Reproduction and Human
Development
(Miller Chapter 4)
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
The BIG Questions
 How are modes of reproduction related
to modes of production?
 How does culture shape fertility in
different contexts?
 How does culture shape personality and
human development over the life cycle?
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Modes of Reproduction
 A mode of reproduction is the
predominant pattern of fertility in a
culture (p. 80).
 Fertility is the number of children a woman
bears, or the rate of population growth.
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Three Modes of Reproduction
 There are three major modes of
reproduction which correlate with
several of the modes of production
 The foraging mode of reproduction
 The agricultural mode of reproduction
 The industrial/informatics mode of
reproduction
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Foraging Mode of Reproduction
 Common among those with a foraging
mode of production
 Moderate birth and death rates
 Average of about 2 children per woman
survive to adulthood
 Value of children: moderate (labor
value)
 Children do not do much work
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Foraging Mode of Reproduction
 Indirect means of fertility control: diet,
breastfeeding, work/exercise,
spontaneous abortion
 Low body fat due to low fat diet and lots of
exercise – suppresses ovulation – fewer
children
 Long length of breastfeeding – suppresses
ovulation – fewer children
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Agricultural Mode of Reproduction
 Common among societies with an
agricultural, horticultural, and pastoralist
mode of production
 High birth rates, moderate/low death
rates
 Average between 2 and 8 children per
woman
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Agricultural Mode of Reproduction
 Value of children: high (labor value)
–
–
–
Need for children to work the land, care for
animals, process foods, etc.
Pronatalism – an ideology promoting
many children (p. 80)
Increased reliance on direct means of birth
control
 Increasing specialization: midwives,
herbalists
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Industrial/Informatics Mode
of Reproduction
 Common in societies with an
industrial/informatics mode of
production
 Stable or declining population
 Either replacement level fertility in which
the number of births equals the number of
deaths, leading to maintenance of current
population size
 Or below-replacement level fertility in
which the number of births is less than the
number of deaths, leading to population
decline
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Industrial/Informatics Mode
of Reproduction
 Low fertility and moderate/low mortality
 Leading to aging population in many
industrialized nations
 Value of children: mixed or low (labor)
 Cost of raising children: high
 Highly developed professional
specializations
 Mandatory formal schooling for children
 Parents have fewer children and invest
more resources in them
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Industrial/Informatics Mode
of Reproduction
 Social inequality is reflected in population
patterns – stratified reproduction
 Middle- and upper-class people – few children
with high survival rates
 Lower-class – higher fertility and higher mortality
rates
 Government policies may promote births in the
“native” population while discouraging births in the
non-native population
 e.g. France
 Increasing specialization and involvement in
the scientific and medical community of all
aspects of pregnancy and birth
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Changes in the Population of Japan
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Culture and Fertility
Culture affects:
 Sexual intercourse
 Frequency and timing of sexual intercourse
 Fertility control
 Why and when to have a child
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Culture Shapes Reproduction at
Several Levels
Cultural guidelines…
Government
policies…
International
organizations…
•when to start
having sex
•how many
children to have
•when to stop
having sex and
children
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Fertility Decision Making
 At the family level
 At the state level
 At the global level
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Fertility Decision Making
 At the family level
 4 factors are most important in affecting the
desire for children
 Children’s labor value
 High – higher fertility rates
 Children’s value as old-age support for parents
 High – higher fertility rates
 Infant and child mortality rates
 High – higher fertility rates
 Economic costs of children
 High – lower fertility rates
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Fertility Decision Making
 At the family level
 Desire for children may differ based on the
parent
 Families may prefer sons, daughters, or a
combination of both, often depending upon
the culture and the gender division of labor
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Fertility Decision Making
 At the state level
 State governments formulate policies that
affect rates of population growth within
their boundaries
 Vary from being pronatalist (favoring many
births)
 To antinatalist (opposed to many births)
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Fertility Decision Making
 At the state level
 Factors that affect government policies
include…
 Projected jobs and employment levels
 Public services
 Maintaining the tax base
 Filling the ranks of the military
 Maintaining ethnic and regional proportions
 Dealing with population aging
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Fertility Decision Making
 At the global level
 Global corporations such as
pharmaceutical companies and religious
leaders influence country-level and familylevel decision making
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Fertility Control
 People in all cultures since prehistory
have had ways of influencing fertility
 Methods to increase fertility
 Methods to reduce fertility
 Methods to regulate its spacing
 Even among non-industrial cultures
 Research in Afghanistan in the 1980s
found over 500 fertility-regulating
techniques in just one region!
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Fertility Control
 Direct methods
 Taking medicines or herbs that induce
abortion, act as contraceptives, or increase
fertility
 Cross-culturally, often the women who possess
the most information about these methods
 Indirect methods
 e.g. Long periods of breast feeding to reduce
the chances of conception
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Fertility Control
 Induced abortion
 A review of 400 societies found that
induced abortion was practiced in virtually
all of them
 Attitudes towards abortion very greatly
 Methods vary widely
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Fertility Control
 Induced abortion
 Reasons to induce abortion
 Economic reasons
 Mobility
 Poverty
 Cultural reasons
 “Illegitimate” child
 Social penalties for bearing an illegitimate
child are often motivations for abortion
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Fertility Control
 Induced abortion
 Governments intervene in family decisions to
regulate access to abortion, either promoting
it or forbidding it
 U.S.
 Abortion legally allowed but the issue is often still hotly
contested
 China
 One-Child per-Couple Policy started in 1978
 Often forced abortions and sterilizations
 Increase in female infanticide because of cultural
preference for sons
 Brazil
 Predominantly Catholic country
 Outlawed abortion
 Still intense poverty, so in practice 1/3 of women had
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
abortions
Fertility Control
 New Reproductive Technologies
 In vitro fertilization (IVF)
 Often used among middle- and upper-class
couples in the U.S. who cannot have children the
“natural” way
 Meanings depend on cultural context
 In Greece it seen as “natural” because it allows women
to realize a key aspect of their feminine nature through
pregnancy and birth
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Fertility Control
 Infanticide
 Infanticide is the deliberate killing of offspring
 Practiced cross-culturally, but is rarely a frequent
practice within a culture
 Direct infanticide
 Death of an infant or child resulting from actions such as
beating, smothering, poisoning, or drowning
 Indirect infanticide
 A more subtle process, may involve prolonged practices
such as food deprivation, failure to take a sick infant to a
clinic, or failure to provide warm clothing in winter
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Fertility Control
 Infanticide
 Motives include…
 Having a “deformed,” very sick, or very ill child
 Sex of the infant
 Unwed mother – “illegitimate” child
 Too many children in the family
 Poverty
 Can occur as a perceived necessity (creating
“angel babies”) rather than as a result of
cruelty
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Infanticide as “Family Planning”
The killing of an
offspring
Direct or indirect
•poverty
•due to child
deformity or
sickness
•if child does not
meet family
expectations
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Personality and Culture
 Personality is an individual’s patterned
and characteristic way of behaving,
thinking, and feeling (p.88)
 Formed largely through enculturation
 The process by which culture is passed from
one generation to the next and through which
individuals become members of their society
 Also a genetic component to personality
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Personality and Culture

Psychological anthropology is the
study of the interactions between
culture and personality
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Personality and the Life Cycle




Birth and infancy
Childhood
Adolescence
Adulthood
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Birth and Infancy
 The cultural context of birth affects an
infant’s psychological development
 There are a variety of different cultural
practices that occur at birth which are
considered essential for the baby’s physical
and psychological welfare
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Birth and Infancy
 Often times will have conflicting views about
what practices are essential between cultures
 Often requires someone to act as a cultural
broker – someone who is familiar with the
practices and beliefs of two different cultures and
can promote cross-cultural understanding to
prevent or mediate conflicts
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Birth and Infancy
 Pre-birth
 Babies may also begin to be enculturated
when a child is in the womb
 Birth
 Members of the household play the key role
in enculturating the newborn
 Infant begins to develop a sense of selfawareness
 About 2 years old in industrialized and postindustrial societies
 A bit sooner in foraging societies
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Birth and Infancy
 Bonding
 Different cultures believe in different times
and ways of bonding with children
 U.S.
 Believe that should start bonding with baby at birth
 Adaptive in low-mortality/low-fertility societies
 Brazil
 Bonding occurs several years after birth
 Adaptive in high-mortality/high-fertility societies
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Birth and Infancy
 Naming
 Personal names are important devices of
self-definition in all cultures. Without a name
an individual has no self, no identity
 It is through naming that a social group
acknowledges a child’s birthright and
establishes it’s social identity
 Naming varies cross culturally
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Birth and Infancy
 Oriented with surrounding world




Object orientation
Spatial orientation
Temporal orientation
Normative orientation
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Infancy and Identity
 Sex and Gender in Infancy
 Sex is something that everybody is born with
 Has three biological markers: genitals,
hormones, and chromosomes
 Either male or female
 Gender is a cultural construction and is
highly variable across cultures
 Learned behaviors and ideas attributed to males,
females, or third genders
 Children are taught their gender roles beginning
in infancy
 Does not necessarily correlate to biological
characteristics (sex)
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Gender and Identity
 Gender identity is influenced both by
biology and culture
 Many individuals born with XX (biological
female) or XY (biological male)
 Can choose to be culturally male, female, or a
third gender
 Some individuals are born as intersexuals
(about 1 percent of humans – over 60 million
individuals worldwide)
 People who are born with reproductive organs,
genitalia, and/or sex chromosomes that are not
exclusively male or female
 Hermaphrodite – has both testicular and ovarian tissue
 Can choose or may be forced to be culturally male,
female, or a third gender
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Gender and Identity
 http://www.thestar.com/sports/article/6939
42
 “Runner has male and female sex organs”
 Caster Semenya of South Africa
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Gender and Identity
 Gender identities can be fluid
 Individuals might change their gender at
different points in their lives
 Transgenders are people who cross over or
occupy a culturally accepted position in the binary
male-female gender construction
 Berdache in some native North American groups
 Amazon – a woman who takes on male roles and
behaviors
 Hijra in India
 Fa’afafines in Samoa
 Sambia people of New Guinea
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Gender and Identity
 Intersexual, transgendered, and/or homosexual
individuals in U.S.
 Transgendered individuals in the may be
stigmatized or revered and well respected
depending on the cultural context
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Gender and Identity
Gender identity and sexual orientation
is determined by a mix of genetic and
cultural factors
Gender pluralism – the existence
within a culture of multiple
categories of femininity, masculinity
and androgyny that are tolerated
and legitimate
“Third genders” – some cultures
permit the expression of varied forms
of sexual orientation: for example,
the berdache
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Childhood and Personality

Cross-cultural studies have shown two
general patterns of child rearing (opposite
ends of a spectrum)
 nurturant-responsible
 dependent-dominant
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Childhood and Personality

Nurturant-responsible child rearing
 Emphasizes caring and sharing acts toward
other children
 Socializes children to think of themselves in
terms of the larger whole
 Prominent in areas where extended families
raise children and where decisions are made
collectively
 In foraging, egalitarian societies
 In horticultural societies
 In pastoral societies
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Childhood and Personality

Dependent-dominant child rearing
 Emphasizes independence, self-reliance, and personal
achievement
 Children have fewer acts of caregiving, seek more
attention, try to assert dominance over other children
 Prominent in areas where parent(s) and offspring are
the basic social unit
 In agricultural and industrialized/informatic societies, children
have fewer tasks and less responsibilities
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Childhood and Personality
 Often in childhood other individuals
outside the household are brought into the
enculturation process
 Extended relatives
 Peers
 School teachers in societies with formalized
schooling, such as the U.S.
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Adolescence
 Puberty is a time in the human life cycle
that occurs universally and involves a set
of biological markers
 Adolescence is a culturally defined period
of maturation from around the time of
puberty until the attainment of adulthood
 Length of adolescence varies cross-culturally
 Length and activities of adolescence varies by
gender
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Adulthood
 Usually thought of as the period of
entering into some form of marriage or
long-term relationship and having children
 In U.S., adulthood is often thought of as
becoming economically self-sufficient
 Often a rite of passage occurs during the
transition from adolescence to adulthood
 May be a period of isolation
 May be circumcision or female genital cutting
(FGC)
 Giving birth
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Adulthood
 Becoming a mother
 Matrescence is the cultural process of
becoming a mother
 Varies cross-culturally in terms of duration and
meaning
 In U.S. a woman becomes a mother when she
gives birth
 In other cultures it can be when conception occurs
or when a woman delivers an infant of the “right”
sex or at the right time period in her life
 Often a number of prenatal taboos, including food
taboos, in cultures
 Proper behavior insures a good delivery and a
healthy baby
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Adulthood
 Becoming a father
 Patrescence is the cultural process of
becoming a father
 Couvade are beliefs and customs applying to a
father during his wife’s pregnancy and delivery
 Often occurs in societies in where father have prominent
roles in child care
 Father is symbolically bearing some of the woman’s birth
pain
 Proper behavior insures a good delivery and a healthy
baby
 Paternal involvement in child rearing varies crossculturally
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Example of
paternal
child care
among the
Aka of the
Central
African
Republic
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Adulthood
 Middle Age
 Typically seen as being between 30 and 70
years old in industrial/informatics societies
 May occur earlier in societies where the life
expectancy is shorter
 For women, going through menopause is a
significant aspect of middle age
 Depending on the culture, can be a time of
stress or crisis, or it can be a time of relief
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Adulthood
 The Senior Years
 The elderly are variably recognized, defined,
and valued in different cultures
 In many cultures, elders are highly revered and their
life experiences are valued as the greatest wisdom
 In other cultures, the elderly are perceived as
becoming burdens to their families and to society
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Death
 In many industrialized societies such as the U.S.
 A large resistance to death
 High dependence on medical technology
 Try to avoid it often at high financial and psychological
costs

In many other cultures
 Is a greater acceptance of death, but still have
various rules and burial practices that must be
followed if living relatives are to avert psychological
suffering

Grief
 Outward expression varies greatly from huge displays
of ritualized mourning (Trobriand Islands) to no
outside display of crying or grief (Bali, Indonesia)
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Death
http://www.funeralplanning101.com/funeraletiquette/attending-a-wake.aspx
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Personality in Adulthood
Parenthood
Middle age
Old age
• Role of
mother and
father shaped
by culture
• Mid-life crisis
and menopause:
a Western
obsession?
• Nonindustrial
cultures respect
the elderly more
• Responsibility
for childcare
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Group Personality
 Trying to determine the personality or
“typical characteristics” of a large group,
often a nation
 Tries to determine the “average” personality of
a member of a particular society
 “National character” studies
 Popular in anthropology during the 1930’s and
1940’s
 Tries to discover personality traits shared by the
majority of the people of modern nation states
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Group Personality
 Problems?
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Group Personality
 Problems?
 Who is average?
 Individual variations – not everyone will
behave this way
 Stereotyping
 What about microcultures?
 Sample size representative of a large group
 Subjective
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Group Personality

Modal personality of a group


The body of personality traits that occur with
the highest frequency in a culturally
bounded population
Is a statistical concept rather than the
personality of an average person in a
particular society
1. So instead of typifying and generalizing the
average American as materialistic, recognize the
variation that exists from non-materialistic to
materialistic
2. Collect a variety of data
3. Maybe can make a statement that based on this
data we find that 70% of the Americans sampled
are materialistic, 30% are non-materialistic
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Group Personality

Core values of a group

The values promoted by a particular culture

e.g. North Americans – value rugged
individualism



Fits well with our mode of production and family life
e.g. China – value kin ties, cooperation, and
mutual dependence
Allows for the fact that not all personalities
will conform to cultural ideals
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
The BIG Questions Revisited
 How are modes of reproduction related
to modes of production?
 How does culture shape fertility in
different contexts?
 How does culture shape personality and
human development over the life cycle?
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Samoa Tsunami
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wd
MAH8jboA
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqS
_7tk3Ec
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0mT
nu9ibFk
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRgTi
CQdMxg&NR=1
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008