ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns adoption among East African pastoralists and focuses on one particular form of adoption. Among pastoral peoples in this part of the world it is quite common for infertile or childless women to adopt children from co-wives, sisters-in-law or other close female relatives (Spencer 1988; Dahl 1990; Wagner-Glenn 1992). Although husbands and fathers may interfere in the decision-making, even initiate decisions on behalf of women, women are the major agents in these transactions. The prominent role of women in ‘child exchanges’ must be interpreted and located within wider cultural notions of femininity and gender, of procreation and prosperity in these societies. Cultural preferences and moral norms, however, must be given a form, and my argument in this chapter is that when women adopt children from each other, they evoke a meaningful image of the ‘good life’.
