Apart from the special task of producing and rearing the chil dren, the wife normally looks after the preparation of the food, she almost invariably provides the fuel and the water, is the ac tual attendant at the hearth or fireplace, manufactures, tends and owns the cooking-vessels, and she is also the main carrier of burdens In the very simplest cultures the woman also erects the hut or shelter and looks after camp arrangements (Australians, Bushmen, Andaman Islanders). The husband is the protector and defender of the family, and he also performs all the work which requires greater strength, courage and decision, such as hunting game, fishing, heavy building of houses and craft, and clearing the timber.
The division of labour between husband and wife outside the household follows the line of men's and women's occupations which differ with the community, but on the whole make fighting, hunting, sailing, metal work purely male occupations ; collecting, agriculture, pottery, weaving predominantly female; while fishing, cattle-tending, making of clothing and utensils are done by one sex or the other according to culture.
The division of labour outside the household does not mean merely that husband and wife collect food and manufacture goods for their family each in a different manner. It means also as a rule that each has to collaborate with other members of the com munity of the same sex in some wider collective enterprise, from which the family benefits only partially and indirectly. In spite of repeated theoretical assertions as to the existence of the "closed household economy" or even of individual search for food among primitive peoples, we find in every community, how ever simple, a wider economic collaboration embracing all mem bers and welding the various families into larger co-operative units (cf. B. Malinowski, "Primitive Economics of the Trobriand Islanders," Econ. Journal, 1921 ; "Labour and Primitive Eco nomics," Nature, December, 1925).
The fuller our knowledge of relevant facts, the better we see on the one hand the dependence of the family upon the rest of the community, and on the other hand the duty of each individual to contribute not only to his own household but to those of others as well. Thus in Australia a great part of a man's yield in hunting has to be divided according to fixed rules among his relatives, own and classificatory. Throughout Oceania a network of obligations unites the members of the community and overrules the economic autonomy of the household. In the Trobriand Is
lands a man has to offer about half of his garden produce to his sister and another part to various relatives, only the remainder be ing kept for his own household, which in turn is supported sub stantially by the wife's brother and other relatives. Economic obligations of such a nature cutting across the closed unity of the household could be quoted from every single tribe of which we have adequate information.
The most important examples however come from the com munities organised on extreme mother-right, where husband and wife are in most matters members of different households, and their mutual economic contributions show the character of gifts rather than of mutual maintenance.
9. The Split Household Under Matrilocal Mother-right. —Most of what has been said so far refers to the marriage based on a united household and associated as a rule both under father right and mother-right with patrilocal residence. This means that the bride moves to the husband's community, when she either joins his family house or camp, or else inhabits a house built for the new couple and owned in the husband's name. Patrilocal marriages are by far the most prevalent all over the world.
Matrilocal marriage consists in the husband's joining the wife's community, taking up residence in her parents' house and often having to do some services for them. Matrilocal residence may be permanent ; or it may be temporary, the husband having to re main for a year or two with his parents-in-law, and having also possibly to work for them. (Eskimo, Kwakiutl, Guaycuru, Fue gians of America; Bushmen, Hottentots, Bapedi, Bakumbi, Nuer of Africa ; negrites of Philippines; Ainu of Japan.) (See also Wes termarck, History of Human Marriage, vol. ii., 36o-364; Briffault, The Mothers, vol. i. pp. 268-302.) In a few cases which might be regarded as the extreme develop ment of mother-right combined with matrilocal conditions, the wife remains at her mother's residence and the husband does not even take up a permanent abode there, but simply joins her as a frequent and regular but still temporary visitor (Menangkabau Malays of Sumatra, Pueblo and Seri Indians of N. America, Nairs of Malabar). Such extreme cases of mother-right are an exception. They are the product of special conditions found as a rule at a high level of culture and should never be taken as the prototype of "primitive marriage" (as has been done by Bachofen, Hartland and Briffault).