ABSTRACT
Between the household and the family a complex relation obtains, and this connection, with which I am concerned in this and the following chapters, can best be approached by examining how the people define kinship. 1 For them the irreducible kinship link, the tie from which all others are derived, is the mother-child relationship. ‘A mother is always a mother’, the countrymen say. ‘The link can never be denied for it has been seen by others.’ Thus, for the people, the elemental mother-child bond is based on the fact of birth, but the tie is a biological given only because it can be and is socially recognized. The position of the patrifilial bond is slightly different. On the one hand, the father-child relationship is thought to be based on the fact that the father engendered the child. Most mothers are able to name the father if he does not wish to identify himself, and in doubtful cases the people will even deduce genetic links from phenotypic characteristics. The father-child bond, then, appears to be like the mother-child link with the single difference that it is not so easily identifiable. But there is a complication. Genitors do not always live with their children, even beginning at birth. A child, therefore, may be brought up by a different male from his recognized or even unrecognized genetic father. In many cases this second man may be said to be the father, by virtue of having lived with and having brought up the child, both of which are implied by the term ‘to raise’ (criar). In such a situation, locality gives rise to a kinship bond.
