citing two examples, the Comanche and the Tallensi, taking as proof the fact that in- ... the Comanche âthey have no taboo, but simply an absence of incest.
Letters t o the Editor LACTATION AND PREGNANCY Sir : It is embarrassing to detect an anthropologist accepting an unvalidated hypothesis that contradicts an observable fact, but that such slips can occur when uncritical reliance is placed upon the dicta of a sister science is demonstrated by a statement in Mariam Kreiselman Slater’s “Ecological Factors in the Origin of Incest” (American Anthropologist 61 : 1042-1059). On p. 1052 we are told that “ovulation occurs only rarely during lactation,” and that as a consequence the prolonged nursing of infants in very primitive societies “lowers the birth rate” in these societies and restricts the number of children a woman can bear. The medical schools did teach, for a number of years, that lactogenic hormone inhibits the ovulation cycle. But the increasing incidence of breast feeding among better-educated American women (the class that maintains a close relationship with its physicians) has demonstrated that, whatever the laboratory behavior of hormones, it is by no means rare for a nursing mother to become pregnant (e.g., Gioiosa 1955). One can understand how doctors could accept the fallacy of sterility during lactation i n an era when nearly all their patients insisted on bottle feeding their infants, but an anthropologist, familiar with the numerous societies that forbid intercourse with nursing women in order to prevent too frequent pregnancies (and justify polygyny on this proscription), should have been more cautious. Dr. Slater should not be singled out for nalvetC concerning the pronouncements of our colleagues in allied fields. I n spite of the proliferation of theories linking facets of cultures to early childhood experiences, there is still no critique of Freud’s hypothesis on the importance of weaning that utilizes objectively-gathered data from nonEuropean groups and from lower class Europeans. Yet such data would considerably alter the Freudian dogma, for the consensus among women I have talked with (including elderly European immigrants, elderly Atsina and Blackfoot, and those of my contemporaries who have nursed their babies) is that the child will reject the breast between about eight and fourteen months of age and will want to drink from a cup instead. This rejection is one aspect of the toddler’s eager transition from babyhood to the greater independence of childhood. When the mother permits the child himself to set the time for weaning, and continues to keep the child in close proximity to herself (riding on her hip, playing beside her in the home) until he voluntarily ventures out: weaning is no more traumatic than is toilet training in “permissive” groups. A significant question that has been overlooked through adherence to the implications of Freudian theory is: How do so many primitive mothers persuade their children to continue nursing for two or three years? Many other aspects of childbearing and rearing would equally benefit from an objective anthropological study. I do not wish to attack Dr. Slater’s excellent analysis of the factors that could originate incest tabus. Her arguments remain effective, because societies that did not protect women by forbidding intercourse during lactation would weaken the mother’s health through the strain of too frequent childbearing, resulting in more miscarriages, poorer quality milk, and earlier deaths. Thus the net effect would still be a lower birth rate. But we should postulate that because women can breed yearly, whether or not
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they nurse, regulation of intercourse and patterns of child rearing may have been a feature of extremely primitive groups, and that as an outgrowth of the attempt by mothers to space their children a t an optimum interval (through continence, of course), polygyny may also have arisen early. ALICE B. KEHOE Regina, Saskatchewan REFERENCE CITED
GIOIOSA, KOSE 1955 Incidence of pregnancy during lactation in 500 cases. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Vol. 70:162-174.
PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERRENTS TO INCEST Sir : I would like to make some critical comments on the argument presented by Mariam Kreiselman Slater in her recent article “The Origin of Incest” (American Anthropologist 61 :1042-1059). Mrs. Slater proposes the hypothesis that early in the history of man there was no incest prohibition, but that incestuous marriages were nearly impossible. She argues that under rigorous conditions life expectancy is so short that parents would hardly survive past the time when their children arrived a t puberty, making parent-child unions impractical. As for sibling incest, Mrs. Slater argues that it was made unlikely by a probable four year age disparity between siblings. By the time the younger sibling reached puberty, it is assumed that the elder would already be committed and bound to a prior child-rearing liaison. Mrs. Slater infers that a t a later date, when ecological conditions were more benign and incest more practical, the incest prohibition arose to protect the well entrenched institutions which had been founded on previous conditions. First of all, Mrs. Slater’s vital statistics are drawn from contemporary tribes living under the very rigorous conditions which she assumes are probable for early man. Yet all of these tribes have the incest prohibition in some form. Mrs. Slater questions this, citing two examples, the Comanche and the Tallensi, taking as proof the fact that informants from both groups said incest was impossible or even laughable. She says of the Comanche “they have no taboo, but simply an absence of incest.” Surely one could find Americans who would assert that incest does not happen, or even could not happen in America. But for an informant to deny that Americans commit incest, or even to laugh a t the suggestion, is no proof that we lack a taboo. Second, Mrs. Slater equates incest with “intrafamily breeding units.” But they are not the same. The incest prohibition forbids sexual relations in the nuclear family, not merely marriage. Mrs. Slater quite correctly deplores a number of other authors’ explanations of the origin of the incest prohibition on the ground that they involve teleological assumptions. But is it not a similar logic which sees all sexual relations as directed toward the establishment of child rearing units? Surely sexual intercourse was as attractive then as now. Why not amuse oneself with mother; why insist upon a child rearing partner from the start?
