Until 1860, a history of the family could hardly be imagined. The historical sciences were still under the domain of the five books of Moses. The patriarchal form embodied in these books was unreservedly admitted as the oldest and was identified with the bourgeois family of that time; in this way it would seem that the family had not had a historical development: at most it was admitted that in primitive times there was sexual promiscuity.

The study of the family begins in 1861, with Bachofen's Maternal Law, later they will come: Tylor, McLennan, Lubbock, Until the American sociologist Morgan appears on the scene with new and decisive theories in his Systems of consanguinity and affinity (1871) and another fundamental work Ancient Society (1877) and it is precisely to him that we owe the revolution of ideas, although at the time his ideas were sabotaged as novel, Morgan was the first to try to introduce a precise order in the prehistory of The humanity.

The origin of the family, private property and the State, published in 1884, traces a vision of the evolution of human societies. Engels introduces in this work unpublished observations of Karl Marx, comparing the fundamental ideas of Capital with the ideas of Morgan, among others: he combats traditional theories, according to which the modern monogamous family, private property and the State are the permanent forms of social existence. In this work Engels will take us through the different stages through which the human being has passed until reaching civilization. According to him, private property, the State and the monogamous family appeared at a certain moment in human history and should disappear when the causes that presided over their birth disappear. Here the author stigmatizes the social structure that is based on domestic slavery (declared or simulated) of women. Under this analysis, the conclusion is reached that with private property, the forms of the family based on exploitation and oppression will disappear.