Father's Water equals Mother's Milk

The Conception of Parentage in Kaliai, West New Britain

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3914624
AutoresDorothy Ayers Counts (University of Waterloo, autor de correspondencia), David Reese Counts (University of Waterloo)
Año2010
Volumen14
Número1
Páginas46-56
Fecha de publicación2010-05-10
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaMankind (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0025-2328 • E-ISSN: 2204-2121
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1835-9310.1983.tb01250.x
OpenAlexW2161249565
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas7

This paper describes the traditional and modern ideology of conception and parenting among the Kaliai of West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. A pervasive set of beliefs hinges on male primacy and includes the assignment of the principal role in conception to the male. Females become kin to the children they bear only secondarily, through nurturance of their infants. Mother's milk and semen, then, are equivalent in their capacity to establish links of kinship. Despite the ideology of male dominance, food given is so loaded with significance for the establishment of kin ties that adoptive parents, male and female, must feed a nursing mother or risk the lapse of their claim on her infant. A mother's milk is therefore truly equal to a father's semen — his ‘water’ — and different aspects of Kaliai ideology are used more to justify past behaviour rather than to constrain it in the present

Biology · Dominance (genetics · Genealogy · Ideology · Kinship · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Genetics · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology