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Manthropology

Page 21

by Peter McAllister


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  Spare the rod

  The phrase “Spare the rod and spoil the child” has its origin in a biblical verse, Proverbs 13:24. It has justified many a savage caning for unfortunate Christian school children, yet some ancient tribal disciplinarians took the advice to even greater extremes. The Tswana people of South Africa, for example, literally applied the rod, sometimes with fatal consequences.

  The bogwera initiation rite of the Tswana featured a disciplinary ritual in which young boys were made to confess their sins and were then punished for them. Punishment was meted out with thorny sticks nicknamed dichoshwane, “ants,” or dinotshe, “bees.” Miscreants were whipped on the body until the ants and bees ripped open their skin. Serious wrongdoers were stretched out on their back with their head tilted while their bared throat was repeatedly hit—it was this use of the dichoshwnne that sometimes resulted in death.

  Just as savage were Rwala Bedouin Arab fathers of the Syrian desert. They disciplined their sons by stabbing them with daggers—or sabers in the case of particularly weighty offences. Crying out was specifically forbidden and prompted further punishment.

  Yet even Tswana and Rwala boys, if they survived, eventually escaped their father’s control. Ancient Roman men, on the other hand, were subject to their father’s total authority for their entire lives. Even elderly Roman senators, grandfathers themselves, might find themselves subject to an autocratic father’s whim. Thanks to the legal institution of patria potestas, too, this was no joke: Roman dads could seize their sons’ properties and income, force them to divorce, and even kill them with impunity. The founder of Rome, Brutus, is reputed to have done exactly that, executing two of his own sons for military incompetence.

  * * *

  In the endurance contest of time spent with the kids, it seems, the Aka have it all over the Western “new father.” They spend three times as long with their children as Western dads do, and at much closer range to boot. What about the second marker of the “new father” then: involvement with one’s infants, rather than just one’s older kids? This symbolizes “new fathering” because the earlier “involved father” didn’t do it—if a child wasn’t old enough to don a baseball mitt or throw a football it was still, by definition, it’s mother’s concern. A quick glance at the statistics shows that modern dads have indeed jettisoned this attitude: in fact, they’ve reversed it. The figure of 1.21 hours per day spent caring for their children, given earlier, relates to children under the age of 6; for children over the age of 6 that figure drops to 47 minutes per day. True, the under-6 measure is not a precise one, but it nonetheless indicates that dads these days spend more time with their infants than their older kids, not less. The only proviso I would add is that those low levels of housework show that modern dads still aren’t quite up to all aspects of caring for their infants. Be that as it may, how does the modern dad’s improved connection with his infant kids compare to that of his Aka competitors?

  Hewlett’s figures show that Aka dads are much more intensely involved with their infant children than the Western “new father.” In the first four months of their infants’ lives Aka dads hold them for 22 percent of their time in camp (the percentage is lower when the men are out on a hunt). This figure declines as the infants get older, but is still at 14.3 percent when the infants are eighteen months old. This is not surprising, given the words of one Aka father quoted by Hewlett: “We Aka look after our children with love, from the minute they are born to when they are much older.”7 Hewlett found, what’s more, that this is no idle boast: Aka men really do undertake a lot of infant care. When babies fuss at night it is most often their fathers who take them outside to soothe them. It is also often their fathers who wipe the infants off with leaves after they urinate or defecate (frequently on the father himself). They kiss their infants more often than the children’s mothers do. Aka men have no qualms either about assuming other supposedly female duties such as chewing their babies’ food for them and feeding them. One might think, of course, that Aka men can’t do quite everything for their babies that their mothers can—nurse them, for example. Incredibly, however, it turns out that Aka men do suckle their children.

  This fact was brought to the world’s attention in a newspaper interview with Hewlett in 2005.8 The paper reported that the professor had occasionally witnessed male breastfeeding during his fieldwork with the Aka. Skeptics raised the sensible question of how men could breastfeed without breasts, but the mystery only deepened with Hewlett’s insistence that he had, in fact, witnessed frequent instances of gynecomastia (male breast growth) among young Aka Pygmy men. While this sounds remarkable, it is supported by the reports of frequent gynecomastia among the unrelated Mbuti Pygmy people of Eastern Congo. What’s more, male lactation (milk production) is not an unknown phenomenon. It occurs, even in the absence of identifiable breasts, in some groups of Western men suffering from a hormonal imbalance, such as cancer patients and concentration-camp survivors. The two major hormones involved are prolactin, which stimulates milk production in the breast, and estrogen, which in turn stimulates the production of prolactin and the growth of breast tissue. Putting these facts all together, could it be, then, that Aka dads have truly crossed the final frontier into breastfeeding, super-dad stardom?

  To find out, I contacted Professor Hewlett directly. He quickly set me straight—yes it’s true that Aka dads frequently offer their babies a nipple, but this is simply, he says, for comfort, not for breastfeeding. Given that mechanical stimulation of the nipples, even men’s nipples, does generate prolactin production, however, might such suckling not produce lactation in the occasional Aka father? Hewlett had never witnessed this, and after asking several Aka men directly had, in fact, been told that Aka men couldn’t breastfeed, since their “nipples were too small.” So what about the curious male breast growth that Hewlett, and others, had noticed among the Aka and other Pygmy men? Clearly, some Aka men, at least, experience surges of estrogen sufficient to prompt breast growth. But this, Hewlett thought, was probably related to diet or peculiarities of Pygmy growth, rather than Aka fathering and suckling. I’m not so sure, however. A 2001 study by the Mayo Clinic found that Canadian men who were expectant fathers developed elevated levels of estrogen and reduced testosterone. It doesn’t seem too far a stretch, then, to theorize that the caring, paternal style of Aka men is a contributing cause of high estrogen levels and gynecomastia among them (though it could just as easily be the other way around). Suffice it to say that, for whatever reason, a substantial minority of Aka men carry a visible symbol of their caring, fatherly abilities on their own bodies.9

  In any case, although Aka Pygmy men are apparently unique in their suckling behavior, they are not unique among ancient and tribal men in care of infant children. Other tribal fathers took very loving care of their infant children too. Malinowski, for example, made it clear that those Trobriand Island fathers began their devoted attention in their child’s early infancy:

  He (the father) will fondle and carry a baby, clean and wash it, and give it the mashed vegetable food…The father performs his duties with genuine natural fondness…looking at it with eyes of such love and pride as are seldom seen in those of a European.10

  Accounts of Melanesian Lesu fathers, similarly, spoke in glowing terms of their connection with their infant children:

  The father and mother are equally tender towards the child…A man plays with his child…talking pure foolishness to the baby…Or they may croon one of the dance songs to the infant.11

  Malinowski pointed out that such tender paternal behavior tended to occur in matrilineal societies (those tracing descent through the female line), since fathers in those societies were not the primary male authority figures (a child’s mother’s brother was). Patrilineal descent, on the other hand, tended to discourage close paternal affection, as in the case of the African Kipsigis people, whose fathers don’t hold their infants at all for their first year of life. Clearly we modern fathers a
re, to some extent, throwing off our patrilineal roots in moving towards a model of greater infant care. Yet these figures show we still have a long way to go before we get anywhere near the efforts of Aka, Trobriand Island, or Lesu dads.

  Rounds one and two, then, seem to have gone to the Aka and their support crew of tribal super-dads. But what of the two remaining markers of the “new father”—child-care rather than play, and equal treatment for sons and daughters? To take the first of these first, why exactly is a greater proportion of care as opposed to play considered a desirable trait of the modern “new father”? It’s for two reasons: first, it indicates a willingness to do the heavy lifting of childcare (though what was that about the housework?), and second, it shows a high level of intimacy and comfortableness with one’s children. At first glance, the figures for the involvement of the “new father” in actual child care do seem to have improved dramatically. According to a University of Chicago study, employed, married fathers went from spending seventeen minutes a day caring for their kids in 1965 to fifty-one minutes in 1998 (the latest figures available).12 Yet the same study also showed that the ratio of care to play actually remained the same—that is, play had increased even more dramatically.13 Sure, dads were giving more time overall to their kids, but they still preferred to spend that time in play, rather than care—diaper changing, feeding, and other tasks. Another study by the University of Michigan, similarly, showed that playing with his kids still takes up 39 percent of a modern dad’s total involvement, as opposed to 28 percent for caring activities. For mothers, on the other hand, play takes up just over 21 percent of their total involvement. There is also a marked difference in the nature of mothers’ and fathers’ play: dads far more frequently engage in vigorous, physical interaction with kids than mothers do.

  The comparison with Aka dads here is revealing, for despite their extraordinary levels of involvement with their kids, Aka fathers almost never play with them. Hewlett reported that he witnessed just one episode of father–child play in 264 hours of recorded observations. Aka children, when interviewed, also reported that their fathers rarely played with them. We are so conditioned to think of a father’s role as a playful one that this would sound distressingly neglectful to us, were it not for all the other figures on Aka dads’ superior care. So what’s going on? There are two main reasons for the non-playful nature of Aka dads’ interaction with their kids. First, that they have a strong role in teaching their children, which Western men have largely surrendered to the state. Aka training is a daily, minute-by-minute affair and starts from a remarkably early age, as Hewlett writes:

  I was rather surprised to find parents teaching their eight-to-twelve-month-old infants how to use small pointed digging sticks, throw small spears, use miniature axes with sharp metal blades, and carry small baskets.14

  Aka dads don’t need to invent games to play with their kids, since their whole life with them is, effectively, a teaching game. Beyond that reason however, lies another: the sheer intimacy of the understanding that Aka fathers have for their children. They spend so much time caring for them, Hewlett writes, that they become expert at knowing what their child needs and when. An Aka father can, it seems, read his young child far better than a modern Western father, even a “new” dad, can read his child. Looked at in this way, the preference for play shown by Western fathers is not an inbuilt, biological drive, as is sometimes stated, but a simple product of not knowing exactly what to do. Hewlett points to a major difference between European and Aka fathers in support of this: European men almost always initiate their interactions with their child, he says, while Aka men almost never do. They don’t have to—their deep familiarity with their kids allows them to interact comfortably, easily, and naturally.

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  Kids on parade

  Child beauty contests have had a bad reputation since the tragic murder of JonBenét Ramsay in 1996. Yet they have continued to grow to the level where, according to the Pageant Center Web site, twenty-five thousand such contests are held every year, generating in excess of a billion dollars.15 The Pageant Center claims that child beauty parades were invented in Florida during the 1960s, yet it might surprise them to know that some tribal peoples had, by that time, already been holding child beauty contests for hundreds of years.

  In ancient Hawaii, doting grandparents apparently lined up their pa’i punahele, “little favorites,” for periodic ho’okelakela, “beauty contests.” These, however, were quite different from today’s extravaganzas of fake spray tan, baby’s breath, and pint-sized satin evening gowns. In line with the Polynesian love of corpulence (see “When fat was the new black”) pa’i punahele were stuffed with food to make them as fat as possible. They also might have had trouble tottering down the catwalk, since pa’i punahele were carried everywhere and not allowed to walk for the first few years of their lives. Even so, these arrangements were still probably healthier than modern-day child beauty contests; a study published in the Journal of Eating Disorders found that girls who had been contestants in child beauty pageants were more likely to have significant body-dissatisfaction issues.16

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  At this point things are looking grim for the “new father”—3 out of 4 rounds have now gone to his Aka rivals. Can he fight a rearguard action on the last supposed marker of his “new” fatherhood: equal treatment for sons and daughters? Initial signs, once again, seem promising. The Western world has none of the female infanticide that so skews sex ratios in some Asian and African countries (112 boys are born for every 100 girls in South Korea, thanks to the advent of sex selection based on ultrasound). Yet look a little deeper and some intriguing patterns emerge. Despite the absence of any tendency to abort female fetuses, 48 percent of American expectant fathers still say they want a son, as opposed to 19 percent who hope for a daughter. After the child is born, too, subtle differences in treatment set in, possibly not even consciously noted by the dad himself. Fathers are, for example, more motivated to work harder, and for more money, once they have had a son. They spend more time playing with them, too—an hour a day during weekdays as opposed to just half an hour with their daughters.17 (The discrepancy becomes even more pronounced in the case of stepfathers, who spend more time with sons than daughters in every category of child-care, not just play.) The difference in fathers’ attitudes to sons and daughters can even affect the man’s marriage. Fathers are more likely to marry the mother of their child, for example, if that child is a son. One study of couples who had learned the sex of their child through ultrasound even found that those couples with sons were more likely to marry before the baby was born. The list goes on: parents with sons are more likely to start a university fund; levels of happiness and marital harmony are higher for couples with male children, and divorce rates lower; when couples do divorce, the father is more likely to seek custody if sons are involved, rather than daughters. In each one of these measures the difference is small, but marked. The figures don’t lie—the Western “new father,” despite his undoubtedly sincere protestations of equal love, does not treat his daughters exactly the same as his sons. Do the Aka show the same tendency?

  Interestingly, we don’t have any data on this problem—not a scrap.18 Professor Hewlett didn’t even address the issue in his fieldwork among the Aka. So completely absent is the question that his excellent book on Aka dads, Intimate Fathers, doesn’t even carry index entries for sons and daughters. This may, of course, be a simple matter of research focus, but I think something deeper is going on. Hewlett’s study does not investigate differences in Aka dads’ treatment of sons and daughters, I’d suggest, because there are none. Aka society is so blind to status differences between men and women that the idea of treating boys differently to girls doesn’t occur to them. The evidence lies in Hewlett’s descriptions of male and female roles in Aka life. These are, he writes, characterized by an extremely high level of equality:

  Aka women challenge men’s authority on a regular basis and are influentia
l actors in all kinds of decision making. Women participate in decisions about camp movement, extramarital affairs, bad luck on the hunt, and sorcery accusations…the capabilities of men and women are very similar, and therefore tasks can be reversed easily.

  Aka women participate actively in supposedly male activities such as net hunting, and are, in fact, responsible for killing the small antelopes and other prey that the men chase into the net (they don’t, however, take part in the rarer spear hunts for elephant and wild boar). The high status of Aka women is shown through the lyrics of one of their popular dingboku, “women’s dance songs”: “the penis is not a competitor, it has died already! The vagina wins!” It is also evidenced by the fact that neither Hewlett nor any of the other anthropologists who have worked with the Aka witnessed incidents of male violence toward women. (Interestingly, there was some female-on-male violence, generally from wives who cut their husbands’ faces with knives or hit them with burning logs for sleeping with another woman. Even here, though, a more usual female tantrum involved simply tearing their shared hut down.) So while I admit that we have no direct data on Aka dads’ treatment of daughters compared to sons, I’m still, regrettably, able to award them probable victory in this round, too.

 

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