Premarital childbearing in northwest Kenya: challenging the concept of illegitimacy
Shell-Duncan, B.; Wimmer, M.
Social Biology 46(1-2): 47-61
1999
ISSN/ISBN: 0037-766X PMID: 10842501 Document Number: 525278
This paper examines the level and pattern of premarital fertility in a rural Kenyan community and evaluated the cultural context surrounding this phenomenon. Data were collected in 1990-91 over the course of an 18-month field study of sociocultural and biological determinants of maternal and child health among the Turkana. The premarital fertility among the Turkana is both widespread and culturally acceptable, with over 30% of women having at least one child prior to marriage. Although women with premarital births initiate childbearing on average a year earlier than women with only marital births, women's marital status does not influence the length of the interval between first and second births. Marriage among the Turkana is not a social trigger for the onset and continuation of reproduction or a means to legitimate reproduction. Marital status of the parents simply determines the custody of a child. In a premarital birth, the father pays a set fee to the mother's family, and the custody of the child remains permanently with the mother's family. If the parents later marry, the father must purchase custody of the child by another fee at that time. Since the Turkana have experienced few effects of modernization, the existence of such a practice suggests that cultural factors must be taken into account before assessing premarital fertility in Africa as a social problem.