Major stages in the individual’s life cycle were traditionally marked by the family, and the intrusion of society came only in the past century or so. It was the family that celebrated the birth and the marriage and remembered the death of its members: the state did not record any of these events. And it was the family which held the individual to account and which controlled the individual’s choice of spouse and career path. Of course the family was composed of individuals, but the interests of the family group took precedence over those of the individuals, in contrast to the pre-eminence of the individual in modern urbanised societies. There was more importance attached to males than to females, because the family was patrilineal, and surname, succession and inheritance normally passed only through males.
