Intimate Fathers: The Nature and Context of Aka Pygmy Paternal Infant Care [Hardcover]

Barry S. Hewlett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1991

This systematic study of non-Western fathers' roles in infant care focuses on the Aka pygmies of central Africa

Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press (May 15, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0472101846
• ISBN-13: 978-0472101849
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 0.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,519,889 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dated, But Nevertheless Remarkable Content Concerning All of Us, June 22, 2009

By 

Bonam Pak (Berlin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Intimate Fathers: The Nature and Context of Aka Pygmy Paternal Infant Care (Paperback)

I read the 1994 edition of the 1991 book, which is based on field work among the Aka of the Bokoka section of Bongandu village in the Central African Republic started in 1973. However, special research on Aka fathers, the topic of the book was conducted over a (short) six-month period in 1984, involving few individuals with few observations as the author admits. The book depends heavily on 54 tables and figures, representing the author's / anthropologist's statistics on who does what how many times. Of the some 220 pages 175 are reserved for regular text and 8 for altogether 17 monochrome pictures.

The scientist visited the human society with the most known infant care by fathers to check on averred universal theories on the father's role in the upbringing of children. (Though a South American society may have escaped the author's attention, of which I do not know the name, unfortunately.) To find out that they are wrong, i.e. NOT universal. Among them are the Western concepts that attachment to fathers universally builds on vigorous play and their punitive role.

Instead he found that the Aka live a different system with near equal contribution to the diet of anatomical females and males, high fertility, lack of warfare and lack violence, especially not against women, a fierce egalitarian ethic and a mobile foraging lifestyle, which does not accumulate material goods. The result of all of these factors contribute to that unusually high infant care by fathers to the benefit of the entire Aka society. On the way the researcher found out, too, that divorce and single parenthood aren't signs of decay of the modern US/Western society, but belong to the human heritage.

This book/edition is not up to date. For example, Neanderhals aren't classified as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis anymore, but as Homo neanderthalensis, i.e. a branch further removed from modern humans. The role of hunting large game in the earlier days of humanity has been reduced considerably in the meantime. And it doesn't occur to the author yet to even find out, wether offering their nipples to demanding infants actually involves male lactation, which has been accepted among Western scientists as (easily) existing these days.

Even though, this is a remarkable work. No matter the accumulating dust, limited research frame, non-native (i.e. Western) perspective and writing style burdened with statistics of people's activities, this is a recommendable book. For it broadens the horizons and contributes to the knowledge of ourselves and alternative styles of child-rearing.

You may also be interested in the booklet Kindezi: The KoÌngo art of babysitting and The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses on Westernstyle bias in anthropology of African societies.