Marital Practices Research Articles

Biogenetic and functional frameworks for the assignment of parentage by the courts: Implications for foster caregivers

Abstract Parental authority falls under the established parental-rights doctrine which states that a fit parent possesses a basic right to the custody, care, and companionship of his or her child. Also known as the “natural right” of parenthood, designation as a parent places an individual within a clearly defined sphere of essential constitutional protections and rights. Yet, with technological innovations and shifting marital practices, the definition of individuals who fall within this parental sphere continues to evolve over time. Nondependency case law suggests movement towards an increasingly functional/psychological conceptualization of parentage, stretching far beyond biology. In this article we examine the potential implications of this shift for foster caregivers.

Impact of restricted marital practices on genetic variation in an endogamous Gujarati group

Recent studies have examined the influence on patterns of human genetic variation of a variety of cultural practices. In India, centuries-old marriage customs have introduced extensive social structuring into the contemporary population, potentially with significant consequences for genetic variation. Social stratification in India is evident as social classes that are defined by endogamous groups known as castes. Within a caste, there exist endogamous groups known as gols (marriage circles), each of which comprises a small number of exogamous gotra (lineages). Thus, while consanguinity is strictly avoided and some randomness in mate selection occurs within the gol, gene flow is limited with groups outside the gol. Gujarati Patels practice this form of "exogamic endogamy." We have analyzed genetic variation in one such group of Gujarati Patels, the Chha Gaam Patels (CGP), who comprise individuals from six villages. Population structure analysis of 1,200 autosomal loci offers support for the existence of distinctive multilocus genotypes in the CGP with respect to both non-Gujaratis and other Gujaratis, and indicates that CGP individuals are genetically very similar. Analysis of Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial haplotypes provides support for both patrilocal and patrilineal practices within the gol, and a low-level of female gene flow into the gol. Our study illustrates how the practice of gol endogamy has introduced fine-scale genetic structure into the population of India, and contributes more generally to an understanding of the way in which marriage practices affect patterns of genetic variation.

The Gordian Knot of Interpretation: Roman written sources, the idea of socio-cultural evolution and the concept of Romanization

In the Roman Empire, under the Greek influences, authors shared the idea of “the degree of humanity”, according to which the Romans formed value judgements about the “barbarian” societies. The framework of reference was constituted by the Roman society itself, taken as superior and predestined as the centre of the known world. The criteria for comparison were based upon the natural and climatic environment, socio-political organization, economy, religion, ways of life, warfare, marital practices, certain kinds of material culture and cultural practices in general. According to this view, the Mediterranean societies were “the most human”, and the level of humanity declined in direct relation to the geographical remoteness and other differences as compared to the centre. Although these speculations were not organized into a unified interpretive framework, like the modern social theories, they nevertheless were implicit assumptions of the Roman elite. This „naive“ or “common-sense anthropology” has had a strong impact on the formation of the premises of the modern anthropological theories, due to the general role of the ancient written sources in the processes of knowledge formation in modern Europe. It is therefore possible to assume that the ancient ideas, along with the later ones, played an important role in the shaping of the postulates of the early theory of socio-cultural evolution – the implicit base of interpretation of human societies during the 19th century. Consequently, the written sources have played a double role in the processes of formation of the concept of Romanization – directly, as well as through socio-cultural evolution, onto which the concept itself relied. In this way, the prejudices stemming from the discourse of Romanization gained the air of scientific interpretations, verified by two seemingly independent reference systems.

Marriage Today: Exploring the Incongruence Between Americans’ Beliefs and Practices

This paper provides a literature review of the incongruence between Americans’ beliefs and practices regarding marriage. In the United States, marriage is conceptualized as a monogamous, lifelong partnership. Yet American practices do not support this conceptualization, which is evidenced by infidelity and divorce rates that approximate 25-50 percent. This paper explores the incongruence and examines how cultural shifts in marital practices have contributed to higher rates of infidelity and divorce. Information is presented about the purpose of marriage, and attitudes and practices regarding infidelity and divorce. We present these topics using a sociohistorical context and describe how the nature of marriage has changed over time. It is argued that the purpose of marriage has shifted from being a social obligation to a choice based on personal fulfillment; and that this shift puts individuals at greater risk of infidelity and divorce. Throughout the paper, and particularly in the concluding section, we offer commentary about how the incongruence between marital beliefs and practices can be reconciled at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and contextual levels.

The Anxiety of Dispossession: Jealousy in Nineteenth-Century French Culture (review)

Reviewed by: The Anxiety of Dispossession: Jealousy in Nineteenth-Century French Culture Anne Green Belenky, Masha . The Anxiety of Dispossession: Jealousy in Nineteenth-Century French Culture. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2008. Pp. 173. ISBN 978-0-8387-5690-4 The green-eyed monster provides Masha Belenky with a wonderful topic to explore in The Anxiety of Dispossession. As she ably demonstrates, jealousy haunted the cultural [End Page 282] imagination of nineteenth-century France. It drove the plots of most major novels of the period; it was a recurrent theme for painters and sculptors; and for moralists, journalists, medical writers and social commentators alike it was a constant focus of interest. Belenky's starting point is to ask what stories nineteenth-century French culture tells about itself through its many and varied narratives of jealousy. Jealousy is thus viewed not as a timeless psychological phenomenon but as a social force – a culturally-determined concept that had particularly strong resonances in nineteenth-century France. Belenky considers it as "a manifestation of a culture in crisis over different forms of social change, including the emergence of bourgeois values, mutating concepts of marriage, revisions of family law and marital practices, and new questions surrounding construction of masculinity" (19). In a fascinating first chapter, "The Physiology of Jealousy," she establishes the background to contemporary views of jealousy by surveying a wide range of non-fictional nineteenth-century texts such as medical dictionaries and marriage manuals, and by providing a useful account of the Civil and Penal Codes relating to marriage. Belenky shows that such views were constructed around changing notions of ownership, property and propriety that mirrored legislative changes introduced in the years following the Revolution; she argues in particular that changes to the laws governing the definition of illegitimacy and the inheritance rights of illegitimate children gave rise to new anxieties about paternity which triggered an obsession with jealousy. Jealousy at this period is shown to be clearly gendered. Whereas the jealous wife was perceived as a dangerous and destabilising figure, embodied by the recurrent figure of Medea, the jealous husband was socially sanctioned, his jealousy seen as not only a right but a duty: "jealousy was construed as a shield that protected the wife's virtue, safeguarded the integrity of the husband's property, and thus contributed to social health" (41). The literary texts discussed by Belenky tell a rather more complicated story, however. As she points out, the jaloux who feature in works by Hugo (Notre-Dame de Paris), Musset (La Confession d'un enfant du siècle), Feydeau (Fanny) and Balzac (Ferragus) undermine the conception of the jealous husband as a socially beneficial figure of power. Instead, the inability of the fictional jaloux to see the truth, his persistent misinterpretation of evidence, and his failure to win back the object of his desire together signal a profound crisis of masculinity. In these novels, Belenky argues, "the jealousy plot is inextricably bound up with the narrative of the generational conflict. Young men's anxiety about generational dispossession and social impotence is mapped onto the fear of sexual loss" (83). Balzac also provides a rich source of examples of female jealousy. Unexpectedly, discussion of La Cousine Bette is relegated to a footnote and Belenky instead concentrates primarily on his Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées, Le Lys dans la vallée and Wann-Chlore in order to show how he effectively pathologises his jalouses by appropriating contemporary medical discourse on jealousy. She interprets this as Balzac drawing on the authority of the medical establishment to set out a strategy for containing disruptive female desire, since the jealous female "sought to appropriate the male privilege of possessing the object of passion, and thus threatened to unsettle and disrupt a culture premised on male rationality and on man's presumed exclusive right to ownership" (106). Moving deftly between medical textbooks and Balzac's fiction, she argues that whereas doctors believed they could control excessive female passion by finding a cure, [End Page 283] the novelist contained the dangerous jalouse by killing her off. Women's writing of the period rarely touches on female jealousy and has little place in this book, but in a...

Sex and Conflict in New Religious Movements: A Comparison of the Oneida Community under John Humphrey Noyes and the Early Mormons under Joseph Smith and his Would-Be Successors

Efforts to introduce unorthodox sexual and marital practices have often caused dissension in new religious movements. The nineteenth-century Oneida Perfectionist and Mormon communities highlight the profound impact such practices may have on group cohesion and development. Conflicts over the introduction of complex marriage almost led John Humphrey Noyes' Oneida Community to disband in 1852, yet the group survived and prospered for another quarter century until renewed internal and external tension precipitated the group's formal demise in 1881. Serious internal and external challenges associated with polygamy also developed within the larger, rapidly expanding Mormon community in Illinois under Joseph Smith Jr., during the early 1840s, and in Utah under Brigham Young until 1877. Not until the LDS Church began to give up plural marriage and make other significant accommodations to American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, was Mormonism eventually freed to begin its rapid expansion throughout the United States and worldwide after World War II. The article concludes that although alternative marriage and sexual practices may have initially served as powerful commitment mechanisms, such controversial practices appear to have had a net negative impact upon the long-term development of both groups.

The Reform Ideas of Shaykh 'Abdallāh Sālih al-Farsī and the Transformation of Marital Practices among Digo Muslims of Kenya

AbstractThis essay examines the reformist ideas of Shaykh 'Abdallāh Sālih al-Farsī (1912-1982) on the institution of marriage in Muslim East Africa as expressed in his work Ndoa-Talaka na Maamrisho Yake (“Marriage-Divorce and Governing Regulations”). Unlike earlier scholars who mention al-Farsī's reformist ideas without detailing the specifics, I attempt to relate al-Farsī's reform agenda to the transformation of the marital practices of the Digo Muslims of the southern Kenyan coast. Although al-Farsī did not depart radically from the predominantly Shāfi'ī law, he did attempt to use Islamic normative teachings to transform prevailing practices which he regarded as antithetical to the spirit of the law.

Race in early modern England: a documentary companion

This collection makes available for the first time a rich archive of materials that illuminate the history of racial thought and practices in sixteenth and seventeenth century England. A comprehensive introduction shows how these writings on religion, skin color, sexual and marital practices, geography, and the human body are crucial for understanding the pre-Enlightenment lineages of racial categories.

Male and Female He Created Them: Jewish Marriage in the Late Second Temple, Mishnah, and Talmud Periods, and: Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (review)

Reviewed by: Male and Female He Created Them: Jewish Marriage in the Late Second Temple, Mishnah, and Talmud Periods, and: Jewish Marriage in Antiquity Joshua Kulp Adiel Schremer. Male and Female He Created Them: Jewish Marriage in the Late Second Temple, Mishnah, and Talmud Periods [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2003. Pp. 395. Michael Satlow. Jewish Marriage in Antiquity. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001. Pp. xxvi + 431. The intention of Adiel Schremer's recently published book is to describe marriage as it was actually practiced by Jews from the late Second Temple period through the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud. To accomplish this goal, Schremer enlists philological, historical, and sociological tools in his analysis of a vast array of literary and other evidence. The book contains eleven chapters; three concerning the conceptions, purposes, and functions of marriage, and eight concerning actual marriage practice. Schremer's focus is on rabbinic literature; however, he also demonstrates expertise in his analysis of the documentary evidence (primarily the few surviving ketubot [marriage contracts] from the period). In most chapters, he compares the patterns of marriage in rabbinic Jewish society with those found in neighboring Greek, Roman, and Persian cultures. Most innovative and extremely interesting are the frequent comparisons of Jewish practice with the traditions reflected in Syriac Patristic literature. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time such an approach has been extensively employed in a scholarly study of Jewish marriage and it greatly enhances our ability to compare the marital practices of Babylonian Jews with those of their neighbors. Schremer's bibliographical knowledge of both Jewish and general sociological, anthropological, and historical literature is outstanding. His knowledge of rabbinic sources is quite thorough, as is his attention to detail. He should also be complimented on his exhaustive philological research, in both lexicography and manuscript traditions. One of Schremer's positive contributions in terms of his methodology is that he has focused on the normative, dominant trends as opposed to unusual aberrations. While at times this produces conclusions that seem obvious (as for example that social standing was a critical factor in choosing a spouse; or that remarriage was common), these conclusions are well [End Page e46] documented and representative of rabbinic society as a whole. Schremer brings abundant, concrete evidence for what were previously assumptions, thereby strengthening them with firm textual bases. In contrast, while some previous scholars who focused on the unusual (such as the infrequent ascetic trends, the few statements against polygyny) may have uncovered phenomena previously neglected, they may have unwittingly contributed to inaccurate portrayals of Jewish society as a whole. The most convincing and innovative chapters in the book are those on the marital age of men and women in Palestine and Babylonia. Schremer tentatively estimates that men in Palestine did not typically get married until their late twenties, or even early thirties. Girls were married sometime after reaching sexual maturity (around twelve or thirteen), perhaps up until their late teens. In contrast, in Babylonia both boys and girls married much earlier, boys in their late teens and girls were frequently married before reaching puberty. As Schremer demonstrates, awareness of these differences in marital age informs our understanding of numerous other halakhot, as well as some of the differences between Babylonian and Palestinian practice. In his chapter on the choice of spouse he points out that the older a person marries, the more likely s/he will choose a partner with less aid from parents, and the more likely that that partner will be chosen based more on personal rather than societal or familial preferences. In his chapter on the financial arrangements of marriage, he suggests that the lower marital age in Babylonia may have contributed to a lowering of the ketubah value. To the extent that knowledge of the typical age of marriage is important for understanding any society, Schremer's hypothesis makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of Jewish society in antiquity. Schremer also does important work on the question of polygyny. By demonstrating an array of literary sources that deals with the problems that might arise in a polygynous society, Schremer shows that polygyny was an accepted practice among Jews...

Dowry or Inheritance? Kinship, Property, And Women's Agency in Lisbon, Venice, and Florence (1572)

AbstractThe marital property regimes, inheritance practices, and kinship structures of Renaissance Italy and early modern Portugal were at opposite ends of a spectrum. In Italy, the legitimacy of marriage was defined as the outcome of dowry exchange governed by exclusio propter dotem, thus conceptually linked to the disinheritance of daughters and wives. In Portugal, where the Roman principle of equal inheritance was never abolished, domestic unions qualified as marriages insofar as joint ownership was established. Kinship structures were rigidly agnatic in Italy, but cognatic, even residually matrilineal, in Portugal. An investigation of notarial records from Lisbon, Venice, and Florence shows how women's capacity for full legal agency as property owners in both societies differed. Female legal agency, however, whether measured by women's capacity to engage in property transactions independently of their marital status (Portugal), or as the manipulation of limited legal resources, even resistance against a system of dispossession (Italy), always unfolded within the context of larger agendas that were beyond women's control, such as the processes of state formation in medieval Italy and empire-building in Portugal.

Gender and procreation among patients with schizophrenia

Objective: Reduced procreation among men with schizophrenia has been reported consistently when compared with female patients, but the cause is unknown. Reports on Caucasian individuals predominate in the published literature. Therefore, analyses were conducted concurrently among independent Indian and US samples in the present study. Method: Individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (DSM-IV criteria) were ascertained and interviewed at New Delhi and in the northeastern United States using identical procedures ( n=224 and 144, respectively). Selected indices of fertility and fecundity were compared among men and women at each site. Results: In the smaller US sample, male cases were significantly more likely to be single and childless compared with female cases. They also had fewer children. In contrast, there were no significant gender differences in the larger Indian sample with regard to the reproductive indices. Multivariate analyses revealed that the indices of reproduction were associated with different variables in the US and Indian samples. Fertility (the presence or absence of offspring) was associated with gender and age in the US sample while in the Indian sample conjugal status and age were significant predictors. Fecundity (the number of offspring) was associated with gender, conjugal status and educational status in the US sample while in the Indian sample conjugal status and educational status were both significant. Conclusions: The reproductive deficit observed among US males was not observed among the Indian men. Conjugal status was a significant covariate for reproduction in both samples. The reproductive deficit may be due to difficulties in establishing long-term conjugal relationships among the US men. The differences may also reflect underlying cultural variations related to marital practices in these two countries. Our analyses suggest that the male reproductive deficit in schizophrenia is variable and may be overcome.

The Gendered Biopolitics of Marriage and Immigration: A Study of Pre-1949 Chinese Immigrants in Thailand

This first attempt to include women in the pre-1949 history of Chinese immigration to Thailand examines the dialectical relationship between immigration and marital practices through a gender lens. It is argued that labour immigration is not simply an economic endeavour, but rather a complex process of cultural production in which Thai and Chinese regimes compete to produce gendered citizens.

Marital status, cohabitation, and risk of preterm birth in Europe: where births outside marriage are common and uncommon.

This article explores whether the impact of marital status on the risk of preterm birth varies in relation to marital practices in the population, defined by the proportion of out-of-marriage births. Data come from a case-control study of the determinants of preterm birth in 16 European countries (5456 cases and 8234 controls). There is a significantly elevated risk of preterm birth associated with both cohabitation (OR = 1.29 [1.08, 1.55]) and single motherhood (OR = 1.61 [1.26, 2.07]) for women living in countries where fewer than 20 of births occur outside marriage. In contrast, there is no excess risk associated with marital status when out-of-marriage births are more common. This overall result does not apply to all subgroups of preterm births: different patterns emerge for early preterm births and preterm births induced for medical reasons. It is important to consider social context in the analysis of individual risk factors.

It Won't Change a Thing: The Meanings of Marriage in the Netherlands

The vast body of literature that highlights the increasing fragility of marriage fails to explore the effect of this fragility on the meanings people attach to marriage. During the last twenty-five to thirty years the instrumental and normative reasons for marriage—legal protection, societal support and enforcement, the social rejection of alternatives to marriage—have largely disappeared in the Netherlands. This study focuses on how young adults, raised after the most dramatic changes in marital practices took place, talk about the meanings of marriage in the context of building intimate relationships. In-depth interviews with fifteen heterosexual young adults (aged twenty-one to thirty) who were in a committed relationship showed that they talked about marriage in four different ways. They (1) minimized the meaning of marriage, (2) talked about the idea of marriage to ascertain commitment, (3) defined marriage as the ideal relationship, and/or (4) saw marriage as a jinx. Contradictions between these modes of talk revealed feelings of ambivalence and anxiety associated with a desire for commitment. The emotionally charged meanings associated with marriage anchored marriage in interviewees' imaginations, enabling the institution to retain its hold even though social pressures to marry are limited and legal substitutes to marriage exist.

"To Build up the Morals of the Tribe": Southern Ute Women's Sexual Behavior and the Office of Indian Affairs, 1895-1932

This article explores attempts of Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) agents on the Southern Ute reservation in southwestern Colorado to use Southern Ute women to "reform" Ute sexual and marital practices, as well as Ute women's responses to these efforts. While preaching the importance of Indian women as a force for tribal moral "improvement," OIA personnel also made women's sexual behavior the focus of punishment and coercion. Coming from a cultural tradition that allowed them complete control over their sexual choices and activities, however, Southern Ute women resisted the OIA agenda. Even in the face of harsh sanctions, Southern Ute women asserted autonomy over their sexual behavior and often thwarted the OIA's campaign. Attempts to contain Southern Ute women's sexual behavior reflected stereotypes about the sexuality of women of color, and were part of a larger pattern of concern over women's sexual conduct during this period.

Cantora: A Novel by Sylvia Lopez-Medina

Reviews 189 business empire, and his wife Catherine, who it seems has never understood her strengths or her subordination. His debilitation and her awakening are the catalysts for all events. In its Neo-naturalism and homage to D. H. Lawrence, the novel contains a host of clichés and predictable situations, but is rescued by another kind of play, Roper’s manipulation of its self-referential elements. He embellishes his plot with coincidences pointing to Lawrence, and also to the various stories within the story, and in the end names the postmodern game he both mocks and plays. Two character-produced manuscripts frame the narrative: the novel-inprogrcss Bob Stein delivers to Catherine in the opening scene, and the letter to Catherine from her lover, the woodsman-musician Henry Bascomb, that ends the narrative. In between, Rick Mansure writes for publication a journal con­ cerning his illness and his abandonment by Catherine. She is the center; each man approaches with his preoccupation. Mansure’s accusations have some merit, yet his ideas are undercut by his ambiguous combination of high intelli­ gence and blind self-pity. Stein, novelist-within-the-novel, evokes the theme of writer-as-parasite, the ultimate trespasser. The transformation of Bascomb from rough and speechless forest man through “wolfish” seducer to articulate and cultured violinist seems both outrageous and convincing. All want freedom but look for structure, and all doubt the validity of the structures they find. In the end, Catherine-as-reader is a strong characterization: she objects to Stein’s manuscript, but enacts its plot; her reader-response to Bascomb’s letter is perhaps the great decision of her life. The Trespassers also meditates on the New West, with its population pres­ sures, boutique wineries, water shortages, domination by money, and naiveté about liberation myth-plots. Focusing upon the upper levels of society, Roper plays with the rude themes of wilderness pastoral, but in the context of a feminized civilization. What Roper writes about his own novelist-character Stein might also be applied to himself: “It was impossible to tell . . . whether he intended this to be taken with a grain of salt . . . or whether he was actually revealing himself. Perhaps he intended it to be taken in both ways, sincerely as well as facetiously. . . . ” ^KEl^RY AHEARN Oregon State University Cantora: A Novel. By Sylvia Lopez-Medina. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992. 306 pages, $17.95.) Sylvia Lopez-Medina’s first novel marks the appearance of an able new female voice. Cantora relates—via written narrative—what was previously an oral narrative handed from mother to daughter, of a Mexican-American family’s Mayan and courtly Spanish ancestral lineage. Endorsed by Chicana writer 190 Western American Literature Sandra Cisneros as “a history history forgot to mention,” this novel’s historical tale is that of upper class female resistance to paternal authority, family duty and female “respectability.” The brokering of women as wives for Spanish gentry provides the book’s central gender dilemma. Lopez-Medina goes beyond simply depicting patriar­ chal power to explore mothers’ and daughters’ complicity in the brokering process. The book’s matriarch, Rosario, refuses her own arranged marriage, yet makes arrangements for two of her daughters. Rosario’s daughter, Teresita, finally breaks with female complicity. Against the will of husband and motherin -law, Teresita will not permit Amparo’s—the daughter/narrator—arranged marriage to take place. Lopez-Medina comprehends that mothers participate in oppressive marital practices because they offer, tragically, the best future a m other can provide for the daughter she loves. In spite of Cisneros’ sisterly endorsement, Cantora seems an unlikely work to situate within a contemporary Chicana literature. The problem is not an absence of the barrio cadence, a linguistic signature of most Chicana narratives. The problem is that this book seems unaware there is a barrio. Although this narrator proclaims her “indio” identity, the markers of upper class European identity dominate the narrative. The novel’s characters are more accustomed to having, not being, servants. That, to my mind, fundamentally distances Cantora from previous Chicana writers’ sensibilities. Perhaps Lopez-Medina has more in common with the tradition of the Southwestern “Hispanic” women writers of the...

Polyphony in the Courts: Child Custody Cases in Kabba District Court, 1925-1979

In 1918, British colonial officials in Kabba Division of central Nigeria instituted rules for divorce and child custody in Kabba District Native Authority Court. The rules implemented in Kabba Court were ostensibly derived from customary marital practices, although no formal procedure for divorce had existed in Kabba prior to its introduction by British.2 The introduction of divorce would appear to be a classic example of command model of law in which politically dominant--in this case, British colonial officials--imposed newly-created laws upon politically subordinate; Nigerian men and women. Yet as Chanock (1985:12) has observed of colonial period in Africa, the field of customary law was one of few on which Africans were allowed to play with a winning chance. While British introduced a procedure for divorce in Kabba Court, how this procedure was interpreted, particularly in relation to child custody rulings, was affected by respective interests of male and female litigants. Thus what happened in Kabba Customary Court may be better described as an interactional process which was nonetheless affected by colonial power differences (Starr and Collier 1989:9). British colonial officers had last say in appealed cases but their position of power did not obliterate polyphony of voices--from traditional chiefs cum court officials to Nigerian men and women asserting and redefining their claims regarding introduced rules for divorce and child custody. However, in any interactional analysis of legal process, question arises of how relatively powerless are able to manipulate imposed laws to their own advantage. The Kabba Court cases on divorce and child custody are instructive here as they illustrate value of cultural concepts for reinterpreting legal innovations instituted from above. Indeed, assertions of customary, cultural ideas and practices were a particularly useful tool for Kabba litigants. Under policy of indirect rule, British colonial customary court rulings ideally were to be based on just such traditions (Mann and Roberts 1991:22). Specifically, with divorce and child custody cases in Kabba, concept of served as a focal point for reinterpreting respective claims of Bunu Yoruba women and men to children after divorce. Beliefs about how these blood ties were constituted not only differed between British and Nigerians, they were reinterpreted differently over time by Nigerian women and men. Further, disputes over cultural conception of consanguinity in divorce and child custody cases resonated with contests generated by concurrent political and socio-economic changes. An analysis based either on culturally specific concepts or broader social processes alone cannot explain course of events in Kabba (cf. Starr and Collier 1989:20), as they were dialectically related.

Transformations in Sub-Saharan African Marriage and Fertility

Among populations that value high fertility, marital practices often play important roles in regulating fertility. This article interprets ethnographic and demographic data to examine changes in contemporary African marriage. It shows that female education exacerbates inequities between de facto polygynous women who previously would have lived together, shared household resources, and acknowledged each other as cowives. These new forms of polygyny, however, hold an important key to explaining why polygyny and high fertility still proliferate. Men sustain the costs of polygyny and of high fertility in large part by marginalizing low-status women, usually those with the least education, as outside wives and their children as outside children.

Children's cognition of stressful events

Current research on children and stress supports the belief that children today experience stressful events in a complex developmental-ecological context. Many interdependent elements, including child variables (sex, age, temperament, and developmental stage), family variables (marital status, interactions, child-rearing practices, and socioeconomic status), and variables related to the child's extended social and physical environments (neighborhood, child care, and peers), affect the ways in which children perceive, respond, and cope with stressors (Benswanger, 1982; Honig, 1986). The accuracy of children's perceptions and the development of coping skills, however, vary according to children's cognitive abilities and limitations.

The effect of a contraceptive theme on response to erotica

Undergraduate students (60 males, 60 females) viewed a sexually explicit movie in which a couple engaged in intercourse. Different themes were introduced by prefacing the film with information varying the filmed couple's apparent marital status (single, married) and contraceptive practices (no information, no contraception, contraception via the pill). After viewing the movie, subjects filled out a questionnaire assessing their own affective reactions plus their perceptions and evaluations of the couple. Male subjects reported the greatest positive affect when the film couple was described as single and using contraception, but they also perceived the stimulus couple as caring the least for one another when they were using contraceptives. In contrast, females perceived contraceptive use as positive evidence of mutual caring. These sex differences in reacting to contraceptive use were discussed in terms of the relatively greater tendency of males to separate love and sex than is true for females.