Dissertation
An Exploration of Contraception Use as a Parental Investment Tool Among Rural Sidama Females in Southwestern Ethiopia
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
2020
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000005538
Abstract
Despite family planning and parental investment being common research domains in anthropology, gaps remain, particularly regarding investigations of the latter employing the former as a tool. Early life history events can influence parental investment behaviors, with individuals in risky locations being more likely to prefer offspring quantity over quality. In exploring the relationship between contraception use and parental effort, however, we cannot ignore embodied capital. Within modernizing societies, embodied capital concerns shift towards extrasomatic capital, e.g., wealth and formalized education, and offspring quality over quantity may be desired. This project took place in Ethiopia, a high-risk transitioning country with a suite of institutional programs designated to propel the country to lower-middle-income status by 2025. The following hypotheses drove this research: 1) Women who experienced lower levels of early life risk will invest more in their children’s extrasomatic embodied capital; 2) Households with higher educated parents will have greater odds of children enrolled in school; 3) Women who reported higher levels of social support will be more likely to contracept; 4) Women who reported higher levels of social support will have greater odds of children enrolled in school; 5) Women who lived closer to health clinics and reported greater interactions with health agents will be more likely to contracept. Semi-structured interviews (N=439 women) collected information regarding contraception use, early life experiences, educational background, finances, offspring, and their perceptions of social support. Statistical analyses comprised of negative binomial, logistic, and Poisson regressions. Hypotheses for number of children in school were not supported in any models. Several models for current contraceptive use indicated potentially important effects for early life stress and social support; however, results for different types of stressful events and different sources of social support had opposite effects on contraception contrary to predictions, and conservative analyses with multiple comparisons yielded false discovery rates indicating that the null hypothesis could not be rejected. Though greater research is needed to understand parental investment in this manner, this project is novel in its efforts to combine life history and embodied capital theories to explore the effects of risky transitioning societies on family planning behaviors.
Metrics
1 File views/ downloads
27 Record Views
Details
- Title
- An Exploration of Contraception Use as a Parental Investment Tool Among Rural Sidama Females in Southwestern Ethiopia
- Creators
- Katherine Elizabeth Flores
- Contributors
- Marsha B. Quinlan (Advisor)Robert J. Quinlan (Committee Member)Courtney L. Meehan (Committee Member)Caitlyn D. Placek (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of Anthropology
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 147
- Identifiers
- 99901051427401842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation