What is often overlooked is the work he and Friedrich Engels did concerning the family and the economic nature of the relationship between men and women. The affect of economics on men and women is illustrated by Native American Paula Gunn Allen in one of the essays in chapter nine. This represents the state of humanity before technological advancements. It is the primeval tribal nature of humanity that Engels saw as being universal and which placed the woman at the center of human social structure, supreme in her power as the symbolic and physical embodiment of the procreative powers. In primitive societies, women rule the longhouse.
Men marry into the woman's family.
Not only do children remain with their mothers, but also the child is only certain of his descent through his mother. Marx and Engels point out that it is only when men are able to create wealth to pass on to children by the use of technology that the woman loses her central power. With the advance of technology, wealth represented by the products of the male work gives the man the power to demand assurance that his children who inherit his wealth are indeed his. The relationship becomes economic in nature. This is exactly what is seen when primitive societies such as the Native Americans are encroached upon by a more technologically advanced society.