Navigating Livelihood Uncertainty: Prevailing Wisdoms Guiding Fertility Preferences in Rural Malawi

• In Event: 2255 - Social Contextual Influences on Fertility Preferences

Abstract

This article sheds light on how an environment of persistent uncertainty in rural Malawi shapes cultural and individually held schemas, which act as prevailing wisdoms guiding individuals as they form and enact childbearing goals. It bridges two dominant lines of inquiry in contemporary fertility research. First, it is motivated by literature on postponement as an important feature of African fertility declines, a type of behavior that is hypothesized to be dependent on increasing uncertainty and on individuals' future outlooks. Second, the contingent and dynamic nature of preferences remain at the forefront of work on fertility intentions as researchers are taking seriously life’s instabilities and the ways in which this conditions preferences and subsequent behavior. Using in-depth interview data with 29 women, collected at two time points, and living in rural Malawi during 2016, I identify three schemas: "have children you can support", "have children for security", and "have a plan". I find that these are not mutually exclusive ideas nor are they always contingent on the present circumstance. In some cases, the very persistent quality of uncertainty reduces the degree to which present intentions respond to change as individuals seek to increase their perceived control over an otherwise unstable situation. Furthermore, these schema can both motivate and discourage fertility, which can help us understand the motivations for and against further childbearing in this otherwise highly disadvantaged setting.

Author

• Sarah Garver, University of Chicago