I asked the same question a while ago, and ended up having an off-digest conversation with Kevin Rose. We decided to change canon slighly, and said that women are allowed to own a herd as soon as they're married, regardless of children. However, once they're married, they tend to have children fairly quickly, so the distinction is not obvious to outsiders.
The result of our conversation was the following mariage procedure. Women are considered to be considered part of their father's or husband's household. Before marriage, they live with and work for their parents. When a bachelor wants to marry a woman, he has to pay her family compensation for their loss of labour: this can be captured beasts, war booty, promises of work later, etc. The couple marry, and man and wife go off to live in the groom's new household. Very often, the bride receives a good portion of her bride-price as a wedding gift from her family (normally beasts, as they don't want their daughter to starve), but this is not tribal law.
Unfortunately, even with this gift, the newly-weds will rarely have enough beasts and other stuff to set up house as soon as they are married. Instead, they have to move back in with the groom's parents for a while until they become rich enough to set up on their own.
As you can see, this makes marriage expensive for the groom and his family. It gets even worse if the bride's family is either poor or disapproving of the marriage, as they'll ask for a large bride-price and will give little of it back to the bride. But, on an MGF note, this just means that PC couples will have to make large efforts to get enough dosh to get married and get out of his mother's house!
Comments?
Neil.
Neil Smith E-mail: nsmith_at_dmu.ac.ukJunior Research Fellow, Computer Sci. Tel: (01908) 695511 x4145 De Montfort University, Milton Keynes Fax: (01908) 834948 http://www.mk.dmu.ac.uk/depts/dcis/research/res_rep/ken.htm
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