Of Patriarchy Born: The Political Economy of Fertility Decisions

Abstract

Of Patriarchy Born: The Political Economy of Fertility DecisionsEver since Malthus condenmed the brutishness of a working class that mindlessly reproduced itself, social scientists have had a tendency to assume that reproductive behavior could not be readily explained by rational motives.Even thqsc willing to concede the existence of intelligcnt choice in modern industrial societies have continued to assume that families in underdeveloped agrarian societies are bound by traditional and often irrational attitudes.The advent of conscious family size limitation is often pictured as the simple result of a process of modernization.While assumptions such as these still hold sway in the field of detoography, ~4ny demographers have begun to challenge them.Confronted with the crnpiricaJ.reality that families in many rural areas of the developing world enjoy economic advantages from large families, they have increasing-

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