p.273) The difficulty with polyandry...

p.273) The difficulty with polyandry: The greater difficulty that lies with polyandry, and which has been the cause of this custom not being successful in practice, is that there is a problem because the parentage of the children is not known. In this kind of conjugal relationship the connection between a father and his children is unspecified. Just as sexual communism could not find a foot-hold, so also polyandry could not make itself popular in any society worth the name.

The reason is that, as we have pointed out in one of the preceding articles, family-life, which is the establishment of a secure shelter for the next generation and a definite attachment between the previous and the future generations, is an instinctive demand of human nature. If, incidentally, and as an exceptional case, polyandry…