The goddess of aunties?

[ikhet_sekhmet]

Discussing Artemis, Bodil Hjerrild notes the apparent contradiction between her virginity and her role as protectress of women in childbirth, children, and young wild animals. Echoing an idea I think I've encountered somewhere else, "Her virginity has to be understood rather as a conservation of power and maybe a concentration of fertile energy that may be spread instead to nature and the people who worship her."

My brain being what it is, I connected this to come stuff I've been reading about the significance of shared childcare in human evolution, in particular a recent New Scientist article about middle age, and I quote: "Research suggests that a human child requires resources to be provided by multiple adults - almost certainly more than two young parents.' One study of hunter-gatherers found that "each couple requires the help of an additional 1.3 non-reproducing adults to provide for their children."

The article's idea was that the need for extra caregivers could explain why humans keep going strong after the age of menopause, but it struck me that it could also explain the persistence of many other categories of "non-reproducing adults" amongst human populations. Perhaps, for example, Artemis is the patroness of batty old aunties like myself. :)

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Bainbridge, David. Marvellous Middle Age. New Scientist 2855, 8 March 2012, pp 49-51.
Hjerrild, Bodil. Near Eastern Equivalents to Artemis. Acta Hyperborea 12 2009, pp 41-49.

Comments

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

If human kids really do need at least three caregivers on average, I wonder if that could help explain why such a big chunk of the population is queer - it increases the chances of having non-parents available for the job. If so, that would make even greater nonsense of Pastor Worley's proposal to exterminate queers once and for all: not only do plenty of queer folk have kids, but even if they didn't, nature would, out of sheer evolutionary necessity, knit more. (It's sort of the inverse of why Heinlein's "cure" for haemophilia would fail.)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[klgaffney.livejournal.com]

So it's spoon theory in action? =)

Very tangentally (is that even a word?) it reminds me of a Afro-Caribbean-South American magical path that traditionally banned menstruating women, for which the practioner apologized. From what I saw of it, it'd be a grueling discipline, demanding all the resources of the practioner, possibly insane-making, and potentially deadly. So I could see it being for a single person of no other responsibilities, and a certain type, at that--a true fringe dweller, an outcast with only the most ephemeral connections to anyone in any tribe.

I don't think it would work out well having to compete with all the physical and emotional demands of pregnancy and child-rearing, the possibility of a family losing a caretaker to the discipline, or the village losing an able bodied hunter or planter to ritual isolation and the batshittery that comes with one's whole perspective being yoinked up by the roots, turned upside down and shaken violently (real deal old school spirit workers are definitely not...all there).

These were fringe paths walked by the childless (who probably already were given the side-eye by their neighbors for being childless, and any of the differences that tend to go hand-and-hand with that sort of thing). Given the fewer dependable controls over the reproductive process, the ban starts to make contextual sense. The specificness of the wording would imply that intersexed, infertile, and post-menopausal women may be a different matter (even if the modern day practitioners involved may have completely missed that detail). What I also thought was interesting was the further narrowed down the selection by excluding gays, which would have logically made up a significant proportion of that fringe. It seems that the idea is to have a genuine loner, with no potential for divided loyalties at all on any level, just the spirit world. That's some hardcore shit right there. These were meant to be warning signs for a path nobody in their right mind should actually want to follow.

I guess it rang a bell 'cause even from my own practices, I recognized that there's a definite line of how far I'm willing to delve when I know I have husband and children and being able to pass for sane in a highly populated suburb to consider.

At least, that's what I got out of it. If I can find the guy's page again, I'll toss it at you. Sorry for the wall o' text. >_>;

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

Do not apologise! This is fascinating!