Ethnologists question about the meaning of marriage customs in which the future husband and wife wear the adornment traditionally reserved for the opposite sex. Does the same occur in funerary rites ? In birth rituals that are traditionally women’s matters Ukrainian customs give the father a prominent role. Inversion and confusion of sexual identity do not seem, however, to concern only folk rites. Some cultures nearer to us in time also seem to be founded on these paradoxal codes.