[Ethnographics Gallery University of Kent

Turkish Village

Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.

Paul Stirling
CHAPTER THREE
VILLAGES AND HOUSEHOLDS

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Page 41


father or married brother. It therefore creates, or increases the size of, a joint household.
The successful begetting of children is not easy, especially for young men. The wife is often very young; the husband is often away on military service or migrant labour a good deal in the early years of the marriage; gynaecological troubles are common, and gynaecological services limited; infant death-rates are still high. But after a few years, a man with no sons will take steps, first with treatment, both medical and magical, and later, if need be, by trying other wives. In the long run, nothing is more important than begetting a son. Thus the younger the husband, the more likely he is to be part of a joint household, and the less likely he is to have successful children. The large number of childless couples in joint households illustrates the delays and difficulties of successful procreation.

The small number of fragmentary and exceptional households are similarly due in most cases not to whim or deviance but to biological failure. The death of women and children, serious as it is, does not usually disrupt the household, because they are replaceable. A bereft husband normally remarries at once. A bereft father begets more children. One widower in Elbashï maintained a womanless household with his young sons, but he was the only example I came across. On the other hand, I heard a story in Elbashï of an old man who lost his two sons in a snow-storm, and immediately took a widow to wife and begat two more children, one of each sex. His age varied between sixty and ninety in different versions of the story, but his son and stepson were living evidence of its general truth.

The death of the household head is more devastating. Solutions of the problem are various. If he leaves sons old enough to work, the sons normally remain together at least until they and their sisters are all married. Their mother is unlikely to remarry.

A widow with younger children suits her circumstances. If she remarries, she may leave the children with her late husband's agnates, she may take them to her new husband, or she may leave them with her own father and mother. She may marry her late husband's brother, or some other kinsman of his. If she does not remarry, she may either remain in her husband's house and struggle to bring up his children there, with the help of her own or her husband's agnates ; or she may return to her father's house.

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