Parenthood, to be normal, must be made legitimate, that is, based on a socially approved, but individual marriage contract. Society decrees that the initial setting of kinship be the individual family based on individual marriage. And this social decree backs up the natural tenderness and affection which seem to be innate in the human, as well as in the animal, parent. The child again responds with a unique, life-long attachment to the one woman and one man who constitute its first social horizon—that is to its mother and father.
The household is thus the workshop where kinship ties are forged, and the constitution of the individual family supplies the pattern upon which they are built. We return thus to the simple view so long prevalent in tradition and pre-scientific thought (cf. II.), but now we have established it by a survey and analysis of facts, made it precise—and at the same time qualified it consider ably. For the individual household provides only the initial situ ation of kinship; and the individual parents, brothers and sisters supply only the primary meaning of kinship terms. This fact is of the greatest importance, but to appreciate it fully it is neces sary to follow the further development of kinship bonds.
As the child grows beyond the earliest stages of infancy, it is brought into contact with other households—those of the grand parents and those of the brothers and sisters of either parent. Perhaps the most important among these persons is the mother's sister.
In matrilocal communities, she is on the spot, in patrilocal ones she has to be summoned if it is necessary ; even when not needed she will come on long visits. Thus the child, as a rule, becomes
familiar early in life with its mother's sister. She again—having perhaps performed important duties during pregnancy and at childbirth—is especially devoted to her potential ward. She often assists the mother, in case of illness replaces her, occasionally may take the child to her own home for a time. She and the mother both know that, under circumstances, she may have to act as a mother to the child. Later on in life the child comes also to realize this and to regard her as substitute or secondary mother.
The substitute mother is, in certain respects, equivalent to the real one : the child sees her in the intimacy of the household, side by side with the real mother, receives the same services from her, realizes that at times she replaces the real parent, acting thus as a secondary or substitute mother. The child equally well realizes, however, that this is a very different "Mother" from the real one. A new relationship is thus built up for which the first one is certainly the pattern, but the process is never a simple repetition.
Linguistically, the extension of the same term Mother to the mother's sister is obviously no more a complete assimilation than is its sociological equivalent. The child forms a new meaning for the old word—in fact, it acquires a new word with the same form, but a different referent and usually a different phonetic character in its emotional tone. When he calls his mother's sister "Mother," he neither fuses the two ideas nor confuses the two people. He merely emphasizes the similarity while he ignores the differences. This one-sided emphasis corresponds to the fact that similarity is here the basis of legal obligation. The mother's sister is be holden to the child in virtue of her equivalence to the mother. It is this which has to be expressed and the child is taught to call her "Mother" since in doing so it puts her under an obliga tion. The difference is obvious, irrelevant—in a way to be oblit erated or glossed over. The verbal magic, which is the first form by which legal obligations are established, has to create a fictitious identity between Mother's Sister and Mother.