moiety, he also has to marry a woman in a particular class of the opposite moiety and one who has a particular genealogical relationship to him. The basic rule among the Arunta is that a man must marry his mother's mother's brother's daughter's daughter. In other words, as Montagu explains, he must marry "his cousin on his mother's side once removed" (22). As a result of this system, the wives are generally much younger than the husbands. An arrangement is often contracted before the potential husband and mother-in-law are even born. As Maddock notes, the arrangement "evinces an interest in futurity" as events are planned that will not take place for many years (54). A man and his probable mother-in-law are, therefore, about the same age and this results in the taboo against a man having any communication with, or even looking at, his potential mother-in-law (Montagu 22). The co
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