Roasting, smoking and dieting in response to birth: Malay confinement in cross-cultural perspective

Abstract

According to humoral medical theory, food and body states may be classified as ‘hot’ or ‘cold’. During periods of physical vulnerability, behavioral and dietary precautions may be invoked for therapeutic and prophylactic purposes following the humoral medical principle of the treatment of opposites. Childbirth in particular affects humoral balance, and in confinement precautions are observed to replace heat lost during parturition and to protect the mother against cold and wind. Women in Asia and Latin America especially share several postpartum precautions, including physical confinement, restrictions on bathing, the prescription of hot and proscription of cold foods; for many women these precautions are supplemented with the direct application of heat, including by ‘mother roasting’, steaming. or smoking. The postpartum precautions, as detailed for Malay women, provide a framework for the management of birth and the ritual and social assumption of motherhood.