Social Dynamics of Adolescent Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa (1993) / Chapter Skim
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6 EARLY WORK, TRAINING, AND PREPARATION FOR ADULTHOOD
6 EARLY WORK, TRAINING, AND PREPARATION FOR ADULTHOOD
Pages 116-141
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From page 116... ...
It develops the unconventional point that the last chapter raises: Besides formal education, other forms of preparation for adult life play important roles in delaying fertility. Because we can find no direct evidence concerning the relationship of adolescent fertility to types of training other than formal education, we draw inferences by a combined analysis of two quite disparate kinds of data, national studies of economic patterns and microlevel qualitative studies.
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From page 117... ...
TABLE 6-1 Percentage of Population Economically Active in African Regions, by Age and Sex, 1980 Age Group 10-14 Age Group 15-19 Region Male Female Total Male Female Total Eastern Africa 46 37 41 75 62 68 Middle Africa 38 25 31 65 39 52 Western Africa 41 22 31 70 45 57 Southern Africa 4 2 3 39 29 34 SOURCE: International Labour Office (1986, 1990)
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From page 118... ...
Here the principal farmer is male; he draws on his wives and daughters for farm labor and to take part in cooperative work groups in rotating labor agreements with his neighbors. Marriage, however, offers a male farmer greater and more permanent control over a female labor force than retaining his daughters at home.
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From page 119... ...
Children were not strong enough or skilled enough for heavy labor in mining and public works construction, but an author in the Gold Coast Annual Report of the Medical Department of 1920 recounted being "forcibly struck with the number of ~ ~ HA. ~ ~ ~J O vaunt adults.
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From page 120... ...
To make a living in this highly competitive environment, young people venturing into new trades must learn technical skills as well as accounting skills in setting prices, assessing costs, and calculating profits. They also need less obvious but equally essential skills in cultivating working ties with laborers, suppliers, clients, loan agents, government trade regulators, and revenue agents.
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From page 121... ...
Especially in light of the caucitv of slots available in secondary education in many countries and, moreover, the competition to remain on the formal . education track, trade apprenticeships offer an important way of training young people for a vast, ever-expanding range of occupations: Speaking of his apprentices, a Senegalese master craftsmen observed, "I have boys who were thrown out of school" [Morice, 1982:516]
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From page 122... ...
Young people can be found in cities offering to carry shopping bags, guard cars, wash windshields, load lorries, recruit taxi passengers, lead livestock from market to slaughterhouse, sit precariously atop truckloads of produce during bumpy journeys, and sell almost anything: bread, mothballs, maga ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Van Onselen's pioneering studies of South African gang life provide one historical source (1982~. Marguerat's work on Lome represents a new genre of studies that describes how foraging in the urban milieu adds up to a living and a way of life (1990; see also Burman and Naude, 1991, and Reynolds, 1991, on children in South Africa)
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From page 123... ...
Table 6-2 groups countries into four very broad economic types using ILO data for 1980 (the latest available) : agriculture, mixed trading, industrial influence, and Sahelian pastoralism.
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From page 124... ...
Angola 29 89 26 40-44 Burkina Faso 46 86 40 35-39 Burundi 47 98 46 35-39 Congo 21 87 18 55-59 Ethiopia 33 85 28 30-34 Equitorial Guinea 29 86 25 40-44 Gabon 19 88 17 40-44 The Gambia 35 93 33 40-44 Guinea 34 88 30 40-44 Guinea Bissau 34 92 31 40-44 Kenya 35 86 30 40-44 Liberia 19 87 17 40-44 Malawi 38 94 36 45-49 Madagascar 33 94 31 40-44 Mozambique 50 97 49 45-49 Niger 47 94 44 35-39 Rwanda 47 98 46 35-39 Senegal 43 90 39 40-44 Sierra Leone 18 82 15 40-44 Somalia 31 90 28 40-44 Tanzania 42 92 39 40-44 Uganda 38 89 34 40-44 Zaire 24 95 23 40-44 Zambia 20 84 17 55-59 Mean (N = 24) 35 90 31 Pattern - Midlife B: Mixed Trading Economies (high FLFP, late peak)
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From page 125... ...
Women in mixed trading, industrially influenced, and Sahelian pastoral economies, on the other hand, either have more varied work prospects or fewer at all; these configurations appear to entail a later entry into work.
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From page 126... ...
Table 6-3 suggests that these cross-sectional data do not represent merely a passing moment in a rapidly unfolding scenario. Despite recent changes in female labor force participation our categorization of countries appears to reflect persistent economic patterns that, despite surface changes, people can count on if they plan over the life cycle.
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From page 127... ...
highlight the different pathways through adolescence: Senegal is used to represent agricultural economies; Ghana, mixed trading economies; Botswana, industrially influenced economies; and Mali, pastoral economies. Figure 61, which focuses on women under age 20, examines the timing of childbearing and work and the relationship between these two events.
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From page 128... ...
Although we can report the percentages of women having a first birth before age 18, we cannot place these points on the graph because we lack the corresponding female labor force participation rates. In Senegal, the requirements of agriculture induce women to take on adult work responsibilities at a younger age and in a more intensive spurt than is true in most of the other economies, and childbearing is slower to start.
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From page 129... ...
The probable explanation is that in Ghana trade apprenticeships substitute for formal education. Ghanaian women enjoy a wide range of professional prospects, whether in the formal or the informal sector, for which they must acquire training.
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From page 130... ...
In agricultural economies, female labor is required at young ages on family farms so that work begins earlier than childbearing, although the percentage of women beginning childbearing quickly picks up, presumably because marriage follows soon after puberty. Mali displays yet a different pattern.
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From page 131... ...
In fact, by the time many women in agricultural economies reach adolescence, their mothers and, above all, their mothers-in-law (with whom they very likely reside) are beginning the slow decline in labor force participation.
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From page 132... ...
Because families have little to gain by keeping their daughters home during an idle adolescence, and much to gain from forging alliances with other families through marriage and the arrival of grandchildren, young women begin their marital and childbearing careers quite early. The rest of this chapter pursues the idea that the different economic patterns we have found in the macro data produce different emphases on adolescent education and training.
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From page 133... ...
Quite different from agricultural economies are those with highly differentiated tasks that require long periods of training. We describe first two especially visible examples of training activities in such economies: women's trade apprenticeships and home training.
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From page 134... ...
Fostering and Home Training The fosterage/housemaid practices (often called "home training" or "domestic training") that are common particularly in West Africa seem quite different from formal education or apprenticeships.
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From page 135... ...
Conversely, as we saw in the case of formal schooling, girls who avoid pregnancy may get more home training experience. Girls in domestic training in Ghana who become pregnant are almost always evicted, unless they are close relatives (Gracia Clark, personal communication)
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From page 136... ...
The apparent contradiction to be explained is that despite a pressing need for training in a vibrantly diverse commercial economy with numerous work opportunities for women, girls begin marriage and childbearing extremely young. Indeed, they marry at ages that are almost the lowest in the entire continent.
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From page 137... ...
Eastern Versus Western African Trade Apprenticeships While the Hausa case demonstrates an adaptation of female training regimes to a drastically shortened childhood, the existence of other variations among specialized economies also supports the thesis that entry into childbearing is related to training needs.
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From page 138... ...
Training often has distinct stages, and passage from one to another and to final independence is based on the cumulative acquisition of the master's blessings as well as on technical and ritual knowledge (for support of this general depiction of western African apprenticeships, see especially Callaway, 1964; and Dilley, 1989~. Girls plainly have fewer opportunities than boys do to take up trade apprenticeships; but our observations suggest that varied economies may produce for girls, as well, quite diverse forms of training in the social and commercial skills that they cannot learn adequately in earlier childhood or improvise efficiently in adulthood.
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From page 139... ...
(For trade apprenticeships, see Hart, 1975; King, 1977; Bromley and Gerry, 1979. For western African secret societies, see Little, 1948; Gaisseau, 1954; Dennis, 1972; MacCormack, 1979.
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From page 140... ...
CONCLUSION This chapter has argued that the kinds of work opportunities available for women in the wider economy determine the kinds of training that girls will need. In extremely complex African economies, training activities such as trade apprenticeships, ritual initiations, or training in domestic service or Arabic literacy engage a wide range of youth.
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From page 141... ...
It is a key determinant not because older women become role models but because in economies with marked divisions of labor by sex, it is the older women who train the younger ones in marketable skills or at least withhold them from marriage and reproduction long enough for them to learn these skills. The importance of older women using their younger counterparts for their own business labor raises a possibility much like the one Chapter 5 stresses for formal education: Training may lead to lower fertility; but it also may be that young women who manage to avoid pregnancy are able to continue their training.
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