Child sharing in the Inuit subsistence system
2024; Liverpool University Press; Linguagem: Inglês
10.3828/hgr.2024.24
ISSN2056-3264
Autores Tópico(s)Infant Health and Development
ResumoThis article aims to analyse how Inuit extended families engage in collaborative childcare and rearing practices within the framework of their subsistence system. The study demonstrates that child sharing through care and rearing is crucial for continually generating an extended family through a cyclical drive of the subsistence system. First, I analyse childcare and upbringing in Inuit extended family by reviewing previous Inuit ethnographies and my participant observation in Kugaaruk, Nunavut, Canada, an off-road Inuit village in the Central Arctic. The data show that 1) child adoption is prevalent in nuclear families within an extended family, with nearly every nuclear family having at least one adopted child, which is similar to a stepfamily when one of the parents is not genetically related to the child; 2) there are no discernible differences in the emotional and behavioural attitudes of parents and their relatives toward their biological offsprings and adopted children; 3) the adult members of extended family collaboratively rear their children, facilitating their social and moral development and instructing them in survival skills, whereas parents bear the primary responsibility for childcare, including providing food, basic needs, protection and love. Finally, the collaborative childcare and rearing practices are analysed within the subsistence system, demonstrating that child sharing through adoption and cooperative childcare can be seen as an outcome of the subsistence system, particularly food-sharing practices, which play a pivotal role in the system. Then, based on this analysis, I show that sharing practices of food and children play a crucial role in the process of continually generating their world known as nuna (land), the extended family embedded therein, and the trust relationships among its members.
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