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Resumo

In stressing the social advantages of the familial incest taboo, most explanations of the taboo ignore the fact that it makes marriage the enemy of the family. The stranger intruded by marriage often poses a threat to existing domestic relationships. The Chinese solution to this problem is to circumvent the taboo by adopting female children who are raised as wives for their foster parents' sons. The family choosing this form of marriage sacrifices prestige and dependable affinal ties, but by socializing their own daughters‐in‐law they preserve domestic harmony. The fact that many Chinese arrange marriages within the family as a means of preserving the family suggests that widely accepted explanations of the incest taboo exaggerate the dangers of incest and ignore the dangers of the taboo.

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