University of Utah doctoral student, Layne J. Vashro, supervised by Dr. Elizabeth A. Cashdan, will investigate how women's desire to live near childcare providers affects post-marital residence and child health in traditional societies. Social scientists typically have analyzed the significant worldwide variability in human post-marital residence patterns through cross-cultural comparisons, an approach that does not take into account within group variability. In contrast, this project seeks to identify the degree and sources of within-group variation, focusing on allocare in particular. Recent research suggests that the childcare assistance women receive from their family is an incentive for them to remain close to home after marriage.
The research will be conducted among the Thwa of northwestern Namibia. The Thwa practice variable post-marital residence and are subject to high rates of child and infant mortality. Vashro will collect data from Thwa camps in the Zebra Mountain valley. Data sources will include interviews, censuses, observations of childcare behavior, and anthropometric measurements. These data will be used test several hypotheses including whether the availability of care providers predicts post-marital residence and whether it affects child health.
This project will act as an initial step towards understanding how individual variation affects post-marital residence, which will illuminate the patterning of residence in societies that lack clearly defined post-marital residence rules. Understanding the forces that shape residence variability within groups will also speak to broader cross-cultural patterns in post-marital residence. The project also will document a previously under-studied group and contribute to understanding the multiple factors that affect child health. Funding this research also supports the education of a social scientist.
Different cultures have different ideas about where a couple should live after marriage. Some dictate that married couples live with the wife's family, some the husband's family, and others prefer that couples move into a new household away from both families. Understanding variation in this issue of "post-marital residence" has interested cultural anthropologists since the inception of the field. Because residence impacts which family members maintain social contact, it is viewed as a central piece in the development of other social institutions like clans, lineages, and patterns of inheritance. Our study investigated the factors influencing post-marital residence among the Ovatue of northwestern Namibia. Our project supports recent research showing that cultural ideals often have minimal bearing on actual patterns of post-marital residence. The Ovatue believe that a couple should move to live with the husband's family following marriage, but self-reports of actual residence show that couples are nearly 60% more likely to reside with the wife's family. In addition to recognizing this variation in post-marital residence, we also began the process of explaining it. We found that the childcare assistance offered by women's female relatives is an important incentive for women to stay home after marriage. The impact of the maternal grandmother, identified as a key source of childcare among the Ovatue and many other populations, is a strong example of this. Ovatue couples are 28% more likely to live in the maternal camp when the maternal grandmother is still alive and able to provide childcare assistance. We also found that men's wealth plays an important role in shaping post-marital residence. Wealthy men draw their spouses, the spouses of their children, and even the families of these spouses to their residence camp. These men become a residence focal point and lead to larger residence communities. While some women own animals among the Ovatue, they never develop large enough herds to become residence focal points because inheritance only runs through men. Post-marital residence may have important social policy implications. In many societies, women living away from their consanguineal relatives are more prone to domestic violence, and have less access to childcare assistance. This makes post-marital residence an important issue for policy-makers. A better understanding of the factors that shape post-marital residence could help policy-makers ameliorate social problems like domestic violence and child morbidity/mortality, and would also help alert them to unintended effects of current and future policy. Our research has made important steps towards understanding variation in post-marital residence. We have shown that couples flexibility respond to the availability of childcare assistance in different residence locations. We have also shown how increasing wealth disparity between men and women may lead to greater prevalence of patrilocal residence, and have identified sex-biased inheritance rules as a key to this disparity.
