Uncertain Honor: Modern Motherhood in an African Crisis

by Jennifer Johnson-Hanks

Overview

In most countries, educated women have fewer children and have them later than uneducated women. In Uncertain Honor, Jennifer Johnson-Hanks argues that this demographic fact has social causes by offering a rich case study of contraception, abortion, and informal adoption among educated, ethnic Beti women in southern Cameroon.

Combining insights from demography and cultural anthropology, Johnson-Hanks argues that Beti women delay motherhood as part of a broader attempt to assert a modern form of honor only recently made possible by formal education, Catholicism, and economic change. Through itinerant school careers and manipulations of marriage, educated Beti women now manage their status as mothers in order to coordinate major life events in the face of social and economic uncertainty.

Carefully researched and clearly written, Uncertain Honor offers an intimate look at the lives of African women trying to reconcile motherhood with new professional roles in a context of dramatic social change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226401829
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	12/15/2005
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jennifer Johnson-Hanks is assistant professor in the Department of Demography and an affiliate of the Department of Anthropology and the Center for African Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Read an Excerpt

Uncertain Honor
Modern Motherhood in an African Crisis

By JENNIFER JOHNSON-HANKS THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Copyright © 2006
The University of Chicago
All right reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-40182-9


Chapter One Introduction

Without adequacy on the level of meaning, our generalizations remain mere statements of statistical probability, either not intelligible at all or only imperfectly intelligible.... On the other hand, even the most certain adequacy on the level of meaning signifies an acceptable causal proposition only to the extent ... that the action in question really takes the course held to be meaningfully adequate with a certain calculable frequency.-Max Weber, Economy and Society

One of the most remarkable and resilient findings of social science in the later half of the twentieth century is the inverse correlation between women's schooling and their fertility. Throughout the developing world, educated women bear fewer children, and start bearing them later, than do their less educated counterparts (Adamchak and Ntseane 1992; Bledsoe et al. 1999; Castro Martin 1995; Cleland and Rodriguez 1988; United Nations 1995). This basic relationship appears surprisingly impervious to local context: given the variability across countries in the quality and distribution of schooling, in the social meanings ascribed to education and to childbearing, and in the forms of families and households, it seems frankly implausible that the relationship between education and childbearing should be consistent in direction. And yet it is. Whether the unit of analysis is the nation or the individual, the statistical relationship between education and reproduction emerges. Schooling does not predict fertility perfectly-indeed, we find substantial variation-but that it predicts fertility at all is quite astonishing.

Why, and how, do educated women so limit their childbearing by comparison to their less educated compatriots? Why should this limitation so often include postponing the first child? Although these questions may appear to have obvious answers-such as "modernization" or "a rational curriculum"-empirical tests of these easy answers produce mixed results, at best. Despite a detailed body of data characterizing the shape and density of the education-fertility correlation, remarkably little is known about the causes or mechanisms of that correlation. This uncertainty constitutes part of a larger dilemma in studies of population, culture, and society, where the social and economic causes of fertility levels and trends-the "distal determinants"-remain undertheorized (Caldwell 1997; Hirschman 1994; but see also Mason 1997). Despite significant contributions from anthropology, demography, economics, and sociology, we frankly do not yet understand the social processes that underlie fertility rates or changes in those rates.

This demographic dilemma constitutes half of the impetus for this book. Seeking to understand the social mechanisms through which the statistical correlations arise, I focus on one aspect of the schooling-fertility correlation, in one country, and ask: Why do educated Cameroonian women wait so long to bear their first child? How do they achieve this delay? A second stimulus for this book lies in the mystery of coming of age for girls in southern Cameroon. What does it mean to become a Beti woman, particularly one who is educated? How has womanhood been transformed by the social forces of school, church, and economic underdevelopment? This book demonstrates how the answers to these two questions, apparently so discrete, are deeply intertwined. To become an educated Beti woman means, in part, to practice disciplined reproduction; educated Beti women wait so long to bear a first child in order to attain the identity of an educated, disciplined, and honorable woman.

The book comprises three central arguments. First, I propose that educated Beti women delay their childbearing because they view motherhood as appropriate only in a limited set of social contexts, and these contexts are slow to coalesce. It is entry into the social category of "mother," rather than the biological event of giving birth, that women seek to regulate. Educated Cameroonian women characterize their rigorous management of motherhood as an expression of their modernity, discipline, and honor-characteristics that they attribute to their schooling. Thus, the relationship between schooling and fertility cannot be adequately described either as causal or as classic selectivity; instead, the demographic outcomes are the result of culturally mediated aspirations and attempts to capitalize on perceived opportunities. That is, when confronting vital life-history transitions, individuals and their families draw on assembled understandings of what is plausible or desirable; they put themselves into social positions to facilitate certain anticipated outcomes. In the Beti case, these desired outcomes are framed in a system of honor that valorizes self-dominion as measured in autonomy and discretion.

My second central claim is that educated Beti women discipline their reproductive lives not only before conception, but also during pregnancy and after delivery. In each of these moments, they see and act on opportunities to control the timing and conditions of their entry into socially recognized motherhood. In many cases, this control comes in the form of delay-delaying a pregnancy, especially through the use of periodic abstinence, delaying giving birth by aborting certain pregnancies, and delaying socially recognized motherhood by giving up certain children to essentially permanent fosterage. These practices result in a situation where educated women not only bear their first child later than do the less educated, but are also less likely to experience their first pregnancy, first birth, and entry into socially recognized motherhood all at the same time. We therefore need to broaden our view of reproduction to include not only live births, but also the reproductive processes that surround them: the "mishaps" (Bledsoe, Banja, and Hill 1998) and methods of baby making that constitute a reproductive career.

Finally, I build on this ethnographic case to propose an approach to social organization in diachronic perspective that integrates demographic aggregates with systems of meaning, using a unit of social description that I call the "vital conjuncture." Vital conjunctures are structures of possibility that emerge around specific periods of potential transformation in the lives of one or more participants. Although most social life is indeed conjunctural, in the sense that action is conjoined to a particular, temporary manifestation of social structure, vital conjunctures are particularly critical durations when more than usual is in play, when certain potential futures are galvanized and others made improbable. For my purposes, the prototypical vital conjunctures are those surrounding the three moments of childbearing: conception, pregnancy, and birth. However, all life transitions-such as migration, marriage, or career change-can be theorized as vital conjunctures. The analysis of vital conjunctures relies on their horizons and on the possible futures that social actors envision, hope for, or fear, and which thereby motivate the actions that make demographic facts. Thus, an understanding of population-level fertility patterns requires attending to quite nondemographic phenomena. The claim that the demography of fertility is inextricably bound to social form underlies the organization of this book; we will work back and forth between statistical and social patterns, seeking to illuminate each with the pale light of the other.

The Shape of the Correlation

The fact that schooling and fertility are often inversely correlated was observed by Malthus (1970: 90), and has been conclusively demonstrated over the past three decades. It is a relationship that appears at several levels: countries in which a large proportion of women are educated generally have lower fertility rates than do countries in which few women are educated, and within specific countries, women with more education generally bear fewer children than do women who are less educated. The occurrence on multiple levels is significant for the kinds of explanations that might be adequate. It matters also that this is a correlation in the statistical sense, and not a universal pattern. The specific form of the relationship between schooling and fertility varies substantially. It is not always monotonic, or constantly downward sloping: sometimes moderate amounts of school are associated with higher fertility than no school at all, and the predicted inverse relationship only applies after extended schooling. The degree of fertility decline associated with schooling is also quite variable: in some cases, even extended schooling is associated with only a slight reduction in fertility, whereas in other cases, the decline is precipitous. The tightness of fit between education and fertility differs as well: in some cases, the variation in schooling levels can predict most of the variation in fertility, while in other cases, schooling explains relatively little. The relationship between education and fertility is, in fact, a whole set of relationships.

Figure 1.1 shows the cross-national relationship between schooling and fertility. The data points on this scatter plot are countries; the measures of schooling and fertility are thus national aggregates. The proportion of women who are literate serves here as a proxy for women's education, and the total fertility rate (TFR) is used as the measure of fertility. The total fertility rate is the number of children a woman would bear over the course of her life if she bore children at the age-specific rates prevailing in her country at a specific time: it is a useful synoptic illusion. This graph shows two things: first, countries with higher literacy rates (on the right hand side of the graph) have generally lower fertility that those with lower literacy rates. Second, the graph shows that literacy is not the complete explanation of fertility practice-at any given level of literacy, we find countries with wildly differing total fertility rates.

The cross-national correlation indicates that something of significance is going on here, but what? As we move inward, to more detail, the picture gets more complicated. National rates elide important differences. The next series of graphs moves inside the scatter-plot points to show how the relationship between schooling and fertility works within specific countries. Each line on these graphs represents the fertility rates of women with different degrees of education in a single country-each country chosen solely because the data were available. The countries are grouped by national total fertility rates, read loosely as children per woman. Figure 1.2 pertains to countries where total fertility is under four children per woman, primarily in Asia and Latin America. These countries show substantial variability in the character of the relationship between schooling and fertility. A couple of the countries in this group demonstrate a monotonic downward slope of fertility with increasing schooling. Others show almost no relationship at all-the line is flat. In one country, women with a couple of years of schooling have significantly higher fertility than those with none, a pattern called the "inverted-j" by Jejeebhoy (1995).

The middle group of countries, which includes Cameroon, have total fertility rates between four and six (fig. 1.3). Although these countries, some sub-Saharan, some North African, and some Latin American, vary substantially in history, economy, and culture, they share a relatively unambiguous inverse relationship between schooling and fertility. Here, women with no education bear between five and eight children, while the most educated-women with at least ten years of school-bear no more than four. In all but two of these countries, the relationship is monotonic, such that even low levels of schooling are associated with declines in fertility.

The last group of countries, countries with total fertility rates over six, are all in sub-Saharan Africa or Muslim West Asia (fig. 1.4). In only two of these countries does the monotonic inverse relationship appear; in the other countries, it is only women who have attended seven or even ten years of schooling who bear fewer children than those with no schooling. In many of these high-fertility countries, such women are extremely rare, inviting the interpretation that their elite status, even more than their schooling, induces innovative fertility practices.

Looking comparatively across these figures, the correlation between schooling and fertility is strongest in countries with moderate overall fertility levels. In some cases, these are countries where fertility is falling, and it is simply falling fastest among the more educated. In other countries, these moderate fertility rates, and the differentials by education, appear stable. The variation in the shape of the association between schooling and fertility among these different countries is a reminder that this statistical relationship always works through social processes in specific contexts. Here, Weber's call for an integration of "adequacy on the level of meaning" with "calculable frequencies" from statistical aggregates starts to make intuitive sense (1978: 12). Although educated women do indeed bear fewer children than do less-educated women in most countries, they do so in different ways and to different degrees.

This variation in manner and degree is even clearer when we turn from total fertility rates to age-specific rates. Age-specific rates give a sense of the pattern and pacing of childbearing, details that are invisible in more aggregated data, but that are essential to an understanding of the experience of reproduction, its place in social life, and how fertility differentials are made over the life course. Let us look specifically at Cameroon (fig. 1.5). Data from the 1998 Cameroon Demographic and Health Survey, a nationally representative survey conducted by Macro International in collaboration with Cameroonian researchers (Fotso et al. 1999), indicates that the fertility differentials persist across all ages, although they are largest at younger ages (below thirty-five).

The fact that educated Cameroonian women bear fewer children at all ages than do the uneducated implies that the explanation of the rates must be based in a broad, social understanding of reproductive practice. Whereas Henry (1961), Coale and Trussell (1974), Knodel (1987), and others have suggested that the fertility decline begins with certain women deciding to stop bearing children after reaching a certain, desired family size, that does not appear to be the pattern in Cameroon. Here, educated women are restraining their childbearing at all ages, and presumably all parities, in relation to women with no schooling.

The Beti of Southern Cameroon

At the center of this book are a group of young, educated women who call themselves Beti. "Beti" is both a status category and an ethnic affiliation, much like "Nuer" (see Evans-Pritchard 1969: 3-6). A century ago, Beti society was organized into segmentary lineages practicing swidden horticulture. Through taxation, physical violence, and the establishment of a local political hierarchy, German colonials instituted sedentary, centralized communities in the decades before World War One (Mveng 1963; Ngongo 1987). At the same time, Roman Catholic missions and mission schools brought about one of the most rapid and complete conversions known in Africa (Laburthe-Tolra 1977). Following World War One, southern Cameroon was administered by France under a mandate from the League of Nations. Increased production for the cash economy reconfigured patterns of kinship and residence in this period, as rural men took as many wives as possible in order to capitalize on the women's labor on their plantations. So strong was the demand for women's labor that some men took wives who had not yet reached puberty (Guyer 1985). Some of the profits from these enterprises were reinvested in formal education for children, who entered state employment. Thus, the institutions of the state, the church, and the school together came to define a newly emergent elite (see Bayart 1989).

French Cameroon became independent in 1960 and joined with a portion of former British Cameroon in 1961. Schooling was a major priority of the newly independent government, and educational institutions at all levels were built in record numbers in the 1960s and 1970s. The expansion of public schooling was possible, in part, because of the strength of the national economy at that time. Cameroonian imports of cocoa and coffee were well remunerated, and the state was solvent. But in 1987 the value of these exports collapsed. In 1986, Cameroon earned over CFA 800 billion from exports; in 1987, that value scarcely exceeded CFA 500 billion (Asuagbor 1994: 41). From this grew la crise, a disintegration of socioeconomic order that persisted at least to the turn of the millennium. Civil service salaries were cut twice, and the currency was devalued by 50 percent in 1992. But the effects of la crise are as much social as economic. Many southern Cameroonians talk of generalized distrust caused by la crise morale, which makes every step radically uncertain.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Uncertain Honor by JENNIFER JOHNSON-HANKS Copyright © 2006 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents

Preface
1. Introduction
2. A Social System in Transformation
3. The Making of Honorable Women
4. School in the Social World
5. Learning Honor in School
6. The Secret Politics of Sex
7. Vital Conjunctures
8. The Horizons of Honor
Epilogue
Notes
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"A short review cannot do justice to this carefully argued, well-crafted demographic ethnography. Uncertain Honor will be of interest not only to the demographer and anthropologist of Africa, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to the social scientist seeking insight into the sociocultural bases of demographic numbers. An impressive achievement."

Population and Development Review

"A superb book that demonstrates the insights possible when anthropological fieldwork and theory are applied to the study of population processes by a scholar well versed in both fields. . . . In the emergent field of anthropological demography, Uncertain Honor is destined to become an instant classic, but it will be of equal interest to a broad range of scholars and readers in anthropology, demography, development, public health, and African studies. As much as any book I can think of, Uncertain Honor provides a rich and eminently readable example of the analytical gains achieved when central issues in population studies are approached using anthropological theory and methods."

Studies in Family Planning - Daniel Jordan Smith

Fusing both anthropological and demographic methods, Jennifer Johnson-Hanks transforms a tremendous field corpus into an outstanding analysis of the triumphs and travails of young women in Southern Cameroon. With its unswerving cultural emphases on concepts of dignity, respectability, and modernity, this book’s seamless integration of demography, history, and philosophy tells a compelling anthropological story about young women who strive for both an education and a respectable marital life in a volatile economy. Uncertain Honor sets a formidable standard in social science writing in ethnography and population in contemporary Africa.”—Caroline H. Bledsoe, author of Contingent Lives: Fertility, Time and Aging in West Africa

Caroline Bledsoe

"Written in an elegant style, this book is a pleasure to read and a great candidate for use in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses. Its ideas are profound, and its methodology is clearly described in a useful preface."

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute - Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg

"This book is an exemplar of anthropological demography: reading it should convince any demographer that anthropology can contribute more to demography than a set of qualitative methods for reaching those domains inaccessible by survey methods."

Population Studies - Sara Randall

Why does formal schooling for women delay childbearing? Jennifer Johnson-Hanks provocatively begins where other studies end. Rather than assuming a generic ‘modernity’ that inexplicably shapes pregnancy decisions, she probes deeply to find a complex tangle of lived realities that shape the maternity/education nexus among Beti women in Cameroon. Anthropology, education, and demography combine in this work to produce a bold and beautifully realized meditation on schooling and education.”—Alma Gottlieb, author of The Afterlife Is Where We Come From: A Culture of Infancy in West Africa



 

Alma Gottlieb

"A compelling reading to all scholars interested in demographic and social change in the relation to the diffusion of formal education in contemporary Africa and a  remarkable piece of beauitifully written anthropological demography. The author skilfully combines anthropological theory and methods with descriptive demographic tools in a consistent analysis of the relationship between formal schooling and delayed childbearing among educated Beti women in Cameroon. This relationship is pivotal in the understanding of demographic and social change in Western Africa."

European Journal of Population - Laura Bernardi

Written in an elegant style, this book is a pleasure to read and a great candidate for use in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses. Its ideas are profound, and its methodology is clearly described in a useful preface.

— Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

A compelling reading to all scholars interested in demographic and social change in the relation to the diffusion of formal education in contemporary Africa and a  remarkable piece of beauitifully written anthropological demography. The author skilfully combines anthropological theory and methods with descriptive demographic tools in a consistent analysis of the relationship between formal schooling and delayed childbearing among educated Beti women in Cameroon. This relationship is pivotal in the understanding of demographic and social change in Western Africa.

— Laura Bernardi

European Journal of Population

A superb book that demonstrates the insights possible when anthropological fieldwork and theory are applied to the study of population processes by a scholar well versed in both fields. . . . In the emergent field of anthropological demography, Uncertain Honor is destined to become an instant classic, but it will be of equal interest to a broad range of scholars and readers in anthropology, demography, development, public health, and African studies. As much as any book I can think of, Uncertain Honor provides a rich and eminently readable example of the analytical gains achieved when central issues in population studies are approached using anthropological theory and methods.

— Daniel Jordan Smith

Studies in Family Planning

This book is an exemplar of anthropological demography: reading it should convince any demographer that anthropology can contribute more to demography than a set of qualitative methods for reaching those domains inaccessible by survey methods.

— Sara Randall

Population Studies