Grandparent
Grandparents are the parents of a person's father or mother – paternal or maternal. Every sexually-reproducing living organism, not a genetic chimera has a maximum of four genetic grandparents, eight genetic great-grandparents, sixteen genetic great-great-grandparents, thirty-two genetic great-great-great-grandparents, etc. In the history of modern humanity, around 30,000 years ago, the number of modern humans who lived to be a grandparent increased, it is not known for certain what spurred this increase in longevity but results in the improved medical technology and living standard, but it is believed that a key consequence of three generations being alive together was the preservation of information which could otherwise have been lost. In cases where parents are unwilling or unable to provide adequate care for their children, grandparents take on the role of primary caregivers; when this is not the case, in traditional cultures, grandparents have a direct and clear role in relation to the raising and nurture of children.
Grandparents are share 25 % genetic overlap. A step-grandparent can be the step-parent of the parent or the step-parent's parent or the step-parent's step-parent; the various words for grandparents at times may be used to refer to any elderly person the terms gramps, grandfather, nan, maw-maw, paw-paw and others which families make up themselves. When used as a noun and grandmother are used, although forms such as grandma/grandpa, granny/granddaddy or nan/pop are sometimes used; when preceded by "my...", all forms are common. All forms can be used in plural. In writing and Grandmother are most common, but rare when referring to a grandparent in person. In speech and Grandma are used in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. In Britain, United States, New Zealand and prevalent in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Nana, Nanny and Granny and other variations are used for grandmother in both writing and speech. In many parts of India, maternal grandparents are called Nani.
Paternal grandparents are called Dada and Dadi. One's mother's grandparents are called Par-nana. On similar lines, father's grandparents are called Par-dada. Numerous other variants exist, such as Gramp, Grampa, Granda, Granddad, Granddaddy, Pop, Pap and Pawpaw for grandfather. Gogo can be used for etc.. Given that people may have two living sets of grandparents, some confusion arises from calling two people "grandma" or "grandpa", so two of the other terms listed above are used for one set of grandparents. Another common solution is to call grandparents by their family names. In North America, many families call one set of grandparents by their ethnic names. In Friesland, a common pair is beppe. Mandarin-speaking Chinese Americans refer to maternal grandparents as wài pó and wài gōng and paternal grandparents as nǎi nǎi and yé yé. In the Philippines, grandparents are called lola, respectively. Languages and cultures with more specific kinship terminology than English may distinguish between paternal grandparents and maternal grandparents.
For example, in the Swedish language there is no single word for "grandmother". However, the other Scandinavian languages and Norwegian, use words which specifies the kinship like in Swedish, as well as using common terms similar to grandmother; the parents of a grandparent, or the grandparents of a parent, are called the same names as grandparents with the prefix great- added, with an additional great- added for each additional generation. One's great-grandparent's parents would be "great-great-grandparents". To avoid a proliferation of "greats" when discussing genealogical trees, one may use ordinals instead of multiple "greats"; this system is used by some genealogical websites such as Geni. One may use cardinal numbers for numbering greats, for example, great-great-great-grandmother becomes 3×-great-grandmother. Individuals who share the same great-grandparents but are not siblings or first cousins are called "second cousins" to each other, as second cousins have grandparents who are siblings.
"third cousins" would have great-grandparents who are siblings. The use of the prefix "grand-" dates f
Father
A father is the male parent of a child. Besides the paternal bonds of a father to his children, the father may have a parental and social relationship with the child that carries with it certain rights and obligations. An adoptive father is a male who has become the child's parent through the legal process of adoption. A biological father is the male genetic contributor to the creation of the infant, through sexual intercourse or sperm donation. A biological father may have legal obligations to a child not raised by him, such as an obligation of monetary support. A putative father is a man whose biological relationship to a child is alleged but has not been established. A stepfather is a male, the husband of a child's mother and they may form a family unit, but who does not have the legal rights and responsibilities of a parent in relation to the child; the adjective "paternal" comparatively to "maternal" for a mother. The verb "to father" means to procreate or to sire a child from which derives the noun "fathering".
Biological fathers determine the sex of their child through a sperm cell which either contains an X chromosome, or Y chromosome. Related terms of endearment are dad, pappa and pop. A male role model that children can look up to is sometimes referred to as a father-figure; the paternity rights of a father with regard to his children differ from country to country reflecting the level of involvement and roles expected by that society. Paternity leaveParental leave is when a father takes time off to support his newly born or adopted baby. Paid paternity leave first began in Sweden in 1976, is paid in more than half of European Union countries. In the case of male same-sex couples the law makes no provision for either one or both fathers to take paternity leave. Child custodyFathers' rights movements such as Fathers 4 Justice argue that family courts are biased against fathers. Child supportChild. Paternity fraudAn estimated 2% of British fathers experiences paternity fraud during a non-paternity event, bringing up a child they wrongly believe to be their biological offspring.
In all cultures fathers are regarded as secondary caregivers. This perception is changing with more and more fathers becoming primary caregivers, while mothers go to work or in single parenting situations, male same-sex parenting couples. In the West, the image of the married father as the primary wage-earner is changing; the social context of fatherhood plays an important part in the well-being of men and all their children. In the United States 16% of single parents were men as of 2013. Involved fathers offer developmentally specific provisions to their children and are impacted themselves by doing so. Active father figures may play a role in reducing behavior and psychological problems in young adults. An increased amount of father–child involvement may help increase a child's social stability, educational achievement, their potential to have a solid marriage as an adult, their children may be more curious about the world around them and develop greater problem solving skills. Children who were raised with fathers perceive themselves to be more cognitively and physically competent than their peers without a father.
Mothers raising children together with a father reported less severe disputes with their child. The father-figure is not always a child's biological father and some children will have a biological father as well as a step- or nurturing father; when a child is conceived through sperm donation, the donor will be the "biological father" of the child. Fatherhood as legitimate identity can be dependent on domestic behaviors. For example, a study of the relationship between fathers, their sons, home computers found that the construction of fatherhood and masculinity required that fathers display computer expertise. Roman law defined fatherhood as "Mater semper certa; the recent emergence of accurate scientific testing DNA testing, has resulted in the family law relating to fatherhood experiencing rapid changes. In medieval and most of modern European history, caring for children was predominantly the domain of mothers, whereas fathers in many societies provide for the family as a whole. Since the 1950s, social scientists and feminists have challenged gender roles in Western countries, including that of the male breadwinner.
Policies are targeting fatherhood as a tool of changing gender relations. In early human history there have been notable instances of patricide. For example: Tukulti-Ninurta I, Assyrian king, was killed by his own son after sacking Babylon. Sennacherib, Assyrian king, was killed by two of his sons for his desecration of Babylon. King Kassapa I creator of the Sigiriya citadel of ancient Sri Lanka killed his father king Dhatusena for the throne. Emperor Yang of Sui in Chinese history killed his father, Emperor Wen of Sui. Beatrice Cenci, Italian noblewoman who, according to legend, killed her father after he imprisoned and raped her, she was condemned and beheaded for the crime along with her brother and her stepmother in 1599. Lizzie Borden killed her father and her stepmother with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892, she was acquitted. Iyasus I of Ethiopia, one of the great warrior emperors of Ethiopia, was deposed by his son Tekle Haymanot in 1706 and subsequentl
Romance (love)
Romance is an emotional feeling of love for, or a strong attraction towards, another person, the courtship behaviors undertaken by an individual to express those overall feelings and resultant emotions. Although the emotions and sensations of romantic love are associated with sexual attraction, romantic feelings can exist without expectation of physical consummation and be subsequently expressed; the term romance originates with the medieval ideal of chivalry as set out in the literature of chivalric romance. Romantic love is a relative term that distinguishes moments and situations within intimate relationships as contributing to a deepened relational connection; the addition of "drama" to relationships of close and strong love. Anthropologist Charles Lindholm defined love as "an intense attraction that involves the idealization of the other, within an erotic context, with expectation of enduring sometime into the future"; the word "romance" comes from the French vernacular where it indicated a verse narrative.
The word was an adverb of Latin origin, "romanicus," meaning "of the Roman style". European medieval vernacular tales and ballads dealt with chivalric adventure, not bringing in the concept of love until late into the seventeenth century; the word romance developed other meanings, such as the early nineteenth century Spanish and Italian definitions of "adventurous" and "passionate," which could intimate both "love affair" and "idealistic quality." Anthropologists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss show that there were complex forms of courtship in ancient as well as contemporary primitive societies. There may not be evidence, that members of such societies formed loving relationships distinct from their established customs in a way that would parallel modern romance. Before the 18th century, many marriages were not arranged, but rather developed out of more or less spontaneous relationships. After the 18th century, illicit relationships took on a more independent role. In bourgeois marriage, illicitness may have become more formidable and to cause tension.
In Ladies of the Leisure Class, Rutgers University professor Bonnie G. Smith depicts courtship and marriage rituals that may be viewed as oppressive to modern people, she writes "When the young women of the Nord married, they did so without illusions of love and romance. They acted within a framework of concern for the reproduction of bloodlines according to financial and sometimes political interests." Subsequent sexual revolution has lessened the conflicts arising out of liberalism, but not eliminated them. Anthony Giddens, in The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality and Eroticism in Modern Society, states that romantic love introduced the idea of a narrative to an individual's life, telling a story is a root meaning of the term romance. According to Giddens, the rise of romantic love more or less coincided with the emergence of the novel, it was that romantic love, associated with freedom and therefore the ideals of romantic love, created the ties between freedom and self-realization. David R. Shumway states that "the discourse of intimacy" emerged in the last third of the 20th century, intended to explain how marriage and other relationships worked, making the specific case that emotional closeness is much more important than passion, with intimacy and romance coexisting.
One example of the changes experienced in relationships in the early 21st century was explored by Giddens regarding homosexual relationships. According to Giddens, since homosexuals were not able to marry they were forced to pioneer more open and negotiated relationships; these kinds of relationships permeated the heterosexual population. The conception of romantic love was popularized in Western culture by the concept of courtly love. Chevaliers, or knights in the Middle Ages, engaged in what were non-physical and non-marital relationships with women of nobility whom they served; these relations were elaborate and ritualized in a complexity, steeped in a framework of tradition, which stemmed from theories of etiquette derived out of chivalry as a moral code of conduct. Courtly love and the notion of domnei were the subjects of troubadours, could be found in artistic endeavors such as lyrical narratives and poetic prose of the time. Since marriage was nothing more than a formal arrangement, courtly love sometimes permitted expressions of emotional closeness that may have been lacking from the union between husband and wife.
In terms of courtly love, "lovers" did not refer to those engaging in sexual acts, but rather, to the act of caring and to emotional intimacy. The bond between a knight and his Lady, or the woman of high stature of whom he served, may have escalated psychologically but ever physically. For knighthood during the Middle Ages, the intrinsic importance of a code of conduct was in large part as a value system of rules codified as a guide to aid a knight in his capacity as champion of the downtrodden, but in his service to the Lord. In the context of dutiful service to a woman of high social standing, ethics designated as a code were established as an institution to provide a firm moral foundation by which to combat the idea that unfit attentions and affections were to be tolerated as "a secret game of trysts" behind closed doors. Therefore, a knight trained in the substance of "chivalry" was instructed, with especial emphasis, to serve a lady most honorably, with purity of heart and mind. To that end, he committed himself to the welfare of both Lord and Lady with unwavering discipline and devotion, while at the same time, presuming to uphold core principles set forth in the code by the religion by which he followed.
Relig
Friendship
Friendship is a relationship of mutual affection between people. Friendship is a stronger form of interpersonal bond than an association. Friendship has been studied in academic fields such as communication, social psychology and philosophy. Various academic theories of friendship have been proposed, including social exchange theory, equity theory, relational dialectics, attachment styles. Although there are many forms of friendship, some of which may vary from place to place, certain characteristics are present in many types of such bonds; such characteristics include affection. Friendship is an essential aspect of relationship building skills; the understanding of friendship in children tends to be more focused on areas such as common activities, physical proximity, shared expectations. These friendships provide opportunity for practicing self-regulation. Most children tend to describe friendship in terms of things like sharing, children are more to share with someone they consider to be a friend.
As children mature, they are more aware of others. They gain the ability to empathize with their friends, enjoy playing in groups, they experience peer rejection as they move through the middle childhood years. Establishing good friendships at a young age helps a child to be better acclimated in society on in their life. Based upon the reports of teachers and mothers, 75% of preschool children had at least one friend; this figure rose to 78% through the fifth grade, as measured by co-nomination as friends, 55% had a mutual best friend. About 15% of children were found to be chronically friendless, reporting periods without mutual friends at least six months. Potential benefits of friendship include the opportunity to learn about problem solving. Coaching from parents can be useful in helping children to make friends. Eileen Kennedy-Moore describes three key ingredients of children's friendship formation: openness and shared fun. Parents can help children understand social guidelines they haven't learned on their own.
Drawing from research by Robert Selman and others, Kennedy-Moore outlines developmental stages in children's friendship, reflecting an increasing capacity to understand others' perspectives: "I Want It My Way", "What's In It For Me?", "By the Rules", "Caring and Sharing", "Friends Through Thick and Thin." In adolescence, friendships become "more giving, frank and spontaneous." Adolescents tend to seek out peers who can provide such qualities in a reciprocal relationship, to avoid peers whose problematic behavior suggest they may not be able to satisfy these needs. Relationships begin to maintain a focus on shared values and common interests, rather than physical concerns like proximity and access to play things that more characterize childhood. A study performed at the University of Texas at Austin examined over 9,000 American adolescents to determine how their engagement in problematic behavior was related to their friendships. Findings indicated that adolescents were less to engage in problem behavior when their friends did well in school, participated in school activities, avoided drinking, had good mental health.
The opposite was found regarding adolescents. Whether adolescents were influenced by their friends to engage in problem behavior depended on how much they were exposed to those friends, whether they and their friendship groups "fit in" at school. A study by researchers from Purdue University found that friendships formed during post-secondary education last longer than friendships formed earlier. Friendship in adulthood provides companionship, affection, as well as emotional support, contributes positively to mental well-being and improved physical health. Adults may find it difficult to maintain meaningful friendships in the workplace. "The workplace can crackle with competition, so people learn to hide vulnerabilities and quirks from colleagues. Work friendships take on a transactional feel. Most adults value the financial security of their jobs more than friendship with coworkers; the majority of adults have an average of two close friends. Numerous studies with adults suggest that friendships and other supportive relationships do enhance self-esteem.
Older adults continue to report high levels of personal satisfaction in their friendships as they age, as the overall number of friends tends to decline. This satisfaction is associated with an increased ability to accomplish activities of daily living, as well as a reduced decline in cognitive abilities, decreased instances of hospitalization, better outcomes related to rehabilitation; the overall number of reported friends in life may be mediated by increased lucidity, better speech and vision, marital status. As on review phrased it: Research within the past four decades has now found that older adults reporting the highest levels of happiness and general well being report strong, close ties to numerous friends; as family responsibilities and vocational pressures lessen, friendships become more important. Among the elderly, friendships can provide links to the larger community, serve as a protective factor against depression and loneliness, compensate for potential losses in social support previously
Dowry
A dowry is a transfer of parental property, gifts or money at the marriage of a daughter. Dowry contrasts with the related concepts of bride dower. While bride price or bride service is a payment by the groom or his family to the bride's parents, dowry is the wealth transferred from the bride's family to the groom or his family, ostensibly for the bride. Dower is the property settled on the bride herself, by the groom at the time of marriage, which remains under her ownership and control. Dowry is an ancient custom, its existence may well predate records of it. Dowries continue to be expected and demanded as a condition to accept a marriage proposal in some parts of the world in parts of Asia, Northern Africa and the Balkans. In some parts of the world, disputes related to dowry sometimes result in acts of violence against women, including killings and acid attacks; the custom of dowry is most common in cultures that are patrilineal and that expect women to reside with or near their husband's family.
Dowries have long histories in Europe, South Asia and other parts of the world. A dowry is the transfer of parental property to a daughter at her marriage rather than at the owner's death. A dowry establishes a type of conjugal fund; this fund may provide an element of financial security in widowhood or against a negligent husband, may go to provide for her children. Dowries may go toward establishing a marital household, therefore might include furnishings such as linens and furniture. Locally, dowry is called dahej in Hindi, varadhachanai in Tamil, jehaz in Urdu and Arabic, joutuk in Bengali, jiazhuang in Mandarin, çeyiz in Turkish, dot in French, daijo in Nepali, in various parts of Africa as serotwana, saduquat, or mugtaf. Anthropologist Jack Goody's comparative study of dowry systems around the world utilizing the Ethnographic Atlas demonstrated that dowry is a form of inheritance found in the broad swath of Eurasian societies from Japan to Ireland that practice "diverging devolution", i.e. that transmit property to children of both sexes.
This practice differs from the majority of Sub-Saharan African societies that practice "homogenous inheritance" in which property is transmitted only to children of the same sex as the property holder. These latter African societies are characterized by the transmission of the "bride price," the money, goods or property given by the groom or his family to the parents of the bride. Goody has demonstrated a historical correlation between the practices of "diverging devolution" and the development of intensive plough agriculture on the one hand, homogeneous inheritance and extensive hoe agriculture on the other. Drawing on the work of Ester Boserup, Goody notes that the sexual division of labour varies in intensive plough agriculture and extensive shifting horticulture. In sparsely populated regions where shifting cultivation takes place, most of the work is done by women; these are the societies. Boserup further associates shifting horticulture with the practice of polygamy, hence bridewealth is paid as a compensation to her family for the loss of her labour.
In plough agriculture farming is men's work. In contrast, plough agriculture is associated with private property and marriage tends to be monogamous, to keep the property within the nuclear family. Close family are the preferred marriage partners. There is a scholarly debate on Goody's theory. Sylvia Yanagisko argues, for example, that there are a number of societies including parts of Japan, Southern Italy, China, that do not support Goody's claim that dowry is a form of female inheritance of male property, she notes that Goody's is an evolutionary model in which these historical variables may not be the decisive factors today. Susan Mann argues, in contrast, with examples where in late Imperial China, dowry was a form of female inheritance. Stanley J. Tambiah argued that Goody's overall thesis remained pertinent in North India, although it required modification to meet local circumstances, he points out that dowry in North India is only used as a bride's conjugal fund, that a large part goes directly to the groom's joint family.
This would seem to discount Goody's model, except that in North India, the joint family is composed of the groom's parents, his married brothers and unmarried sisters, their third generation children. This joint family controlled this part of the dowry, which they used to help fund their own daughter/sister's dowries, but when the parents die, the joint family partitions, this jointly held wealth was divided among the married sons, such that the bride's dowry given to the joint family returned to her and her husband as their "conjugal fund."Schlegel and Eloul expanded on Goody's model through further statistical analysis of the Ethnographic atlas. They argue that a major factor in determining the type of marriage transaction is the type of property controlled by the household. Bridewealth circulates property and women, is typical of societies where property is limited. Dowry concentrates property and is found in property owning classes or commercial or landed pastoral peoples; when families give dowry, they not only ensure their daughter's economic security, they "buy" the best possible husband for her, son-in-law for themselves.
In the oldest available records, such as the Code of Hammurabi in ancient Babylon, the dowry is described as an already-existing custom. Daughters did not inherit anything fr
Love
Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection and to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of meanings is that the love of a mother differs from the love of a spouse, which differs from the love of food. Most love refers to a feeling of strong attraction and emotional attachment. Love is considered to be a virtue representing human kindness and affection, as "the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another", it may describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, one's self or animals. Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts. Love has been postulated to be a function to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species. Ancient Greek philosophers identified five forms of love: familial love, friendly love or platonic love, romantic love, guest love and divine love.
Modern authors have distinguished further varieties of love: unrequited love, infatuated love, self-love, courtly love. Asian cultures have distinguished Ren, Bhakti, Mettā, Ishq and other variants or symbioses of these states. Love has additional spiritual meaning; this diversity of uses and meanings combined with the complexity of the feelings involved makes love unusually difficult to define, compared to other emotional states. The word "love" can have a variety of distinct meanings in different contexts. Many other languages use multiple words to express some of the different concepts that in English are denoted as "love". Cultural differences in conceptualizing love thus doubly impede the establishment of a universal definition. Although the nature or essence of love is a subject of frequent debate, different aspects of the word can be clarified by determining what isn't love. Love as a general expression of positive sentiment is contrasted with hate; as a less-sexual and more-emotionally intimate form of romantic attachment, love is contrasted with lust.
As an interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is sometimes contrasted with friendship, although the word love is applied to close friendships or platonic love.. Abstractly discussed, love refers to an experience one person feels for another. Love involves caring for, or identifying with, a person or thing, including oneself. In addition to cross-cultural differences in understanding love, ideas about love have changed over time; some historians date modern conceptions of romantic love to courtly Europe during or after the Middle Ages, although the prior existence of romantic attachments is attested by ancient love poetry. The complex and abstract nature of love reduces discourse of love to a thought-terminating cliché. Several common proverbs regard love, from Virgil's "Love conquers all" to The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love". St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, defines love as "to will the good of another." Bertrand Russell describes love as a condition of "absolute value,".
Philosopher Gottfried Leibniz said that love is "to be delighted by the happiness of another." Meher Baba stated that in love there is a "feeling of unity" and an "active appreciation of the intrinsic worth of the object of love." Biologist Jeremy Griffith defines love as "unconditional selflessness". People can be said to love an object, principle, or goal to which they are committed and value. For example, compassionate outreach and volunteer workers' "love" of their cause may sometimes be born not of interpersonal love but impersonal love and strong spiritual or political convictions. People can "love" material objects, animals, or activities if they invest themselves in bonding or otherwise identifying with those things. If sexual passion is involved this feeling is called paraphilia. A common principle that people say they love is life itself. Interpersonal love refers to love between human beings, it is a much more potent sentiment than a simple liking for a person. Unrequited love refers to those feelings of love.
Interpersonal love is most associated with interpersonal relationships. Such love might exist between family members and couples. There are a number of psychological disorders related to love, such as erotomania. Throughout history and religion have done the most speculation on the phenomenon of love. In the 20th century, the science of psychology has written a great deal on the subject. In recent years, the sciences of psychology, anthropology and biology have added to the understanding the concept of love. Biological models of sex tend to view love as a mammalian drive, much like thirst. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist and human behavior researcher, divides the experience of love into three overlapping stages: lust and attachment. Lust is the feeling of sexual desire. Three distinct
Romantic friendship
A romantic friendship, passionate friendship, or affectionate friendship is a close but non-sexual relationship between friends involving a degree of physical closeness beyond that, common in the contemporary Western societies. It may include for example holding hands, hugging, giving massages, sharing a bed, or co-sleeping, without sexual intercourse or other physical sexual expression. In historical scholarship, the term may be used to describe a close relationship between people of the same sex during a period of history when homosexuality did not exist as a social category. In this regard, the term was coined in the 20th century in order to retrospectively describe a type of relationship which until the mid-19th century had been considered unremarkable but since the second half of the 19th century had become more rare as physical intimacy between non-sexual partners came to be regarded with anxiety. Romantic friendship between women in Europe and North America became prevalent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with the simultaneous emergence of female education and a new rhetoric of sexual difference.
The study of historical romantic friendship is difficult because the primary source material consists of writing about love relationships, which took the form of love letters, poems, or philosophical essays rather than objective studies. Most of these do not explicitly state the nonsexual nature of relationships; the content of Shakespeare's works has raised the question of. Although twenty-six of Shakespeare's sonnets are love poems addressed to a married woman, one hundred and twenty-six are addressed to an adolescent boy; the amorous tone of the latter group, which focus on the boy's beauty, has been interpreted as evidence for Shakespeare's bisexuality, although others interpret them as referring to intense friendship or fatherly affection, not sexual love. Among those of the latter interpretation, in the preface to his 1961 Pelican edition, Douglas Bush writes: Since modern readers are unused to such ardor in masculine friendship and are to leap at the notion of homosexuality… we may remember that such an ideal exalted above the love of women, could exist in real life, from Montaigne to Sir Thomas Browne, was conspicuous in Renaissance literature.
Bush cites Montaigne, who distinguished male friendships from "that other, licentious Greek love", as evidence of a platonic interpretation. The French philosopher Montaigne described the concept of romantic friendship in his essay "On Friendship." In addition to distinguishing this type of love from homosexuality, another way in which Montaigne differed from the modern view was that he felt that friendship and platonic emotion were a masculine capacity: Seeing that the ordinary sufficiency of women cannot answer this conference and communication, the nurse of this sacred bond: nor seem their minds strong enough to endure the pulling of a knot so hard, so fast, durable. Lesbian-feminist historian Lillian Faderman cites Montaigne, using "On Friendship" as evidence that romantic friendship was distinct from homosexuality, since the former could be extolled by famous and respected writers, who disparaged homosexuality; some historians have used the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed as another example of a relationship that modern people see as ambiguous or gay, but, most to have been a romantic friendship.
Lincoln and Speed shared a bed in their youth and maintained a lifelong friendship. David Herbert Donald pointed out that men at that time shared beds for financial reasons. Anthony Rotundo notes that the custom of romantic friendship for men in America in the early 19th century was different from that of Renaissance France, it was expected that men would distance themselves and physically somewhat after marriage; such distancing is still practiced today. Proponents of the romantic friendship hypothesis make reference to the Bible. Historians like Faderman and Robert Brain believe that the descriptions of relationships such as David and Jonathan or Ruth and Naomi in this religious text establish that the customs of romantic friendship existed and were thought of as virtuous in the ancient Near East, despite the simultaneous taboo on homosexuality; the relationship between King David and Jonathan, son of King Saul, is cited as an example of male romantic friendship.
The dictionary definition of hypergamy at Wiktionary
