The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought: Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-DayChamberlain, Alexander Francis
Science
The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought: Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-Day
Chamberlain, Alexander Francis
Child rearing; Children -- Folklore; Folklore and children
With many peoples the name "father" is applied to others than the male
parent of the child. The following remarks of McLennan, regarding the
Tamil and Telugu of India, will stand for not a few other primitive
tribes: "All the brothers of a father are usually called fathers, but,
in strictness, those who are older than the father are called _great
fathers_, and those who are younger, _little fathers_. With the
Puharies, all the brothers of a father are equally fathers to his
children." In Hawaii, the term "male parent" "applied equally to the
father, to the uncles, and even to distant relations." In Japan, the
paternal uncle is called "little father" and the maternal uncle "second
little father" (100. 389, 391).
A lengthy discussion of these terms, with a wealth of illustration from
many primitive languages, will be found in Westermarck (166. 86-94).
_Father-Right_.
Of the Roman family it has been said: "It was a community comprising men
and things. The members were maintained by adoption as well as by
consanguinity. The father was before all things the chief, the general
administrator. He was called father even when he had no son; paternity
was a question of law, not one of persons. The heir is no more than the
continuing line of the deceased person; he was heir in spite of himself
for the honour of the defunct, for the lares, the hearth, the manes, and
the hereditary sepulchre" (100. 423). In ancient Rome the
_paterfamilias_ and the _patina potestas_ are seen in their
extreme types. Letourneau remarks further: "Absolute master, both of
things and of people, the paterfamilias had the right to kill his wife
and to sell his sons. Priest and king in turn, it was he who represented
the family in their domestic worship; and when, after his death, he was
laid by the side of his ancestors in the common tomb, he was deified,
and helped to swell the number of the household gods" (100. 433).
Post thus defines the system of "father-right":--
"In the system of 'father-right' the child is related only to the father
and to the persons connected with him through the male line, but not
with his mother and the persons connected with him through the female
line. The narrowest group organized according to father-right consists
of the father and his children. The mother, for the most part, appears
in the condition of a slave to the husband. To the patriarchal family in
the wider sense belong the children of the sons of the father, but not
the children of his daughters; the brothers and sisters of the same
father, but not those merely related to the same mother; the children of
the brother of the same father, but not the children of the sisters of
the same father, etc. With every wife the relationship ceases every
time" (127. I. 24).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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