Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/273

Rh weaning of the child takes place long after birth, usually some two years or, as the natives put it, "when it is able to say clearly bakam bamom (I want to eat, I want to drink)."

During the weaning the child is separated from the mother, and sleeps with its father or with its paternal grandmother. When it cries at night a dry breast is given to it, or some coconut milk. If it is fretful and loses condition, it is taken to some distant village where it has relatives, or from inland villages to the seaside, so that it may regain its normal health and good spirits. We have now brought the child up to the time when he will shortly join his playmates in the small children's world of the village. In a few years he will begin his own amorous life. Thus we have closed the cycle which runs through infantile love-making, youthful intrigues, settled liaison, marriage, and its results in the production and rearing of children. This cycle I have described in its main outline, giving special consideration to the sociological aspects as seen in prenuptial intercourse, marriage, kinship ideas, and the interplay of mother-right and paternal influence. In the following chapters it will be necessary to describe certain side-issues and psychological aspects, concerned more particularly with the erotic life before marriage.

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