Symposium†

This is the eighth in a series of articles entitled Symposium on Infant Care and Feeding in Oceania.

: The social context of infant feeding in the murik lakes of Papua New Guinea‡

This research was supported by a dissertation research grant from the University of California, San Diego, the Wenner‐Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and by the Institute for Intercultural Studies. Research affiliation in Papua New Guinea was with the Education Research Unit of the University of Papua New Guinea.

Among the Murik people of Papua New Guinea, food and feeding are central to nearly all social activities. Giving and receiving food are the means for acquiring prestige, paying debts, resolving quarrels and humiliating rivals. The problem of providing for dependent infants and their mothers is closely bound up with these social gestures involving food. Because the need for special care goes on for many months, the requirements of infant care and feeding compete with other activities and force individuals and families to adjust to changing circumstances and priorities. The ideals of infant care and feeding are well‐formulated and often‐expressed. The actual arrangements represent compromises between high expectations and real possibilities. The negotiation of actual caretaking and parenting responsibilities is most visible in cases where there are adoption claims on a new baby. Adoptive parents must demonstrate their claims through willingness to work for and feed the child and its natural mother. This paper presents ideal arrangements, typical modifications of them and one case of family caretaking and rival adoption claims. The case demonstrates the ways in which infant care and feeding are embedded in a complex of social values, activities and expectations.

Key words:

• Food exchange and infant feeding
• child care
• adoption claims and feeding responsibilities
• ideal models of pregnancy, birth and infancy
• caretaking responsibilities of kin
• women's work
• Papua New Guinea
• Melanesia
• Murik Lakes

Notes

This is the eighth in a series of articles entitled Symposium on Infant Care and Feeding in Oceania.

This research was supported by a dissertation research grant from the University of California, San Diego, the Wenner‐Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and by the Institute for Intercultural Studies. Research affiliation in Papua New Guinea was with the Education Research Unit of the University of Papua New Guinea.