There is great diversity among cultures in the way children are reared and treated as they grow up. In
many cultures there is a strict taboo prohibiting any contact or communication between brother and sister, so as to
avoid incest. In some cultures mothers tend to hold their children away from them, avoid eye contact, and
generally minimize emotional responses of their infants. In other cultures people avoid punishing children for fear
that their sensitive little souls may leave them and they will die, whereas in some cultures even young children
are severely punished if they cry too much. It is not uncommon for parents to arrange marriages while their
children are still very young. Among the Druze people, it is believed that the soul of the deceased reincarnates
into a newborn baby almost immediately. Among the Beng people, infants are thought to be capable of
understanding all languages spoken to them. Until recent times, in primitive cultures it was the custom to sacrifice
the first-born child of a family. This seems to have been a kind of sympathetic magic in which the parents offered
their firstborn in exchange for favors bestowed by the gods. Among the Berawan people it is the custom for
parents to give up their babies for adoption if certain bad omens occur during the mother’s pregnancy. The
custom of couvade still exists in many parts of the world, whereby the father of a newborn child must lie in bed
for at least a month, with the child by his side, while the mother carries on her usual activities.