ABSTRACT
Fathers' caregiving to children among the Agta foragers of the Philip pines is especially interesting because of the participation of women in hunting wild pig and deer. The lack of a pronounced gender division of labor in many areas of life places fathers in a context in which their attention to children may be critical to mothers' success in food provi sioning and in bearing and rearing children. Among the Cagayan Agta resident in the early 1980s around the Nanadukan River of coastal Cagayan, women hunting in teams secured one third the wild pigs and one-fifth the deer. Joining parties of men, they helped kill even more (Estioko-Griffin 1985; Goodman et al. 1985a). The predilection of women to contribute to animal protein acquisition and to be active in all subsis tence efforts places them at one end of the forager scale of female food getting efforts, contrasting with perhaps the other extreme, Ache for agers of Paraguay (Hurtado et al. 1985). Initial analyses of childcare among the Agta suggested that mothers predominate in the in-camp care of children (Goodman et al. 1985a) despite their engagement in all subsistence activities. The importance of women's hunting and seeming effectiveness of parenting has led to the interests in the present chapter: understanding variables that affect the parenting behaviors of Agta fathers and mothers. We will examine Agta caregiving with a focus on the men.
