CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF BEHAVIOR 



1467 



gestation (Rossel, Armstrong, 1928). The 

 child may be thought of as the product of 

 a heaven-sent soul and earth introduced by 

 an angel at the time of intercourse (Pales- 

 tine Arabs, Granqvist, 1947) , or it may be 

 variously compounded of semen and vaginal 

 fluid (latmul, IVIcad, 1935), or semen and 

 blood. The semen may be seen as an irritant 

 (Bali, Mead, 1939b) or as food for tlie fetus 

 (Arapesh, Mead, 1935). The child may in- 

 herit entirely from its mother or different 

 parts of itself from each parent — spirit from 

 its father, flesh from its mother (Ashanti, 

 Rattray, 1923), bone from its father, blood 

 from its mother (Arapesh, Mead, 1935) — or 

 the tie to the mother may depend entirely 

 on the postdelivery tie established by breast 

 feeding (Palestine Arabs, Granqvist, 1947). 

 The regulation of sex activities during ges- 

 tation has an equal variety; intercourse may 

 be thought necessary for some weeks to 

 build up the child (Arapesh, Mead, 1935), 

 repeated intercourse may be believed to 

 produce twins (Mundugumor, Mead, 1935), 

 or all intercourse may be forbidden with the 

 pregnant woman (latmul, Mead, 1935). A 

 woman normally permitted to have sex re- 

 lations with her husband's brothers may be 

 confined to intercourse with her husband 

 during pregnancy (Baganda, Roscoe, 1911). 

 Recognition of "life" may be highly insti- 

 tutionalized, or there may be no recognition 

 that the fetus moves at all before birth 

 (Arapesh, Mead, 1935). Pregnancy cravings 

 are very widely recognized. Morning sick- 

 ness may be conventionalized as occurring 

 only for the first 3 months, only for the first 

 child, or as an unusual event which happens 

 to only a few women. However it is viewed, 

 although most women will conform to ex- 

 pectancy, a few women do not, thus pro- 

 viding some evidence for the physiologic 

 basis for this response to pregnancy in some 

 women. 



Childbirth itself is so overlaid with ritual 

 and social usage that no biologically given 

 detail can be extricated from the mass of 

 complex, often nonfunctional, behavior 

 (Ford, 1945). The mother may be required 

 to do everything herself, no hand but hers 

 permitted to touch the newborn. Midwives 

 with great experience may be allowed to 

 give manual assistance or may be limited 

 to magical practices. The father may be re- 



quired to be present and to support his wife, 

 or he may be forbidden to see her for weeks; 

 he may be put to bed with her, or in her 

 place. The infant may be put immediately 

 to the mother's breast, or may be fed by a 

 wet nurse or starved until all trace of colos- 

 trum has disappeared from the mother's 

 milk. It may be smeared with clay or but- 

 ter or oil, and its nose and eyes cleaned by 

 the mouth or hand of the officiant midwife 

 or with some material. The cord may be cut 

 close or far, tied or left hanging; it may be 

 expected to fall off (according to the sacred 

 number of the particular tribe) on the 

 fourth day or the fifth. The infant may be 

 carried close in the mother's arms, or in a 

 tray, bag, basket, cradle board, sling, swing, 

 etc. Wherever we find human beings, at no 

 matter how simple a level, all these matters 

 have already been highly stylized and no 

 simple biologically given pattern is discerni- 

 ble. Pain in childbirth is stressed and ex- 

 pected by some peoples, minimized by oth- 

 ers. Legends in which men find women who 

 hitherto have lived without men and teach 

 the women the correct methods of child- 

 birth are widespread. (A modern version of 

 this plot detail is found in the "discovery" 

 of natural childbirth in recent years by 

 British physicians who are now indoctrinat- 

 ing women against the incorrect use of anes- 

 thetics (Read, 1953) .) 



Every society deals with the problem of 

 maintaining marriages; very few insist on 

 monogamy for life after a single choice, as 

 has been the custom in Europe for so many 

 centuries. Premarital experimentation and 

 divorce, permitted if there are no children, 

 are both widespread, and there are many 

 extensions of sexual access: brothers of hus- 

 band, sisters of wife, members of an age 

 grade, etc. In general, monogamy is the 

 most persistent form of marriage : polygamy 

 is usually patterned as a series of marriages 

 so that a man must build a house or work a 

 garden or construct a canoe for each wife as 

 if she were a single wife. Polyandry is very 

 rare and seems less adapted to the adequate 

 care and production of children than polyg- 

 amy, in which the wife with a young baby 

 is often relieved of other conjugal and 

 household duties by her co-wife. 



The nature of the span of female repro- 

 ductivity, l)eginning after menarche and 



