Female Fertility and Marital Form among the Mende of Rural Upper Bambara Chiefdom, Sierra Leone

Abstract

In the present study wives in monogamous unions were markedly more fertile than their counterparts in polygynous unions among the Mende of rural Upper Bambara Chiefdom Eastern Province Sierra Leone. Ethnicity of both husband and wife was controlled for as was the marital history of the wife. The data reported were obtained through a comprehensive census of 9 rural communities. The field research conducted was aimed at tracing the development of local communities since the advent of the railroad in 1968 and was not aimed primarily at the study of fertility. The 9 study communities contained a total of 160 Mende women married to 86 Mende heads of compounds. 40 of the 160 women were partners to monogamous unions and the other 120 were connected to 46 polygynous unions. The intensity of the polygyny was low: 29 of the 46 polygynous husbands had 2 wives each; 10 had 3 3 had 4 1 had 5 and 3 had 6 wives each. The fertile monogamously-married women had a mean of 4.3 live births. The fertile polygynously-married women had a mean of 3.7 live births. These 2 groups of women were roughly equivalent in estimated age distribution. Roughly 1/3 of this aggregate monogamous-polygynous fertility differential was explainable on the basis of an inferred tendency for widows and divorcees with high fertility in their primary marriages to enter monogamous secondary unions and a corresponding tendency for remarrying women of low previous fertility to become junior cowives in polygynous unions.

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