Customs certainly vary around the world, don't they? Even if she were a bride at 12, it seems to me that she'd be an unlikely attendant at a birth at that age. I'm speculating of course and assuming that a sister-wife attending a birth should be there to render assistance and support, and I have a hard time seeing that a 12 year old would have a lot to offer. It was a different world and a different time, and I'm glad it wasn't my family.
I wonder if this has any bearing on Grandma Toots getting the little devil.
“Amongst the Luo, who live around Lake Victoria, a male child born before marriage was believed to possess a spirit that suppressed the intelligence of his stepbrothers once his mother married. Allowing such a child into the marriage automatically destroyed the family as the child usurped all the luck meant for the others. Such a child was usually left under the care of his grandmother, or killed before the age of five by his stepfather’s people, if the mother intended to take him to the new home.”
Here is something else
“There are contrasts in sexual norms among different ethnic groups. In some groups, such as the Luo, women who give birth before marriage are disgraced”
“An interesting birth practice is found among the Luo, who are Nilotic and not Bantu. Several days after parturition, when a woman is to leave the birth hut with the newborn, her husband must have intercourse with her. Before this act, she may have no contact with anyone who has had intercourse, including midwives or relatives. To do otherwise would afflict the child with chira, a spiritual curse resulting in the child’s death or the parents’ sterility.
“