agricultural societies tended to cultivate strong and often exclusive bonds between parents and children. They strove to instill in their children a sense of duty toward their parents, and, with few exceptions, they placed a high value on marital fidelity—especially on the part of women—to ensure that the paternity of a man’s child was never in doubt. In this way, the value of children to their parents in agricultural societies led over time to a culture of fierce possessiveness toward children and to severe restrictions on the sexual freedom of women. In fact, these cultural traits became so
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