БЪЛГАРСКАТА „КУВАДА" - КУЛТУРНА РЕАЛНОСТ ИЛИ ФИКЦИЯ
THE BULGARIAN RITUAL OF "CUVADE" – CULTURAL REALITY OR FICTION

Summary/Abstract: The special behavior of a man during the period of pregnancy and delivery of his wife, well-known in the specialized anthropological literature as a "couvade", has been viewed in this article on Bulgarian ethnographical material. The problem concerns some elements of traditional birth- (including adoption-) and wedding rituals. This Bulgarian data shows the nonexistence of a widespread system of the "couvade"; in very limited cases certain elements of it could been found in the ritual "father's taboo", in ritual practices, connected with father's or his wife's cloths or parts of them. The geography of these elements is concentrated in West-Bulgarian regions. The analysis of Bulgarian material proves both the mythological and social-historical explanations of the "couvade", existing in the literature as a demonstration of the physical connection between father and his child and avoidance of the evil power from the child to his father; also the thesis that this phenomenon is situated on the transitional level from matri- to patrilineal system of kinship organization. The author presumes that the Bulgarian elements of the "couvade" are ritual manner of equality of social statuses for the husband and wife, manner of "gender symmetry" in the traditional Bulgarian family.

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