#13 Family Studies (Jukes & Kallikak Family)

 

Module #13

Lesson Objectives:

At the end of this module, you should be able to:

1.  create concept maps of the family line of the Jukes’ and Kallikak’s Family; and

apply the theory in real-life situations.

JUKES FAMILY 

Advocates of the inheritance school, such as Henry Goddard, Richard Dugdale, and Arthur Estabrook, traced several generations of crime-prone families (referred to by pseudonyms such as the “Jukes” and the “Kallikaks”), finding evidence that criminal tendencies were based on genetics. Their conclusion: traits deemed socially inferior could be passed down from generation to generation through inheritance (Siegel, 2011). According to Richard Louis Dugdale in his book, “The Jukes": A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity, Also Further Studies of Criminals, stated the origin of the stock of the “Jukes”, there was a hunter, a fisher, a hard drinker, and a jolly-man named Max who was also a descendant of the Dutchess settler. Two of Max’s sons married two out of six sisters (Jukes). The whereabouts of the sixth sister is nowhere to be found. Of the five that are known, three had illegitimate children before marriage. One is called “Ada Juke” but publicly known by many as “Margaret, the mother of criminals”. Ada Juke had one bastard son, who is the progenitor of the distinctively criminal line; 52.40% or 84 of the descendants of Ada are into harlotry (prostitution). Dugdale as cited in Adler (2010) found out among the thousands of descendants that there were 280 paupers, 60 thieves, 7 murderers, 40 other criminals and 40% sons have venereal disease. With that, Dugdale (1841-1883) made some tentative inductions based on his study of the Jukes family line when it comes to  committing crime:

1.  The burden of crime is found in the illegitimate lines;

2.  The legitimate lines marry into a crime;

3.  The eldest child has a tendency to be the criminal of the family;

4.  Crime chiefly follows the male line; and,

5.  The longest lines of crime are along the line of the eldest.

 

Arthur H. Estabrook working out of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, New York gave a picture of the Jukes in 1915, almost forty years after Dugdale. Estabrook says that they have the "same" traits of feeblemindedness, indolence, dishonesty, and licentiousness (extravagance). He says this is because wherever they go they tend to marry persons like themselves. When they marry into better families they show stronger restraint (Foxe, 1945).

 

KALLIKAK FAMILY

 Dr. Henry H. Goddard (1866-1957), a prominent American psychologist together with Elizabeth

S.  Kite conducted a study entitled the “Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeblemindedness,” wherein they traced the family tree of revolutionary war soldier “pseudonym Martin Kallikak, Sr.” The former had an illegitimate son named as Martin Kallikak Jr., the great-great grandfather of Deborah (an 8-year old girl who was interviewed by Goddard). Deborah gained admission at the Training School at Vineland because she did not do well at school and might possibly be feeble-minded. And from him (Martin Kallikak, Jr.) have come 480 descendants: 143 were or are feeble-minded, while only 46 have been found normal. The rest are unknown or doubtful. Among these 480 descendants, 36 have been illegitimate. There have been 33 sexually immoral persons, mostly prostitutes. There have been 24 confirmed alcoholics, 3 epileptics, 82 died in infancy, 3 were criminal, 8 kept houses of ill fame. These people have married into other families, generally of about the same type, so that we now have on record and charted eleven hundred and forty-six individuals. Of this large group, Goddard have discovered that 262 were feeble-minded, while 197 are considered normal, the remaining 581 being still undetermined (Goddard, 1916).

FAQS

Q1. What is the main concern of the theory?

Answer: Theory’s main concern is to explain the repeated appearance of undesirable behaviors and that genes from the ascendants have something to do with the behavior of the descendants.

Q2. Is this theory reliable in all instances?

Answer: No, because there are a lot of reasons why a person commits a crime and one of those is inheritance.