Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/232

Rh matter with others, suggesting that one at least of these children could not be his, my interlocutors did not understand what I meant.

Thus we see, from these instances, that children born in wedlock during a prolonged absence of the husband, will yet be recognized by him as his own children, that is as standing to him in the social relation of child to father. An instructive parallel to this is supplied by cases of children born out of wedlock, but during a liaison as exclusive as a marriage. In such a case, the physiological father would be obvious to us; yet a Trobriander would not recognize the children as his, and further, since for a girl it is dishonourable to bear children before she is married, he might refuse to marry her. Of this I had a good example: Gomaya, one of my early informants, whom we know already (ch. iv, sec. 6), had a liaison with a girl called Ilamweria (pl. 39). They lived together and were going to be married, but she became pregnant and gave birth to a girl, whereupon Gomaya abandoned her. He was quite convinced that she had never had any relations with another boy, so, if any question of physiological fatherhood had come into his mind, he would have accepted the child as his own, and married the mother. But, in accordance with the native point of view, he simply did not inquire into the question of fatherhood; it was enough that there was prenuptial motherhood.

Thus of children borne by a married woman, her husband is the father ex officio, but for an unmarried mother, there is "no father to the child." The father is defined socially, and in order that there may be fatherhood there Rh