as against women and children; of the able-bodied as against those of lesser capability; of the adult as against the child; of the old as against the young. The "loyalty" is one of subjects toward the holders of authority and toward one another. As reverence for ancestors, it finds its way into religion; as a loyalty of the patrimonial official, retainer, or vassal, it becomes a part of the relationships originally having a domestic character.
In terms of economic and personal relationships, the household in its “pure", though not necessarily primitive, form implies solidarity in dealing with the outside and communism of property and consumption of everyday goods within (household communism).
The principle of solidarity in facing the outside world was still found in its pure form in the periodically contractually regulated households as entrepreneurial units in the medieval cities of northern and central Italy, especially those most advanced in capitalist economy. All members of the household, including at times even the clerks and apprentices who were members by contract, were jointly responsible to the creditors. This is the historic source of the joint liability of the owners of a private company for the debts incurred by the firm. This concept of joint liability was of great importance in the subsequent development of the legal forms of modern capitalism …
… The household [is] the most "natural" of the externally closed types of social action.
The Source:
Max Weber, Economy and Society, University of California Press, 1978 [pp. 356-360, 363]