Explaining The Incest Taboo

Although anthropologists have observed and studied violations of incest taboos (in other words, cases of incest), all anthropological theories of the incest taboo are concerned with the formal proscription against incest (as defined locally), not with actual cases of incest (however defined). These theories are motivated by two major questions: first, given the variation in how different societies define incest, and in which relationships are proscribed, is there any general pattern or universal function of incest taboos? Second, given that people do commit incest, why do so many (indeed, arguably, all) societies proscribe certain forms of incest? It should be noted that these questions are not concerned with the specific effects of incest on specific people -- a matter more properly left to psychologists.
One theory suggest that the taboo expresses a psychological revulsion that people naturally experience at the thought of incest. Most anthropologists reject this explanation, since incest does in fact occur.

Another theory is that the observance of the taboo would lower the incidence of congenital birth-defects caused by inbreeding. Anthropologists reject this explanation for two reasons. First, inbreeding does not lead to congenital birth-defects per se; it leads to an increase in the frequency of homozygotes. A homozygote encoding a congenital birth-defect will produce children with birth-defects, but homozygotes that do not encode for congenital birth-defects will decrease the number of carriers in a population. If children born with birth-defects die (or are killed) before they reproduce, the ultimate effect of inbreeding will be to decrease the frequency of defective genes in the population. Second, anthropologists have pointed out that in the Trobriand case a man and the daughter of his father's sister, and a man and the daughter of his mother's sister, are equally distant genetically. Therefore, the prohibition against relations is not based on or motivated by concerns over biological closeness.

Finally, Claude Lévi-Strauss has argued that the incest taboo is in effect a prohibition against endogamy, and the effect is to encourage exogamy. Through exogamy, otherwise unrelated households or lineages will form relationships through marriage, thus strengthening social solidarity.

This theory was debated intensely by anthropologists in the 1950s. It appealed to many because it used the study of incest taboos and marriage to answer more fundamental research interests of anthropologists at the time: how can an anthropologist map out the the social relationships within a given community, and how does these relationships promote or endanger social solidarity? Nevertheless, anthropologists never reached a consensus, and with the Vietnam War and the process of de-colonization in Africa, Asia, and Oceania, anthropological interests shifted away from mapping local social relationships.

Incest is not such a clear-cut matter as it has been made out to be over millennia of taboos. Many participants claim to have enjoyed the act and its physical and emotional consequences. It is often the result of seduction. In some cases, two consenting and fully informed adults are involved. Many types of relationships, which are defined as incestuous, are between genetically unrelated parties (a stepfather and a daughter), or between fictive kin or between classificatory kin (that belong to the same matriline or patriline). In certain societies (the American Indians or the Chinese) it is sufficient to carry the same family name (=to belong to the same clan) and marriage is forbidden. Some incest prohibitions relate to sexual acts - other to marriage. In some societies, incest is mandatory or prohibited, according to the social class (Bali). In others, the Royal House started a tradition of incestuous marriages, which were imitated by lower classes (Ancient Egypt). The list is long and it serves to demonstrate the diversity of this most universal taboo. Generally put, we can say that a prohibition to have sex with or marry a related person should be classified as an incest prohibition, no matter the nature of the relationship.

Perhaps the strongest feature of incest has been hitherto downplayed: that it is, essentially, an autoerotic act. Having sex with a first-degree blood relative is like having sex with yourself. It is a Narcissistic act and like all acts Narcissistic, it involves the objectification of the partner. The incestuous Narcissist over-values and then devalues his sexual partner. He is devoid of empathy (cannot see the other's point of view or put himself in her shoes). For an in depth treatment of Narcissism and its psychosexual dimension, see: "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" and "Frequently Asked Questions".

But incest involves more than a manifestation of a personality disorder or of a paraphilia (incest is considered by many to be a class of pedophilia). It harks back to the very nature of the family. It is closely entangled with its functions and with its contribution to the development of the individual within it.

A family is a mechanism of allocation of genetic and materialistic wealth. Worldly goods are passed on from one generation to the next through succession, inheritance and residence. Genetic material is handed down through the sexual act. It is the mandate of the family to increase both, either by accumulating property or by exogamy (marrying outside the family). Clearly, incest prevents both. It preserves a limited genetic pool and makes an increase of material possessions through intermarriage all but impossible.

Once allocated, the family is an efficient venue of transferring material wealth, as well as transmitting information and messages horizontally (among family members) and vertically (down the generations). A large part of the process of socialization still rides on the back of this property of the family. It is still by far the most heavyweight agent of socialization. Gender roles, for instance, are learned, emulated and assimilated mainly through the family. Incest, in itself, isolated from its social context and judgement, should not have affected this function in particular. There is no logical reason why incest should interfere with socialization, role learning or with the allocation of material resources (except, perhaps, when it comes to inheritance). Paradoxically, it is the reaction of society that transforms incest into such a disruptive phenomenon. The condemnation, the horror, the revulsion and the social sanctions distort the internal processes of the incestuous family. It is from society that the child learns that something is horribly wrong and that he should not adopt the offending parent as a role model. The formation of the Superego is stunted and it remains infantile, ideal, sadistic, perfectionist, demanding and punishing. The Ego, on the other hand, is likely to be replaced by a False Ego version, whose job it is to suffer the consequences of the socially hideous act. To sum up: social control in the case of incest is most likely to produce a Narcissist. Disempathic, exploitative and in eternal search for Narcissistic supply – the child becomes a replica of his offending parent.

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 to sexual touching.

Doctor Dan

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