Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/234

Rh it is so, how do they deal with the problem, what is the position of illegitimate children?

As to the first question, it is very remarkable to note that illegitimate children are rare. The girls seem to remain sterile throughout their period of licence, which begins when they are small children and continues until they marry; when they are married they conceive and breed, sometimes quite prolifically. I express myself cautiously about the number of illegitimate children, for in most cases there are special difficulties even in ascertaining the fact. To have prenuptial children is, as I have said, by an arbitrary ruling of doctrine and custom, considered reprehensible. Thus, out of delicacy towards people present, out of family interest or local pride, the existence of such children is invariably concealed. Such children are often adopted by some relative, and the elasticity of kinship terms makes it very difficult to distinguish between actual and adopted children. If a married man says, "This is my child," it may quite easily be his wife's sister's illegitimate baby. So that only an approximate estimate can be made even in a community with which one is very well acquainted. I was able to find roughly a dozen illegitimate children recorded genealogically in the Trobriands, or about one per cent. In this the illegitimate children of the ugly, deformed, or albino women mentioned above are not included, as none of them happens to figure in the genealogical records made by me.

Thus we are faced with the question: Why are there Rh