Misconceptions about Conception Theories. A Critique of Carol Delaney

Carol Delaney has repeatedly argued that a “monogenic” theory of procreation, whereby women are held to be mere receptacles of semen in coitus, the fetus being attributed solely to the male contribution, is the sole theory of reproduction in the Turkish village in which she worked. It is argued here that (1) she takes no account of the considerable literature on local variation in such theories; (2) that, despite the Koranic basis of the monogenic theory, other Muslim communities commonly ascribe generative agency to both parents; (3) that even in the village in which she worked there are non-Koranic ideas about conception which ascribe such agency; and (4) that there is evidence that in the Turkish language there is a “relatives” class which includes matrilateral and patrilateral kin. This last consideration is especially important in countering her argument that concepts of paternity are cross-culturally variable, which she holds is supported by the data from the Trobriands and Aboriginal Australia. A closer analysis of these data shows quite otherwise. This is also true of her entailed argument that Western ethnographers have ethnocentrically rendered non-Western kinship in exogenous terms. Finally, Delaney’s argument has developed into a wholesale “radical” feminist assault on fatherhood cross-culturally, which is shown to be unjustified.