The term “couvade” covers a wide range of behaviors and symptoms found in many cultures, all suggesting active male participation in pregnancy. Anthropologists have offered different interpretations of culturally imposed restrictions on the daily routines of expectant fathers, as well as of the various physiological and/or psychosomatic manifestations that often accompany them. The richness of lowland South American ethnographic descriptions of the couvade allows us to understand more fully the diversity of means through which cultures symbolically rework the biological processes involved in human procreation and reproduction. Even more importantly, it illustrates the extent to which ideas about relatedness and shared substance may depart from Western notions rooted in biology and genetics.