Minor Marriage: The Case against Maternal Instinct

The idea of a human maternal instinct--a woman's innate disposition to care for children, particularly her own--has been the subject of great debate among social psychologists, anthropologists, and sociobiologists alike, but an unusual social practice from northern Taiwan may have done a great deal to dispel conventional notions that this instinct is in fact inherent in humans. Dubbed "minor marriage," this practice was documented to have occurred between 1905 and 1945 by the Stanford University anthropologist Arthur Wolf and involved Taiwanese mothers trading away their daughters to other families in a manner that directly contradicts the precepts of the instinctual mother-child bond.

A mother's giving her children away (or even practicing infanticide) is not in and of itself a rare event, as child adoption indicates. Adoption that occurs well after the point that a bond theoretically forms between the child and its birth mother also is a well-documented phenomenon. In most cases, however, child adoption is the result of necessity, with the outcome of the adoption typically intended to benefit the child; the adopting parent(s) are ideally selected based on their ability to offer better child care than the birth parent(s).

The Taiwanese practice of minor marriage is unusual in that it was designed to benefit the birth mother and her household, not the child. (The same, of course, may be said of infanticide.) Mothers gave up their daughters even in cases where the birth parents were more than capable of providing for their children. In terms of the strict transaction, the mother gave away her daughter, who was viewed as an economic liability, and adopted an intended daughter-in-law, who was seen as an investment in the future. The adopted girl was immediately betrothed to the adopting mother's son, and the couple would be formally married shortly after both children reached puberty; thus the term minor marriage.

While the majority of these adoptions took place before the girls reached their first birthday, the birth mothers nonetheless raised their daughters through the early stages of infancy, when maternal instinct is presumed by its proponents to create a powerful mother-child bond. However, this theoretical attachment, for which there is substantial psychological and sociological evidence, did little to deter Taiwanese mothers from exchanging their infant daughters.

The stated motivations for the practice were varied, but none seemed to include ensuring a benefit for the female children involved. By giving away their daughters at an early age, Taiwanese households avoided having to pay large dowries when it came time for the young girls to marry. Moreover, by raising their own future daughters-in-law, mothers could ensure that their sons would receive "suitable" wives and that the traditions of the household would be maintained. These traditions included caring for the elders of the family, which meant that the adopting mothers were in many ways planning for their own retirement by ensuring that their future daughters-in-law would be motivated to care for their adopted parents in their old age. Again, the practice of minor marriage was designed to benefit the adopting mother, not the adopted child, by manipulating kinship ties.

We are thus confronted with several questions. Was the Taiwanese minor marriage practice (which has since died out) a mere anomaly, or does it cast real doubt on the idea of an "inherent" maternal instinct that creates a mother-child bond? Is maternal instinct genetic or merely a learned behavior that can be reshaped by a prevailing cultural practice, such as minor marriage? If maternal instinct is genetic, are there populations where the trait is less prevalent, such as those observed by Wolf in northern Taiwan? Regardless of whether it is cultural or genetic, is maternal instinct a beneficial trait, which would explain why the practice of minor marriage "failed" and died out? Although Wolf's research has raised many questions, one fact has been made crystal clear: maternal instinct is not inescapable, but exceptions to it (or what may look like exceptions) are rare. For the time being, however, the debate over "nature or nurture" (genetics versus culture) continues.