Symbolic Inaction in

Rituals of Gender and

Procreation among the
Garifuna (Black Caribs)
of Honduras
JANET M. GHERNELA

The concept of the couvade accompanies the development of an-

thropology since its beginnings. As such, it provides us with a case
study of ethnological interpretation over one century. As the an-
thropologist’s creation, the concept “‘couvade”’ provides us with a
mirror in which to examine our discipline.
This paper first reviews the wide range of practices to which the
term couvade has referred. It then briefly outlines the history of ex-
planation of these practices, giving emphasis to the position, held by
various researchers from 1861 to the present, that the couvade is a
form of maternity simulation.
Taking the case of the Garifuna (Black Caribs) of Honduras, I
argue, instead, that examination of meaning in parent rituals among
the Garifuna reveals that the couvade is not merely a representation

JANET M. CHERNELA is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Florida International Uni-

versity, Miami.

52
 SYMBOLIC INACTION AMONG THE GARIFUNA 53

of gender equivalence, an idea commonly put forth to explain cou-

vade behavior, but a complex of code logic and ritual modalities.
When indigenous classifications are considered, it is apparent that
the couvade is a dramatization of maleness, not femaleness, and
manifests opposition rather than equivalence between the genders.
Key in this analysis are several contrastive sets of meanings and
roles: male/female, husband/wife, father/child, husband/mother’s
brother, growth/decay, blood retention and its opposite, blood ex-
pulsion.
Throughout the early presentation I cite examples that show the
prurient interest and contempt with which Western scholars have
approached the subject of male birth practices. This phenomenon is
in part a subset of the study subject as “exotic other,” as well as the
result of particular biases in the gender representations of Western
society.

THE TERM COUVADE IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL USAGE

The 19th-century British anthropologist Edward Tylor referred

to the couvade as “The laughing stock of mankind” (1888:256).
With similar disdain, Im Thurn called the couvade, ““Among the
strangest [customs] ever invented by the human brain” (1883:217).
These authors, like many who followed them, used the term couvade
to refer to a father’s ritual behavior associated with the birth of his
child.
The tendency to conceptualize the couvade as a homogeneous
entity has proceeded with relatively little scrutiny throughout the
history of anthropological writing. There has been little attempt to
delineate a domain of behavior to which the term might be referred,
or to question the term’s analytic or descriptive utility.
There is little agreement as to what exactly may be called ‘‘cou-
vade.” For example, the label ““couvade”’ has been used to refer to
behavior that is prenatal or postnatal, as well as behavior that ac-
companies birth. It has also been used to refer to behavior that rep-
resents or commemorates birth in general, without relation to a par-
ticular birth. Moreover, while couvade behavior mostly refers to
male behavior, it is also used to refer to the behaviors of women and
children. Examples of each of these usage categories will be dem-
onstrated below.
54 ETHOS

One common usage of the term couvade applies it to husband’s be-

havior during a wife’s pregnancy. The literature contains several
cases in which males exhibit psychosomatic illnesses during the pre-
natal period (for a general overview see Lipkin and Lamb 1982). In
one study, for example, the term is used to refer to fathers-to-be in
Texas who complain of symptoms such as toothaches (Rubel and
Spielberg 1966).
Parenthood behaviors practiced by males at the time of birth are
also called by the term couvade. The most convincing etymology of
the term traces its derivation from the Basque couvade, from the Old
French verb couver, meaning “‘to hatch” (Reik 1914:27). This term,
like the German mannerkindbett, meaning “male child-bed,”’ carries
the notion that the father’s ritual behavior is a form of birth enact-
ment.
Frazer (1910) reports a number of such rites. In southern India,
to cite one of Frazer’s cases, Dravidian husbands are said to have
dressed as their wives during labor. One of Frazer’s important
points, related to his main exegesis on sympathetic magic, is that
the husband “absorbs”’ the pain of his wife through the feigning en-
acted in ritual dressing. Such imitative birth enactments were not
limited to husbands. Frazer describes a custom attributed to the
Dyaks of Borneo in which a shaman mimes a woman’s labor:
He [the shaman] . . . pretends to be the expectant mother; a large stone attached
to his stomach by a cloth wrapt round his body represents the child in the womb,
and, following the directions shouted to him by his colleagues on the real scene of
operations, he moves this make-believe baby about on his body in exact imitation
of the movements of the real baby til the infant is born. [1951(1922):16]!

In addition to the wide range of diverse ritual activities during

pregnancy and birth, a number of postpartum practices also come
under the single rubric, ‘““couvade.”’ Among some California Indi-
ans, the father was said to lie groaning and bandaged after the birth
of his child, while his wife attended him (Bancroft 1876:391). Still
another practice referred to as couvade is postpartum ritual scari-
fication, such as that practiced by new parents among the Amazoni-
an Siriono (Holmberg 1950). Sets of prohibitions, when associated
with birth or the postpartum period, have also been referred to as
couvade.? The postpartum taboos that rule out routine behavior
among the speakers of South American Cariban languages are also
called couvade.
 SYMBOLIC INACTION AMONG THE GARIFUNA 55

The same term, couvade, has been used to describe an annual birth-
simulation ritual said to have been practiced in Northern Ireland.
One report recounts how invaders of Northern Ireland in 200 B.C.
found the warriors confined to bed in observation of an annual five-
day ritual of simulated labor pains (Wood-Martin 1902:40).
Finally, the term couvade has been extended to the activities or re-
strictions of actors other than adult males. Fock (1963) includes re-
strictions on mother’s behavior within the frame of couvade and
Voegelin extends the term to refer to a weaned child’s longing for
the mother’s breast (Voegelin 1960).
In short, the range of practices subsumed under the category
“couvade”’ is so diverse as to render the term of little value. Expla-
nations of the couvade have likewise suffered from lack of rigor.

BRIEF HISTORY OF EXPLANATIONS OF THE COUVADE

Nineteenth-century writers, contemplating the scope of diversity

in human behavior, sought to find explanations for those which
most diverged from their own. The couvade had particular signifi-
cance to Bachofen, for example, whose model of social evolution
proceeds from maternal to paternal rule. Bachofen argued (1861:17,
255) that in the latter stages of maternal rule, males declared their
legal rights over their offspring in the form of the couvade and thus
began the transition toward paternal rule. This explanation in-
volves two inferences: first, that the couvade is a declaration of de
jure rights over a child; and second, that the couvade is associated
with the transition from maternal organization to paternal organi-
zation.
Bachoten’s theory had numerous followers (among them, Bastian
1886, Giraud-Teulon 1884, and Simmons 1937). The most influen-
tial among his followers, however, was Tylor. After taking an op-
posing viewpoint (1865), Tylor finally concluded that the couvade
indeed marked the crucial turning point from female to male rule.
“This apparently absurd custom . . . proves to be .. . the very sign
and record of that vast change [from a matriarchal to a patriarchal
stage] (1888:256).3
The couvade as an indicator of evolutionary change lost credence
as evolutionism gave way to other theoretical interpretations, yet
Bachofen’s early view of the couvade as a declaration of paternal
56 ETHOS

rights over a child persisted into subsequent anthropological treat-

ments of the subject.
Malinowski follows this precedent when he points out that the
couvade ‘‘accentuates the principle of legitimacy,” and ‘‘the child’s
need of the father’’ (1927:215-216). As recently as 1983, Kerns fol-
lows the same Bachofenian tradition when she argues that the Black
Carib couvade may be explained “‘as a means of acknowledging and
clarifying paternity” (1983:104).
Several contemporary authors, such as Poole (1982), remind the
reader of the cultural embeddedness of birth-related phenomena.
Poole’s convincing and original study of the Bimin-Kuskusmin
birth practices, however, enforces the generalists’ notion of father-
as-mother, since, for the Bimin-Kuskusmin, the ritual mem am aiyem
ben, described by Poole as couvade, is the “sacred womb rite”
(1982:55).
A number of modern writers have taken more explicit positions
regarding male parental practices, called ‘‘couvade,”’ as indicative
of cross-sex identity. The most well-known among these is Bettel-
heim (1954), who argues that the couvade is a representation of the
universal phenomenon of parturition envy. Trethowan (1972), also
basing his theories in psychological universals, posits that the cou-
vade is an identification with the pregnant woman, but sees it as
symptomatic of cross-sex identity conflict.

THE BLACK CARIB GOUVADE IN THE LITERATURE

The interpretation of couvade as male-becomes-female, indepen-

dent of cultural matrices, continues in anthropological discourse
with remarkable acceptance. This is particularly the case in ethno-
graphic studies of the Garifuna (Black Carib) couvade. Major re-
searchers of the Black Carib couvade have this to say:
The couvade [is] interpreted here as an unconscious imitation of the female role
although defined by the Carib as a normal part of the male role, [and] qualifies as
a covert measure of sex identity. [Munroe and Munroe 1971:19]

As the authors explain:

The central hypothesis arises from consideration of the fact that the birth cycle is
the most distinctive aspect of the female role vis-a-vis the male role. . . . For males,
identification with the female role may result in different combinations of role-in-
appropriate behavior. [Munroe and Munroe 1971:12]
 SYMBOLIC INACTION AMONG THEGARIFUNA = 57

And, citing from a later publication on the same subject matter:

Cross-sex identity was presumed to be expressed socioculturally in the institution
of couvade. ... Defensive masculinity was argued to operate in such a way that
these same males appeared, in daily behavior, closer to the image of the ‘“‘tough
male.” [Munroe, Munroe, and Whiting 1973:65; see also Munroe and Munroe
1973]

Thus, the female-like behavior, established by psychological testing,

as well as ‘‘excessive male behavior,”’ were taken to be evidence of
cross-sex identity conflict.
Such initiation or transitional ritual systems demand more precise
and complex modes of explanation. ‘wo important areas have es-
caped attention: (1) symbolic analyses that would make “sense,”
that is, Garifuna ‘“‘sense,”’ of these practices, and (2) the configura-
tions of roles among actors and “‘anti-actors”’ (or non-actors) in the
ceremonial.

ETHNOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND
Data for this study were gathered in the Garifuna villages of
Sambo Crique, Corozal, Armenia, and Punta Gorda in Honduras
between the years 1970 and 1974.4 The Garifuna, who numbered
approximately 77,000 in 1974 (Davidson 1976),° occupy some 43
settlements dispersed over 1,000 km along the Caribbean coast of
Central America.®
The populations known as Black Carib are thought to be de-
scended from Africans living with the Carib Indians on St. Vincent
Island during the 17th and 18th centuries. “Black Indians’’ were
earliest reported in 1646 by Armand de la Paix (1929[1646]:23—
127). Between 1517 and 1646, waves of runaway African slaves ap-
parently sought refuge on the island, either from neighboring Eu-
ropean-held islands, or as escapees from wrecked slave vessels. The
British Calendar of State Papers (1668), for example, describes the
wreck of two Spanish slave ships in 1635 not far from St. Vincent.
The Blacks and Island Caribs fought together for 150 years against
European colonization of St. Vincent until the Treaty of Paris for-
mally annexed the island to the British Empire in 1763. In 1795,
after the Blacks fought with the French in a vain attempt to overturn
British control of the island, the British removed the Blacks to the
Island of Roatan.’ They soon moved to the better soils and rivers of
the mainland coast they now inhabit.
58 ETHOS

Black Caribs are marine fishermen and swidden horticulturalists.

Settlements are typically located where fishermen have access to
both freshwater streams and ocean reefs (Chernela 1971). Fishing is
the domain of the men, with horticulture considered to be the do-
main of the women. The Garifuna value fish highly and consider it
a daily necessity. Manioc and plantains, the carbohydrate staples of
the Garifuna diet, are provided by female farmers and are available
all year round.
Gonzalez (1969, 1988) has described Garifuna social organization
as bilateral with a matrilateral emphasis. Using data gathered
among the Garifuna community in Livingston, Guatemala, she re-
ports serial conjugal relationships, with household cores consisting
of women and children, brothers, uncles, and some adult sons.
Kerns provides a similar description for the Garifuna of Belize:
Households and nonresidential extended families are the basic social groups of the
Black Carib. Women, as mothers, are structurally central to most households and
to extended families. The focal female in an extended family is an older woman. .. .
She provides a common focus of affection and exchange, and usually acts as the
redistributor of food, other goods, and money within these groups. Further, her
actions influence both their continuity and composition. [Kerns 1983]

THE GARIFUNA COUVADE

Garifuna paternal behavior has attracted much attention in the

literature, and has been used to support current theorics regarding
male parenting ritual as psychological aberration. In order to ad-
dress this issue, the Garifuna ritual itself must be examined within
the larger framework of Garifuna cultural practices and meanings.
The phenomenon, now well known, is the custom by which the fa-
ther ofa newborn abstains from strenuous activities for up to three
years. During this period the father may take to the hammock, giv-
ing rise to the widespread notion among early writers that the father
is imitating “childbed”’ (Schmidt 1954). As will be shown, this ap-
parently puzzling behavior of Garifuna fathers has a solid basis in
an underlying complex of cultural meanings.

THE BLACK CARIB MODEL

The Garifuna recognize three kinds of ‘“‘souls,”’ which coexist and

are interdependent: (1) the anigi, a vital force that disappears with
 SYMBOLIC INACTION AMONG THE GARIFUNA 59

the death of the individual, (2) the afurugu, a shade or dream form
that “travels” by night through dreams, and (3) the uwani, which
never dies. This paper addresses two special attributes of the uwani.
First, the wwani is acquired by an infant from his or her father. Sec-
ond, the uwwani must be fed in order to maintain its vitality. Such
feeding provides it with “blood-strength.”’
At the basis of all human and animal life, say the Honduran Gar-
ifuna, is the common and uniting feature of blood-strength. Blood-
strength, in this view, is the vital source of all activity, all physical
power, and energy. Ifan animal is ill, it is because its blood-strength
is insufficient. An organism grows by consuming the blood-strength
of animals it feeds upon, this being the only way in which its own
blood supply can increase and its body develop.
The world of blood-strength animals is divided into two cate-
gories: creatures with gibeti hitu (much blood), who are strong, and
creatures with nibeti hitu (little blood), who are weak. Plants, in con-
trast, lack blood-strength, having no force, and are not included in
this dichotomous system of blood-strength classification. Plants, al-
though recognized as important because of their abundance and de-
pendability, are not valued as highly as game or fish. Indeed, the
two classcs of edibles are so different in the eyes of the Black Caribs
that they are never subsumed under a single inclusive category com-
parable to the English word food.
It is the role of the male in Black Carib socicty to provide the
needed blood-strength food to the community, since, according to
Carib belief, only he is capable of providing it. To put it another
way, only he is capable of sustaining the wwani. In killing or catching
a creature with much blood, it is necessary to expend a correspond-
ing amount of blood-strength. Women do not have the store of
blood-strength required to pursue these meat-getting activities be-
cause their bodies lose blood each month. For this reason, according
to the Caribs, female responsibility lies in providing the vegetable
foods, such as manioc, which lack blood-strength and therefore do
not require it in gathering them. The women and children of a
household thus are dependent upon the males to provide them with
the essential blood-strength food. A household without an active
adult male is provided with blood-strength food by the wife’s
brother.
60 ETHOS

The Black Caribs believe that one is not born with blood-
strength. Rather, an infant enters the world in a state of meriti or
weakness. (The same term is used to describe somcone who is ill.)
As long as the infant remains in this state, his situation is considered
precarious. Durig the period in which the infant is thought to be in
a weak state, he is referred to by a special term, nyiragiri, meaning
delicate infant. This special category lasts only as long as the child
is considered weak-—a period that may last from scveral days to
three years. The name nyiragiri may be dropped and then resumed
if the child declines in strength. Parental taboos must be maintained
as long as the child is perceived as delicate.®
The Garifuna have an explanation for the precarious condition of
their infants, invoking the inseparable link thought to exist between
father and infant at the beginning of every infant’s life. The uwani of
the child is thought to come directly from the father, and the child’s
flesh made from the accumulated semen of numerous scxual con-
tacts. In the words of one informant, “The child is made from aguy-
eron [semen]. The man puts the child into the mother . . . then the
mother raises him up and lets him go” [an explanation of concep-
tion, pregnancy, and birth]. It was often expressed another way:
“The father gives blood to the child; the mother gives it nourish-
ment.”
Semen and blood are therefore transformations of one another:
bodily fluids that accumulate proportionally. Perspiration is yet a
third transformation of the body’s fluid forms. With the exercise of
blood-strength, perspiration is expelled, restoring balance to the
body’s system of fluids. The process may be reversed: in states of
weakness, such as illness, applying perspiration acquired from one’s
father will provide the compensation necessary to adjust a tempo-
rary imbalance in bodily fluids.
During the earliest stages of an infant’s life, the bodies of the fa-
ther and the child are the same flesh. In the most literal sense, they
are of one blood. The bond between the father and child is thus so
tangible that any action the father may take is likely to affect the
infant. The danger for the infant consists of its having too little blood
and therefore too little strength and a weak soul. If the father exer-
cises his hereti vitu (strong blood), the force he creates in the blood of
the infant may be so great as to burst through the child’s delicate
navel and cause umbilical hemorrhage.
 SYMBOLIC INACTION AMONG THE GARIFUNA 61

Therefore, Garifuna fathers observe a period of withdrawal,

which they call Gonigua ba buniwae. This they translate “the Care.”
One may compare the related expression éunigua babu, the command
“be carefull’? During this period the prohibitions are as follows: A
recent father may not strike with a heavy instrument, build a house
or boat, run, chop wood, cut a garden, paddle a boat, pull a boat or
other heavy object, sail a boat, or fish. He must not engage in any
activity that will cause him to sweat. Should the child’s growth re-
gress at any time during this period, the father must administer per-
spiration to the infant by covering him or her with a perspiration-
covered garment or blanket. These restrictions may last up to three
years after the birth.
By restraining himself for a protracted period of liminality, the
father behaves ‘‘as though he were a weak person.” His restraint
underscores his own strength. Restraint on the part of masculinity
is the most extreme masculinity known. With the birth of a child, a
male is perceived as an adult; he “becomes a man.”

ROLE AND ANTI-ROLE IN THE COUVADE:

IDENTIFICATION AND OPPOSITION

Geertz (1972) quotes from Auden’s elegy of Ycats, ““Poetry makes

nothing happen, it survives in the valley of its saying... a way of
happening, a mouth.” As a mere series of prohibitions, the couvade
may be described as “‘symbolic inaction,”’ best characterized by that
which is not present and has not occurred than by that which has.
As such, it is an anti-event, with its principal participant an anti-
player, recognized for the deeds he does not perform. Yet the fa-
ther’s inactivity is balanced by the activities of those around him. It
is these associated roles, and their juxtapositions to one another,
which reveal that the Garifuna couvade is far more than has been
formerly recognized.

FATHER/CHILD
The danger or precariousness of the couvade period rests on two
apparently incompatible realities. First, father and son are identi-
cal, attached by an indivisible bond that is at once spiritual and
physical. Yet, father and son are opposed: father’s blood-strength is
powerful enough to kill his offspring through even a minimal display
62 ETHOS

of exertion. This equivalence-opposition is central to the Garifuna

couvade.
To the extent that son and father are joined, the father must enter
into a period of ““Care.”’ The logic behind this equivalence lies in the
origin of the infant, who is transformed from father’s semen. Father
and offspring are one.
The Care taken by the husband is not imitation of wife’s childbed,
it is imitation or enactment of infancy. Father becomes son. The
Garifuna couvade is a reversal not of gender but of generation.

HUSBAND/WIFE
The couvade well demonstrates that relations among ritual play-
ers may be simultaneously opposed and equivalent.
The assertion that the couvade is female imitation may have par-
tial validity. Father replaces wife, so to speak, at the infant’s side. But
this apparent equivalence obscures the underlying relation of op-
position. The husband does not imitate his wife’s convalescence,
and therefore behave ‘“‘as a woman,” he enacts his own (true) con-
nection to his offspring.
Thus, husband and wife are opposed: he the creator, possessor of
blood and semen, she the nurturer, unable to retain bodily fluids.
As it was in utero, so it 1s extra utero.

FATHER/MOTHER’S BROTHER
During the couvade, a woman’s brothers are providers to her off-
spring—temporarily suspending and preempting the conjugal re-
lations of husband and wife. The unexamined role of mother’s
brother in couvade is an important component in Garifuna couvade
practices and possibly the couvade practices of other peoples.
Two boundary-related properties that give rise to competition are
present in the relations between husband and wife’s brother: (1) the
prohibition on sexual relations between brother and sister, as op-
posed to the license for sexual relations between sister and her hus-
band/lover; and (2) the ambivalence inherent in authority over sis-
ter/wife’s offspring.
As Gonzalez points out (1969), matrilateral kin play a significant
role in a Carib household. Garifuna residential patterns for Liv-
ingston show a higher rate of women residing with brothers than
with children’s father. Kerns’s more recent study (1983) supports
Gonzalez’s findings.
 SYMBOLIC INACTION AMONG THE GARIFUNA 63

While father abstains from activities, engaged in a metaphysical

infant-as-self care, mother’s brother assumes the role of provider. As
the father withdraws from productive activities, the mother’s
brother assumes them. While the husband is rendered impotent (for
reasons of his dangerous potency), only the wife’s brother may bring
male food into the houschold. As the husband retains his blood-
strength, the brother-in-law expends his blood-strength and secures
the blood-strength food products that will eventually strengthen off-
spring and separate mother’s brother from father.
Mother’s brother’s action underscores husband’s inaction as pro-
vider. Husband’s role becomes anti-role. Mother’s brother is an ex-
tension of sister as nurturer: he is male nurturer, providing the
sustenance that males provide, in the same way that females pro-
vide, to offspring they did not “‘create” but whose lives they sustain.
Mother and mother’s brothers are equivalents, or partners—they
who are bound by blood stand in opposition to infant and husband,
also bound by blood. As the father appropriates the female role as
procreator, so the mother’s brother appropriates father’s role as
provider. Father is reduced to recipient while mother’s brother is
raised to the position of gift-giver and provider.
If mother’s brother = mother, then, for a ritual period, mother
in the largest sense (mother’s group) is the source of all nourish-
ment. Father and infant are nourished by mother and mother’s
brother.
Mother = Brother

nourishment

Father = Infant

The couvade is an elaborate symbolic battleground on which peo-

ple struggle over contradictory relationships and the rights to repro-
duction.

TRANSITIONS IN MALE ROLE

An individual male embodies the various roles of husband, moth-

er’s brother, father, and son. The male role in bilateral society may
be particularly fraught with conflict. The contradictions are socially
placed: as mother’s brother, he embodies the providing principle,
64 ETHOS

whereas in his own family he embodies the negative, receiving prin-

ciple. Two fundamental aspects of the complete male role—man as
father and as mother’s brother—are born with the child.
Moreover, a male does not become a man until he has a child. In
this sense, the birth of the child is identical with the birth of the man.
Through the couvade, therefore, a man experiences his own birth as
a full male.

CONCLUSIONS

I have maintained that transitional ritual systems, such as the

Garifuna couvade, demand modes of explanation that would make
sense of apparently senseless practices. In the case of the couvade,
the modes of relations among the social actors have been obfuscated
by both players and interpreters. For the Garifuna couvade, I have
attempted to show that the structural arrangement of relations
among players comprises four, not two, positions, as has been as-
sumed. These consist of husband (father), wife (mother), offspring,
and mother’s (wife’s) brother.
In this juxtaposition of ritual players, equivalences are not be-
tween husband and wife, but between father and infant. Moreover,
I argue that when mother’s brother is taken into account, the crea-
tive potency of the father-lover is nulled as father becomes infant
and brother becomes provider.
If the father’s behavior is isolated from the full complex of activ-
ities and restrictions at birth, the view of couvade is a partial one.
When other actors are taken into account, certain hidden relations
are revealed: as father becomes son, mother and mother’s brother
assume domestic leadership and authority. From this point of view,
the four positions collapse into two: mother’s kin and offspring, in
which father, the creator of the child, through his semen, has been
assimilated by the child.
Garifuna ritual restrictions serve to order and control the pow-
erful processes of transition as persons pass from one social category
to another, transforming and potentially jeopardizing the categori-
cal identities and boundaries attached to them. Order during the
period of Care is a state of apparent disorder in which categories are
confounded and roles reversed.
Indiscriminate cross-cultural generalization and the associated
grouping of diverse behaviors into a single taxon belies a Western
 SYMBOLIC INACTION AMONG THE GARIFUNA 65

symbolic equivalency: (male) parental behavior before or at partu-

rition is ‘female.’ Since reproduction is rendered exclusively fe-
male, a symbolic recognition of male as procreator indicates female
likeness or equivalence. Thus, Western writers, among them social
scientists, find all such male parenting behavior a form of female
imitation and several attribute its practice to cross-sex identity con-
flict. The widespread use of the concept of couvade, the variety of
behaviors which it covers, and the paucity of explanation for these
behaviors all demonstrate the need for closer review of fathers’ ritual
birth behaviors where they occur.

NOTES

Acknowledgments. A version of this paper was presented at the 1987 annual meeting of the
American Anthropological Association and at the University of Chicago Department of An-
thropology Invited Paper Serics. I am grateful to Fitz John Porter Poole, Nancy Fried, and
John Comaroff, who heard this paper and provided valuable comments. I wish to express
special thanks to Richard Von Schmertzing, whose own interest in the Honduran Garifuna
inspired this study. Funding for the field stage of the research was provided by the Wenner-
Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the writing stage by the McKnight Jun-
ior Faculty Fellowship Program.
'This passage conveys the strangeness with which such activities were regarded and the
pattern of treating them as isolated, inexplicable, and even amusing practices.
?According to Dobritzhoffer, the Abipones prohibited even sneezing during a child’s first
days. When asked why, Dobritzhofter received this reply: ‘Don’t you know . . . that my wife
has just been confined? Must not I therefore abstain from stimulating my nostrils? What a
danger my sneezing would bring upon my child!” (Dobritzhoffer cited in Reik 1914:33).
3Using the ethnographic data available to him, ‘l'ylor attempted to correlate couvade prac-
tice with social organization and found an association between the “mother-family” and the
couvade. Although Sumner and Keller (1927) found no such correlation when they attempted
the same endeavor, Simmons reaffirmed Tylor’s findings through his own statistical calcu-
lations (1937).
*Ficld time was approximately seven months, although additional interviews were held in
New York among emigré Garifuna.
°According to Jenkins (1984:431), this number has substantially decreased since that time
due to outmigration. A later figure from Davidson (1984) places the number at 65,000.
®Various estimates have been given for the total Garifuna population at any time. For ex-
ample, Conzemius (1928) estimates 20,000, while Goclho (1955) estimates 50,000. ‘These fig-
ures may indicate true population growth over time (as Grawford [1984:162] maintains), or
differences in population boundary or methodology. Crawford (1984:169), who includes em-
igrants in his estimation, calculates a worldwide Garifuna population of 90,000.
7Gonzalez (1984) estimates at 2,500 persons the number of “black Caribs” deported to the
island of Roatan in 1797.
®Mother maintains dietary taboos for a period of approximately one week following birth.
°L.évi-Strauss must have seen this when he asserted (1962) that the father was imitating his
own offspring in couvade.
66 ETHOS

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