The trend toward smaller families may not be as modern as we think. Although women gatherers had four or five children, only two (36) survived childhood — the number found in the (37) American family today. Even our style of (38) children is starting to parallel hunting-gathering communities, in which girls and boys are permitted to play together from a young age, and consequently experiment at sex earlier and engage in (39) marriages. Clearly, we’ve moved away from the agricultural custom of arranged marriages and insulating girls at home to (40) their virginity. Moreover, the home is no longer the "place of production", as it was in farm days. We don’t make our soap, grow our vegetables and kill chickens for the dinner table. Instead, we hunt and gather in the grocery store and return to our "home base" to consume the food we have collected. No wonder we are so in love with fast food. It probably goes back to an eating strategy our primate relatives (41) over 50 million years ago. There’s no mistaking the (42) : Humans are once again on the (43) (44) . (45) By equality, I mean a more equitable division of power -- not that our roles will converge. Alike men and women have never been and never will be. (46) .
