Cultural Parameters of a “Miraculous” Birth Rate Drop

Anthropology News • March 2009

Birth Policy continued from page 13 did not offer it as an alternative. Additionally they feared offending patients by offering them “indigenous” birth because of the many negative connotations that this word has in the area. Nonetheless, informal chats with local women indicated that general birth preferences for vertical positions, herbal remedies, presence of family members, appropriate disposal of the placenta and reduced exposure were still present. Due to contestation in applying the “indigenous” label, pregnant women were probably not receiving the type of birth care they would like. Health care providers continued to risk alienating patients by engaging in the same practices that kept them away from biomedical health services prior to the new policy, meaning that the policy might fail to promote safe birth and reduce maternal deaths through basic lack of implementation. The case of Cajamarca indicates that in defining a set of practices for birth care as specifically Andean or indigenous, the Peruvian government may have restricted birth options for women in its health system. The policy has overlooked the ways in which health care providers’ perceptions and choices affect policy implementation on the ground, and how people throughout the Andes might reject or apply identifying labels in ways inconsistent with government assumptions. The consequences for reproductive health care in the region are great, as failure of the new perinatal care policy might mean a stagnant maternal mortality rate. It will be interesting to evaluate how birth care evolves in Cajamarca and to see how it compares to other policy implementation areas in the Andes. Lucia Guerra-Reyes is a thirdyear student in the University of Pittsburgh’s joint degree program in behavioral and community health sciences (MPH) and anthropology (PhD). She previously conducted research into Peru’s sexual education policy for an MA in gender, sexuality and reproductive health at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in 2006.

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Cultural Parameters of a “Miraculous” Birth Rate Drop Agnes Loeffler U Wisconsin Erika Friedl Western Michigan U According to national records, Iran experienced a drop in birth rate from about seven to two children per woman between 1986 and 2000. This represents a dramatic shift from biological fertility to below replacement levels, described by demographers as “remarkable,” “phenomenal,” “record pace” and the “Iranian miracle.” It happened without heavy-handed policies, advice from Western planners or

tion, and the marriage age of girls was around menarche, leading to short generation spans and long fecundity periods. Fertile women socially identified themselves by carrying around small children. Agriculturalists justified large families with a need for labor, despite the fact that families with fewer children had more comfortable lives. Feuds and internecine warfare depended on male fighters, creating a perceived need for male offspring and strengthening Iran’s androcentric ideology. Customary cohabitation with husband’s parents increased the pressure to produce children: women could watch over sexual

c o m m e n ta ry alienation of the populace. Most published research on population dynamics focuses on statistical analyses of individual factors influencing fertility rather than on relationships between various cultural (“ideational”) variables, especially for transition phases in fertility behavior. We aim to show that the birth rate decline in Iran rests on the interplay of these understudied cultural and sociopolitical variables rather than on commonly identified individual factors. During 15 fieldwork sessions between 1965 and 2006 in a rural area in Iran, we observed the interplay of various factors as demographic dynamics moved from a traditional high fertility/high mortality pattern to high fertility/low mortality and then, rapidly, to the present low fertility/low mortality. A History of High Fertility Until about 1960 Iran had a population profile typical of largely rural, traditional societies, with a high birth rate and slightly less high death rate. People took fertility as a natural effect of conjugal sex. Children were expected, not planned; their absence had to be explained, not their presence. People pitied childless women even as they saw “too many” children as a burden. Child survival was influenced by poor health and nutri-

activities of their sons and berate daughters-in-law if they denied their husbands sex. During the Pahlavi era, public health programs, primary education for boys and girls, and the rising standard of living lowered infant mortality and increased life expectancy so that the population started to rise rapidly. Counseled by Western advisers, the government launched a birth control program based on the anti-natal agenda of a “modern” nation, including access to free contraceptives and abortion. Advertisements extolled the virtues of the small family. However, continued valuation of boys over girls, perpetuation of pre-existing economic and familial structures, and the example the Shah’s four photogenic children (by Farah Diba) promoted the notion that the ideal family size was two sons and two daughters. Large families were produced in an attempt to replicate this ideal. Nevertheless, by the 1979 revolution the birth rate was dropping, especially in the growing middle class, though this drop would be short-lived. During the Iran/Iraq war (1980–88), Iran’s Islamist government adopted an aggressive pronatalist stance. As word spread that Ayatollah Khomeini needed boys to wage war, women showed political allegiance and affirmed their identity through their

fertility, even “borrowing” babies to take along on social visits. Women who were not pregnant soon after their wedding caused concern. Fertility discussions were ubiquitous, pro and con. Mothers complained about large families, costs to their own health, hard work and the expense of bringing up children, but alternatives were problematic. The government kept contraceptive devices legally available but did not advocate them. Health care workers and women reported that men disliked condoms and that oral contraceptives had negative health consequences for women. Tubal ligation and vasectomies became more acceptable, but stories about post-ligation pregnancies made women distrustful. Thus, contraception was only used to space children or to prevent pregnancies after six or seven children. A Small Family Ideal Even as it was advocating high fertility, the Islamic government promoted modernist developments such as equal education for both sexes and health care for all. Simultaneously, the increasing oil wealth trickling down to lower classes and into the hinterland stimulated people’s aspirations for a better standard of living. “Progress” based on Western norms regarding housing, food habits, educational achievement, gender relations, and the treatment of children became a popular ideology, especially among the rapidly growing number of young, educated people. At the same time, employment shifted from agricultural pursuits to work in cities, with diminishing need for children’s labor. The increasingly cash-based economy shifted family organization away from the extended family as a production/ consumption unit to the nuclear family, with increased consumption and decreased willingness to support relatives. As lifestyle aspirations surpassed incomes, children became economic liabilities and young couples began to suggest that three children were enough, despite governmental pressure to produce more. Even

March 2009 • Anthropology News

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older people supported this limit, especially those whose daughters and granddaughters hoped for employment based on a lengthy education. By 1989, the high birth rate and steadily declining death rate had led to a dramatic increase in population despite heavy war losses. Half the population was under the age of 15. Unemployment was rising, and pressure on Iran’s infrastructure was mounting. By a narrow vote the parliament decided to officially limit the birth rate. In a marked policy reversal, after 1989 the staff at health clinics throughout the nation began promoting the health benefits of contraception for mothers and children. The previous regime’s slogans about small families being better off than large ones reappeared on television and on posters in public health buildings and schools. Health clinic staff liberally dispensed, free of charge, all forms of birth control, tracked local women’s fertility behavior and compliance, and documented young children’s health. Patriotism now implied having small families. The government even threatened parents with

various mild punishments for exceeding the three child limit, though such threats ended up being unnecessary. Throughout the 1990s popular attitudes toward family size were further reinforced by media, the Internet, travel and contacts with the “Los Angeles cousins” (affluent expatriate Iranians), who exported Western middle class customs and values to Iran despite governmental opposition. These values and habits reinforced already rising aspirations for lifestyle, including changing intra-family relationships and attitudes toward children. As Abbasi-Shavazi has described, this “ideology of progress” reached sufficient strength to extend to all areas and all social classes. Eventually, worsening economic conditions together with high consumer aspirations, neolocal nuclear families in expensive housing, and high debt-loads of young couples motivated Iranians to postpone first births, space children and declare two as the new limit. Even in agricultural communities the desire to give children a “good life” (including extended education) is popular; parents who use their children

for labor are criticized and those with large families are ridiculed for behaving “like cows.” For the time being, the “progress” ideology is working to curb the birth rate throughout Iran. Our research suggests that the decline in Iran’s birth rate was not sudden can not be attributed to any single variable, be it governmental policy, availability of birth control, women’s education, economic status, cost/ benefit calculations of children or “parental choice.” Rather, the synergy of such factors over 25 years led to the acceleration of demographic dynamics observable elsewhere (see Leete’s Dynamics of Values in Fertility Change). Most of these factors belong to the understudied realm of the ideational or cultural—ever-changing shared values and practices that are hard to quantify. Yet they can be linked, if not weighed. Governmental policies such as women’s education, comprehensive basic health care and a will to curb fertility; fast modernization advocated by opinion leaders such as media and relatives in the West; aspirations to consumerist lifestyles and individuation processes that accord children value per se—

Embracing a Singleton Daughter Transforming Reproductive Choice in Rural Northeast China Lihong Shi Tulane U Since its implementation in 1979, China’s birth control policy has received tremendous academic attention, and has been a source of heated political discussion in the international community. The large body of literature on this topic suggests that the policy conflicts in particular with the desire of rural families for multiple children, especially sons. Corresponding to China’s strong

resistance, ranging from open confrontation with birth control personnel, to evading detection of unauthorized births, to the most drastic forms of female infant abandonment and sexselective abortion, resulting in a skewed male-to-female ratio. As a response to such strong resistance in rural areas, since the mid1980s the Chinese government has relaxed the one-child rule to allow rural couples whose first birth has produced a girl to have a second child.

c o m m e n ta ry patrilineal tradition, sons are culturally significant to continue the family line and economically liable for providing old-age security. Accordingly, strict enforcement of the birth control policy has encountered determined

Notwithstanding the prevalence of patriarchal biases in reproductive choice in China, a recent intriguing phenomenon has drawn scholarly attention. Some couples in certain regions in rural China have been willing to

have only one child, even if that child is a girl. Since 2004, I have been conducting field research on this emerging phenomenon of couples who embrace a singleton daughter, rather than take advantage of the modified birth control policy that allows them to have a second child. An Emerging Transition My research in rural Northeast China reveals an increasing number of couples embracing a singleton daughter. In my primary field site, a rural community with a population of 824 in 2006, there were 152 couples below the age of 49. Of these, 43 couples had a singleton daughter, 25 (58%) of which had even applied for a singleton-child certificate, a pledge not to have a second child. Surprisingly, this is not an exceptional phenomenon, as

these factors enforce one another to effect low birth rates. The Iranian case suggests that only the cumulative and interrelational effect of these variables can produce a reproductive “miracle.” It demonstrates that qualitative, holistic approaches to understanding demographic systems must be used to complement factoral analyses of demographic change. Agnes Loeffler is an MD/PhD who currently practices pathology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her book Allopathy Goes Native: Traditional vs Modern Medicine in Iran (2007) is based on ethnographic research conducted in Iran, 1997–98. She initially traveled to Iran as a child, for the fieldwork of her anthropologist parents Erika Friedl and Reinhold Loeffler. Erika Friedl has conducted research in Iran since 1964, and is Distinguished Faculty Scholar of anthropology at Western Michigan University. Her recent publications include Folk Tales from a Persian Tribe (2007) and a special 2004 issue of Iranian Studies (coedited with Mary E Hegland). my further surveys and archival research beyond the village level show a similar transition in the larger township, which includes nine other villages. Within 20 years, the total number of singleton daughter households who have voluntarily applied for a singleton-child certificate in the township has significantly increased from 9 in 1987, to 91 in 1996, to 298 in 2006. My further ethnographic research suggests that this emerging transition is closely related to a movement away from the maleoriented Confucian ideal of filial piety among a new generation of parents in rural China. Transforming Gendered Ideals of Filial Piety The traditional notion of filial piety in China, as it developed through a framework of Confucianism, obligates a son to the sacred duty to support his parents in old age and to produce male heirs to continue the family See Singleton on page 16

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