Daribi - Marriage and Family

Marriage. Daribi traditionally betrothed girls from an early age, often infancy, and tried to betroth them to wealthy or prestigious men if possible. The people were traditionally highly polygynous; women were married at puberty, whereas men, who had to assemble a bride-price, normally married about ten years afterward. This imbalance in age permitted most men to be polygynous at middle age, and marriage to sisters or other close relatives of an earlier wife was encouraged. Daribi state summarily that they marry among those with whom they do not "eat meat" or share wealth. This makes the clan, which likewise shares in contributing meat and wealth to recruitment of its members, something of a "holding Company" for wives. A woman's close relatives in her natal clan are called her pagebidi, and, as in the case of her offspring, her membership must be redeemed from them. In statistical terms, fully half of all marriages at any given time are the result of a transference of the betrothed or married woman to someone other than the originally intended spouse. Divorce often involves nothing more than a transference among men in a woman's clan of marriage; this transference is also the most common consequence of widowhood. Postmarital Residence is virilocal by normative preference, though there are exceptions.

Domestic Unit. The domestic unit, or household, is determined more strongly by division of labor than by marriage, though a marital household is the norm. For example, a separate household was often formed (with its own building) of all the unmarried youths and widows past childbearing age in a community, so they might cooperate in gardening.

Inheritance. Since a person's pigs and wealth, including money, are most often dispersed in kin payments at death, Inheritance frequently comes down to the right to share in clan lands and wealth. The garden of a deceased person goes to the surviving spouse or gardening partner; rights in bearing trees are inherited patrilineally.

Socialization. A child is not punished for its acts before it is felt to be rational, that is, before it "has a soul" and can speak. Male children are socialized by peers and by participation in male activities, female children through their involvement in women's gardening and child-rearing work.