Vol. 20, No. 2, 2003

Journal of Population Research

PREMARITAL CHILDBEARING IN THAMAGA VILLAGE, BOTSWANA Joseph M.N. Pitso,† University of Botswana Gordon A. Carmichael, The Australian National University This paper examines the diminished importance of marriage as a setting for childbearing in Botswana. It uses qualitative data gathered in Thamaga Village during 1995 to explore the cultural basis of this development. Marriage practices and traditional attitudes to marriage, childbearing and sexual relations are reviewed, and factors identified as having undermined them are discussed. Rational adaptation theory and social disorganization theory then provide a framework within which forces encouraging premarital childbearing in Thamaga are investigated. Both theories are found to be useful. Especially where women are older, premarital childbearing is often strategic and goaldirected, providing a sense of self-worth, labour and old-age security. In many other cases, however, it reflects spontaneous sexual activity generated by the undermining of social controls and inauspicious economic circumstances. Societal attitudes to premarital motherhood become less condemnatory after about age 25, as women are judged to have waited long enough for marriage.

Keywords: marriage customs, childbearing, premarital sexual behaviour, premarital births, motherhood, social disorganization, rational adaptation, Botswana, marriage trends, qualitative research Traditionally in Botswana, childbearing occurred largely within marriage. Marriage was almost compulsory for every mature person, being not married was considered an aberration, and newly married couples were expected to have a child immediately. Except in limited, culturally prescribed circumstances, premarital and extramarital sexual activity were frowned on as serious cultural breaches, discouraged, and subject to a range of penalties. Nowadays, however, with values and priorities derived from modernization having undermined traditional practices and controls, the cultural foundations of traditional behaviour have been weakened. The imperative to have children has remained strong, but the imperative to marry has been greatly reduced. In consequence many births now take place outside marriage. Despite the widely acknowledged frequency of premarital childbearing in contemporary Botswana, no study has carefully examined either the reasons for it or the attitudes toward it. Social anthropologists, lawyers, demographers and sociologists (BCSS 1983; Molokomme 1991; WLSA 1992) have often alluded to the phe†

Address for correspondence: Address for correspondence: Demography Department, University of Botswana, P/Bag 0022, Gaborone, Botswana. Email: [email protected]. 187

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nomenon while focusing primarily on subjects like child support, but they have tended to explain it away as merely a consequence of men’s irresponsibility. Similarly, while censuses and surveys have clearly shown that marriage is in decline in Botswana, researchers have failed to explore the reasons for this decline beyond attributing it to male labour migration. This paper examines why childbearing has become a common occurrence among unmarried women in Botswana (the term ‘unmarried’ being used to refer to the never-married state). It particularly aims to provide insight into the cultural basis of the almost universal desire for parenthood among women, regardless of whether they are married. This is achieved by focusing on how the childbearing decisions of unmarried women are made, and exploring the contexts that influence them. Through this, insight is also gained into changing societal attitudes to premarital motherhood as maternal age increases. Thamaga Village is used as a case study. The concept of marriage in Botswana Officially, a couple is legally married in Botswana once they have celebrated either customary marriage or civil marriage. Marriage by civil rite is governed by Roman Dutch law and is a distinct event. The most important requirements for customary marriage have been identified as patlo, a marriage agreement entered into by the parents of the groom and bride incorporating the giving of gifts by the groom to the bride; and bogadi, the payment of bridewealth, brideprice, or lobola. Patlo may take place without immediate payment of bogadi, although when that happens it is expected that bogadi will be paid later. Social acceptance is crucial for a union to be called a marriage in Botswana. Marriage becomes socially recognized when the patlo ceremony has occurred. Patlo is integral to all customary marriages, and a civil rite marriage that does not also include patlo is not socially recognized. Roberts (1972: 70) describes patlo as follows: On the day fixed for the marriage, a group of the man’s married relations go to the kgotla of the woman’s descent group during the morning and publicly ask for the woman in marriage (this is known as patlo). This request is formally accepted. In the afternoon the request is repeated by a group of the man’s married female relations who visit their counterparts at the woman’s homestead. Again the request is formally accepted.

Patlo is thus the rite that couples have to undergo in order for their marriages to be regarded as lawful and as carrying the rights, duties and privileges accorded married people by Batswana society. Bogadi has been perceived as both constituting and completing marriage in Botswana (Schapera 1938; Campbell 1970; Roberts 1971; Comaroff and Roberts 1981; Krige 1981; Kuper 1985; Timaeus and Graham 1989; Diamond and Rutenburg 1995). It has also been associated with the transfer of rights in children and/or partners (Schapera 1938; Campbell 1970; Krige 1981; Griffiths 1983; Gulbrandsen 1986; Solway 1990). Roberts (1972) further holds that bogadi is paid as compensation to the family of the bride, as well as playing a symbolic role in creating and maintaining a relationship between the groom’s and the bride’s families. In summary, the couple is socially recognized as married after the patlo ceremony has taken place. Patlo marks the acknowledgment of a union as a marriage by

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the parents of the groom and the bride, and indeed by society at large (Griffiths 1983, 1989; Law Reform Committee 1989; Townsend and Garey 1994). It is thus generally regarded as the hallmark of marriage. Marriage, childbearing and sexual relations in premodern Botswana Traditionally, parents or senior relatives arranged marriages in Botswana. Mutual attraction between young people was little considered, and there was little scope for young sexually mature people to associate. Upon puberty, much effort was made to keep boys and girls apart. Boys were made to spend most of their youth and early manhood at cattle posts out in the veld while girls remained under the direct control of their mothers, often sharing the same hut at night until married. Procreation was the main object of marriage, and childbearing was strictly restricted to married people. Extramarital relations were punished as unlawful. Schapera (1938), for example, noted that in earlier times a husband could kill a man caught committing adultery with his wife, and was still entitled to thrash him. Damages in the form of cattle could also be claimed from a wife’s lover. Their scale was unrelated to whether pregnancy occurred, but if it did the lover had no claim on the child. Sexual intercourse was normally considered proper only within marriage, and stringent rules governed premarital intercourse and pregnancy. Significant penalties were imposed on an unmarried girl and her boyfriend, especially if pregnancy occurred. According to Schapera (1938), there was no legal redress where seduction of an unmarried woman did not result in pregnancy, but her father might with impunity beat the seducer if he caught him in the act, and the woman herself might be whipped, although more typically she was scolded. Where pregnancy occurred and did not lead to marriage, the child could be aborted or killed, or else along with the mother would suffer ‘social degradation and other indignities’ (Schapera 1933: 59). The lover, in such instances, in addition to possibly being beaten at the time of the coital act, was frequently fined. Changes in marriage and premarital childbearing In 1978, Molenaar (1980, cited in Kuper 1985) repeated a study undertaken in 1938 by Schapera (1957) and found that at the earlier date eight per cent of never-married women over the age of 16 in the Kweneng Ward of Botswana1 had had one or more children, but 40 years later the figure had risen to 60 per cent. Moreover, while in 1938 the average unmarried mother had had one child, in the late 1970s she had had two or three children. The proportion of unmarried men had also increased. In 1938, 23 per cent of adult men were unmarried; in 1978 the figure was 65 per cent. Similarly, Knocken and Uhlenbeck (1980) found that, whereas in 1943 Schapera (1957) had recorded that 73 per cent of women above the age of 16 in Tlokweng Village were married, in 1978 only 35 per cent were married, while 45 per cent were unmarried but had children. In 1943, about half of women aged 20–24 had already married, but in 1978 it was not until age group 35–39 that half of women were married. Knocken and Uhlenbeck also found that only about 30 per cent of unmarried mothers in Tlokweng Village still expected to marry. The rest anticipated bringing up their children on their own.

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The proportion of teenagers in Botswana who were mothers rose from 15 per cent in 1981 to 24 per cent in 1988 (Lesetedi et al. 1989), and the 1991 Census showed that more than 50 per cent of births during the previous 12 months had been to women who were not married. According to the Botswana Family Health Survey III (BFHS III), the majority of women aged 15–49 who had ever been pregnant had become pregnant for the first time at age 15–19 (59.9 per cent), and a further 31.9 per cent first became pregnant at age 20–24 (CSO 1999). The median age at first pregnancy for all women aged 15–49 was 19 years. BFHS III further indicated a decline in the proportion of women currently married and increases in the proportions living together and never married compared to figures obtained from BFHS II in 1988 (Lesetedi et al. 1989). Whereas in 1988 59.9 per cent of women aged 15–49 reported being never-married, 28.3 per cent were currently married and 10.8 per cent were cohabiting, in 1996 the comparable figures were 61.0 per cent, 19.0 per cent and 17.4 per cent, respectively (CSO 1999). Factors influencing change The increasing separation of reproduction from marriage in Botswana has been associated with several factors. Among those consistently mentioned have been the weakening of traditional practices such as initiation, and also the decline of traditional controls exercised by elders over the young because of the latter’s absence at school or work and labour migration. Labour migration has additionally promoted behaviour conducive to ex-nuptial pregnancies through the sex imbalances it has generated (Brown 1983; Molokomme 1991; WLSA 1992). In the past it was imperative that every physically mature adult male should marry. A man who did not marry would be ridiculed and called names like matlhogole (invalid), setseketseke (goofy), maja-a-sa-ipeele (a person who eats without thinking of tomorrow) and lekgwatlhe (a derogatory term for a bachelor). A woman who did not marry received sympathy from elderly people, but her peers would taunt her and call her lefetwa (a person bypassed by marriage). So common has it now become to be unmarried, however, that these societal pressures to marry have lost much of their previous effectiveness. Under customary Tswana law all women, regardless of age, were defined as legal and political minors requiring male guardians. After Independence in 1966, however, they gained legal recognition in many areas of their lives as adults responsible for themselves. Suggs (1987) thus ascribed the changes in marriage practices to a combination of educational gains and the redefinition of women’s jural status, these developments enabling women to form independent households without marriage. He noted that the primary areas of change in women’s status and roles have been (1) the … devaluation of marriage as a pre-requisite for motherhood and definitional characteristics of adulthood, and (2) a concurrent increased emphasis on women’s productive and managerial roles in the definition of female adulthood (Suggs 1987: 107).

In the view of Meekers and Ahmed (1997: 4–5), a ‘new set of values related to sexuality, marriage and the family’ underlies current patterns of nonmarital unions and childbearing. Westernization, with its social, economic, political and cultural values, has partly eroded traditional values. The introduction of schools brought

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boys and girls together, encouraging the development of a natural attraction for the opposite sex that Setswana culture traditionally had controlled by geographically separating boys and girls. The new socialization also saw boys and girls attending church, going to parties and playing sports together (Schapera 1971). Adolescence became a new life cycle stage, bringing with it the issues of dating, a concept grossly misunderstood because traditionally by agreeing to meet a boy, a girl was agreeing to have intercourse with him. Theoretical framework Two hypotheses have been advanced by Cherlin and Riley (1986) to explain the changed sexual and reproductive behaviour of unmarried adolescent girls and young women in countries like Botswana. The first, social disorganization theory, contends that unmarried childbearing reflects a breakdown of traditional social controls over the sexual behaviour of the young. It is argued that removal of sexual behaviour from the control of elders and the community has resulted in individual decisions about when, where, with whom and for what purpose to have sexual intercourse (Bauni 1992). Allegedly the educated young now obtain their knowledge from books, and have challenged the older generation’s wisdom. This social disorganization model asserts that sexual activity is spontaneous, and is not directed toward a specific goal. The second hypothesis, rational adaptation theory, suggests that unmarried teenagers use sexual relations and pregnancy to achieve certain goals (Meekers 1994; Meekers and Calvès 1997). This theory holds that unmarried adolescent and young adult women’s sexual activity and fertility may be means to specific ends. It argues that there are often economic advantages to a sexual relationship or to bearing children for a man: for example, if he is a policeman, a teacher or one of the socalled ‘sugar daddies’ who financially support young women and help pay their school fees (Karanja 1994; Meekers 1994). Meekers (1994: 48) argues that ‘from this perspective, premarital pregnancies are a result of conscious, rational decisions’. The utility of these two hypotheses for understanding premarital childbearing in Thamaga Village will be evaluated as the qualitative data pertaining to women’s sexual and childbearing behaviour are examined. It will be shown that both are of value in endeavouring to explain the contemporary high level of such childbearing. The study community: Thamaga Village The de facto population of Thamaga Village was 3,681 in 1971, 6,520 in 1981 and 13,026 in 1991. Thamaga is located within the populated southeastern portion of Botswana, where people are almost entirely Setswana-speaking and ethnically Batswana. It is situated roughly 60 kilometres from the capital city, Gaborone, to which it is linked by a sealed road, which makes access to urban employment, services and supplies relatively easy. Many workers commute between Thamaga and Gaborone, but Thamaga is still typically rural. It is broadly representative of villages caught between tradition and modernization (CSO 1994). According to the 1991 Population Census there were 5,155 males and 7,871 females in Thamaga, a sex ratio of 65.5 males per 100 females. There were only half as many males as females aged 15–64 (sex ratio 51.6), an imbalance bound to

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increase the pressure on females to accede to the sexual demands of available males. This surplus of females reflects the fact that many males whose home village is Thamaga work at cattleposts (some as far as 100 kilometres from the village), as wage labourers in urban areas, or in South African mines. The export of labour has long been a central feature of Thamaga’s economy. In 1991, of the 939 usually resident males reported to be absent, 828 (88 per cent) were working in mines in South Africa, compared with only 13 of 69 females (19 per cent). Absent females mainly worked as domestic servants in South Africa (CSO 1994). Economically, Bakgatla society has depended for many years on income from migrant labour. Before Independence labour migration to South Africa was almost exclusively male, but since then the emergence of new urban centres, and the discovery of diamonds in Jwaneng and Orapa and other minerals like coal, have provided employment opportunities for villagers of both sexes (Taylor 1986). The national job market is, nevertheless, more favourable to males, and this is also true for Thamaga Village. More women than men, however, are involved in informal sector activities (CSO 1994), which makes their much lower level of economic activity as recorded by the census somewhat misleading. Among the ever-married population aged 12 years and over in 1991, 4.5 per cent of males were aged 12–29, compared with 20.7 per cent of females. Overall, 33.5 per cent of males aged 12 and over had ever married compared with 43.9 per cent of females. These differences are probably reflective of both a later male age at marriage and a degree of selection of married males in male labour migration. The qualitative data Two qualitative data collection exercises were undertaken: focus group discussions (FGD) and in-depth interviews (IDI). Thirteen FGDs and eleven IDIs were conducted. Discussants and interviewees were chosen who were knowledgeable or experienced, and who viewed marriage and reproduction from different perspectives. They ranged from teenaged boys and girls, who were currently grappling with their adolescent sexuality, to those with longer-term perspectives on change, like the elderly. The aim was to assemble a ‘wide-ranging panel of knowledgeable informants’ (Weiss 1994: 17). Free flow of discussion within focus groups was facilitated by choosing discussants who were similar in status and shared a common perspective on the topic under investigation. Homogeneity was also achieved by recruiting groups of similar age, and the same sex. Focus groups consisted of 6 to 11 people. Six groups were women aged 20–45, comprising three groups of unmarried women and three groups of married women, all with at least primary school education. The remaining groups comprised unmarried girls aged 16–20 (two groups), unmarried boys aged 18–19, unmarried men aged in their thirties who were manual workers, elderly men (aged 55 and over), elderly women, and elderly ward chiefs aged 65–94 none of whom had been formally educated. In-depth interviewees were chosen for their ability to inform on the nature of marriage and reproductive life, the culture and values pertaining to marriage and reproduction, the problems people face in these areas of their lives, their own experiences, and their broader perceptions of marriage and reproductive behaviour in

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Thamaga. Eight of the interviewees were women and three were men: they ranged in age from 19 to 93; six were married, four were single and one female was in a de facto relationship. All had children: the number ranged from one to eleven. Most had six or seven years of education, but one man and one woman had no education. Four interviewees were affiliated with the United Congregational Church of South Africa and four had no religion; the others were of other Christian denominations. Several unmarried mothers were selected to share their thoughts and feelings, while older people were also included to provide ‘a window on the past’ (Weiss 1994: 1). Some discussants and interviewees were selected purposively, while others were recruited through snowball sampling. Some, such as ward chiefs, needed to be invited to participate with the help of the village chief, whereas for most women with children, convenience and snowball sampling were adopted. Mothers would bring their children for weighing to three clinics at different locations in the village. The help of clinic matrons was sought on the basis that, since the clinics were places where women of interest gathered, focus groups could be organized there after the child-weighing. Matrons would ask women in prespecified categories to wait to participate in focus groups, having been told ahead of time whether to recruit married or unmarried mothers. Three informants for in-depth interview were recruited out of the five FGDs organized in this way, after citing interesting personal situations. Two groups of male and female teenagers were recruited at the Social Work Club which they attended every Monday and Wednesday to learn vocational skills. These groups were included because of having imminent prospects of becoming involved in premarital parenthood, and also because their attitudes to marriage and premarital childbearing were obviously contemporary and therefore highly relevant. They were also well placed to comment on the attitudes and behaviour of their peers. FGD sessions were conducted in the Setswana language to facilitate self-expression. All were moderated by the first author, who also conducted the IDIs. Both FGDs and IDIs were tape recorded and transcribed verbatim in Setswana as soon as possible after completion to preserve original meaning and detect emergent themes that needed more probing. Although the normal practice of qualitative researchers is to transcribe only as much as they need (Weiss 1994), in this instance everything was transcribed, the transcripts being treated as a set of material to be mined. Given the sensitive nature of the subject, discussants and interviewees were assured that all information provided would be treated confidentially. Ensuing discussion therefore uses pseudonyms or general characterizations of informants by age, sex and maternal or marital status to protect their identity. An issue-focused approach was adopted in analysing the qualitative data. This is an approach that describes what has been learned from all informants about a particular situation (Weiss 1994). Data were coded according to concepts and categories used in the paper, and from these coded data, excerpt files were compiled that collected material from both focus groups and interviews that dealt with the same issue. Findings from both the FGDs and the IDIs in the discussion which follows are supported by quotations translated by the first author and by case descriptions.

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Excerpts are presented using the ‘preservationist approach’ (Weiss 1994: 192); that is, material is presented in the original speech so as to reproduce the words on tape as accurately as possible. Verbatim vernacular words, with English translations in parenthesis, are inserted in places for emphasis. Since the FGDs and IDIs were not representative, terms like ‘a few’, ‘some’ or ‘many’ are used to give impressionistic views in situations where to state proportions would be meaningless. Where informants are described as ‘adolescents’, ‘younger adults’, ‘adults’ or ‘elderly’ they are respectively aged less than 21 years, 21–35 years, 36–49 years and 50 years or older. Factors influencing premarital childbearing in Thamaga Among the Bakgatla, premarital sex was in the past prohibited. Both elderly and adult focus group discussants and in-depth interviewees reported that formerly, if a girl gave birth before marriage, she, the child and their immediate kin suffered public scorn, humiliation, and occasionally even ostracism. A recurring phrase was leina-wee: ‘this girl has brought her parents’ name into disrepute’. A boy responsible for such a birth would also be reproached, often violently, for dishonouring his family and tribe. If not yet initiated he was treated with special severity at initiation school, and might even be killed there. His parents would also suffer community censure, and if Christians, stood to be rebuked by the Church for failing to instil appropriate values in their son. The incidence of children born out of wedlock was low in the past, not least because parents often arranged marriages soon after girls reached puberty. Notwithstanding this traditional condemnation of premarital childbearing, the FGDs and IDIs indicated that Bakgatla nevertheless believe women to be eternally damned and unfulfilled without children. This seemed, in more recent times, to have been a strong motivation to have children irrespective of marital status. A number of factors were identified as having given rise to the surge in premarital childbearing in Thamaga. They are discussed below under headings derived from the theoretical framework outlined earlier, although in specific cases elements of both ‘rational adaptation’ and ‘social disorganization’ can operate together, with, for example, a set of circumstances inviting different interpretations viewed from the perspectives of the two parties to a relationship. Rational adaptation factors Several rational adaptation factors were identified. First, there were those who claimed that they needed their children in order to be fulfilled as women, despite their unmarried status. An unmarried adult female discussant argued: If you do not have a child because you are not married it is not good, because bontle jwa mosadi ke ngwana (the beauty of a woman is having a child). We grew up being taught that the beauty of a woman is having a child. If you do not have a child, your peers will laugh at you and say ‘is this woman a woman or a man?’ On many occasions when we have these children, it is not because of mistakes; it is because we have already given up on marriage after a long wait.

The view that bontle jwa mosadi ke ngwana was frequently expressed, and is clearly a driving force behind the bearing of children by unmarried women in Thamaga.

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Second, there was an age threshold by which the transition to motherhood was supposed to have taken place. When a woman is beyond a certain age in Thamaga, she is expected to have children whether married or not. This is despite the fact that, before reaching that age, premarital childbearing has a good chance of arousing disapproval. Mman, a 63-year-old married female in-depth interviewee, remarked: If you are a girl of about 25 years, you are free to have a child. You have been bypassed by marriage. There is no one who can blame you or scorn you. No one will be surprised by the fact that you have a child outside marriage. You are an old person. You have preserved yourself long enough.

Ros, a 38-year-old unmarried mother, explaining how she ended up having three children out of desperation after not finding a marriage partner, similarly expressed a view common among unmarried mothers: When I turned 25 years I told myself that I would never get married. I decided to have a child outside marriage. I stayed for another long time raising my son until I met another man when my son was then 10 years old. When my son turned 10 years old, I decided to have another child. I then gave up on marriage after waiting for 10 years with my son hoping that I would find a man who would marry me. After 10 years I said, well, let me have two quick births and relax. Ka bo ke boa ke tshola thulaganyane gape (I started having closely spaced births). Then I gave up on marriage.

Age 25 recurred frequently, in both FGDs and IDIs, as a cutoff age beyond which premarital childbearing drew greater sympathy and acquired more respectability. An elderly male discussant expressed support for the idea that it is more or less mandatory for a woman to have a child by the time she is 25: Ke tlholego (It is customary). Sometimes there is a saying: a o ka tlhoka lonyalo wa bo wa tlhoka ngwana? (‘How can you not be married and also not have a child?’) It is a saying that is rife in our culture. A woman talking to her daughter when she realizes that she is already getting old says it. When a girl starts passing age 25, parents start to get worried.

These three quotations suggest that if a woman has not married by age 25, she is free to have a child. If she has a child while unmarried before reaching age 25, she risks being seen as having not waited long enough for marriage, and may face criticism. Rational adaptation was also in evidence with regard to competing for a spouse. Unmarried women in Thamaga claimed there was only a limited supply of economically secure potential husbands, and in competing for this restricted pool, adopted strategies that could place them in precarious situations. A younger-adult focus group discussant who was an unmarried mother observed: Sometimes you go out with a person for three years and then he asks you to bear a child for him before marriage, so that when he tells his parents that he is marrying you, and they intend refusing, he can ask them if they want him to latlha mmaagwe ngwana (‘throw away my child’s mother’).

This illustrates the scope for conspiracy between partners to circumvent parental opposition to a union, but female parties to such conspiracies must trust the sin-

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cerity of their male partners. This cannot always be taken for granted, and men, knowing well women’s desperation for marriage, are also apt to ask for a child to test a relationship. If the woman insists that she will not have a child outside marriage, she runs the risk of losing her boyfriend. Then again, she herself may take the initiative. An adult never-married mother raised the issue of women bearing children in the hope of persuading their boyfriends to marry them out of pity: Sometimes, even though he is not married to you, you keep on bearing him children in the hope that as time goes on he will tlhomogela pelo (pity you) and marry you, saying ‘well, selo se o kare se ka nna mosadi wa tota (this seems to be real wife material)’. Unfortunately, I fell prey to that deception twice and ended up having to raise two children on my own.

Another, more fortunate, married adult mother focus-group discussant summed up the precarious position of women in these premarital manoeuvrings: Sometimes after agreeing to have him a child, he indeed marries you, whereas sometimes he does not. After bearing him a child, he marries you and you start wondering if what he was waiting for was to have a child or what.

While never-married women frequently claimed that men had asked them to have their children, younger adult men sometimes refuted their claims. Denying that men asked their girlfriends to have children outside marriage, one casual worker who admitted having had a child with an unmarried woman said: Children outside marriage are a result of mistakes. You cannot insist that you need a baby with a girl that you have not married. These are purely accidental children. In the midst of playing together the child emerges. There is no sane girl who can just agree to have a child outside marriage just because the boyfriend wants a child. Even that man will be stupid, because even if he desires to marry that girl he will still have to pay kgomo ya tlhagela (a cow for impregnating the girl before marriage). All that I know is that children born outside marriage, like my daughter, are unplanned. Re ne re itshamekela fela a bo a tlhaga (We were just playing and the baby came out of that play).

Nevertheless, it was a common view among never-married women in Thamaga that giving birth to a child outside marriage was often an essential attempt to strengthen a shaky relationship sufficiently for marriage to become a possibility. It was also clear that men in the village often sought to assure themselves of women’s loyalty by having children with them. It is common throughout Botswana for young unmarried men to boast of relationships with maago-ngwanake (the mother of my child), without having agreed to marriage. They have these children to safeguard their relationships with women who tend to be tied to them and to be more faithful than they are, even though they have no intention of making long-term commitments. Children therefore are used as instruments to gain a form of conjugal bond, but certainly not as conjugal ‘cement’. This works as long as a man still wants a woman, but he can easily abscond. Women participate in these relationships out of desperation to secure a man, and in the frequently vain hope that he will become a husband. A rational adaptation factor that divided opinion was the question whether young women acquired greater respect by becoming unmarried mothers. One younger-adult unmarried mother claimed that they did:

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In the home you are treated like a woman. Parents can even give you a separate house, more especially if they know the father of the child. If you have a child your parents cannot rebuke you publicly, they must call you into the house to reprimand you. If you do not have a child they can simply rebuke you in the middle of the road.

This issue of respect derived from motherhood was, however, always controversial when it was raised. Most discussants saw it as a case of parents tolerating what had happened, rather than openly scorning a daughter who had had a child outside marriage as they might have done in the past. It was argued that a girl who had a child while young still spoiled her marriage prospects, but that because it was so much more common an occurrence, parents were nowadays more resigned to such an event. A final rational justification for having children outside marriage, once a woman had concluded that marriage had passed her by, was old-age security. This was put succinctly by a never-married adult female discussant: ‘Children take good care of their parents when old. This child tomorrow will be my “husband”. He will be doing everything I need for me’. Social disorganization factors The elderly frequently lamented what they perceived to be moral breakdown. They complained that because the young were educated and thereby conditioned to relying on non-familial sources of knowledge, older people’s advice, as codified in taboos and superstitions, was usually disregarded, often derisively. An elderly married woman said: ‘…it seems that young girls nowadays budge easily. Some of them know more than we do, as they read books and these books tell them everything’. In particular, elderly Bakgatla of both sexes were unequivocally opposed to family life education. They attributed what they termed go kgagoga ga bana (‘morally torn’, or morally corrupt, children) to the school system that teaches young boys and girls about sex. An elderly man in a FGD expressed his view: Children are taught thobalo (sexual intercourse), and it is compulsory that young children be taught how to have sexual intercourse. Radio Botswana, too, urges parents to send their children to school so that they can be taught about these things. Now, the food that they eat, when it changes their bodies, they feel like experimenting. If you look at a car with your eyes without knowing how to drive it, you cannot try to drive it. If you have been taught how to drive a car, you will feel the urge to drive it. These contemporary people are taught sexual intercourse, and they feel compelled to test what it feels like. These sexual activities, more often than not, result in unwanted pregnancies.

Even the elderly chiefs were extremely negative about family life education. One of them said: Nowadays we find that daughters know their body functions better than their mothers. They are taught about sexual intercourse at school. They are also taught about contraceptives that make it safe to sleep around. They now do things knowing very well that nothing will happen, even though we still see them falling pregnant unintentionally. In the past a mother could simply say, ‘if you sleep with a boy, you will fall pregnant’. She will then abide by her mother’s advice. Nowadays, they trust too much in what they have been taught at school, and frown upon parental advice to their peril.

These quotations link premarital childbearing to a breakdown of traditional social controls exercised by elders over the sexual behaviour of the young. The lat-

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ter allegedly use their education, and the book knowledge it gives them, to challenge the authority of the older generation. In this ‘deregulated’ environment, sexual activity has become much more spontaneous, and taking precautions is easier to advocate than to implement. Itseng, a 35-year-old never-married mother, related her views and experience: Quite often you will find that women become careful and consistent in their use of contraception when they already have a child. But before having a child, it is not easy to use contraception. Setswana kana sa re lesilo ga le boele … gabedi: A Setswana adage says ‘once beaten, twice shy’. For instance, in my case, I did not have a stable relationship, so there was no way I was going to continue swallowing pills when I was not sleeping with a man every day. Men, too, are problematic and very lacking in understanding. I fell pregnant when I least expected to. That day I was not willing to sleep with him, but somehow he managed to persuade me to go to bed with him. I never saw him again, because we met at a friend’s party and he was from Gaborone. Since I was used to intercourse without contraception and having nothing happen, I did it. I then realized two months later that I had conceived …. I tried to no avail to trace the guy who had made me pregnant. He had told me that his name was Tebogo and he was working at a brewery. When I asked Gadi, the host of the party, she said that she could not remember anyone by that name. I tried to describe what he was wearing, but no one seemed to remember him.

This statement clearly indicates spontaneous sexual activity between Itseng and Tebogo that was geared towards sexual gratification, not childbearing. The comment of Sego, a younger-adult never-married mother in a FGD, acknowledged sexual behaviour that was even more extreme in its casualness: Sometimes you can sleep with men for a long time without using any contraception without falling pregnant. When your time for falling pregnant comes, you just find yourself pregnant. Right now my child is seven years old. Since the birth of my child I have been sleeping with men without using anything, but I have not fallen pregnant yet. The first one was conceived after I had been sleeping with different men without getting pregnant for a long time. … Again, since I rarely plan to have sex, it just happens. I cannot afford to always be on guard with contraception as I have unplanned sex.

These last two quotations suggest a degree of knowledge about modern contraception, but also a level of unpredictability about when sexual activity is likely to occur and a preparedness to leave its consequences to fate that are not conducive to effective adoption of this technology. Issues of access to contraception also restrict its use. Young people in Thamaga reported a lack of privacy and confidentiality at health clinics, fear of discovery by parents, admonishment by clinic staff, and inconvenient clinic hours, problems that Roedde (1998) and Olukoya and Smith (1999) have identified as prevalent throughout Botswana. Traditional controls over premarital childbearing have been dismantled, but the social, cultural and economic contexts are such that modern alternatives are ineffective. Discussion The traditional importance of near-universal marriage in Botswana was that marriage was a status symbol. Jural relationships were created through it, and hence every person had to conform by marrying. Derogatory names given to those who failed to marry seem to have been used to encourage compliance. Even today there are many things that unmarried Bakgatla forgo: they are not allowed to participate

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in ceremonies such as patlo, and if their children die their corpses are taken into the courtyard for the funeral by the back entrance. The change from parental arrangement of marriage to individual choice of a sexual partner, and the resultant premarital childbearing, however, indicate the waning of gerontocratic control. There were very strong normative expectations in Thamaga that older nevermarried women should have children. It was obvious that there was a stigma attached to older nulliparous women, but none attached to premarital childbearing at ages 25 and older. This age threshold had no explanation other than that, by then, a woman was perceived to have waited long enough for marriage, and was not expected to forgo the fulfilment of motherhood. The condoning of premarital childbearing only after young women reach age 25 reflects the traditional Bakgatla culture’s difficulty in condoning childbearing outside marriage. It shows that Bakgatla would still prefer young women to marry before raising families. There was a consensus that all women should have children. Older unmarried women tend to have them partly to meet an unfulfilled desire to get married, and also to cushion themselves against insecurity concerning the future and, in particular, their old age. Parents express clear expectations that their children will help them to improve their lives. Evidently, then, some premarital pregnancies are the result of conscious, rational decisions (Meekers 1994). Some, perhaps much, sexual activity engaged in by never-married women is spontaneous and directed not at having children but at sexual pleasure. This was signalled in both FGDs and IDIs by indications of never-married women sleeping with casual partners without using contraception. Such data point to a breakdown of social control by elders over the young, and thus support the social disorganization hypothesis. It was frequently reported that fathers of unmarried women’s children came from other villages. This, too, suggests a lack of community control over premarital sexual activity, with men engaging in such behaviour knowing they are beyond the oversight and control of those who, according to cultural tradition, have authority over them. It raises the possibility that social disorganization and rational adaptation may sometimes operate simultaneously. A pregnancy that has a rational purpose to the woman (as, perhaps, a means of attempting to induce marriage or of providing old-age security) may from the male’s perspective be a product of social disorganization. Traditionally, adolescence was circumvented in Sekgatla culture by having young women move straight from childhood into parentally arranged marriages. The advent of adolescence as a lifecycle stage in consequence of modernization brought with it the issues of dating, premarital sexual relations and unwanted pregnancies. As a result of unwanted teenage pregnancies, family life education was introduced, and this has been misconceived and severely criticized by the elderly as having instigated and perpetuated undesirable sexual behaviour. Conclusion It is evident that in Thamaga Village, society’s construction of ideal female attributes and roles typically emphasizes motherhood. Having children both defines selfworth and provides social security for many women. Children are viewed as sources of labour for the family and security for parents in old age. Thus, there is little question that a component of contemporary premarital childbearing is strategic and goal-

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directed (rational adaptation), particularly where it involves older unmarried women. Motherhood enables them to feel valued, to be more valued in the eyes of society, and to better secure their economic futures. But premarital childbearing is also a product of forces beyond individual choice (social disorganization); of spontaneous sexual activity generated by the undermining of cultural controls and by economic realities that have produced a marked sex imbalance consequent upon a high proportion of absentee males. Both theories therefore clearly have something to offer in attempting to understand premarital childbearing in Thamaga. An interesting finding from this study is the different attitudes to premarital childbearing depending on maternal age. At adolescent and younger-adult ages it incurs stigma and disapproval, although blame tends to be attributed less to individuals than to an education system seen as inviting and creating opportunity for sexual experimentation. Teenage motherhood, in particular, is perceived to be socially undesirable, but a waning of gerontocratic authority has undermined traditional controls and sanctions, and it is therefore much more common than in the past. At what are perceived to be ‘mature’ ages, however, by which having achieved maternal status assumes a certain cultural imperative, women bypassed by marriage tend to be seen as unfortunate victims, and there is noticeably greater acceptance of premarital childbearing. The magic age at which this more sympathetic attitude is adopted appears to be 25 years. The high social value placed on childbearing in Thamaga creates double jeopardy for young unmarried women. First, it leads many to engage in sexual activity in the hope that marriage might ensue. This automatically entails sexual risk taking, but it also exposes them to being openly persuaded to have children by often empty promises of marriage, and to being tempted to try to use childbearing as a means of securing commitment. The marked shortage of adult males in the population only intensifies these pressures and temptations. It is clear that to a significant degree contemporary premarital childbearing in Thamaga reflects a persistence of traditional beliefs in, for example, the role of women and the source of their self-worth, in a modernized environment that no longer as readily makes available the traditional marital setting for realizing these beliefs. Having a child is rational, goal-oriented behaviour in pursuit either of marriage itself or of other objectives that cannot be ignored simply because marriage seems to have passed a woman by. Other aspects of traditional culture and the traditional belief system have, however, been so undermined by post-Independence developments as to foster considerably more spontaneous sexual activity among the unmarried young than previously occurred: not least by delaying marriage and hence increasing exposure to risk. In the absence of widespread practice of effective fertility control, this inevitably has resulted in additional premarital births. Older generations are apt to attribute this ‘social disorganization’ component of premarital fertility to family life education classes in schools, forgetting the more fundamental reality of the disappearance of the traditional physical separation of the sexes. With this mechanism no longer a realistic control option, they need to address their discomfort by openly discussing sexual matters with their adolescent and young-adult children if effective, modern means of control are to be established.

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Note 1

Etymological root -tswana (from the name of the ethnic group Tswana). The country = Botswana, the people = Batswana, a national = Motswana, the language = Setswana, the culture = Setswana. The Batswana, or Tswana as they will be alternatively designated, are all Setswana speakers and make up the majority of the population of Botswana. Similarly, the tribal group inhabiting Thamaga Village is called Bakgatla, one member of that group is a Mokgatla, and the language and culture are Sekgatla.

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