Why does bloodline go through the male side?

Question

After all the mother carries the baby and is the primary care taker of the baby. Also more often the not baby's blood is same as the mothers blood.
So why male blood line and not female bloodline.

Am I making any sense here?

I think Pagans had the right idea~!

Answer 1

Many cultures are matriarchal...we, on the other hand, are a sexist culture. There is a ton of reasons for this, but religion and politics are the primary reasons that most of the western world is patriarchal.

Answer 2

You're right. Many pagan religions follow the woman's bloodline. Not meaning, of course, that there's anything wrong with the man's. It's much easier to trace lineage through a woman than a man. The woman obviously births the baby, but the man may or may not be the father. They also valued women as the givers of birth and held them in high esteem.

The current tradition of following the male line stems from Christianity and the other masculine oriented religions. They regarded men as being much more valuable than women.

Answer 3

Bloodlines were traced through the male side for purposes of inheritance and property rights. In many ancient societies military service in defense of the tribe, village, city, or nation was tied into property ownership.
This resulted from the expense of weapons, even in the bronze age only the wealthier members of a community could be well armed.
Warfare was generally restricted to males due to weapons being muscle powered, and to the fact that males are expendable.
Therefor the connection was made, society needed defense. The defenders needed property. The defenders were male. Therefor, the males owned the property and inheritance when through the male line.
Regarding the Pagans, most Pagan societies were patriarchal. Where matriarchies existed it tended to be in lower technology cultures where all males were warriors. In a society were the males might die in large numbers fighting to defend the tribe or it's territory the only continuity would be provided by the females.
It all comes down to the need of ancient societies to fight for the territory needed by the community. Those that didn't have that means were destroyed by, or subsumed into the societies of those that did.

Answer 4

It's a matter of ownership. A man inherits a castle from his father, a woman comes into it (via a business arrangement) and his bloodline survives. I suppose it could be the other way, but then there aren't many women capable of defending their property by force. In barbaric times might makes right and men are physically more capable of physically enforcing their will.

That being said, it had to go one way or the other. This is the way it went in most cultures I'm aware of (including, contrary to popular opinion, most Jewish tribes as well).

I once had a g/f who bemoaned this. She thought all girls should retain the name of their mother. She liked her last name and wanted her daughter to have it. She failed to grasp the idea that the name she like so much was inherited from her father.

I know in Germany it's somewhat popular to have hyphenated names of both the parents. How is this going to look 3 or 4 generations down the line?

Answer 5

The answer lies in the mechanics of tribal warfare and male dominated societies. In some of the tribes that were recorded before disappearing the blood line and property were indeed traced from the mothers. (early Mohawk as an example) The system makes sense on one level because it is always pretty obvious who the mother was. Who the father was is much less certain. When women became dependant on the support of a specific man for survival of their children then paternity and monoandrous relationships became dominant instead of maternity and polyandry.
Polygamy in the modern mind seems to refer only to multiple wives while in the Mohawk precolumbian culture it meant multiple husbands.
Good luck on finding a good answer for why because I am still trying to understand it myself.

Answer 6

The patrilineal tracking of descent is purely a cultural convention. Not all cultures track bloodlines following the father.

In western culture, it's linked with the inheritance of lands and property - which have traditionally been held by the man, and passed to their eldest son.

There's no rational reason for it, but exists because there has to be some sort of system in place, and it kind of, sort of works.

Personally, I think matrilineal descent makes more sense (and you have less problems with questionable ancestry - even if you can't be sure who your father is, you're usually fairly certain about the mother).

Answer 7

It's a Roman idea that bloodlines run through the male side of the family. Funny thing is though when I was doing our family geneology I had an easier time tracing the matriarchs. Considering women tend to change their last names I would've thought it would be easier to trace the men.

Answer 8

It doesn't in all races or even all religions. Just a culture thing really...and not necessarily pagan. Jewish tradition holds that a child shares the racial heritage of the mother NOT the father...a child with a Jewish mother (and non Jewish father) is a Jew, a child with a Jewish father (and a non-Jewish mother) is NOT a Jew unless he or she converts...and even then, that child doesn't receive some of the honors reserved for people of "Jewish descent". Many Native American tribes (e.g. the Hopi and the Navajo) also follow a matrilineal pattern (for example, a groom becomes part of his wife's line and lives in her family group after marriage). India also follows a matrilineal structure.

Answer 9

Jesus (pbuh) son of Mary (pbuh)... he didn't have a father... what's his bloodline?
so the mother's bloodline counts too :)

Also Lady Fatima's (s.a) children are known as Sayyed n Sayyeda... this bloodline went through the mother's side as well :)

Answer 10

Yes and the baby get mitochondrial DNA from the mother only.

It would be easier to do historic research if the baby had the mothers last name instead of the fathers.

Answer 11

This is very new....
In ancient Greece and most of Europe the bloodline was traced through the mother.

You always knew who your mother was.

♥Blessed Be♥
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