Going Home to Mother: Traditional Marriage among the Irigwe of Benue‐Plateau State, Nigeria¹

The Irigwe marriage system in effect demands that men and women be married to several spouses in differing tribal sections during the course of their adult lives and precludes all divorce. It also ascribes patrivirilocal residence and assigns the paternity of each child a woman bears to the husband with whom she is residing at the time of the child's conception. Consequently women shift residence from husband to husband several times during the course of their lives, and unless childless they suffer intermittent separation from one or another of their dependent children. Spirit possession cults, involving nearly all the mature women of the tribe, supply both the emotional catharsis and the avenues for social integration to compensate the women for the repeated separations and social disjunctions the marriage system produces in their lives. [Irigwe; marriage; Nigeria; secondary marriage; spirit possession]