Social and Cultural Context of Fertility

Fertility behaviour includes not only biological but also social reproduction, involving a complex network of institutions. As Fortes highlights: 'The process of social reproduction, in broad terms, includes all those institutional mechanisms and customary activities and norms which serve to maintain, replenish and transmit the social capital from generation to generation' (1958: 2). Biological reproduction needs to be seen in the context of social reproduction. (see Meillassoux, 1991: 23-140 for an elaboration on this distinction in slavery, and for social context see Mac Cormack ed. 1982). Fertility behaviour, including childbirth, is the outcome of a complex web of institutional mechanisms regulated by social norms and cosmology. People's perception of fertility, and their values and attitudes are intricately interwined with social institutions. For analytical purposes, fertility behaviour is divided into domestic, economic and political spheres (cf. Srinivas and Ramaswamy 1977).