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Breast-feeding: An International and Historical Review
Published in Frank Falkner, Infant and Child Nutrition Worldwide:, 2021
Ancient folk knowledge of the contraceptive effects of breast-feeding must have been combined with awareness that it was not dependable. Breastfeeding surely made a difference, but a woman could not depend upon it. In some cultures, at least, frequent breast-feeding was combined with postpartum sexual abstinence to enhance its effectiveness. A variety of studies have shown that in many African cultures the combination provides effective birth-spacing (Page and Lestheaghe, 1981). In the chapter by Schoenmaeckers et al. (1981), for example, their review of the Human Relations Area files and other comparable sources, showed that in the 171 African tribal groups for which data were adequate, the duration of postpartum sexual abstinence ranged from 0 to 40 days in 22 groups, from 40 days up to a year in 37, and for a year or more in 72. In these cultures the birth interval was rarely less than two years and was occasionally as much as four years. Today in many of these same tribal groups, the polygyny that probably made prolonged postpartum abstinence acceptable to husbands, is becoming steadily less common. At the same time the practice of breast-feeding is declining, especially in urban areas, while utilization rates for modern contraceptives remain low. As a consequence birth intervals are becoming shorter and total fertility is increasing. The consequences of these changes arc not trivial, cither at the family level or at national or global levels.
Directions in Gender Research in American Indian Societies: Two Spirits and Other Categories
Published in Walter J. Lonner, Dale L. Dinnel, Deborah K. Forgays, Susanna A. Hayes, Merging Past, Present, and Future in Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2020
In traditional Lakota society, excessive sexuality was not condoned. Women practiced a long lactation period lasting up to 4 to 5 years; this custom persisted into the early reservation period. Of course, as the Lakota practiced sororal polygyny (sisters marrying one man), this social script might also have been a factor. It was a common belief that the Lakota woman’s life was difficult in a nomadic society and a yearly pregnancy was debilitating. When men pledged to dance in the sacred Sun Dance, they were expected to refrain from sex for a year before this yearly event. Early reservation records revealed one child per family in traditional families. A three-child family was considered “large.” Feminine sexuality has not been carefully examined in so-called “Warrior societies.”
Deception in Nonhumans
Published in Harold V. Hall, Joseph G. Poirier, Detecting Malingering and Deception, 2020
Harold V. Hall, Joseph G. Poirier
The deception hypothesis has been controversially attributed to the mating behavior of pied flycatcher birds. Female flycatchers typically do not mate with already mated males. Stenmark, Slagsvold, and Lifjeld (1988) observed that already mated male pied flycatchers hide their mating status by singing in secondary (non-nest) territory, thus increasing the probability of obtaining a second mate. The females would mate with already mated males when the females were apparently unaware that the male had mated in another territory. This observation led to the deception hypothesis being ascribed to the male flycatcher. Specifically, the hypothesis was that the males hid their existing mating status and deceived females into polygyny.
Consanguineous marriage and its relevance to divorce, polygyny and survival of marriage: evidence from a population-based analysis in Jordan
Published in Annals of Human Biology, 2021
Polygyny (having more than one wife per husband at a time) is also a prevailing cultural practice among Arab Muslims. The practice of polygyny varies widely across the world. The prevalence of polygyny is relatively high in Africa, varying between 20 and 50% in Sub-Saharan communities (Timaeus and Reynar 1998). In addition to socio-economic and cultural factors, polygyny is associated with high rates of divorce (Pison 1986). In most African communities, divorced and widowed women remarry rapidly, which is likely to be associated with the high rate of polygyny among African communities. Contrary to the popular belief of a high rate of polygyny among Arab Muslims, it is in fact relatively low among Arab Muslims compared with Sub-Saharan African societies. On average, the prevalence of polygyny among Arab Muslim societies does not exceed 12% of total marriages (Chamie 1986; Tabutin and Schoumaker 2005). Although a good number of studies have been done on the socio-economic and demographic impacts of polygyny, there is a dearth of studies examining the relationship between consanguinity and polygyny.
The Invention of Heterosexual Culture, by Louis-Georges Tin
Published in Journal of Homosexuality, 2018
Walter Scheidel did a survey of anthropological literature and found that until very recently, polygynous arrangements of marriage or cohabitation were the norm in world history, and strict monogamy remained an exception. Barely one in six of the 1,195 societies surveyed in the largest anthropological dataset have been classified as ‘monogamous’, while polygyny was frequently considered the preferred choice even if it failed to be common in practice. (Scheidel, 2009, p. 1)