Family Relations and Fertility Behavior in Rural North India.

Abstract

The principal concern of this dissertation is reproductive decision-making within the family in a rural developing country. Three aspects of familial decision-making are considered in the study: (a) the nature of joint decision-making and interaction between marital partners; (b) the relative influence of husb and s and wives; and (c) the role of extended family members in the reproductive decisions of the couple. Throughout the dissertation, these topics are examined within the broader social context in which family decisions are made. Two contrasting research approaches are used. First, these issues are examined through multivariate analyses of the responses of 1902 matched pairs of husb and s and wives surveyed in rural North India in 1972. Second, the process of reproductive decision-making within the family is explored by means of in-depth interviews with approximately 50 of the original couples, resurveyed in 1979. The results of a multivariate analysis indicate that conjugal interaction has little independent significance in predicting contraceptive behavior. Joint decision-making and interaction between spouses on matters related to fertility is infrequent in this population. The interaction which does occur is highly authoritarian in character and dominated by the husb and ; it takes place only after the one spouse has already decided that childbearing should be curtailed. Findings from the in-depth interviews emphasize the predominance of the husb and in this sphere. These data also illustrate that older members of the extended family are often highly involved in the reproductive decisions of the couple. The results of a multivariate analysis, however, fail to support the hypothesis that fertility is significantly higher in extended as opposed to nuclear families. The study proposes a counter hypothesis to explain the relationship between family structure and fertility. While noting aspects of the extended family which may encourage higher fertility, this hypothesis suggests that fertility in both types of families is determined primarily by structural factors related to socioeconomic development. As a by-product of this investigation of reproductive behavior within the family, an examination is made of inconsistencies in marital partners' reports of contraceptive use, and a method is proposed to estimate true use more accurately.