The domestic context of production and reproduction in a Guatemalan community
Odell, M.E.
Human Ecology 10(1): 47-69
1982
ISSN/ISBN: 0046-8169 PMID: 12265052 DOI: 10.1007/bf01531104Document Number: 394225
The relationship between fertility and domestic adjustments that people have made to changing conditions of production and consumption in a rural community in western Guatemala is investigated. Both present and past systems of production and the domestic factors affecting the timing of family formation and the incidence of sexual activity with unions are described. The data were collected between 1973-76 in Aguacatan, a rural community in western Guatemala. Population and patterns of production and consumption have changed in the period since World War 2. Population size increased from 10,400 to 14,694 in the 1950-64 period. This growth occurred during a period when local economic life was strongly affected by improved transport, agricultural innovation, and population growth itself. Throughout this period the family has remained the basic economic unit. Marriage and childbearing are the major means available to families for adjusting personnel to the needs of production and the limitations on consumption. The finding of an analysis of the relationship between them is discussed in terms of stresses impinging on the domestic unit. The relationship between productive systems and childbearing is assessed by analyzing the variance of demographic variables between households in different productive sectors. The sample of households was selected from a group of 383 women aged 15 or older, surveyed in the latter half of 1974. Focus is on differences in reproduction between households of basketmakers, garlic producers, and rainfall farmers, and only women from these households are included. Women aged 45 and older at the time of the study were grouped into cohort 1; those aged 30-44 made up cohort 2. Reproductive adjustments to changed productive conditions did not begin early but became important only in the maternal 30s and 40s. Despite an absence of differences in early reproductive experiences between productive sectors for cohort 1 women, a clear separation appeared for the indices of total fertility. Comparisons of mean values for births before age 30 with those for completed fertility revealed that, on the average, women in all groups bore more children after age 30 than they did before. The differences in completed fertility were due to differentials in the lengthening of the birth interval after age 30. This change was small among spouses of garlic producers, somewhat more obvious among those of rainfall farmers, and most pronounced among women in basketmaking households. This may reflect a lowered frequency of intercourse among town dwelling spouses of specialists as families grow larger, older children become adolescents, and domestic privacy becomes more rare. Large families in Aguacatan may be a byproduct of an earilier age of family formation.
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