We begin by identifying culturally salient concepts of relatedness that

are the axioms for cultural theories of kinship relations. These

concepts derive from the universally recognized statuses of
motherhood, fatherhood, and spousehood, each having different,
culturally specific criteria for its implementation. In its default mode,
motherhood involves ‘mothering’ – the positive caring, nurturing, and
feeding behaviors that a female directs toward those she recognizes
as her offspring – but ‘mothering,’ hence motherhood, is not limited to
behaviors directed in this manner and can arise in conjunction with
other practices such as adoption, suckling, and/or coresidence,
among others.
Similarly, what constitutes fatherhood is culture-specific and the status
can, but need not always, be initiated through cultural recognition of,
and the meaning assigned to, a male's biological role in a woman
becoming pregnant. In some societies, the biological role of semen in
pregnancy is not given importance in local theories of reproduction
and pregnancy is culturally attributed to other actions a man engages
in that relate to establishing the social identity of a newborn.
Motherhood (fatherhood) leads to the concept of a mother relation
(father relation) through associating mothering behavior with the dyad
of two interacting individuals that is the locus for the behavior
associated with motherhood. Cognizing a mother relation in this sense
is not just a human capacity but occurs among the macaques (Dasser,
1988). The father relation in human societies, however, does not have
a counterpart among nonhuman primates since the status of
fatherhood does not exist for most nonhuman primate species.
We can define the idea of a mother relation (father relation) through
the ensemble of behaviors, BMo, associated with motherhood (BFa,
associated with fatherhood). We define a mother relation, M, as
follows.
Definition of Mother Relation M: For f