Sarah Levine

Maternal literacy and health behavior: a Nepalese case study

This article addresses the question of whether literacy could be mediating the relationships of schooling to maternal health behavior in populations undergoing demographic transition. Recent studies in which literacy was directly assessed suggest a literacy pathway to demographic change. The literacy skills of 167 urban and rural mothers of school-aged children in Lalitpur District of the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal were assessed by tests of reading comprehension, academic language proficiency, health media skills and health narrative skill, as part of studies in the urban and rural communities that included a maternal interview and ethnographic fieldwork on the contexts of family life, health care and female schooling. Regression analysis of the data indicates the retention of literacy skills in adulthood and their influence on health behavior; ethnographic evidence shows that selective bias in school attainment does not account for the results. Further direct assessment studies are recommended.

Maternal Education and Maternal Behaviour in Mexico: Implications for the Changing Characteristics of Mexican Immigrants to the United States

This article summarises findings of research designed to shed light on the mechanisms by which female schooling changes atttitudes to childbearing and childrearing in Mexico. The data reported come primarily from a 1987 survey in the rural Mexican town of Tilzapotla in the state of Morelos. Subsidiary data come from a later survey in 1990 and from a survey and home observations carried out in 1983 in the urban area of Cuernavaca. Conditions of childbearing and childrearing in Tilzapotla and Cuernavaca are relevant to these issues among Mexican immigrants in the United States because these communities are among many in Mexico from which Mexican immigrants to the United States originate. Together the results indicate that increases in maternal schooling lead to more prenatal care, more use of contraception, and smaller family size. The studies indicate that the pathways by which these effects are achieved relate to the emphasis that schools place on verbal interaction and decontextualised language use. This communication model presented in school by the teacher subsequently influences the way the schooled mother deals with her own children, with mass media, and with the health care system. The overall level of education in Tilzapotla, as in the rest of Mexico, has been rising over the last two decades. Current Mexican immigrants to the United States therefore arrive with higher levels of education than was the case 20 or 30 years ago. As a consequence, findings concerning the effects of maternal education on childbearing and childrearing imply that mothers currently immigrating from Mexico will more frequently have the childbearing and childrearing attitudes, skills, and practices of the more highly educated Mexican mothers in our studies than was the case in past decades of immigration.

The Marital Morality of Mexican Women: An Urban Study

The purpose of this paper is to examine marital morality from the perspective of lower-middle and working-class women in a large urban center south of Mexico City. Anthropologists have noted that a departure from the ideal of sexual fidelity is expected male behavior in Mexican communities, while infidelity by the wife is much more negatively regarded. We examine the extent to which norms governing husband-wife relations and marital morality have been affected by the rapid socioeconomic changes of recent years. We show that, despite the persistence of a double standard of sexual morality, younger urban women with more formal education and access to contraception are beginning to challenge traditional notions of husband-wife relations rather than endure infidelity, physical violence, and other forms of abuse.

Widowhood in Los Robles: Parent-child relations and economic survival in old age in urban Mexico

In rural Mexico the burden of care for widowed and elderly mothers has traditionally fallen on sons; but Mexico is now more than 70% urban and, in the city, patterns of support for aging parents vary widely. In the face of steep inflation, widespread unemployment and economic stagnation, young people are increasingly hesitant to offer support, while older people feel less entitled to and more ambivalent about requesting it.

Crime or affliction? Rape in an African community

Amongst the Gush of southwestern Kenya instances of rape are frequently reported; this was true also in the colonial period and yet it seems that those cases which come to the notice of the authorities are few compared with the numbers which actually occur. While certain features of the traditional culture seem to have encouraged violent sexual assault, because in a patrilocal society miscreants are likely to victimize their relatives, that is women who are sexually taboo, the crime is considered a sacrilegious matter to be dealt with in the family, not by the secular authorities. Given the sacrilegious nature of the act the Gush are convinced that such behavior is involuntary and that the criminal is not a criminal but an afflicted person, motivated by the malevolence of the ancestral spirits or of jealous neighbors and kin. The author uses case material to illustrate various aspects of the Gush belief system in regard to criminal behavior in general and rape in particular.

Child care and Culture: Infant care: Cultural norms and interpersonal environment

This chapter concerns how Gusii mothers define infant care – their shared assumptions about the tasks and standards involved – and examines the infants interpersonal environment over the first 30 months of life. Age trends in the infants social ecology are analyzed in relation to family characteristics and to developmental patterns measured by the Bayley Infant Scales. THE CULTURAL MODEL OF INFANT CARE Despite their socioeconomic and religious differences, our sample families in Morongo varied little in how they defined the maternal role and its primary responsibilities. Their model of infant care largely replicated that of the preceding generation, whose norms and practices were recorded in the 1950s. The practices of mothers had been affected by new scarcities as well as new resources. The new resources included blankets, which made it unnecessary to keep the cooking fire going all night, thus reducing the risks of burns; more clothing, keeping children warmer during the rainy season; bottles with nipples, making it unnecessary for child caregivers to force-feed babies from a calabash when the mother was absent; and the use of water from wells instead of streams. In other words, greater access to cash, imported consumer goods, and household improvements had brought a higher level of material welfare that reduced some of the risks to infants observable in the earlier study. Novel scarcities included firewood, still used for cooking but more difficult to obtain in densely inhabited settlements, and children to look after babies, now attending school during the years they formerly spent at home.