1440 



HORMONAL REGULATIOX OF BEHAVIOR 



yams. The entire ritual cycle® stresses a 

 basic dichotomy between sex on the one 

 hand and food and growth on the other. 



Intercourse, before a cessation of the 

 menses indicates the beginning of impreg- 

 nation, is regarded as play, but once a 

 pregnancy is indicated, the married pair 

 has to copulate assiduously to build up the 

 fetus from semen and blood. Once the child 

 is regarded as established (indicated by 

 discoloration of the breasts), intercourse is 

 forbidden to the expectant mother; the fa- 

 ther may still have relationships with an- 

 other wife. There is no recognition of "life" 

 in the fetus, which is believed to sleep peace- 

 fully until the moment of birth when it 

 puts its hands by its sides and dives out. 



Males are forbidden to witness birth ; the 

 birth must take place over the edge of the 

 village, which is situated on a hilltop, in the 

 "bad place" also reserved for excretion, 

 menstrual huts, and foraging pigs. The 

 mother is attended by the woman who has 

 most recently given birth, recency of ex- 

 perience being regarded as more important 

 than age or skill. Only the mother, who sits 

 during childbirth on a specially prepared 

 bark basin, may touch the child and that 

 with a protective leaf; if she picks up the 

 child with her left hand, it will be left- 

 handed. The father stays within earshot, 

 and when told the sex of the child he gives 

 the signal to save it or to let it die by saying 

 "Wash it" or "Do not wash it." In the case 

 of female children, especially if there is 

 already a young female child in the house- 

 hold, the decision may be made not to keep 

 the child. This decision is viewed as protec- 

 tive in not putting too great a strain on 

 mother and siblings. Also, girls are less pre- 

 ferred because "they will marry away, while 

 a boy stays with his relatives always." 

 When the afterbirth has been expelled and 

 gathered up to be placed in a tree so that 

 pigs will not eat it, the mother goes up to 

 the village and lies down with the new 

 infant placed at her breast. The next morn- 

 ing, father and mother are installed together 

 in a house on the ground, for the birth 

 contamination is still too great for the 

 mother and child to enter the regular 

 dwelling, which is raised on piles, and the 



" The rituals are analyzed in detail in Mead 

 (1940). 



father lies down beside the mother in a 

 modified form of the observance technically 

 called couvade. Ceremonies to ensure the 

 safe growth of the child are performed. The 

 father takes a long peeled rod, brought in by 

 one of his brothers' wives (the official 

 nurses of the child), and calls in some of 

 their older children who are loitering about. 

 He rubs the rod over their strong backs and 

 then rubs it against the infant's back re- 

 citing a charm: "I give you vertebrae, one 

 from a pig, one from a snake, one from a 

 human being, one from a tree snake, one 

 from a python, one from a viper, one from 

 a child." He breaks the rod into six small 

 pieces and hangs them in the house so that, 

 should his foot break a twig as he walks 

 about, the infant's back will not be hurt. 



Child begetting is regarded as being just 

 as exhausting for men as for women, in 

 terms of the arduous copulation necessary 

 to accomplish the initial impregnation and 

 the work of feeding children after they are 

 born. Until the child is weaned, the father 

 is expected to sleep beside mother and child 

 and abstain from intercourse with the 

 child's mother and with his other wife or 

 wives also. The child needs the protection 

 of his father's presence to grow, and parents 

 later in life will reproach children, whose 

 behavior they deplore, by emphasizing how 

 long they kept these protective taboos which 

 are mentioned in the same breath with 

 working sago, growing yams, and hunting 

 to provide food for the child's later growth. 

 There is a special ceremony for the reap- 

 pearance of the menses, which adolescent 

 boys think corresponds to the resumption 

 of intercourse, but the taboo should be kept 

 until the child can walk. Parents whose 

 children are too closely spaced feel guilty 

 before community gossip. 



The incest taboo is phrased as "Your 

 own mother, your own sister, your own pigs, 

 your own yams which you have piled up, 

 you may not eat." Those who have been in 

 contact with birth, puberty, sex, or death 

 are in a state from which they must protect 

 themselves by taking great precautions 

 about food. The ideal male personality, like 

 the ideal female personality, is parental, 

 cherishing, intent on growing things- — a 

 young wife, a child, food — unaggressive, 

 reluctant to take the initiative, responsive 



