couvade

couvade, (from French couver “to hatch”) ritual behaviour undertaken, usually by a man, during or around the birth of a child. Historically, couvade has been poorly defined; it has encompassed practices that are quite divergent in terms of timing, participants, activity, and cause.

Ethnographic examples of couvade have been known to co-occur with pregnancy, parturition, the postpartum period, and even annual festivals celebrating male reenactments of birth. Observers have recorded instances of couvade by biological fathers, other men, women, and children. Examples of ritual behaviour have included a man’s taking to his bed or dressing in his wife’s clothing during her labour and delivery, a new father’s being bound or bandaged in the same manner as a postpartum mother, and a father’s pre- or postpartum avoidance of specific foods or activities (most commonly sexual intercourse or heavy exertion), in some cases for a period of years.

Anthropological interpretations of couvade have shifted over time and have generally reflected the major theoretical standpoint of the era. In the 19th century, cultural evolutionists, who posited that primordial societies were matriarchal, suggested that couvade was a relic of the transition to patriarchy. Early 20th-century functionalists held that it was a method through which fathers publicly accepted the legitimacy of their children. By the 1970s, psychological anthropologists were citing Sigmund Freud’s theories, suggesting that men in matrilineal cultures carry an intrinsic envy of their mother’s status as the core persona of the household and that men overcame that envy and internalized their true, masculine role only by reenacting the work of motherhood. Most of these interpretations considered couvade the act of an individual rather than viewing it as embedded in a larger cultural milieu.

However, by the end of the 20th century researchers had begun to question whether couvade should be viewed as part of a wider ritual cycle surrounding human reproduction and development or, alternatively, if such behaviours are enacted more generally, during periods of liminality or propagation. Both of these situations have been shown to be true, sometimes within a single culture. An example of the former occurs among the Lesu of Melanesia: Lesu men traditionally avoid certain foods before the birth of their children, and the community as a whole engages in similar avoidance when its young people experience passage rites such as initiation or marriage. Lesu couvade behaviour also applies to nonhuman propagation: while a child’s parents avoid sexual intercourse after its birth, the community as a whole avoids intercourse during the pig-farrowing season.

Among the Garifuna of Honduras, fathers abstain from fishing, complex construction activities (such as building a house), and heavy exertion during the postpartum period. Garifuna people explain that this parental behaviour is essential for proper infant development: a child receives food from its mother (in the form of breast milk) but gains its life force directly from its father, through a spiritual umbilicus. Thus, a new father must avoid activities that will “spend” his vigour, because such expenditures may cause his child to fall weak and die. If a new father accidentally engages in an activity that causes him to sweat—sweat being the physical manifestation of vigour—he must rub the fluid on the child’s body so that the energy is passed along to the child rather than dissipated into the atmosphere. Garifuna men also rub perspiration onto their older children as a curative.