Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
Paul Stirling
CHAPTER SIX
HOUSEHOLD AND FAMILY STRUCTURE
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Page 114
the labour migrants and achieved a much greater prosperity.
The notion of `successful' marriage in terms of personal relations does not exist in the village. The main criterion of success is the existence of healthy sons. Success is inconspicuous. If a wife is driven out or runs away, or dies, her husband normally loses no time in replacing her; a new wife may be installed in no more than a week (p. 195). Every household needs an efficient woman to cook its daily bread, and care for the small children. A woman who is chronically ill may well be replaced, or my find a new wife brought in to share her husband. If she fails within a reasonable number of years to produce sons, she is also likely to be replaced, or added to.
Mother-son. Every woman desires above all things the birth of a son. The new bride's position in her husband's household depends on this. Everyone will be pleased. Her son, moreover, is a permanent acquisition. As he grows, her position in her husbnd's household becomes increasingly assured; when he is adult he will marry and provide her with a daughter-in-law to wait upon her. A woman with sons will never be in want or homeless.
A mother is thought of as protective and indulgent to her small sons, in contrast to father who is stern and exacting. Of course, mothers discipline their sons, and are often driven to temporary distraction by their small children. But in general the good mother is comforter and defender against paternal wrath.
Adult men treat mothers with respect, and have an unshakeable duty to care for them. But they and not their mothers are in charge of the household. Men are automatically superior, and sons will give orders to their mothers when necessary.
The tie between mother and son holds the household together under the strain of the arrival of a daughter-in-law. Only one full son had left his father's house prematurely, whereas all other cases in both villages of premature separation were cases of stepsons removing their new wife from the stepmother-in-law (p. 132). Where the mother-son tie is weak, the new bride is able to persuade her husband to set up an independent household, where it is strong, she has to submit. Widows are sure of a place i their son's household until death. In only one case did a woman, after protracted quarrels, manage to drive her old
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