Father's Water equals Mother's Milk

The Conception of Parentage in Kaliai, West New Britain

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3914624
AutoresDorothy Ayers Counts (University of Waterloo, autor correspondente), David Reese Counts (University of Waterloo)
Ano2010
Volume14
Fascículo1
Páginas46-56
Data de publicação2010-05-10
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoMankind (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0025-2328 • E-ISSN: 2204-2121
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1835-9310.1983.tb01250.x
OpenAlexW2161249565
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências 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