This paper presents research on the factors that promote romantic love as a basis for marriage in non-industrial societies. After a discussion of the previous literature on romantic love in ethnographic societies, the authors used the SCCS, EA, and data from eHRAF to create a data set of 109 cultures and then utilized multiple ordinal regression to test the relationship between different types of families and post-marital residence practices and the importance of romantic love in marriage. The findings show that monogamy is significantly correlated with romantic love, while nuclear family organization and neolocal post-marital residence are not significantly correlated. The presence of polygyny is found to lower the probability of romantic love being a basis for marriage. These findings contradict previous research, which found a relationship between non-neolocal post-marital residence and the presence of romantic love in marriage.

This paper is concerned with the variation in sexual behavior in humans. Authors test hypotheses regarding the relationships between sexual behaviors and beliefs concerning sex.

This article examines the relationships between family structure, type of mate-selection system, and romantic love as a basis for mate-selection. Analysis indicates that autonomous mate selection is more common in societies with nuclear family structure and neolocal residence patterns. Romantic love as a basis for mate selection is also more common with nuclear family organization, but it is negatively associated with neolocal residence patterns.

This study attempts to expand on the list of common customs employed to cope with childlessness in a marriage. Authors specifically examine the relationship between the presence of customs that help cope with childlessness and the severity of punishment for adultery. Results indicate a significant relationship between these two variables.

Authors use an exhange theory perspective to explain differences in sex restrictions during betrothal. Results indicate a positive association between the amount of wealth transferred and sex restrictions during betrothal.

This study investigates responses to childlessness in a cross-cultural sample. Solutions to childlessness appear universal, and magico-religious-ethnomedical solutions seem the most likely to be tried first. Empirical analysis also shows that women are blamed for childlessness more often than men, which the authors suggest could be due to women’s lower status.

This study explores the evolution of family systems in non-industrial agricultural societies based on environmental conditions. First, the authors conduct a multi-evolutionary simulation for each family system: absolute nuclear families (nuclear with unequal inheritance), egalitarian nuclear families (nuclear with equal inheritance), stem families (extended families with unequal inheritance), and community families (extended families with equal inheritance). Second, they use Spearman's rank correlation analyses to assess the relation between the 186 non-industrial societies and the types of inheritance relationships, either parent-child (nuclear or extended) or inter-sibling (strongly biased or equal). The results show that the four core family systems are related to wealth and land resources. Other relevant findings are that low polygyny is related to agricultural societies, higher poverty levels to extended families, and accelerated wealth accumulation to strongly biased inheritance.

This study negates the hypothesis that romantic love is unique to Euro-American culture and provides evidence of romantic love in the majority of cultures sampled.

This article explores the association between father-son relationships and bridewealth. Bridewealth becomes an instrument through which male parents impose their will on their male offspring. The hypotheses are supported by the results presented.

Based on work by Rosenblatt (1966), this article tests a hypothesis relating sexual freedom to romantic love. Findings suggest a relationship between premarital and extramarital sexual permissiveness equality for women and men and romantic love.