Review of P. Valentine, Cultures of Multiple Fathers

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 10(1): 206-07 (2004).

This volume is a rich compendium of previously unpublished field reports from across Lowland South America. It consists of an excellent introduction, followed by twelve chapters in which a range of regional specialists debate and dispute the implications of their own and one another’s challenging and often-unexpected findings. Jargon free, tightly edited, and with a consistent focus, the book should interest not only Americanists but anyone concerned with kinship, gender, origins scenarios, sociobiology, or the history and evolution of the family. If you think you already know about such things – think again.

Beckerman and Valentine offer the first systematic account of a belief found deeply entrenched in a substantial number of Lowland South American societies. If a woman has sexual relations with several men before and during her pregnancy, then all are in varying degrees considered biological fathers of her child. Becoming pregnant is not an all-or-nothing event – it is a matter of degree. Since a baby is formed initially from sperm, all those who have sex with the mother play a role in making and strengthening that baby. In the case of at least one Venezuelan community, the indigenous belief turns out to be statistically well founded. A long-term investigation into the reproductive histories of 114 Bar women (involved in a total of 916 pregnancies) shows that infants with two fathers are significantly more likely to survive to age 15 than those with just one (pp. 27-41).

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Beckerman, Stephen & Paul Valentine (eds). Cultures of multiple fathers: the theory and practice of partible paternity in Lowland South America. 291 pp. map, tables, figs., bibliogr. Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2002. $59.95 (cloth)