Contingent lives : fertility, time, and aging in West Africa / Caroline H. Bledsoe with contributions by Fatoumatta Banja ; foreword by Anthony T. Carter.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 357-383) and index.
Contents
Foreword / Anthony T. Carter -- Ch. 1. Introduction -- Ch. 2. Reproductive Tolls and Temporalities in Studies of Reproduction -- Ch. 3. Setting, Data, and Methods -- Ch. 4. Managing the Birth Interval: Child Spacing -- Ch. 5. Disjunctures and Anomalies: Deconstructing Child Spacing -- Ch. 6. Realizing a Reproductive Endowment in a Contingent Body -- Ch. 7. Time-Neutral Reproduction, Time-Neutral Aging -- Ch. 8. Reaping the Rewards of Reproduction: Morality, Retirement, and Repletion -- Ch. 9. Discovering Our Habitus: Contingency and Linearity in Western Obstetric Observations -- Ch. 10. Rethinking Fertility, Time, and Aging.
Summary
Most women in the West use contraception in order to avoid having children. But in rural sub-saharan Africa many women use it to have more children. This study of aging & reproduction makes use of ethnographic & demographic data.