Anthropological works focusing on reproductive health seldom devote attention to men’s
experience and perceptions of birth. This gender bias, overcome only in recent studies of
masculinity, is partly due to the field being preferred by female anthropologists. In earlier
male-dominated anthropology the involvement of men in activities related to childbirth was
classified under the label couvade, treated as exotic magical-religious rituals and
susceptible to a range of psychological and social structural interpretations (cf. Rivie`re 1974)
and in recent times even termed a ‘syndrome’ (Klein 1991; Khanobdee, Sukratanachaiyakul,
and Gay 1993). Based on fieldwork among Muslims in Southern Thailand, this paper
considers local male practices as part of ‘patrescence’ (Raphael 1975, 70), a dynamic process
whereby fatherhood is constructed through socially relevant concern for the physical, moral
and social well-being of mother and child. Muslim men in Satun province contribute to
building and shaping the experience of paternity (and maternity) by providing material tools
used in postpartum women’s practices, direct care of the wife, introduction of the child in
the social world and ceremonial burial of the afterbirth. These practices, at present
heavily influenced by birth in hospitals, testify to the complementarity characterising gender
relations in Southeast Asia (Ong and Peletz 1995). This study analyses how practices
pertaining to reproduction in southern Thailand also speak of maintenance of cultural and
ethnic identity and are part of a process of arranging and ordering the ‘cosmos’ in the dual
sense of universe (ordering the relation between human and non-human worlds) and social