h the
wife bore and reared the child. Amongst the Marathas of India, on the
contrary, "even to the well-to-do, to have many daughters is a curse."
The bride's father has to give a big dowry to the groom. If the fathers
have rank, but are poor, the girls often have to marry men who are
inferior in age or rank.[903]

+320. Individual and group interest.+ It follows that, in all variations
of the life conditions, in all forms of industrial organization, and at
all stages of the arts, conjunctures arise in which the value of
children fluctuates, and also the relative value of boys and girls turns
in favor, now of one, now of the other. In the examination of any case
of the customs of abortion and infanticide chief attention should be
directed to these conjunctures. On the stage of pastoral-nomadic life,
or wherever else horde life existed, it appears that numerous offspring
were regarded as a blessing and child rearing, in the horde, was not
felt as a burden. It was in the life of the narrower family, whatever
its form, that children came to be felt as a burden, so that "progress"
caused abortion and infanticide. Further progress has made children more
and more expensive, down to our own times, when "neomalthusianism,"
although unavowed, exists in fact as a compromise between egoism and
child rearing. All the folkways which go to make up a population policy
seem to imply greater knowledge of the philosophy of population than can
be ascribed to uncivilized men. The case is one, however, in which the
knowledge is simple and the acts proceed from immediate interest, while
the generalization is an unapprehended result. The mothers know the
strain of child bearing and child rearing. They refuse to undergo it,
for purely egoistic reasons. The consequent adjustment of the population
to the food supply comes of itself. It was never foreseen or purposed by
anybody. The women would not be allowed by the men to shirk motherhood
if the group needed warriors, or if the men wanted daughters to sell as
wives, so that the egoistic motive of mothers never could alone suffice
to make folkways. It would need to be in accord with the interest of the
group or the interest of the men. Abortion and infanticide are primary
and violent acts of self-defense by the parents against famine, disease,
and other calamities of overpopulation, which increase with the number
which each man or woman has to provide for. In time, the customs get
ghost sanction,