THE INCEST TABOO: SOCIAL CONTROL OF HUMAN SEXUALITY
Another way to see how extensively sex is social is to look at the social control
of human sexuality. One of the best examples is incest. Although most of us
feel revulsion at the idea of having sex with our mother or father, a brother
or a sister, or our own child, not everyone does. Such desires are present in
every human group--for every human group has rules against such sex. These rules,
or incest taboo, prohibit sex and marriage between certain specified relatives.
In our society, those relatives are parents and their children, and brothers
and sisters.
How the Incest Taboo Varies Among Groups
Feelings against incest run so deeply that we might think the incest taboo is
due to human instinct. As you may have noticed, however, nowhere in this book
do I speak of any human behavior whatsoever as due to instinct. The sociological
view is that our behaviors and attitudes are due to our socialization in human
groups. The incest taboo is no exception to this basic sociological principle.
Why don't we sociologists think of the incest taboo as instinctual? After all, it is found among every human group in the world. In no culture is sex between parents and their children, or between brother and sister, the norm.
First, the definition of incest varies from one group to another. In the United States, for example, marriage between first cousins is illegal in some states, but legal in others. Americans don't carry the ban against marriage beyond first cousins, but some groups carry it much farther. The Arunta, a tribe in Australia, for example, look at relationships in an entirely different way than we do. They think of certain clans as being "blood" relatives, and marriage between people in those clans as incest. They reckon such blood relationships so extensively that for Arunta men marriage to seven out of every eight women is defined as incest. Obviously, there is nothing instinctual about prohibiting sex or marriage among people we don't even see as related to one another--say your uncle's aunt's daughter's sister or brother, or even someone who has a certain last name.
"But the Arunta don't allow sex or marriage between brothers and sisters or parents and their children," you might argue. "So that is where the incest taboo is instinctual. The Arunta have just applied this universal instinct farther than anyone else." This argument sounds good, but it takes us to the second argument against the incest taboo being due to a human instinct. Some groups allow exceptions even here. For example, several groups have allowed marriages between brothers and sisters. In fact, three groups that we know of required brother-sister marriages for their high nobility: the ancient Egyptians, the Incas of Peru, and the old kingdom of Hawaii (Beals and Hoijer 1965). Some groups also allow sex between fathers and daughters. The Thonga, a tribe in East Africa, permit a hunter to have sexual intercourse with his daughter before he goes on a lion hunt. And a tribe in Central Africa, the Azande, permit high nobles to marry their own daughters (LaBarre 1960).
Are the Exceptions to the Incest Taboo Due to Power?
You may have noticed that these exceptions to the incest taboo that bans parent-child
sex allow fathers to have sex with their daughters, not mothers to have sex
with their sons. This may sound like more of the discrimination due to male
power that we have examined throughout this text--men holding the power and
giving themselves privileges that they deny to women. If you notice, these exceptions
also generally apply to a group's nobility, to its rulers, which lends additional
support to this argument.
This difference in power, however, is not necessary for a group to have patterns of approved incest. Ethel Albert, an anthropologist, did research among a group that approves of sex between a mother and her son. In her fieldwork among the Burundi of tropical Africa, Albert (1963:49) found that when a son is impotent the mother is supposed to have sex with him in order to cure his impotence. Here is what she says:
Sometimes the marriage does not last the four days of the honeymoon. The morning
after the wedding, it can be that the young bride will go out into the yard
and announce in a loud, clear voice: "I did not come here to go to bed
with another girl." She goes home. The boy's father knows that his son
is impotent. It is the mother's fault. She must have allowed the dried umbilical
cord to fall on the male organ of her newborn son. The cure also is up to her.
The parents give their son a great deal of beer so that he will become drunk.
The father then leaves the house, and the mother then has intercourse with the
son in order to remove the impotence which her neglect caused. If the cure has
not failed--and there is great confidence in the probable success of this remedy--the
young couple will be reunited and remain together to face the other risks of
married life.
The Sociological Significance of the Exceptions
These exceptions to the incest taboo are startling to our ears, but I don't
want you to get lost in the examples. Their sociological significance is that
what one group defines as incest, another group may define as approved sex.
In some groups, under circumstances that they determine, sex between a mother
and her son, a father and his daughter, or a sister and brother is approved.
Among some groups, it may even be required. We can see that behavior that we
disapprove--or even find shocking or revolting--is approved by others. This
follows the basic sociological principle stressed in the text--how we evaluate
behavior depends on our socialization. That is, as discussed in Chapters 2 and
3, we learn our values--including our ideas of what is moral and immoral.
Why Is an Incest Taboo Universal?
If what is considered incest differs from one group to another, and what one
group finds revolting another group approves or even requires, then why is there
no human group that approves of father-daughter, mother-son, or brother-sister
marriage for most of its people? Why does every human group prohibit such sex
and marriage except for specified members under highly specific situations?
A social basis for the incest taboo was proposed by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1927, 1929). Malinowski said that the lack of an incest taboo would disrupt the socialization of a group's children. As you saw in the chapter on socialization (Chapter 3) and in the chapter on the family (Chapter 12 of Essentials and Chapter 16 of the hardback text), the family is essential for transmitting a society's customs--its way of life--to the next generation. It is in the family--no matter what form it may take in any part of the world--that children are initiated into the customs of their group.
If incest were generally allowed, said Malinowski, it would disrupt this socialization, which is essential for society. For example, if fathers and mothers were allowed to have intercourse with their children, what would their role be? Would they still be able to guide their children as parents? Or would their role change to that of lover? What we expect of people as parents and lovers are quite distinct matters. Specifically, to permit incest would lead to role conflict--the expectations and obligations that are attached to one role would conflict with those attached to another role. As a result, said anthropologist George Murdock (1949), to avoid these strains on the family every society developed some form of an incest taboo.
Because the incest taboo developed somewhere in the ancient past, leaving us no records, we are left with theorizing, not fact. This explanation of roles and socialization that anthropologists have developed may be correct, but we don't know for sure. We do know that every human group has some form of the incest taboo, and that it pushes children outside the family for marriage (what we call exogamy). By doing this, the incest taboo extends people's relationships and forces them to create alliances. In early human history, this would have been important for survival as alliances would have diminished war making between small human groups. In contemporary society, uniting people in larger networks leads to more cohesion (or unity). This functional analysis of the incest taboo, however, does not explain its origins, which are lost in history.
Offenders and Victims
Although incest is strongly condemned in U.S. society, it is not rare, and it
has serious effects on its victims. Sociologist Diana Russell (1986) interviewed
a probability sample (a representative sample from which we can generalize)
of 930 women in San Francisco. She found that before they turned age eighteen,
16 percent of these women had been victims of incest, but only 5 of 100 cases
had been reported to the police. Even though Russell interviewed a probability
sample, we have to be careful of this conclusion. As you may recall from the
materials on sociological methods (Chapter 2 in Essentials and Chapter 5 in
the hardback text), operational definitions (how we define the concepts we are
researching) affect our findings. Russell's operational definition of incest
was so broad that it included not only sexual touching, sexual intercourse,
and rape but also unwanted kisses and even "stealthy looks." It also
included any relative. While this study does not adequately reflect common assumptions
about incest, Russell found that many cases of sexual intercourse had not been
reported to the police. We can conclude that the actual rate of incest is much
higher than the official statistics.
Who are the offenders? Russell found that the most common offenders are uncles, followed by male first cousins. Then come fathers, brothers, and finally a variety of other male relatives from brothers-in-law to step-grandfathers. She found little incest between mother and son, a finding supported by other researchers (Lester 1972). As you can see, far from being random, incest shows specific patterns. You can see that incest increases as the relationship to the victim decreases. Gender is also especially strong, for seldom do women break this taboo.
Incest can create enormous burdens for its victims, from lower self-esteem
and higher promiscuity to confusion about one's sexual identity (Finkelhor 1980;
Bartoi and Kinder 1998; Lewin 1998). Diana Russell (n.d.) found that incest
victims who experience the most difficulty are those who have been victimized
the most often, those whose incest took place over a longer period of time,
and those whose incest was "more serious," such as sexual intercourse
as opposed