Marriage fidelity is rare. For a people with a fierce reputation they are also known as doting parents who admonish, but rarely discipline their children and have chided missionaries who spank their own children. To our perception, they think nothing of lying, cheating, or stealing to get what they desire, and are generally amused by a successful deception. Their concept of the sanctity of life differs westerners profess to hold and guiltlessly murder outsiders if they feel they were cheated. The fetus of awoman's first pregnancy, considered high risk, is usually aborted, as are pregnancies occurring too soon after the birth of the previous child.
Most groups practice infanticide, either of unwanted females or deformed infants.
Women seem treated more as property than human, and function to bear children and serve the men in her family. Gender roles are strict. Marriages are arranged, and a proposition of survival and economy rather than love. The Yanomami view what we call love as a weakness, an obsession that gets in way of normal behavior. Husbands live with, and give allegiance to, his wife's family, allegiance to wife's family.