Among the Doni tribe, in Irian Jaya, men sleep in a long house and then each wife and little or unmarried children would have their own house. The men would plan their activities all together in the long house. Also men would not sleep with their wives during pregnancies or while the baby was breast-feeding. That's about 3 years of abstinence. Basically this was a form of community birth control.
Then some missionaries (not all) believed that the nuclear family was important, so they convinced the man to move in with their families. Then it all got awkward. There was not enough space, so there would be full grown daughters having to work out how to get changed while their father was in the house. The men did not get enough time to plan their activities so the communication in the village broke down. Women started having too many babies too closely together because the men couldn't help it when they had to be in the same house every night, and then the babies would die of starvation because there was not enough milk to go around... In the end, the men gave up and moved back into the long house.
Then some missionaries (not all) believed that the nuclear family was important, so they convinced the man to move in with their families. Then it all got awkward. There was not enough space, so there would be full grown daughters having to work out how to get changed while their father was in the house. The men did not get enough time to plan their activities so the communication in the village broke down. Women started having too many babies too closely together because the men couldn't help it when they had to be in the same house every night, and then the babies would die of starvation because there was not enough milk to go around... In the end, the men gave up and moved back into the long house.
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