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Chapter Three. Phases of Life |
| caption: |
nearly all children have a legal father |
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Nearly all girls succeeded in securing legal fathers for their children. In the 249 houses of Wakching there was, at the time of my fieldwork, not a single child without a legal father. If an unmarried girl bore the child of a married man who was unwilling to divorce his wife, the child was reared in the girl's natal home and the child's biological father paid the girl's parents compensation to the value of one brass plate. A boy born into such circumstances moved, after some years, to his father's house, where he was regarded as a fully privileged member of his father's clan and entered the morung like any other boy. |
