ABSTRACT
In the old days girls were betrothed before puberty, and the initiation rites, which followed as closely as possible on first menstruation, were the immediate preliminary to marriage. There are a few matrilineal peoples among whom a wife joins her husband at marriage, but the children are sent away by their parents to live with a maternal uncle. A. I. Richards’s work on the Bemba gives a very detailed description of family life among a people with this system of descent and marriage. In the north-eastern part of the region special emphasis was traditionally laid on the initiation of girls. The marriage is consummated as soon as possible after the initiation ceremony. Where girls were betrothed as young children there was obviously a long interval between betrothal and marriage. Where the customs associated with child betrothal are strictly observed, there is no room for the freer pre-marital sex relations so widely allowed in South and East Africa.
