Production and Reproduction

Abstract

The dual role women play in ]Kung society as producers of food and the necessities of life and as reproducers, who bear and raise the children is examined. Focus is on 3 questions: what are the factors that regulate ]Kung fertility under traditional hunting and gathering conditions; how might these factors be altered in a shift from a nomadic to a sedentary life; and what are the actual trends in fertility among the ]Kung of the Dobe. Women's work, gathering wild vegetable foods, provides about 2/3 of all the food consumed by a ]Kung camp. Subsistence work, visits, and group moves require an adult woman to walk about 1500 miles during the course of an annual round. For at least 1/2 this distance she carries substantial burdens. The woman's major burden is carrying each of her children under age 4. Because of this, it is fortunate that the birth interval among the ]Kung is as long as it is. The onset of puberty in girls is late, and a woman does not bear her 1st child until she is between 18 and 22 years of age. The 1st pregnancy is followed by 4-8 others spaced 3-5 years apart until menopause occurs after age 40. What is critical to this analysis is not the overall fertility picture as expressed in birth rate, but the frequency with which successive births occur to individual women: the interval between births, or birth spacing, expressed in months or years. The actual work involved in raising young children in a hunting and gathering society is a function of 3 variables: weight of children; the distance to be traveled; and the frequency with which children are born to a given woman. The implications of higher and lower fertility levels on the economic adaptation of the hunting and gathering San was examined. More babies and greater distances to travel mean more work for San mothers. Similarly, work effort declines with fewer babies and/or less walking. For the population as a whole sedentarization may lead to upsetting of the low fertility adaptation of the hunting and gathering and trigger population growth, even in the absence of any expansion of the food supply. Data are presented on the reproductive lives of 256 adult Dobe women over the 10-year period 1963-1973. The entire population was undergoing sedentarization during 1963-1973, and this was reflected in the fact that the birth interval dropped from 39.89 to 32.15 months. This shortening of the birth interval was particularly marked for more sedentary women.