Arnold van Gennep published the classic French text Rites de passage in 1908. Basing his study on ethnological reports, including some from Australia and parts of Melanesia and Polynesia, he noted how people change their social status throughout their lives. The break between these social spaces is like a pivot upon which one's life trajectory alters direction. These pivots, or liminal periods, are critical moments, and ritual is the principal means of safely navigating through to the next stage.

One may question whether van Gennep's theory tends to impose a threefold pattern of separation, transition and incorporation onto complex rites. Nevertheless, Oceanic cultures generally accept that people are "made," not born; that is, they are formed by social recognition as much as biological gestation. Rites of passage, common throughout Oceania, accompany transitions in people's lives: childless people into parents, children into adults, living people into ancestors.

Birth and Parenthood