Anthropos 85.1990
Berichte und Kommentare
Yanomami Wailing Songs and the
Question of Parental Attachment in
Traditional Kinbased Societies
Irenâus Eibl-Eibesfeldt und Marie-Claude
Mattei-Müller
The Yanomami have been portrayed as “The Fierce
People,” and this image sticks to them. In the
context of a longterm project of cross-cultural
documentation of unstaged social interactions and
rituals (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1989, 1975), the first au
thor has visited the Yanomami twelve times since
1969, collecting 51.400 m 16 mm film and many
hours of tape. Amongst others the films document
parent-child, sibling, and other instances of adult-
child interaction. Upon comparison with those
of other cultures, the films and tapes document
a considerable number of behavioral patterns of
mother-child interaction which are practically alike
in all cultures and which are to be interpreted as
phylogenetic adaptations. The patterns have been
described and the films have partly been published
(Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1983, 1989; Eibl-Eibesfeldt and
Herzog 1985, 1987a, 19877?). Amongst others,
John Bowlby’s biological attachment theory finds
our support (Bowlby 1958). A preferential moth
er-child bond also exists among the Yanomami.
In March 1989 the first author taped a wailing
song of a Yanomami father and a mother who
had lost their little daughter approximately three
months prior to our visit. The tape was transcribed
and translated by the co-author with the help of the
Yanomami informant Serowe. It provides interest
ing as well as touching insight in the Yanomami’s
way of thinking and feeling. And together with
the already published documentation on parental
behavior, it can be helpful to correct the so far
one-sided views about the “Fierce People.” In a
wider context these documents may help to correct
some recently propagated views as to the origin of
maternal affection and love.
The Question of Parental Attachment
Recently, Aries (1978) and Badinter (1981) have
put forward the thesis that mother love only occurs
as a result of late civilization and that in traditional
kinbased societies mothers do not form strong
attachments to their children, since child mortality
is high and mothers are accustomed to losing chil
dren. Badinter’s theses as announced on the book
jacket reads: “This ‘History of Motherlove’ proves
that mother love is not an instinct of a ‘Female
Nature’ but a social behavior which changes with
time and societal conditions.” Both voice the opin
ion that in traditional societies mothers are much
less emotionally attached to their children than are
mothers in our society. In support of this idea,
Aries and Badinter maintain that in traditional
societies mothers readily kill their newborns if they
do not wish to raise them. Schmidbauer (1971)
went as far as to argue that they would do that
“light-heartedly.” Aries and Badinter furthermore
point at the fact that in the 18th and 19th century
it was customary in western Europe for mothers to
give their children away to wet-nurses who killed
their own children in order to obtain the salary of a
wet-nurse. In addition, many wet-nursed children
were badly neglected and their mortality rate was
accordingly high. Apparently, there was not much
mother love involved in this procedure. It did not,
however, occur to Aries that only a small fraction
of the French population was financially in a po
sition to give children to wet-nurses, and that this
phenomenon might perhaps better be considered
a pathology of a certain stratum of the urban
population who had undergone a process of moral
self-negligence due to prosperity (“Wohlstandsver-
wahrlosung”). Certainly, the landfolks raised their
children, except those few who participated in
wet-nursing the offspring of the well to do in order
to help support their own families.
Badinter’s writings are clearly motivated by
the desire to convince her readers that the human
female is not better adapted for child care than