Ageing without children : European and Asian perspectives 9781571816146, 1571816143, 9781845450410, 1845450418

Table of contents :
Key Features: Puts focus on a fairly unknown subgroup
elderly without children Attempts to define and characterize factors that remove the support of children from elders in Europe and Asia

Citation preview

AGEING WITHOUT CHILDREN

Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality GENERAL EDITORS: David Parkin, Director of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford Soraya Tremayne, Co-ordinating Director of the Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group and Research Associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, and a Vice-President of the Royal Anthropological Institute Volume 1 Managing Reproductive Life: Cross-Cultural Themes in Fertility and Sexuality Edited by Soraya Tremayne Volume 2 Modern Babylon? Prostituting Children in Thailand Heather Montgomery Volume 3 Reproductive Agency, Medicine and the State: Cultural Transformations in Childbearing Edited by Maya Unnithan-Kumar Volume 4 A New Look at Thai AIDS: Perspectives from the Margin Graham Fordham Volume 5 Breast Feeding and Sexuality: Behaviour, Beliefs and Taboos among the Gogo Mothers in Tanzania Mara Mabilia Volume 6 Ageing without Children: European and Asian Perspectives on Elderly Access to Support Networks Philip Kreager and Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill Volume 7 Nameless Relations: Anonymity, Melanesia and Reproductive Gift Exchange between British Ova Donors and Recipients Monica Konrad

AGEING WITHOUT CHILDREN European and Asian Perspectives on Elderly Access to Support Networks

Edited by Philip Kreager and Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

First published in 2004 by Berghahn Books www.BerghahnBooks.com © 2004 Philip Kreager and Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill First paperback edition printed in 2005 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ageing without children : European and Asian perspectives on elderly access to support networks / Philip Kreager and Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill (editors). p. cm. -- (Fertility, reproduction, and sexuality ; v. 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57181-614-3 1. Older people--Services for--Europe--Case studies. 2. Older people--Services for--Asia--Case studies. 3. Childlessness--Europe. 4. Childlessness--Asia. I. Title: Ageing without children. II. Kreager, Philip. III. SchroederButterfill, E. IV. Series. HV1481.E782A34 2004 305.26--dc22

2004053835

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN 1-57181-614-3 (hardback) ISBN 1-84545-041-8 (paperback)

CONTENTS

List of Figures

vii

List of Tables

viii

Foreword 1. Where are the Children? Philip Kreager

x 1

Part I: Asia 2. Problems of Elderly without Children: A Case-study of the Matrilineal Minangkabau, West Sumatra Edi Indrizal

49

3. ‘They Don’t Need It, and I Can’t Give It’: Filial Support in South India Penny Vera-Sanso

77

4. Adoption, Patronage and Charity: Arrangements for the Elderly without Children in East Java Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

106

5. In the Absence of Family Support: Cases of Childless Widows in Urban Neighbourhoods of East Java Ruly Marianti

147

Part II: Europe 6. Demographic Change in Europe: Implications for Future Family Support for Older People Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham

175

7. British Pakistani Elderly without Children: An Invisible Minority Alison Shaw

198

vi

Contents

8. Home-place, Movement and Autonomy: Rural Aged in East Anglia and Normandy Judith Okely

223

9. The Position of the Elderly in Greece Prior to the Second World War: Evidence from Three Island Populations Violetta Hionidou

244

Notes on Contributors

269

Index

273

LIST OF FIGURES

Percentage of Elderly Respondents (Men and Women) by Number of Children Ever Born, Number of Children Surviving and Number of Children in the Village Figure 6.1. Percentage of Population Aged Sixty-five and Over, Europe, 2000 Figure 6.2. Trends in Completed Fertility by Birth Cohort, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom Figure 6.3. Proportion of Women Remaining Childless by Birth Cohort, England and Wales Figure 6.4. Crude Marriage-rate, Europe, 1960–2000 Figure 6.5. Trends in Total Female First-marriage Rate Below Age Fifty, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom Figure 6.6. Proportion of Women Remaining Unmarried by Birth Cohort, England and Wales Figure 6.7. Crude Divorce Rate, Europe, 1960–2000 Figure 6.8. Proportion of Women Ever Divorced by Birth Cohort, England and Wales Figure 6.9. Sources of Help With Mobility Tasks among Persons Aged Sixty-five and Over, Great Britain, 1998 Figure 6.10. Sources of Help With Self-care and Domestic Tasks among Persons Aged Sixty-five and Over Living Alone, Great Britain, 1998 Figure 6.11. Sources of Help With Self-care and Domestic Tasks among Persons Aged Sixty-five and Over Living With a Spouse, Great Britain, 1998 Figure 9.1. Map of Greece Figure 4.1.

111 177 181 182 184

185 186 187

188

191

191

192 246

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1. Table 2.2. Table 2.3.

Table 2.4.

Table 5.1. Table 5.2. Table 6.1. Table 6.2.

Table 6.3. Table 6.4.

Table 6.5.

The Development of the Elderly Population in West Sumatra Sex Differences in the Size of the Elderly Population in West Sumatra The Development of the Young Population (People Aged Under Fifteen Years) in West Sumatra Percentages of Ever-married Women of Various Age Groups Who Have Never Given Birth or Have No Surviving Children, West Sumatra and Indonesia Support Providers Mentioned by the Widows by Type of Support Rendered Characteristics of Childless Widows and the Research Population of All Widows Life Expectancy at Age Sixty-five among Men and Women in Europe, 1980 to 1999/2000 Trends in Total Life Expectancy, Disability-free Life Expectancy and Proportion of Healthy Life Left, Great Britain 1980 to 1998 Total Period Fertility Rate, Europe 1960 to 2000 Changes in Living Arrangements among Persons Aged Sixty-five and Over, Europe 1950s and 1960s to 1980s and 1990s Living Arrangements among Persons Aged Sixty-five and Over by Sex and Age, Great Britain 1998

53 54

54

55 155 161 178

179 180

189

190

List of Tables

ix

Table 6.6.

Use of Personal Social Services in the Last Month among Persons Aged Sixty-five and Over Who Are Unable to Walk Out of Doors Unaided, by Household Composition, 1980 to 192 1998, Great Britain Percentages of Elderly Persons (Aged Fifty Years and Over) by Marital Status, Sex and Type of Household, Hermoupolis 1861, 1870 257 and 1879

Table 9.1.

This page intentionally left blank

Foreword

xi

nised. Indeed, the very identity and definition of sub-populations of elderly and the wider social networks to which they belong are a subject that requires investigation before standard statistical sources can be improved. This area of study is plainly one in which combined qualitative and quantitative methodologies are necessary. One important group may be identified tentatively as the ‘elderly without children’. Older people may be childless for several reasons. They may be infertile, owing to either natural or pathological reasons. Divorce and remarriage may have effectively severed them from their children. Children may have left the community and be out of contact. Children may have died, or they may be present in or nearby the community and yet enmity, disability, incompetence or other commitments effectively separate them from their parents. The elderly may be isolated practically and emotionally even when children do provide support. Individuals and couples may be aware from early middle age of potential dependency problems, but not in a position to do much about them. Yet we have very little idea of the size and composition of this group and no agreed framework of comparative analysis that would enable us to assess its significance and variation between societies over time. The need to establish the incidence and variations of actual and de facto childlessness as demographic phenomena and as potential loci of economic and physical vulnerability requires us to move beyond standard macro-level characterisation of the life course. Familiar measures like dependency ratios, total fertility, life expectation, household composition and income, and reported disabilities have undoubtedly been useful in creating an awareness of the trend of population ageing and its potential economic and welfare implications. These indicators are based for the most part on censuses and surveys, projecting forward in time the ‘snapshots’ or ‘period’ pictures these sources provide, and relying for interpretation and adjustment on the standard repertoire of individual, household, provincial, and other units employed in official sources. They can take little account of the way community and familial networks govern differential access to public institutions and to opportunities in the market-place. Nor are they concerned with the continuing power of traditional social and economic hierarchies to shape access. They tell us relatively little, in other words, about the processes that work to the disadvantage of certain groups of elderly rather than others, or how best to identify the constituent units of societies that would help us to address their differing human needs.

xii

Foreword

The chapters contained in this volume arise from a seminar held in Hilary Term 2001 under the auspices of the Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group (FRSG) of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Institute of Ageing, Department of Sociology, at Oxford University. The choice of regional perspectives originated in the important role of nuclear families and bilateral kinship systems in major cultures of Europe and Indonesia. The prevalence of nuclear and other non-extended family systems is an important factor elsewhere in Southeast Asia, notably in Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. Yet these features are too often ignored outside some specialist anthropological and demographic studies in the region. The structural similarities underlying small family systems raise common practical questions linking East and West that are crucial for understanding the opportunities and constraints elderly people now face. That said, the existence of wider and deeper networks of kin, which joint and extended family systems may provide, is in itself no guarantee that the elderly will participate fully in groups having ample numbers of younger members able to help them if necessary. For purposes of comparison, therefore, further chapters have been included on Asian and European populations characterised by joint family systems. The editors would like to thank all those who participated in the seminar, with special thanks to Soraya Tremayne for facilitating – in a thousand kind ways – both the seminar and its publication. We are grateful to the FRSG for hosting the seminar and to the two institutes with which it was associated. The generous support of the Wellcome Trust has been essential to our research over the period in which this volume was conceived and took shape. The insights, observations and friendly persistence of our Indonesian colleagues, Edi Indrizal, Tengku Syawila Fithry, Vita Priantina Dewi and Tri Budi Rahardjo, have been an inspiration.

FOREWORD

A

mong the principal consequences of rapid fertility declines are the changes in social and demographic structure known as population ageing. Significantly smaller younger generations shift the overall balance of population towards older ages. Accompanying improvements in longevity mean that the larger cohorts born before fertility decline may realistically expect to live into their late seventies, with many reaching their eighties and nineties. Together these shifts lead to dramatic increases in the proportion of persons over age sixty, which may take place within a few decades. Current projections for more than thirty countries spread across Europe, Asia, North Africa and the Americas show that the proportions of their elderly population will double by the year 2025. In absolute terms numbers of elderly will increase threefold in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Singapore and Thailand. Displacements of this order raise serious questions about the economic resource base of governments and the capacity of modern societies to ensure adequate health and welfare provision for all their members. Western governments now commonly acknowledge that greater responsibility for the elderly is bound to devolve on to individuals and families and have begun to restructure public provision accordingly. Of course, relatively few elderly in the developing world have been able to rely on general state pension and health systems. The extent to which developing states will be able to put such systems in place in the near future is, at best, unclear. Population ageing – East and West – thus implies that family and community networks on which older people have been able to rely in the past are likely to be stretched more than ever before. Within the growing numbers of elderly there are many groups with particular needs about which relatively little is known. Census, registration and most standard survey sources were designed before the need to conduct research on these groups was recog-

CHAPTER 1

WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN? Philip Kreager

T

he topic of ageing in modern societies, like so many contemporary social issues, stakes its claim to our attention on grounds of real and potential personal impact. Yet it does so in part by placing the realities of later life in a wider and much more impersonal context. Ageing is no longer just ‘what everyone knows’ about the human condition of growing old: the physical deterioration and potential social and economic vulnerability that we, and family and friends around us, may normally expect to experience in advancing years. A primary function of demographic and related statistics is to insist that these perennial and apparently personal matters be considered as problems of scale. Ageing must be viewed in terms of the main demographic changes of the later twentieth century, changes which have seen fertility levels decline towards or below replacement in most of the world whilst life expectation has markedly improved. One principal outcome of these shifts has been a change in the balance of generations, usually expressed as a growing number of elderly dependents per person of working age. A mixture of benefits and disadvantages may be envisaged to flow from these changes, but the balance of opinion has tended to be negative or at least to emphasise potentially worrying disadvantages accruing both to older and younger age groups. As Livi-Bacci (1982) put it, demographic trends have created a ‘social vacuum’ in which larger and larger older cohorts cease to have parental responsibility and to

2

Philip Kreager

contribute to productive aspects of modern life, whilst sucking in ever greater amounts of public and private resources that younger generations are left to provide. The use of demographic and other statistics to characterise generational differences is aimed not simply at the size of cohorts and their implications for national and private income streams. It embraces a much wider set of variables, calling attention to diverging patterns of marriage, education, health, and economic and social mobility that typify different age groups. Influential statistical compendiums, such as those provided by the US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census (1992) and the United Nations (2002), use these variables to paint – in very broad-brush fashion – a picture of heightening concern. They point beyond the growing demographic imbalance of generations to differences in values and institutions that may have a strategic impact on older individuals and their children, giving them not only different but opposed values, opportunities and constraints. The implications – expressed variously in terms of growing inequalities of income and health care, residential arrangements, reinforcement of class differentials and gender biases, social exclusion and loneliness – are traced in a growing body of historical, regional, and national syntheses (e.g. Martin and Preston 1994; Kertzer and Laslett 1995; Hermalin 2002). At base this approach can be recognised as a continuation of sociological themes of the kind laid down long ago by Durkheim: as the situations of generations diverge, so familial and wider social solidarity may be put under strain, with many traditional arrangements likely to break down.1 Unfortunately, as we shall see, aggregate description of ageing also partakes of the limitations of this sociology. Quantitative description of population ageing is very suited to revealing the potential power of impersonal, aggregate trends and differentials to shape people’s lives. But in so doing it predisposes us to see these lives as increasingly powerless and depersonalised. The very image of a ‘social vacuum’ captures this tendency very well. Inevitably, only some aggregate measures are employed, whilst others – more difficult to develop but which might give a more balanced picture – are set aside. We need to ask, in other words, whether prevailing aggregate measures, however useful they may be for describing age-structural changes en masse, are sufficiently realistic to enable us to identify causes and consequences or to design policies to address them. The macro-picture is inevitably made up of many sub-populations, with their own characteristics and problems not adequately represented when submerged in the whole.

Where are the Children?

3

The chapters contained in the present volume address a fundamental and general issue that arises in the nexus of generations and one that demonstrates the importance and difficulty of identifying such sub-populations: the existence in all societies of elderly people without children. Few if any commentators would deny that the absence of children poses potential human and welfare problems for older people without them. For a number of reasons, however, this sub-population has proved difficult to incorporate into mainstream aggregate thinking about ageing and has in consequence been marginalised. On the one hand, the numbers and characteristics of childless elderly are difficult to estimate. Standard quantitative methodologies, as we shall see, tend to marginalise the issue by beginning from assumptions that encourage us to treat childless older people as an insignificant minority. Evidence to the contrary, that elderly without children are likely to have comprised significant sub-populations in several parts of the world and over long periods, is certainly available. In addition, levels of childlessness fluctuate over time, apparently as part of related adaptations of fertility and family systems to changing circumstances. But these macro-pictures are at best incomplete and tend to be located in specialist demographic literatures outside the study of population ageing, notably in the history of marriage and family systems and in the social biology of infertility. On the other hand, considerations necessary to identify and characterise childless elderly strike at several basic methodological premises on which conventional measures depend. Childlessness is not adequately measured by data on women reporting no children ever born if, for example, there are other factors – migration, mortality, marital instability – that effectively remove children from their lives. Understanding the situation of elderly without children requires us to question very closely and at least partly to rethink usual approaches in which population ageing is defined first in generational or cohort terms at a societal level, with attention turning only subsequently to social realities. Intergenerational relations at a local level are not simply microversions of macro-level trends and models. The first part of this introductory essay is thus, of necessity, an overview of what prevailing aggregate perspectives on population ageing have and have not been able to tell us about elderly people without children. The second part briefly reviews three alternative macro-pictures drawn from major chapters in modern demographic history: pre-industrial England; America during its fertility transition; and contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. A fourth macro-picture is provided in the chapter by Maria

4

Philip Kreager

Evandrou and Jane Falkingham, which carries this long-term picture of childlessness as a general social phenomenon up to the current situation in Western Europe. The paths to childlessness are diverse and not incidental: they are integral to major longterm adaptations that characterise societies. We turn in the third part of this chapter to the agenda that emerges from these pictures and the several case- studies that make up this book. When we ask why older people have no children two sets of issues come to the fore. One has to do with factors that restrict childbearing. Here the blunt answer to the question ‘Where are the children?’ is that some older people had none. Discussion cannot stop there, however, because it is important to enquire into the several biological, cultural, and economic factors that in many societies have sustained nil childbearing. The second set of issues, which may be termed de facto childlessness, concern absent children: factors like migration, divorce, remarriage, enmity and conflicting priorities that remove children permanently or over long periods from older people’s lives. The elderly without children, as we shall see, are a composite population entailing both sets of issues, which have given rise to different patterns of adaptation in different periods and cultures.

Questioning the Big Picture If we ask what makes population ageing specifically intergenerational, an obvious minimum answer is the presence of two generations, the first composed of cohorts aged sixty and above, and the second made up of their children.2 Standard measures of ageing employed in compendiums and syntheses (age dependency ratios, proportions over age sixty, measures of co-residence) all begin from this kind of assumption. Minimal definitions, of course, understate the complexity of the aggregate picture. Improvements in life expectation have multiplied the generations we need to consider. There will be two generations of elderly where those in their eighties and nineties have children reaching sixty years of age. Multiple generations of children and grandchildren follow those in their sixties. As Lutz and Sanderson (2000) and Pool (2000) remark, separating generations in this way is still insufficient for purposes of social and economic demography as it fails to tell us about the timing of major life events relative to both older and younger generations. Do elderly health crises, for example, tend to coincide with phases in the life cycle of younger cohorts (childbearing, major career choices)

Where are the Children?

5

such that the support each generation can give to the other is seriously reduced? Are all older and younger cohorts affected to the same degree by the co-occurrence of major life events? Even this critical perspective, should it prove open to quantitative analysis, would still leave unsubstantiated the reassuring assumption which the issue of childless elderly calls into question: Can we take for granted that there are members of the younger generation on whom older people are able to rely? More to the point than the issue of the varying size of generations is the assumption that children are somehow distributed equitably, so that all older people effectively have access to the support of reliable younger people. Considered in aggregate this assumption may appear to pose no problems. Even a country in which fertility has declined below replacement will number its younger members in the thousands and millions. In the past, total fertility was generally much higher. Births per woman in historical Europe rarely fell much below four and commonly averaged between four and six. The upper range of fertility in most of Asia and Africa during the colonial and post-colonial periods tended to be higher still, in some places reaching seven births per woman and more (Livi-Bacci 1992: 22f.). Levels of natural sterility are, in contrast, statistically modest, so that demographers by a long-established convention treat them as a constant affecting at most some 3 to 6 per cent of couples (Pressat 1988: 214). As sterile couples do not pass on their infecundity to younger generations, their limited recurrence in a population may be treated as distributed uniformly across the aggregate as a whole. This simplified picture of sterility as modest and fertility as sufficient carries over into research and policy on contemporary needs of older people. If all that was at issue in the ‘social vacuum’ of ageing was couples physiologically unable to bear children, then the threat that ageing poses for social solidarity would scarcely attract so much attention. After all, some childless elderly live out their later lives without assistance. In most cases, siblings and other kin exist who may be able to help when necessary. Social security systems in advanced economies can be expected to cope easily with the small remaining numbers of childless elderly involved. Childless elderly in advanced economies thus appear to conform to the familiar image of a small and abnormal social category, a minority of potential welfare concern. Annexed to issues of caring for isolated and vulnerable subgroups, they become one of the myriad objects of public health and welfare services and, more specifically, of gerontology. The need for informed policies

6

Philip Kreager

in this area has encouraged several thoughtful and important local studies (e.g. Johnson and Catalano 1981; Rubinstein et al. 1991; Wenger 2001). These contributions are unfortunately dwarfed by the growing mountain of research on generational impacts of ageing in which the pending retirement of baby-boom cohorts on pensions and health care predominate. There is some danger, in short, that treating older people without access to children as a special minority case simply confirms their image as marginal. As we shall see, the elderly without children are of interest not simply because of the health and policy issues they may raise, but as a recurring and normal element of social organisation. This requires a comparative and long-term demographic perspective. With the problem of identifying distinctive sub-populations of older people confined to the margins of population ageing, the way has been clear for a vast literature and extended debate to grow up around the actuarial implications of ageing as a national and global concern. Chiefly in the developed world, questions of equity across generations come down to developing fair mechanisms for redistributing waged income via taxation and investment, so that pension and health provision may be arranged for the older population as a whole (e.g. Keyfitz 1985; Disney and Whitehouse 2002). As noted earlier, the scale of pending pension imbalances taken en masse encourages fears of a ‘social vacuum’: if adequate public policies are not put in place, substantial increases in taxation will fall on younger generations and/or there will have to be major reductions in the scale of support for older generations – with all the attendant political and social recriminations that such policies are likely to entail. Put another way, the desirability in principle of providing pensions and health care for all appears to have run up against the reality that the state has limitations as a universal provider or at least that long-term planning remains difficult in the context of short-term political priorities. Of course, not all elderly and not all elderly without children are in need of public assistance. Treating the problem primarily in aggregate generational terms is bound to exaggerate levels of support required, because it embraces many people not in need. The difficulty of attaining a just balance between public capacities and individual needs may in consequence appear more difficult than is likely to be the case. The real need is to identify those parts of the older population that face a serious lack of assistance and those that do not. National-level data remain, of course, the conventional basis of macro-economic planning. Large data sets carry greater statistical

Where are the Children?

7

reliability, even if defining the problem in broad age-structural terms seems bound to exaggerate potential needs and hence heighten fears. Demographers and actuaries have, however, a long-established way of responding to more or less any possible population crises, which is to insist that moderate solutions are possible if policies can be guided by more refined technical analysis. Hence an array of technical and institutional adjustments dominates discussion: modifications of public pension schemes; development of private pension alternatives; retraining programmes; delays in retirement age; and further ‘parametric’ adjustments (Chand and Jaeger 1996). Of course, whether all such adjustments will be put in place, whether they can be established quickly enough and whether they will succeed are open questions. What is clear, none the less, is that treatment of population ageing on a macro-scale lessens the apparent need for empirical research on distinctive subgroups within older generations. From an actuarial point of view there is little need to distinguish groups like older people without children. For practical and analytical purposes they may be divided like all other older people into two blocks: those with sufficient access to commercial sector pensions and health care and those dependent on state assistance. In this way Western elders without children, like the Asian elderly described by Shaw (Chapter 7, this volume), simply become invisible. As public pension and welfare provision remain modest in the developing world, the negative implications of age-structural imbalances appear to carry even greater force there. In the absence of public provision, family networks remain crucial to social welfare in poorer populations. Once again, the question of whether older people actually have access to children, and what type of access, tends to be treated in broad generational terms. The prevalence of joint and other complex family systems in much of Asia, their importance in parts of historical Europe and the presence of elaborate kin networks in sub-Saharan Africa are generally assumed to indicate that elderly in these places have children with whom they reside, either their own or their siblings’ (e.g. Goody 1976; Hajnal 1982; Kertzer 1995). Yet these reassuring assumptions deserve closer examination. More complex family systems undoubtedly have the capacity to provide older people with security where families hold property and other material advantages – assuming, of course, that generational authority or at least respect for age and kin ties is secure. The latter, however, is a sweeping and questionable assumption. The evidence for historical Europe (discussed below) suggests that

8

Philip Kreager

many poor older people commonly depended on charity. Whether joint and other complex family systems in Asia actually secure the position of poor and propertyless older people and whether the support they do provide comes at the price of major losses of status, material well-being, and respect are issues highlighted some time ago by Cain (1981). As Vera-Sanso and Shaw (Chapters 3 and 7, respectively, this volume) show, this issue is still seriously neglected and is one to which the situation of elderly without children is particularly relevant. The ‘solution’ which complex family systems are supposed to provide cannot, of course, apply to the major areas in the developing world characterised by small family systems without reliable extended networks. The implications of these systems for poor, childless elderly are explored in the case of Indonesia by (Schröder-Butterfill and Marianti, Chapters 4 and 5, respectively, this volume). Addressing the situation of the childless elderly is complicated by the fact that there is no hard and fast line between their situation and the position of many older people who do have offspring. Having children, in other words, does not guarantee access to them or their support: there is a problem of de facto childlessness, where offspring are absent or are unable or unprepared to maintain kin ties (Kreager and Schröder-Butterfill 2003). In the chapters by Indrizal and Vera-Sanso (Chapters 2 and 3, respectively, this volume) the impact of gender preferences is shown to be a relevant factor, as in some societies only children of one or the other sex can be primary sources of support. Elderly Minangkabau in Sumatra are effectively childless without daughters, and in South Asia sons are crucial. As Vera-Sanso goes on to note, even then the support of sons may be so minimal and intermittent that parents often find themselves effectively childless. The large literature on transfers between households that has come to dominate discussion of intergenerational relationships in economic and social demography unfortunately fails to address these issues head-on. Its directed focus on hypothesised rationalities governing transfers between parents and children generally takes the presence and regular participation of the latter for granted. Elderly without children may simply be equated with numbers of women reporting no children ever born and hence excluded by definition from samples under analysis. The serious time constraints of survey collection generally preclude examination of transfers as an aspect of long-term relationships in family and community networks.3 Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that recent syntheses agree that prevailing household economic models are generally not well

Where are the Children?

9

supported by evidence and that statistical associations between intergenerational transfers and differentials in income, education, residence and other variables remain inconclusive (e.g. Folbre 1996; Haddad et al. 1997; Lillard and Willis 1997). Further and general criticisms have been addressed to this methodology (e.g. Murphy 1993; Deaton 1997), two of which without doubt apply to a large body of social and economic analyses of population ageing. One shortcoming, known as the ecological fallacy, arises from the widespread assumption that aggregate data can be used to explain choices at the local level. Such ‘explanation’ relies on an inferred rationality of individual and household strategies that remains empirically unsubstantiated. Secondly, analyses often depend on survey data in which family networks are reduced to dyadic exchanges between households: these households may additionally be treated largely as homogeneous social and economic units. The neglect of the way households are linked to each other over time and of conflicting interests within them in relation to such links means that research captures only a few strands of the web of social and familial processes in which members of different generations participate. Instead, research has focused for some time on the co-residence of the elderly with their children. Echoing the stereotype that complex household forms cater well for their older members in Asia, the incidence of older individuals and couples living on their own is taken as a sign of vulnerability and even the breakdown of traditional arrangements. The inappropriateness of such assumptions for countries like Indonesia or India has already been remarked. This failure to take due account of the heterogeneity and changeability of elderly residence has a bearing on the neglect of the elderly without children as a focus of research, owing to the problem of de facto childlessness. Separate elderly residence is due to a wide range of factors, and the incidence of elderly without children as de facto childless needs to be distinguished amongst this group. On the one hand, independent residence may have little or no bearing on isolation and vulnerability: it may simply describe situations in which older people are net givers and/or receivers of support in networks with various kin and neighbours in other households. Or, as Vera-Sanso notes, separate residence may reflect other issues, such as privacy, the compounding of older generations that greater life expectancy now makes possible and alternative domestic cycles. On the other hand, older people have long had good reason to prefer living separately in many societies, both within and outside Europe. Where residing with others entails loss of authority and influence (for example, a loss of control over

10

Philip Kreager

economic management), co-residence may be avoided as it is synonymous with reduced income and respect. The opposite problem may also arise where the continuing economic and social viability of the older generation makes them an important source of income: the continuing reliance of co-resident younger adults on parents becomes a burden in which excessive responsibility carries on to the very end of parents’ lives (Hermalin et al. 1998; Schröder-Butterfill 2004). Nor can we assume that co-residence is necessarily with kin. In early modern north-western Europe, for instance, economic circumstances kept people from marriage and childbearing and left them as servants or recipients of charity in other people’s households (Hajnal 1982). Elsewhere in Europe, adults who remained unmarried and childless in a sibling’s household commonly accepted a secondary status, which could for all practical purposes amount to permanent unpaid servanthood (e.g. Bourdieu 1962). The implications of separate residence, in short, can only be interpreted with accuracy where there is detailed contextual evidence. Surveys cannot resolve the issue unless accompanied by sustained ethnography or social history able to relate changing household composition and networks of support to relations of status, prestige, and respect. Without these data, the likelihood of ecological fallacy, in which irrelevant motivations and strategies are imputed to some or all older people, is more or less inevitable. The role of de facto childlessness here provides a crucial instance of why the need for accurate data reflecting social and familial processes is paramount. The presence or absence of children, say, at one or two or more points in time as recorded in surveys, needs to be put in the context of life histories that tell us about the quality and changeability of relationships over time. De facto childlessness may arise, for example, in consequence of divorce, remarriage and consequent family conflict – factors that, by alienating generations, remove key support for the elderly even where surveys record regular contact with children and the presence of (what may be at best minimal) transfers. These sources of family disruption and their impact on transfers are often, of course, sensitive subjects which the standard formulas of survey questionnaires are not well suited to reveal.4 De facto childlessness due to loss of children in the course of migration poses similar issues. The chapters by Shaw, Okely and Hionidou (Chapters 7, 8 and 9, respectively, this volume) document the anguish which elderly experience either through the disregard which successful children show them or through the inability of children to overcome the effects of distance on their ability to

Where are the Children?

11

give support in times of crisis. Alternatively, as Indrizal describes, children who return to the community may do so consequent on the failure of the economic objectives of their migration. Those children who remain in the same community as their parents may be the ones least capable of providing adequate assistance. To summarise, the general neglect of older people without children as a demographic, social and economic phenomenon arises from a combination of four factors. First, the implicit tendency to treat childless elderly as an infertile minority has led to a limited range of other demographic factors (delays in marriage, celibacy, divorce, pathological infertility) being considered systematically. Secondly, characterisation as an isolated minority has marginalised them as an abnormal phenomenon of concern chiefly to special health and welfare policies, rather than a subpopulation of general demographic and sociological importance. The elderly without children have not usually been seen as comprising a sub-population at all. Thirdly, reduced to a disaggregated set of isolated and presumed marginal people, older persons without children have not appeared to be overly problematic from a policy point of view. Either general public welfare and pension provision or extended family networks have mistakenly been assumed adequate. Finally, recourse to crude intergenerational indices, such as dependency ratios and measures of co-residence, has failed to capture the diverse circumstances of older people over time whilst leaving unchecked the tendency to project negative stereotypes of isolation and vulnerability on to them. Adherence to standard household units and survey schedules has meant that the functioning of family networks over time goes unexplored.

Alternative Demographic Perspectives Only a little questioning is necessary to show that childless elderly are not inevitably a small and residual social category. The immense expansion of demographic and historical research on family and household systems that has taken place over the last half century has given rise to alternative macro-perspectives that need to be taken into account. Subjects like childlessness, widowhood and old age have not been primary objects of this research. But understanding the causes and processes underlying aggregate patterns of reproduction, marriage and family formation has for some time led population research into more searching cross-cultural analysis (e.g. Lesthaeghe 1980; Watkins 1984;

12

Philip Kreager

Gillis et al. 1992), which increasingly calls on social history and anthropological demography for ideas and supporting evidence. In the course of this work the incidence of childlessness, factors giving rise to it and the means of dealing with a shortage of children have turned out to have a long and varied history. An outline of three patterns described in this wider literature will suffice to show why older people without children deserve to be brought into the mainstream of research on population ageing. The following examples, whilst necessarily brief summaries of extensive literatures, underscore the general importance of the particular issue to which this volume is addressed on two counts. The first is evident from the diversity of examples we are able to cite, drawn from early modern Europe, nineteenth-century America and a varied set of twentieth-century societies from the Caribbean to the Far East.5 Even though the demographic and social accounting available on these instances is incomplete, it makes clear beyond doubt that childlessness – and in consequence the existence of elderly people without children – recurs as a significant social phenomenon, sometimes with marked fluctuations, over long periods. The existence of major social instances of childlessness would appear to have a direct bearing on how contemporary ageing and childlessness should be considered. Secondly, the factors that leave people without access to children occupy potentially key locations in the dynamics of population change. The three examples discuss the integral role of childlessness in establishing observed levels of reproduction and their relation to the organisation of family life in the era leading up to and during the principal transformation of modern population history – the demographic transition. Rather than a residuum brought about by recent fertility declines and mortality improvements, childlessness and its potential impacts on the elderly have long been central to demographic systems. North-western Europe to 1800: the case of England Historical demography has for some time played an influential role in demythologising widely shared images of the family in past times. Perhaps the most widely held preconception to be displaced is the notion that large and extended families dominated Western Europe before the industrial era (Laslett 1972). The capacity to amass children and co-resident kin was constrained by mutually reinforcing arrangements of marriage, residence and migration. The general features of the marriage component of this system, although subject to local variation, have been known since Hajnal’s (1965) classic summary. Restrictions on nuptiality

Where are the Children?

13

delayed average marriage ages to around twenty-three for women and twenty-six for men, with 10 to 20 per cent of the population never marrying. (The latter figures refer to both sexes, non-marriage amongst women being generally higher within this range than for men. In the discussion that follows, I shall refer to data on women, as they are more consistently reported in the demographic literature.) In English parishes, for example, cohorts born in 1610 to 1739 experienced female marriage ages that never fell below twenty-five (Wrigley et al. 1997: 134). Comparable figures for proportions never marrying in the period 1596 to 1641 varied in the range of 22 to 19 per cent; in the century from 1641 the range fell to between 8 and 12 per cent before rising again subsequently (Schofield 1985). Hajnal (1965: 102) remarked that by 1900 proportions not marrying in sixteen European countries varied between 10 and 29 per cent, while half of these countries (including Britain) had proportions in the range of 15 to 20 per cent. Meanwhile, Laslett et al. (1980) and Adair (1991) (both cited in Wrigley et al. 1997: 219) have shown that births outside wedlock remained less than 4 per cent of overall fertility up to the mid-eighteenth century. Although illegitimacy ratios rose to near 7 per cent in the mid-nineteenth century, they fell again to 4 per cent in the period to which Hajnal’s data on non-marriage refer. In short, his observation that 10 to 20 per cent of women do not marry, therefore, may be taken as a reasonable first approximation of those who never had a chance to bear children. Marriage delay is a further consideration. Human biology favours the fecundity of women between their late teens and age thirty. Postponing marriage significantly increases risks of childlessness. Using historical data on seven communities of Western European descent, Larsen and Mencken (1989) have shown that 9 per cent of women marrying between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-nine were likely to remain childless. The figures rise progressively to 15.5, 29.6 and 63.6 per cent for those marrying at ages thirty to thirty-four, thirty-five to thirty-nine, and forty to forty-four, respectively. These figures are broadly comparable to the representative sample of English parishes analysed by Wrigley et al. (1997: 411): nearly 8 per cent of marriages to women aged twenty-five to twenty-nine and 14 per cent at ages thirty to thirty-four were childless over the long period 1580 to 1837, with figures for ages thirty-five to thirty-nine and forty to forty-four rising to 24 percent and 69 per cent, respectively. The English data, which refer to sterile marriages in which wives survive to age fifty, are of additional interest because they may be compared

14

Philip Kreager

with data on fertility for wives who died before age fifty. The childlessness of the latter rises, for example, in the thirty to thirtyfour age at marriage group to 20 per cent. By implication, these numbers indicate significant proportions of childless widowers, although some surviving husbands doubtless succeeded in making later and fertile marriages. Thus, in addition to levels of unmarried childlessness of between 10 and 20 per cent of the female population there existed a similar range of variation due to the sterility of marriages delayed to ages twenty-five to thirty-nine. The rough arithmetic implies a possible range from around one in five to perhaps more than one in three women without children at age forty, that is, at a stage of life when the vast majority of childbearing has ceased. Such sums constitute a prima facie argument, at least, for the existence of significant numbers of older people without children. Thane (2001: 136), citing demographic simulations, proposes comparable figures for the history of childless elderly. A more precise accounting is, however, clearly desirable. It would need to include analysis of further factors that sometimes assisted couples to gain children (such as adoption) as well as major demographic forces working to increase childlessness and the absence of children (notably, high levels of infant mortality and migration). Adult mortality of childless persons would of course have had the opposite effect of removing childless adults before they reached old age. More quantitative detail would no doubt lead us to modify the crude percentages cited above, which can provide only an order-of-magnitude picture of childlessness.6 Yet a more important point arises from any such considerations. The effects of further factors could only modify to some degree the central position of the marriage system as an institution that during long periods kept many people from childbearing. Marriage and family systems are, of course, not organised with the primary aim of keeping people from having children. Procreation is a central and positive value in all societies. High levels of childlessness, in other words, need to be understood as only one outcome of the systematic organisation of vital events in a given society: a system that ensures that most people do have children in conformity with cultural values and norms, whilst also tending (to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the marriage and family system and its adaptation to wider social changes) to the outcome that some do not. It is in the nature of demographic regimes as cultural systems that only some members of a society are able to make the marriages, build the families, and attain the material and social statuses they desire (Kreager 1986: 138f.).

Where are the Children?

15

Many have to make do with considerably less than custom designates as ideal. Three further questions arise, therefore, about childlessness in early modern Europe. First, was childlessness merely a by-product of early modern marriage and family systems which left an unfortunate residuum of childless older people (in effect, the losers in the normal functioning of the demographic regime)? Or was the existence of considerable numbers of childless people in some sense necessary to the structure and continuity of this social and economic system, an integral adaptive mechanism of early modern society as a whole? Secondly, as numbers of childless older people were not constant, can we understand fluctuations in their numbers as part of this adaptation? Finally, the question inevitably arises in the absence of modern state welfare provision of the potential vulnerability of this substantial sub-population without its own offspring. If the system consistently produced people in this situation, to what extent was this vulnerability normally recognised as a social problem and regular alternative mechanisms of support provided? Historical demography again has much to tell us about these issues. The social and economic mechanisms underlying European marriage patterns were the subject of a second seminal paper by Hajnal (1982), subsequently extended and qualified by later research (see, for example, Goody 1996; Kertzer 1996; Reher 1998). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, across a broad band of north-western and central Europe (the Low Countries, the British Isles, Scandinavia (less Finland), Iceland, northern France, Germany and Austria), couples delayed marriage until they had the wherewithal to establish their own self-sufficient households. Young people did not, however, merely remain in the parental home until such an opening appeared. A rough estimate of those who left home may be gained from the sixtyodd local census lists compiled in England over the long period 1574 to 1831. These show that around 60 per cent of all young persons aged fifteen to twenty-four became servants – usually employed in agriculture – in other people’s households (Kussmaul 1981: 3). Setting up an independent household was for these young people no easy matter. It required savings, often painfully scraped together over ten or more years of service, or an inherited smallholding, a tenancy or attainment of some other viable economic niche. The extent of delayed marriage can be seen, in effect, as an index of this difficulty and the considerable numbers non-marrying as evidence that many people did not, in the end, succeed in finding a niche. Wrigley and Schofield (1989:

16

Philip Kreager

417–430), tracking English marriage and reproductive trends over the long period from the mid-sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, have shown persuasively that marriage and reproductive rates followed the broad upward and downward movement in real wages. They argue that, taken in aggregate, the rise and fall in ages at marriage and proportions non-marrying may be understood as a systematic response to economic fluctuations: bad times increased impediments to marriage, variously driving up the age at marriage or numbers never marrying; in contrast, economic expansion signalled more marriage opportunities, albeit usually after some delay. The adaptive properties of a marriage system which adjusts to levels of material well-being may be understood as carrying benefits to society as a whole: relatively moderate reproductive levels would have served to ease the pressure of numbers of young people on available livings, whilst making possible more secure living standards and thus assisting the improvement of longevity for those surviving to adulthood. Elaborating on this perspective, Wrigley has envisaged the English system as the micro-component of wider demographic homeostasis (Wrigley 1969: 113). With the benefit of hindsight, the adaptability of early modern marriage and family arrangements was particularly opportune for a society about to embark, from the later eighteenth century, on a course of rapid industrialisation – as if the system was primed to provide a growing reserve of manpower whenever favourable circumstances arose. The later impact of declining age at marriage and declining non-marriage towards the end of the eighteenth century is estimated to have increased fertility by 20 and 17 per cent, respectively (Wrigley and Schofield 1989: 265; Wrigley et al. 1997: 194). Viewed in aggregate historical terms, then, childlessness was not an incidental but a crucial variable in early modern England and one, moreover, that has proved fruitful in helping to develop general models that enable us to understand the conditions that may have made major social transformations possible. Childlessness was produced as part of the functioning of interlocking institutions (marriage, internal migration of young workers, independent household formation). But it was not merely an outcome. The low reproductive levels to which it made a substantial contribution were essential to these institutions’ normal functioning and continuity. Understanding childlessness as an integral component of a wider demographic regime is also important because it enables us to understand the flexibility that may be built into such systems, a flexibility that operates by systemati-

Where are the Children?

17

cally disadvantaging certain sub-populations. The adjustments that people made can be followed in the alternative pathways by which this institutional complex appears to have adapted to changing economic circumstances. Adjustments to levels of nonmarriage and delayed marriage were key. Weir (1984) and Schofield (1985), remarking the long sixteenth- to mid-eighteenth-century fluctuations in proportions married (cited above), have noted that different marriage patterns characterised different periods. For cohorts born up to the 1660s the system was ‘celibacy-dominated’, that is, driven by higher rates of non-marriage. The social constraints on household formation and the economics of declining wages were not so strict that the majority of people needed to delay marriage any more than was customary. However, the normal pattern of internal migration of young people into jobs before marriage was insufficient to enable a substantial minority (approximately 20 per cent) to find the means to marry. For cohorts born around 1700, however, rates of non-marriage fell to half of this level. Those born after 1741, and hence coming into the marriage market in the economic and industrial upturn later in the eighteenth century, appear to have enjoyed better opportunities, as levels of non-marriage fell closer to 4 per cent. Mean age at marriage also declined significantly in the latter half of the century, the two factors together sustaining the rise in fertility noted above. The fact that non-marriage declined earlier suggests that there may have been improvements in the circumstances of the poorest poor. Up to this time, as Weir hypothesises, labour patterns may well have created local sex-ratio imbalances as men needed to remain on the land to find work whilst the availability of female employment was greater in urban areas. Such imbalances could have endured over several generations and appear to have been corrected only gradually as the eighteenth century proceeded. All of these shifts carried important implications for levels of support available to older people. The considerable extent to which internal migration removed children from the community suggests that at least some parents, and probably the poorer among them, would have found all their children gone. The unreliability of filial support as an aspect of de facto childlessness is suggested by the prevalence of ‘retirement contracts’ in many parts of Europe: legal documents which bound heirs to provide specific levels of subsistence and support for their parents (Berkner 1972; Reher 1998; Hionidou, Chapter 9, this volume). Contemporary witnesses, such as Daniel Defoe (cited in Thane 2001: 136), testify to the fecklessness of children as sources of

18

Philip Kreager

support. Together with the impact of the marriage system on levels of reproduction and the continuing impact of infant and child mortality on numbers of surviving offspring, the combined impact of migration and de facto childlessness suggests that many older people would have found that the numbers of children available to support them were limited. Such factors would have also worked to restrict the opportunities of poor people to build up enduring kin networks that might provide assistance in later life. These are issues that clearly deserve further research. For example, in the rural English communities studied by Wall (1995: 88) over the period 1599–1796 (that is, including the period of rising fertility and economic improvement), those able to live with a child generally remained in the minority. Thus, 49 per cent of men aged sixty-five and over lived with a child but only 37 per cent of women; in urban areas the corresponding figures were 54 per cent for men and between 37 and 46 per cent for women. At first glance these figures might appear a simple consequence of the customary preference of younger and older people in this part of Europe to live in independent households. However, if this were the only matter at issue we could still expect to find large numbers of older people living with their spouses. The figures for co-resident spouses are, however, much lower than those for elders residing with a child. Only a quarter to a third of men in all areas were currently married and living with their wives; women were even less likely to be married – some 26 per cent in rural areas and 10 to 15 per cent in urban areas resided with their husband. It seems possible that the higher figures for elders living with their children reflected a patchwork of arrangements improvised following one or the other parent’s death. The alternative living arrangements appear to have been as follows. Fewer than 5 per cent of either sex lived with kin other than their children. Some simply lived alone: fewer than 5 per cent of men in all areas but 8 to 16 per cent of women. Living alone would not, of course, preclude support received from children or others. Living alone might also be a consequence of never marrying. More important than living alone was co-residence with non-kin (8–15 per cent of all men but one third of all women), a composite group reflecting three factors: older people who continued a lifetime’s work as unmarried servants; those who employed servants or kept lodgers; and the role of community organisations (Poor Law authorities) in placing elderly singletons in care in the homes of other poor members of the community. The existence of Poor Law institutions in England

Where are the Children?

19

from the remarkably early date of 1601 – that is, of community rather than kin-based welfare provision – has been widely remarked (e.g. Thomson 1991). Such arrangements appear to have been necessary in a part of the world in which complex family forms and extended kin support networks were not normative. The isolated and poor elderly were among a number of vulnerable social groups explicitly recognised to require Poor Law support, and it is unfortunate that, as Wall’s analysis does not include residents of these institutions, his figures understate the size of the older population in need of assistance. The exact numbers of elderly persons without children – reflecting the combined totals of those infecund, unmarried and whose children were absent, feckless, incapable or dead – will probably never be determined precisely. They would have made up some proportion of the several categories Wall was able to glean from local censuses. The existence of institutional arrangements for poor elderly over two centuries at the very least indicates wider contemporary awareness of the presence of older people lacking family-based intergenerational support Childlessness in the American fertility transition The capacity of historical demography to question popular mythologies of family life is not confined to the idea that extended kin and large households were the norm in European history. The reader may have noticed the erosion of two further stereotypes in the course of the preceding discussion. The first is the idea that Western society came to be characterised by small family units in consequence of industrialisation and what is broadly termed ‘modernisation’. Nuclear family organisation was evidently widespread in England by the sixteenth century, long before it became the first industrial nation. A second stereotype, namely, that older people in the past could count on co-residence in later life in multiple family households, obviously collapses with the first. If space allowed, a wider picture of early modern Europe as a whole might be explored in which a third defunct stereotype would also become evident, namely, that small family units are everywhere essentially nuclear in form. The effects of domestic cycles, mortality and the departure of the young on the size of domestic groups in European history admitted other (e.g. stem family) arrangements, in which relatively small units were common, although the potential vulnerability of older people appears to have been a recurring issue across the region (Goody 1996; Reher 1998).

20

Philip Kreager

These fundamental shifts in our historical understanding of periods leading up to the nineteenth century have an important bearing on how we approach the remarkable demographic changes that subsequently embraced Europe, including its overseas populations, and which shaped the family systems and arrangements for the elderly to which we are now accustomed. Demographic research since 1945 has concentrated on the subject of fertility and mortality transition, a sea change in demographic behaviour which began in some areas of Europe as early as the later eighteenth century and became general between 1870 and 1940 (Chesnais 1992). Demographic transition is rightly regarded as having given modern economy and society the capacity to break decisively with earlier systems, such as those described in the preceding section, in which the timing and incidence of marriage had been essential as primary checks on reproduction. A central problem in this literature is the means people used to effect rapid fertility declines, and much debate has come to surround the social biology of birth control – the so-called ‘stopping versus spacing’ debate (Szreter 1996: 367–371; Friedlander et al. 1999: 508–511). At first glance, this appears to be a rather technical argument, quite removed from the lives of older people. Its central focus is on how to measure the contributions to fertility change of variables like abortion and contraception relative to the influence of other factors such as marriage rates, breast-feeding and coital frequency. Does fertility transition require a general social shift to contraception and abortion as ways of ensuring that no further children are born (‘stopping’), or do traditional ways of postponing procreation (‘spacing’) remain fundamental means of effecting reproductive preferences? The impression of irrelevance to the present topic, however, is misleading. To understand population ageing we cannot focus only on what happens to age structures after rapid fertility decline. The ways in which past generations came to have fewer or no children are material to their subsequent behaviour and to that of generations following them. Factors which lead to reduced or nil childbearing, whether such outcomes were desired or not, are obviously relevant to understanding life courses lived out in the absence of children. In short, the mechanisms that before 1800 gave rise to substantial numbers of elderly without children remain integral to understanding more recent demographic change in Western history. A brief digression is needed, however, to place the possible importance of childlessness in the context of the stopping versus spacing debate. The measurement and interpretation of fertility transition, as developed from Henry (1961) to Coale and Trussell (1974) and

Where are the Children?

21

Knodel and van de Walle (1979), gave primacy to the adoption of birth control as the spread of an essentially new form of behaviour. The diffusion of contraception (notably coitus interruptus) and abortion after 1870 is interpreted in this approach as a historically unprecedented emergence across whole societies of conscious strategies to stop having any further births. In this view, continuities between reproductive behaviour under the ancien régime and modern replacement-level fertility are regarded as secondary, if they are seriously examined at all. On the one hand, initial analysis of historical populations before 1800 appeared to show that contraception was confined to relatively few places (Livi-Bacci 1986). On the other, following Notestein (1945), the interest of any continuation of older family values into the period of declining and low fertility was considered significant chiefly as a possible explanation for the differential timing and pace of declines, that is, as evidence of resistance to the spread of modern values and practices such as contraception, the effect of which was to make some declines slower or later than others. As Notestein wrote, ‘marriage habits and family organization are all focused toward maintaining high fertility. These change only gradually and in response to the strongest stimulation’ (1945: 39f.). This abrupt dismissal of major continuities between factors restricting reproduction before, during, and after transition is now widely questioned (e.g. Morgan 1991; Santow 1995; Schneider and Schneider 1996; Szreter 1996; Friedlander et al. 1999). ‘Stopping’ appears to be only part of how fertility was reduced after 1870. Two patterns are of particular note here. One is the reemergence of significant levels of non-marriage. The second is the relevance of contraception and abortion to birth spacing. The spread of birth control, whilst undoubtedly marking a new public acceptability of techniques of marital fertility control, also occurred in important respects as a new means of carrying out older strategies of avoiding or postponing births considered inappropriate at particular times in the life course or in certain circumstances. From a demographic point of view, postponement appears to have functioned as a factor leading to significant numbers of childless couples in a way analogous to the effects of marriage delay in the ancien régime. As we have seen, before 1800 marriage delay tended to increase the numbers of women whose marriage after the age of twenty-five left them unable to bear children. Postponement of childbearing within marriage appears to have had a similar impact as more and more married women only entered childbearing in their late twenties and thirties. The evidence for these two patterns is, very briefly, as follows.

22

Philip Kreager

Hajnal’s classic paper of 1965 suggested that caution is necessary before accepting any sweeping view of transitional fertility behaviour as a radical and fundamentally innovative break from the past. His account begins not with the earlier seventeenth- and eighteenth-century patterns but with the situation in 1900. In the later nineteenth century proportions not marrying in England had fallen from their early modern levels to around 4 per cent at ages forty-five to forty-nine (Schofield 1985). But Hajnal found that by 1900 higher proportions of single women in this age group had again become widespread. Non-marriage varied between 10 and 29 per cent of women aged forty-five to fortynine in Western and Central European countries for 1900, with half of the countries falling in a range of 15 to 20 per cent. This cohort would have passed through its reproductive years from 1870 onwards, just as the fertility transition became increasingly general. Hajnal’s assessment of these figures as a reflection of long-established patterns is unequivocal: ‘numbers remaining single at 45–49 may be taken to indicate the numbers who never marry at all’ (1965: 102). Childlessness in American marriages is likewise not a new theme (see, for instance, Lotka 1928). Morgan’s excellent study (1991) brought new thinking to bear on this issue, in effect arguing that the distinction between stopping and spacing might be better expressed in terms of ‘stopping’ and ‘postponing’. American trends in childlessness, and the demographic factors supporting them, echo three features of the early modern English situation described above, which show how the rise of contraceptive practice became part of long-term patterns of childlessness. The first is the presence of comparable levels of childlessness and of long-term fluctuations in childlessness that appear to have responded to changing economic circumstances. Cohorts of women aged forty-five and older experienced levels of childlessness that rose steadily from the 1840 birth cohort (15 per cent) to between 21 and 25 per cent in the 1910 cohort. The very high levels at the end of this period correspond with the economic depression of the 1930s, when the 1910 cohort was in its prime reproductive period. Secondly, as in early eighteenth-century England, the relative importance of non-marriage and childlessness within marriage altered over time, with the latter gradually becoming much more significant. Non-marriage and delayed marriage each accounted for roughly half of childlessness as it rose to 17 per cent in the cohorts born up to 1860. Thereafter marital childlessness came to have a preponderant role, rising steadily to account for 20 per cent of women by 1900, whilst non-

Where are the Children?

23

marriage declined to 9 per cent. Levels of childlessness due to each of these factors subsequently fell to 7 and 5 per cent, respectively, as cohorts born around 1925 experienced the fertility of the post-Second World War baby boom. Thirdly, as in Europe, there were significant regional variations in childlessness. The several American states varied in a range of 12 to 31 per cent of ever-married women born in the 1891–1895 cohort. What made these levels of marital childlessness in the early twentieth century different from previous history, in Morgan’s view, is that contraception, and not marriage delay, appears to have been a major factor. He deduces this by bringing together evidence of two kinds: parallel declines in childlessness and in the numbers of women having three or more children; and evidence that birth control was practised by married women in the early years of their marriage. These trends were linked as follows. Delayed childbearing in marriage and the decline of larger family sizes are, of course, classic signs of the spread of contraceptive practice. Morgan argues that women in this era did not seek to have no children and yet, as more and more of them practised birth control at younger marriage ages, higher percentages of them fell into the trap of increased infertility. Childlessness increased as total fertility declined to replacement level because a growing proportion of married women delayed having children too long and wound up without them. As he notes, these patterns imply that current levels of childlessness in the United States and elsewhere in the West are not a new, post-transitional phenomena but the continuation of long-term customs of postponed reproduction (Morgan 1991: 863). Childlessness and infecundity in the developing world: the case of sub-Saharan Africa A third historical pattern of childlessness arises from infections that cause infertility. Evidence on the social and personal impacts of pathological sterility is unfortunately much less available than for subjects like non-marriage, marriage delay or postponement of births. However, the generality of the pattern and its potential impact on older people deserve note. The principal factor cited is usually gonorrhoea, leading to sterility in both sexes, although chlamydia, which may result in pelvic inflammatory disease in women, genital tuberculosis, and complications arising from circumcision practices, may also play important roles. The demonstrable impact of pathological sterility on fertility is widely distributed in the world and dates in many places from the late nineteenth century and probably earlier. The principal regions

24

Philip Kreager

affected include the Caribbean (Nag 1980), sub-Saharan Africa (Frank 1983; Mammo and Morgan 1986), Indonesia (Hull and Tukiran 1976), Oceania (Rallu 1990) and Mongolia (Randall 1993), although this list could probably be extended if data were available. Significant health improvements have fortunately been effected in most of these areas, although coming too late for most current generations aged sixty and over whose prime childbearing years finished before 1980. The situation has continued to be very serious in sub-Saharan Africa (Larsen 1994), which will be taken as a case in point here. The significance of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) as a factor underlying childlessness in Indonesia is discussed in Chapter 4 by Schröder-Butterfill in this volume. Frank’s (1983) synthesis of data for seventeen Sub-Saharan African countries revealed thirteen states in which childlessness among women aged forty-five to forty-nine ranged between 8.7 and 32 per cent and a further four states with levels between 4 and 7.7 per cent. On average, childlessness affected 12 per cent of women in this age group, of which only 3 per cent Frank considers to have been naturally sterile. Because the impact of gonorrhoea on fecundity is gradual, and infections usually occur at some point subsequent to marriage, an even greater impact of pathological sterility tends to fall on women who have already begun childbearing. National fertility levels in Africa in the late 1970s varied between 4.1 and 8.1 births per woman, and Frank estimated that 60 per cent of this variation was due to infertility. In view of considerable local and regional variations, however, Larsen (1994: 446) argues that in some areas other factors than gonorrhoea may be major factors underlying variation, notably spousal separation, abstinence and effects of circumcision. Levels of childlessness and the impact of pathological sterility are particularly impressive in view of the strong positive value of procreation in African cultures and traditional marriage arrangements that encouraged early marriage and average family sizes of six children per woman. The factors which have until recently sustained high levels of fertility throughout tropical Africa are the subject of a large demographic literature, addressed especially to the social biology of fertility spacing and the value of children (see, for example, Caldwell and Caldwell 1987; Lesthaeghe 1989). Until recently remarkably little attention has been given to the fate of childless people, although the papers collected by Inhorn and van Balen (2002) mark an encouraging change of perspective, which provides an important complement to the necessarily brief and stylised

Where are the Children?

25

account of the implications of infertility possible here. Sterility has long been seen as the worst misfortune that can befall a woman and traditionally gives men the right to divorce. Masculine identity is also closely associated with a capacity to have many children, a value which can be enhanced considerably via polygyny. In most areas having only one or two offspring remains a mark against a person’s reputation. As African agricultural systems traditionally depended largely on the labour of women and children, low fertility was for men a block to amassing material wealth via family labour as well as a sign of limited potency. For women, childlessness entailed not only social stigma but a life of labour unrelieved by the assistance of children’s labour. Not only material wealth but the ability to participate in social exchanges was lessened – and hence social status. Having no or few children makes dependency on others in old age very likely. From a demographic point of view African marriage and family systems provide a radical contrast to the European patterns described in preceding sections, as they are in major respects extremely well designed to ensure that high fertility is maintained in a society as a whole. Three fertility-enhancing patterns have been noted. First, levels of non-marriage in tropical Africa have long been negligible. Secondly, almost all women married before the age of twenty, and remarriage soon after the death of a spouse was all but obligatory. Thirdly, breast-feeding practices of two years or more were backed up by mothers’ sexual abstinence, these practices together being recognised as means of supporting the health of mothers and children (Bledsoe et al. 1994). The resultant spacing of births ensured that childbearing could be spread across women’s childbearing years. Or, put another way, customary arrangements worked to ensure that a woman’s prime reproductive years were devoted to childbearing. Given the immense social value of procreation, the 12 per cent of women without children constitute a seriously disadvantaged group. These systems, however, also gave rise to a number of regular arrangements that could provide support for older people without children. Childless women could remarry via polygyny, giving them access to other women’s children, whom it would be their shared responsibility to raise. Such arrangements could, however, be fraught with difficulty. Co-wives, for example, do not necessarily get along, and the sharing of children in such instances seems unlikely. Even where relations between wives are good there is no guarantee that children will in due course provide support for their mother’s co-wife on a par with what they give their mother. Remarriage, where the woman remains infertile,

26

Philip Kreager

does nothing in any case to remove the stigma of a woman’s childlessness and may merely provide a man and his existing wife or wives with additional labour (a pattern that Shaw, Chapter 7 in this volume, also notes for South Asia). A second arrangement, particularly prevalent in West Africa (Goody 1976; Isiugo-Abanihe 1985), is the fostering of children to childless women. The extent to which fostering is subject to the same problems of unreliability as informal adoption elsewhere in the world (see Schröder-Butterfill, Chapter 4 this volume) is, however, unclear. The options available to childless men receive very little attention in the literature. At least in theory high fertility coupled with fostering and access to children of co-wives should ensure a distribution of children adequate to old-age provision. The situation of the childless elderly has not, however, received sustained attention. The data cited in Frank’s (1983) and Larsen’s (1994) studies are drawn from surveys and would need corroborative ethnographic and life-course analysis to trace the outcomes of childlessness in later life. Moreover, the spread of STDs is clearly associated not only with remarkable levels of childlessness but also with factors associated with de facto childlessness, notably migration, marital instability and conflict. Where a marriage is infertile, the wife has traditionally been assumed responsible and the husband’s remarriage enjoined.7 If one or both of these partners were infected, the chances for the spread of infertility are thus multiplied. Polygyny further increased the chances of the spread of disease to several women. The likelihood of a man being infected with gonorrhoea is arguably greater, as norms have allowed men considerable levels of extra marital sexuality, particularly during a wife’s period of post-partum abstinence. With the growth of towns, not only prostitution but alternative forms of plural marriage have increased, greatly exacerbating the potential for the spread not only of pathological sterility but of HIV/AIDS (Bledsoe and Pison 1994). The extent to which HIV/AIDS, the migration of young people to towns and the displacement of populations as refugees from recurring warfare are creating populations of de facto childless elderly in several parts of sub-Saharan Africa merits further consideration (see, for example, Powles 2002). Unfortunately research on childless older people is at present too limited to form a detailed assessment of the situation, either in Africa or in most of the other parts of the world in which pathological sterility has had a major impact. What can be said, at least, is that childlessness is a long-term pattern and a critical factor reducing fertility in many populations. Institutional responses are

Where are the Children?

27

again evident, not only in fostering arrangements and the absorption of excess female labour via polygyny but also in the elaborate ritual systems addressed to infertility (Turner 1969: 10–43) and the control of adultery (Douglas 1996).

The Emerging Picture To this point we have reviewed some limitations of conventional approaches that characterise population ageing in terms of broad generational imbalances, and we have outlined three historical patterns that provide a starting-point for an alternative, or at least complementary, perspective. One principal shortcoming of prevailing generational approaches is that significant sub-populations making up older cohorts become all but invisible as a general social phenomenon. The three historical patterns indicate the potential importance of one such sub-population, namely, elderly people without children. The histories also underscore a second critical argument. Childlessness is an enduring social fact in many cultures. Recent and projected population ageing may be unprecedented, but we cannot simply assume that it erases or makes irrelevant existing norms and institutions. The long-term experience of cultures that have reduced childbearing in response to recurring demographic, health and economic conditions or that rely on patterns of migration and domestic arrangements that encourage de facto childlessness is a case in point. These norms and institutions will shape the responses that are made to growing proportions of elderly in coming decades. To assess current and potential impacts of population ageing, we need a more careful examination of the composition of older age groups in society and how they have changed over time. As the implications of population ageing cannot be taken as uniform across society, the examination of intergenerational ties and sources of vulnerability are likely to be more fruitful where they can be related to specific sub-populations and existing institutions. The three historical cases show that the elderly without children are a useful population with which to explore such an approach. Seven observations may be made on the basis of these cases. 1. Many societies have experienced levels of childlessness of 10 to 20 per cent or more over long periods. 2. Childlessness in these societies appears to be an integral part of adjustments that individuals, couples and families make to

28

3.

4.

5.

6.

Philip Kreager

prevailing social, economic and health conditions. Fluctuations in levels of childlessness appear to reflect concerted responses to changing conditions and have served as important mechanisms both of long-term population stability (before demographic transition) and of reducing fertility levels (in the course of demographic transition). The elderly without children are a composite population. Their childlessness arises not simply from natural causes but more importantly as an outcome of a diverse set of social practices. Defining the membership of this population requires examination of the main demographic processes of nuptiality, fertility, mortality, and migration over individual life courses, as well as the functioning of family systems and institutions of social support. Successful childbearing is not a guarantee that children will be available in later life. Nil childbearing does not preclude access to the support of other people’s children. On the reproductive side of the question, three sets of fertility determinants have been shown to be fundamental: non-marriage and delayed marriage; contraception and abortion; and pathological sterility in conjunction with fluid sexual and marital relationships. The relative importance of these variables may differ radically between societies and appears to be bound up with local institutions and the alternative courses of action they permit. In the cases examined they are clearly much more important for understanding variations and levels of childlessness than natural sterility. Mortality influences the numbers of childless elderly in two ways. First, not all childless men and women survive into old age. The prevalence of social institutions in many societies to assist isolated older people, however, suggests that significant numbers of them have generally reached later life. Secondly, childlessness may be due to the death of all of a person’s children. The latter appears to be potentially most significant where marital or contraceptive restrictions on fertility, just noted, are important. Where many or most children migrate and do not maintain ties to parents or otherwise absent themselves from continuing links to parents, the mortality of any remaining children may have a similar effect. The main factors in addition to migration that may leave older people without children are divorce, remarriage, enmity, and conflicting priorities between family members. All such factors underlying de facto childlessness may be permanent or may endure for long periods. Differentials in de facto childlessness between societies and the extent to which it significantly

Where are the Children?

29

increases the vulnerability of older people are largely unexplored in the literature. On the other hand, social institutions such as adoption, fostering, remarriage and forms of charity and patronage may provide significant, if not preferable, options to having children. Estimates of the total population of childless older people in a society need to take account of all of these factors. 7. Childlessness, in sum, is an outcome of many events and processes over a person’s life course. Once we have an idea of the composition of the childless population in a given society, we can begin to study older people without children in relation to prevailing social and economic forces that, for example, lead people to delay marriage, postpone childbearing or break off relations with spouses, families, and home communities. The differing family and community institutions that characterise different societies give rise to differing conceptions and levels of childlessness, and the extent to which older people are made vulnerable by the lack or absence of children is an empirical question that needs to be decided in each case. Case-studies The studies included in this book chart the issues that arise when the incidence and processes sustaining childlessness are actually investigated. They take up, in illuminating detail, four key implications of the macro-pictures sketched above. First, as may be expected, the meaning of childlessness and the several factors that give rise to it vary between cultures. So do the avenues available to overcoming childlessness. Secondly, the studies confirm that the incidence of nil childbearing due to biological factors is but one, and often a quantitatively secondary, part of the issue. Above all, childlessness is a social category which reflects constraints on marriage, the role of migration and the extent to which relationships with children and kin are or can be maintained. Even in parts of the world like Indonesia, where the biology of infertility has in the past acted as a major constraint on procreation, the incidence of nil and reduced childbearing due to pathological sterility and access to alternatives to having one’s own children are strongly shaped by these factors. For convenience the case-studies may be introduced in terms of the familiar contrast between joint and extended family systems and those that are nuclear and bilateral. Family norms in the former work to designate particular children as responsible for family continuity and the care and respect of the elderly. In practice, of course, the norms are subject to negotiation, and there is

30

Philip Kreager

ample scope for de facto childlessness. The desirability of designating particular children (usually siblings’ children if not one’s own) commonly makes gender a major issue. The need is not just for children but for particular kinds or categories of children. For the Minangkabau, discussed in Edi Indrizal’s chapter (Chapter 2), not having sisters and daughters poses insurmountable problems for older people whose social identity and prime responsibility lies in maintaining the matrilineal descent groups which are the principal units of society. No amount of sons or recourse to adoption can fill this void. The social value of what Judith Okely in Chapter 8 calls the ‘home-place’ is paramount for older Minangkabau, who are focused on the need to maintain mother–daughter co-residence in the ancestral home, the rumah gadang. Where there are no daughters or nieces in the female line the descent group is extinguished. That is not the only way that childlessness may arise, however. Established patterns of migration may mean that all young Minangkabau women in a family can insist on living their lives away from their home communities. Although they may have sons to assist their basic material needs and are thus not childless as the term is ordinarily understood in the West, older Minangkabau with no resident daughters or nieces see themselves as childless. Cherished ancestral property may henceforth be maintained only by much less desirable caretaker arrangements, with consequent loss of status. The potential spread of this problem strikes at the roots of Minangkabau culture: one in three elderly do not have children in the village. The situation of poor elderly Minangkabau without children can become even more precarious if they are not living in their home communities; even if they moved to their current community of residence many years previously, they may lack basic material support because as newcomers they are not considered eligible for community assistance. In theory, the joint family systems of South Asian populations, as described by Penny Vera-Sanso and Alison Shaw (Chapters 3 and 7, respectively), may be said to pose the same problem from the patrilineal side: where daughter’s responsibilities are given over to their spouse’s family on marriage, the imperative is to have sons. As Vera-Sanso observes, ‘for the vast majority of people unable to work or fund themselves in old age, viable alternatives to a son’s support do not exist’. This primacy of sons gives them considerable discretion regarding levels of assistance. It is here that de facto childlessness arises as a more general phenomenon. Considerations of privacy and space and of relative status among sons and fathers commonly divide joint families. Sons,

Where are the Children?

31

where they, their wives and children move out of the parental home, are likely to be more independent. As Vera-Sanso shows, only intermittent and unreliable support, scarcely sufficient for elderly subsistence, may be the result. Affective ties between mothers and daughters can sometimes overcome patrilineal norms where there is residential propinquity. But in general, poor elderly are at the mercy of sons who adhere to the more general undervaluation of the elderly that Vera-Sanso describes: their needs even for subsistence are treated as minimal and considered to arise only after those of the young are met. In such circumstances elderly parents are effectively childless, and their options are few: passive acceptance of life below the poverty line; the search for work despite their seriously diminished capacity for physical labour; charity. Yet the elderly may still be expected to contribute to the wider family economy, understood as including labour and other assistance (for example, child care) for their children. In the British Pakistani community this may, for example, mean that they are expected to free family capital by selling their home and moving into public housing. Elderly may resist such demands only at the risk of flouting social norms. The extended family to which these disadvantaged elderly belong thus maintains the surface image that sons and parents are meeting their normative responsibilities, whilst in practice a reasonably equitable level of reciprocity between parents and children is not a reality. The de facto childless elderly, with their loss of power, status and a decent standard of living, become, as Shaw says, invisible. Ethnography in which family relationships are examined over the life course of successive generations thus makes possible an examination of the social processes by which family systems adapt over the long term. This kind of research is necessary if we are to understand what forces give rise to major historical patterns and shifts in them, such as those traced above. In addition, by giving more detailed attention to childlessness as a comparative issue affecting later life, a third and fourth set of implications emerge which help us to understand the primarily social rather than biological determination of elderly childlessness. The third implication is already evident from the preceding discussion of extended family systems. A person’s childlessness comes to be established as a social fact only gradually, and with it comes the growing likelihood of that person’s social exclusion. Social exclusion as it affects childless elderly is not manifested solely or abruptly in later life. The process begins much earlier, for example, as the estrangement or departure of children has an

32

Philip Kreager

impact on parental participation in social networks and rites of passage. The situation for those unable to bear children or who find that divorce, separation, disease or infant and child mortality leave them childless is even more marked. The childless are sidelined from the central role which as parents they could expect to play in all of those relationships and events that make having children so central to ordinary social life: child care, education, marriage, finding and advancing in employment, exchange of labour and services, leisure activities. Many of the case histories of individual elderly that feature prominently in this book demonstrate how not having a reliable network of personal support in later life and the lower social reputation that often accompanies relative isolation are established incrementally over a person’s life course. The fourth set of issues, closely bound up with gradual social exclusion, concerns the experience of uncertainty that characterises the secondary status and loss of social esteem that accompany childlessness. The case studies from Greece (Violetta Hionidou, Chapter 9), England and France (Judith Okely, Chapter 8), and Java (Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill and Ruly Marianti, Chapters 4 and 5, respectively) take up these issues in the context of nuclear and bilateral family systems. In these societies the norm is for parents to provide support for children, often well into adulthood, without seeking formal sanctions that ensure reciprocity. The closest we find to normative arrangements that designate a particular child’s responsibilities to elderly parents are contracts that protect vulnerable parties in cases of conflicting interest. Hionidou, for instance, describes inheritance practices in which parents retain some rights to the product of property passed to children or which secure the inheritance of an adopted child. The case of France also shows that the law may be necessary, notably to oblige children to meet costs of institutionalised parents where the children are themselves unprepared to provide care. As Okely’s chapter makes clear, the personal contact that older people then have with their children tends to be minimal; Hionidou adds that, where contracts designate a particular child as responsible, help from other children is unlikely. The common feeling of uncertainty whether some children will be there to provide assistance if needed is thus compounded by their absence most, if not all, of the time from older people’s lives. This compound of problems runs through all of the studies that address actual and de facto childlessness in nuclear family systems. As individual case histories in these chapters show, old people express their regret but not shock or surprise at their

Where are the Children?

33

children’s behaviour. Social opprobrium may be conventionally expressed in regard to negligent children in extended family systems, even if it does not in many cases actually ensure fair practice. In nuclear systems it appears to carry even less force. Of course, a more positive gloss, which avoids implications of filial irresponsibility, is often given to how elderly cope with the uncertainty of family ties. It is argued that older people expect and prefer to be independent – whether or not they in fact have a choice. In nuclear family systems the principal source of assistance to which an elderly person may expect to turn is normally their spouse. A usual focus on potential vulnerability is consequently on elderly without a partner (the widowed, divorced, separated, never-married), or circumstances in which one or both partners experience infirmity or poverty that are beyond their ability to resolve. The point that being alone is the real worry is neatly underlined by a linguistic observation by Marianti: in everyday Indonesian parlance no terminological distinction is deemed necessary between widows and spouseless women, since the principal social fact is simply that they have no partner to turn to. Much of the ethnography of elderly childlessness comes down to coping strategies that single elderly, or individuals and couples anticipating their frailty, may be said to devise. Some elderly find alternative avenues to children. Other strategies take the current or permanent absence of children as a given and seek alternative sources of support. There is a large zone, nevertheless, of daily improvised problem-solving that only sometimes rises to the level of explicit strategising. Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill’s study of Kidul, a rural community in East Java, reveals a range of adaptations to childlessness over the life course, including adoption, remarriage, patronage and reliance on charity. Unlike the other communities described in this book, adoption is the preferred option despite the uncertainty that prevails in Indonesian arrangements because it answers most directly to the strong desire for children. As Schröder-Butterfill emphasises, adoption is neither primarily nor necessarily seen as a means to security in old age. In this respect, adoptive parents show considerable realism. A family is created by adopting others’ – usually a relative’s – children, often nieces or nephews. The nuclear family norms already noted apply to these arrangements, including parental acceptance that support given to adopted children creates no secure entitlement to their labour and services when they grow up. Adoptive parents are in the same position as ordinary parents who may hope their children will assist them in later life but risk de facto childlessness.

34

Philip Kreager

Adopting children at least opens up the possibility of enjoying some of the wider advantages of procreation by helping to integrate childless people into social networks and providing opportunities to make links to kin and community more substantial. What makes adoption nevertheless highly uncertain, from the standpoint of de facto childlessness, is that it does not give exclusive control over child-related networks. The child’s links to his or her biological parents are not normally severed, which often results in conflicting allegiances. Adoption as an explicit old-age security strategy in East Java tends to occur rather later in a person’s life, for example, following a physical and personal crisis or where age appears to make such crises imminent. In these cases the person adopted is likely to be an adult member of the wider kindred and the arrangement entails inheritance of property in explicit exchange for the care it is hoped they will provide. This pattern is similar to that described by Hionidou, apart from the age at which kin are adopted. In her Greek communities the future carer was adopted as a child, although apparently not so young that she or he could not be expected to assume heavier responsibilities when needed in just a few years’ time. Such a child was subject to strong moral and economic pressure to carry out her or his responsibilities, since the inheritance gained was likely to be a significant opportunity for them and their families. Other social controls, notably use of dowry and strict parental say over labour migration, suggest that Greek communities exercised much greater control over their children – or at least over young women – and could avoid de facto childlessness more readily than is the case in other studies included in this book. There are, however, good reasons why arranging the assistance of children and kin in later life is more commonly pursued in ways that are not so direct. Strict reciprocity is not generally observed in any of the family systems discussed in this book, and it is unrealistic in the study of ageing and family systems to proceed as if it were. As in the extended family systems discussed above, the situation of elderly in nuclear families is often delicate because they have to cope with the reality of their inequality without exposing their vulnerability and the possible injustices of their own family to public view. Schröder-Butterfill’s study provides important insights into normative options that older people use to obtain support from non-nuclear kin where there is no recourse to the levers of strict and overt parental authority. Even within a kindred it is generally crucial to avoid giving or receiving assistance that could be more widely stigmatised as charity.

Where are the Children?

35

Patronage in the East Javanese case functions – like adoption – as a family idiom establishing long-term obligations between kin that combine moral and economic roles. Like adoption, patronage need not be arranged as an explicit strategy of old-age security. Service to a patron may, rather, evolve into family welfare as older clients are allowed to continue to rely on an income from their patron long after their years of service are really over. Or a younger patron may in effect adopt an older relative for his or her ostensible services, thereby disguising charity that would otherwise demean both parties. Overt dependence on charity as an option of last resort is a theme which runs through all the ethnography in this volume: institutionalisation in hospices dreaded by the aged in Normandy; ending one’s life as a pauper in a monastery on a Greek island; relying on the ad hoc support of neighbours in Indonesian towns and villages; the assumption in Tamil Nadu that landless labourers struggling to meet their responsibilities to their marital families are under no obligation to support parents if there are high-caste families from whom they may beg; and the reliance of poor and illiterate South Asians in Britain on ‘credit’ in local shops. All of these cases speak of the absence not merely of economic support but of an adequate range and depth of social ties. Wealth in itself is no solution. Marianti and Okely both provide poignant instances of elderly childless widows whose substantial property effectively isolates them. Residence in well-appointed retirement homes, as Okely describes in Normandy, ensures de facto childlessness: visits of children and kin are a rare occurrence. Nor can wealth secure female descendants for elderly Minangkabau. Childlessness, however, compounds social and economic disadvantage and carries unmistakable implications for elderly social exclusion and powerlessness. The loss of mobility and the steady restriction of personal space typical of old age may prove insurmountable in the absence of children, as Okely and Marianti show. The problems elderly have in gaining access to public health services in Britain, recounted by Shaw, is redoubled if they do not have children who are more likely to be fluent in English and familiar with Western medical institutions. In India, as Vera-Sanso notes, poor elderly without sons are among the few who qualify for non-contributory pensions, but to get them they must be fit enough to persevere against an unresponsive bureaucracy. Poor and vulnerable sub-populations, like the elderly without children, have little chance of accessing or influencing even well-intentioned public policy. The arrangements they make for themselves,

36

Philip Kreager

moreover, may be more easily undone where there are insufficient resources. The encroachment of commercial agriculture on simpler, menial jobs that enable elderly to continue in work and the effects of labour movements on their networks of support are noted in this volume not just in India and Indonesia, but in France and England. Schröder-Butterfill records the breakdown of nearly half of the adoption arrangements made by elderly in the two lowest economic strata in East Java, against only 15 per cent in the two upper strata. At the extreme, there is the greater vulnerability of elderly on their own in situations of wider social breakdown. Hionidou suggests that age and the need for more youthful assistance imply the existence of major mortality differentials in the Greek islands during the wartime famine: younger adults and children could escape but the elderly could only wait. Getting the data These examples underscore a general property of demographic regimes, noted above: only some members of a society make the marriages, build the families, and attain the material and social statuses that are deemed desirable in a given culture. Demographic differentials, in this case regarding levels and pathways to childlessness, are both means and ends of social differentiation. Where aggregate trends in childlessness characterise a significant proportion of a population, they are likely to indicate regular adaptations that families and communities make to wider social and economic circumstances. The composite character of childless and de facto childless elderly populations, however, makes serious demands on data which can be met only by methodologies that enable life-course and preferably longitudinal data collection to be carried out, and which embrace the several demographic factors and the processes of social classification and differentiation that together constitute these populations. As we have seen, the elderly without children are effectively by-passed by broad generational approaches that simply infer motives and experience from uniform models of behaviour applied to aggregate cross-sectional data. The diverse composition of childless older populations and the fluctuations observed in their numbers over time constitute a recurring sociological phenomenon that makes such approaches unfruitful. There are several routes to childlessness in a given society and several alternative courses of action in response to it at different points in social space and time. The phenomenon can only be addressed if we begin by reconsidering the substantive ground and redesign our methods accordingly.

Where are the Children?

37

Chapter 7 by Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham helpfully brings our picture of childlessness as a recurring large-scale phenomenon in European societies up to the present. As they note, cohorts of Englishwomen born in the 1960s are expected to experience levels of childlessness of the order of 20 per cent, and levels in a range of 15 to 23 per cent have been found for 1950s cohorts in nine other states (Prioux 1993). These apparently maximum figures of course do not include the de facto childless, but it is none the less striking that these reported levels of childlessness of around one woman in five concur with past European experience in several periods since the sixteenth century and with data reported for other cultures, notably Indonesia (Indrizal, Schröder-Butterfill, Chapters 2 and 4, respectively, this volume). The forces that have led to fluctuations in European childlessness in the later twentieth century are, regrettably, as difficult to discern from existing survey sources as they are from historical records in the past. Evandrou and Falkingham call attention to the currently stated preference of many English women to remain childless, whether in partnership or not, as marking a potentially major change from past times. They go on to show, however, that this trend is one part of a complex of four factors (widespread contraceptive use, later marriage, frequent divorce, population mobility), all of which make the normative assumption that children are a reliable basis of family support more and more subject to doubt. Three of these factors are, of course, integral to the long-term history of European childlessness sketched above. The extent to which current childlessness is a new conscious choice and how much it remains, as in the past, mediated by other life-course events (marriage, divorce, remarriage, migration, alternative social networks) is clearly an interesting question.8 A database adequate to providing an answer, as Evandrou and Falkingham note, will require the development of new approaches. We need, for example, to be able to trace the effects of divorce on family networks and to monitor changing relations of support between households over long periods of time. The nature of the family systems in which shifting household arrangements are embedded is clearly crucial to understanding elderly outcomes, and approaches based primarily on households or a predetermined selection of transfers between them bypass the social processes we need to know about. The frustration inherent in sole reliance on current household survey methodologies is underlined by Evandrou and Falkingham’s point that these sources ‘tell us virtually nothing about relationships with non-

38

Philip Kreager

co-residential kin, despite the fact that the majority of care for older people living alone in Britain is necessarily provided by non-household members’. The content of these relationships is evidently shaped not just by the issues to which surveys are commonly addressed (residential status, frequency of contact, types and amounts of support) but by their nature as relationships: multi-faceted and yet often uncertain social ties that have histories. Reconsidering the substantive ground necessarily begins in examining and comparing these histories. Ethnography is the obvious and, indeed, unavoidable ground of such enquiry, since we need to examine the processes by which social identities like old age and childlessness are constructed in different societies and, more particularly, to observe how a range of outcomes for older people – from the secure to the vulnerable – arise from their several attempts to negotiate the often conflicting family norms and institutional arrangements characteristic of a given society. It is sobering in this respect that Okely and Hionidou, in surveying available research on ageing in their respective parts of Europe, find no body of ethnographic research on which they can rely. Here, at least, work in the developing world has begun to show the way. None of the ethnographic research reported in the following chapters, however, originated in projects conceived explicitly as a study of elderly people without children. Family systems, kinship and marriage, their political and economic entailments and the means by which people negotiate their position in society through these institutions have long provided anthropologists with central topics. These subjects underpin anthropologists’ more general attempts to provide a cultural framework for comparative population analysis. The incidence of childless and de facto childless older people is simply one observable component of these central topics to which the rise of research on population ageing has now begun to draw closer attention. It can only be hoped that this volume will encourage anthropologists to reconsider their ethnography from the perspective of elderly childlessness and that combined methodologies that join anthropology to central problems in the demography and social economy of ageing will be forthcoming.

Notes I would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Wellcome Trust over the period in which this volume was planned and produced, and the helpful com-

Where are the Children?

39

ments of Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill, Penny Vera-Sanso, Tony Wrigley, and John Landers on the draft of this chapter. 1. Durkheim’s treatment of social solidarity was not developed explicitly with reference to generational conflicts, but modernisation theory has adopted this perspective (e.g. Cowgill and Holmes 1972; Cowgill, 1974). Historical syntheses, notably Kertzer (1995), now question the application of this framework to elderly residential arrangements. 2. In the absence of agreed cross-cultural definitions of old age and the impossibility of a uniform numerical specification which fits all social systems, ‘age sixty and above’ is used here merely to introduce a number of relevant issues. The moment we begin to examine the contexts in which elderly live, the need to specify more realistic groupings within such broad generational definitions becomes apparent. Elderly without children are an important instance. Caste and class distinctions provide a point of entry into further examples, as they often underlie disabilities arising from the physical impacts of different kinds of work. Disaggregating older populations in terms of distinctions normatively employed in daily life is evidently one critical step towards understanding which elderly people are most readily identified as ‘old’ in a given society and what factors have given rise to forms of vulnerability characteristic of that society. 3. The study by Lillard and Willis (1997) is an example of a searching and critical examination of hypothesised rationalities currently on offer in intergenerational research, which nonetheless takes for granted that children once born remain part of a household’s decision-making calculus. Their analysis is confined to households with at least one eligible child. A second thoughtful study which is disappointing in this respect is the major comparative study of elderly well-being in South East Asia, edited by Hermalin (2002). Here childless elderly are confined to the very small numbers reporting no living children (p. 465). Multivariate analysis shows that their small households and social networks are statistically associated with social disadvantage, although it is recognised that this finding is to a large extent tautological (p. 496), since the absence of children is implicit in small networks which are indicative of social disadvantage. Elsewhere (p. 220) it is noted that the childless are nonetheless in receipt of others’ money and material support although no details are given. The likelihood of disadvantage is thus confirmed but the identity and composition of this group remain vague. As several contributors to the present volume remark, informants commonly disguise actual and de facto childlessness; the extent to which survey informants in Hermalin’s comparative study may have done so will remain unknown in the absence of parallel ethnography. 4. Prevalent patterns of divorce, it should perhaps be pointed out, are not necessarily confined to modern Europe. In some parts of the world, notably South East Asia (Jones 1994) and sub-Saharan Africa (Bledsoe and Pison 1994), marriage instability has an established history that only recently shows signs of change, at least in the former case. 5. As the demographic, social and economic constraints that encouraged childlessness have received more sustained attention in the historical literature on early modern England, a more detailed account will be given of the first of these patterns, followed by briefer treatment of the second and third. 6. A more detailed demographic picture, for example, on the reproductive side of the question, would need to examine whether secondary factors indeed had a minor impact. We would need to ensure, for instance, that women who

40

Philip Kreager

remained unmarried did not make up a statistically high proportion of those giving birth out of wedlock. Remarriage is another factor. Marriages subsequent to the death of spouses were commonly fertile and also contained the possibility of gaining stepchildren (assuming, of course, that these children would be supportive). From another point of view, the prevalence of a neolocal household formation pattern and the preference for separate residence characteristic of English populations does not preclude an important role for help from kin, whether resident or not. Kertzer (1995) is particularly emphatic that more complex households and stronger kin ties were a significant factor in parts of southern and central Europe and possibly also had a significant role to play in Europe’s north and west; however, see also Hionidou (Chapter 9, this volume). Where mortality is concerned, the impact of adult, child, and infant mortality would, as remarked, have worked as countervailing forces tending to increase, and partly to decrease, levels of childlessness in older age groups. In some places childlessness due to non-marriage may have been associated with reduced longevity, a pattern which Vera-Sanso (Chapter 3, this volume) also remarks for South Asia. Should we understand ill health in such cases as a factor leading to non-marriage and infecundity, or did it arise subsequently where there were no children to provide adequate care for older persons? Turning to the effects of infant and child mortality, the trend over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for infant mortality fluctuated in England in a range of 150 to 210 per thousand births, reaching over 300 in urban areas (Landers 1993: 136; Wrigley et al. 1997: 225). Deaths of children aged one to four ranged between 80 and 130 per thousand. The combined effects took as many as one in every five English children in relatively healthy periods (e.g. 1620–1649) but could rise above one in three (e.g. in the 1680s) (Wrigley et al. 1997: 216). If these rates fell disproportionately on less fecund delayed marriages, they could have significantly increased childlessness. Once again, however, the impact of high infant mortality levels could have flowed in contrary directions. Where marriage delay (often reflecting conditions of poverty) resulted in only one or two births, the impact of high levels of infant and child mortality could have fallen heavily on those with modest abilities to keep their few children alive, leaving them with none. On the other hand, a common influence of high rates of infant mortality is to drive fertility up (where infant death cuts short the period of lactational infecundability, returning women much more quickly to risk of impregnation). Of course, risks of subsequent pregnancy cannot be assumed to exist for all women, for example, on account of medical complications. Altogether, assessing the impact of delayed marriage in terms of its final effects on childlessness requires calculation of net reproduction rates for these marriages, entailing not only age-specific fertility and mortality schedules for successive marriage cohorts but their correction in light of evidence on all of the above-mentioned factors. Historical records, unfortunately, are unlikely to provide all the necessary detail. 7. Gerrits (2002) provides the mirror image of a matrilineal society in which men are assumed responsible for infertility, although the implications for the spread of STDs are no different. 8. Here the relation between decisions not to have children and the several factors that can turn postponement into childlessness clearly requires probing (Morgan 1991).

Where are the Children?

41

References Adair, R.L., ‘Regional Variations in Illegitimacy and Courtship Patterns in England, 1538–1754’. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1991. Berkner, L.K., ‘The Stem Family and the Developmental Cycle of the Peasant Household: An Eighteenth-Century Austrian Example’, American Historical Review 72 (1972): 398–418. Bledsoe, C.H., A.G. Hill, U. D’Alessandro, and P. Langerock, ‘Constructing Natural Fertility: The Use of Western Contraceptive Technologies in Rural Gambia’, Population and Development Review 20, no. 1 (1994): 81–113. Bledsoe, C.H. and G. Pison, eds, Nuptiality in Sub-Saharan Africa, Oxford, 1994. Bourdieu, P., ‘Célibat et condition paysanne’, Études rurales v–vi (1962): 32–135. Cain, M., ‘Risk and Insurance: Perspectives on Fertility and Agrarian Change in India and Bangladesh’, Population and Development Review 7, no. 3 (1981): 435–474. Caldwell, J.C. and P. Caldwell, ‘The Cultural Context of High Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Population and Development Review 13, no. 3 (1987): 409–437. Chand, S.K. and A. Jaeger, Aging Populations and Public Pensions Schemes. IMF Occasional Paper, Washington D.C., 1996. Chesnais, J.-C., The Demographic Transition, transl. P. Kreager and E. Kreager, Oxford, 1992. Coale, A.J. and T.J. Trussell, ‘Model Fertility Schedules: Variations in the Age Structure of Childbearing in Human Populations’, Population Index 40 (1974): 185–258. Cowgill, D.O. and L.D. Holmes, Ageing and Modernization, New York, 1972. Cowgill, D.O., ‘Aging and Modernization: A Revision of the Theory’. In Late Life: Communities and Environmental Policy, ed. J.F. Gubrium, Springfield, Illinois, 1974, pp. 123–146. Deaton, A., The Analysis of Household Surveys, Baltimore, 1997. Disney, R. and E. Whitehouse, ‘The Economic Well-Being of Older People in International Perspective: A Critical Review’, Annual Review of Gerontology and Geriatrics 22 (2002): 17–31. Douglas, M., Purity and Danger, London, 1996. Folbre, N., ‘Introduction’. In The Economics of the Family, ed. N. Folbre, London, 1996, pp. xiii–xxvi. Frank, O., ‘Infertility in Sub-Saharan Africa: Estimates and Implications’, Population and Development Review 9, no. 1 (1983): 137–144. Friedlander, D., B.S. Okun and S. Segal, ‘The Demographic Transition Then and Now: Processes, Perspectives and Analyses’, Journal of Family History 24, no. 4 (1999): 493–533.

42

Philip Kreager

Gerrits, T., ‘Infertility and Matrilineality: The Exceptional Case of the Macua of Mozambique’. In Infertility Around the Globe, ed. M.C. Inhorn and F. van Balen, London, 2002, pp. 233–246. Gillis, J.R., L.A. Tilly, and D. Levine, The European Experience of Declining Fertility: A Quiet Revolution 1850–1970, Oxford, 1992. Goody, J., Production and Reproduction: A Comparative Study of the Domestic Domain, London, 1976. –––––, ‘Comparing Family Systems in Europe and Asia: Are There Different Sets of Rules?’, Population and Development Review 22, no.1 (1996): 1–20. Haddad, L., J. Hoddinott, and H. Alderman, eds, Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in Developing Countries, London, 1997. Hajnal, J., ‘European Marriage Patterns in Perspective’. In Population in History, ed. D. Glass and D.E.C. Eversley, London, 1965, pp. 101–143. –––––, ‘Two Kinds of Preindustrial Household Formation System’, Population and Development Review 8, no. 3 (1982): 449–494. Henry, L., ‘Some Data on Natural Fertility’, Eugenics Quarterly 8 (1961): 81–91. Hermalin, A., ed., The Well-Being of the Elderly in Asia: A Four-Country Comparative Study, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2002. Hermalin, A., C. Roan and A. Perez, The Emerging Role of Grandparents in Asia. Comparative Study of the Elderly in Asia Research Reports, no. 98–52, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1998. Hull, T.H. and Tukiran, ‘Regional Variations in the Prevalence of Childlessness in Indonesia’, Indonesian Journal of Geography 6, no. 32 (1976): 1–25. Inhorn, M.C. and F. van Balen, eds. Infertility Around the Globe, Berkeley, 2002. Isiugo-Abanihe, U.C., ‘Child Fosterage in West Africa’, Population and Development Review 11, no. 1 (1985): 53–74. Johnson, C.L. and D.J. Catalano, ‘Childless Elderly and Their Family Supports’, The Gerontologist 21, no. 6 (1981): 610–618. Jones, G., Marriage and Divorce in Islamic Southeast Asia, Singapore, 1994. Kertzer, D.I., ‘Toward a Historical Demography of Aging’. In Aging in the Past: Demography, Society and Old Age, ed. D.I. Kertzer and P. Laslett, Berkeley, 1995, pp. 363–383. Kertzer, D.I. and P. Laslett, eds, Aging in the Past: Demography, Society, and Old Age, Berkeley, 1995. Keyfitz, N., ‘The Demography of Unfunded Pensions’, European Journal of Population 1, no. 1 (1985): 5–30. Knodel, J. and E. van de Walle, ‘Lessons from the Past: Policy Implications of Historical Fertility Studies’, Population and Development Review 5, no. 2 (1979): 217–246. Kreager, P., ‘Demographic Regimes as Cultural Systems’. In The State of Population Theory, ed. D.A. Coleman and R. Schofield, Oxford, 1986, pp. 131–155.

Where are the Children?

43

Kreager, P. and E. Schröder-Butterfill, Actual and De Facto Childlessness in East Java: A Preliminary Analysis. Oxford Institute of Ageing Working Papers, no. 203, Oxford, 2003. Kussmaul, A., Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England, London, 1981. Landers, J., Death and the Metropolis: Studies in the Demographic History of London, 1670–1830, London, 1993. Larsen, U., ‘Sterility in sub-Saharan Africa’, Population Studies 48 (1994): 459–474. Larsen, U. and J. Mencken, ‘Measuring Sterility from Incomplete Birth Histories’, Demography 26 (1989): 185–202. Laslett, P. ed. 1972. Household and Family in Past Time. Cambridge. Laslett, P., K. Oosterveen and R.M. Smith, eds, Bastardy and its Comparative History, London, 1980. Lesthaeghe, R., ‘On the Social Control of Human Reproduction’, Population and Development Review 6, no. 4 (1980): 527–548. –––––, ed. Reproduction and Social Organization in Sub-Saharan Africa, London, 1989. Lillard, L.A. and R.J. Willis, ‘Motives for Intergenerational Transfers: Evidence from Malaysia’, Demography 34, no. 1 (1997): 115–134. Livi-Bacci, M., ‘Social and Biological Ageing’, Population and Development Review 8, no. 4 (1982): 771–781. –––––, ‘Social-Group Forerunners of Fertility Control in Europe’. In The Decline of Fertility in Europe, ed. A.J. Coale and S.C. Watkins, Princeton, 1986. pp. 182–200. –––––, A Concise History of World Population, transl. C. Ipsen, Oxford, 1992. Lotka, A.J., ‘Sterility in American Marriages’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 14, no. 1 (1928): 99–109. Lutz, W. and W. Sanderson, ‘Toward a Concept of Population Balance Considering Age-Structure, Human Capital, and Intergenerational Equity’. Paper presented at the Conference on Age Structural Transitions and Policy Implications, 8–10 November 2000, Phuket, Thailand. Mammo, A. and S.P. Morgan, ‘Childlessness in Rural Ethiopia’, Population and Development Review 12, no. 3 (1986): 533–546. Martin, L.G. and S.H. Preston, eds, Demography of Aging, Washington D.C., 1994. Morgan, S.P., ‘Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Childlessness’, American Journal of Sociology 97, no. 3 (1991): 779–807. Murphy, M., ‘Economic Models of Fertility in Post-War Britain’, Population Studies 47 (1993): 221–243. Nag, M., Factors Affecting Human Fertility in Non-Industrial Societies: A Cross-Cultural Study, New Haven, 1980. Notestein, F.W., ‘Population – The Long View’. In Food for the World, ed. T. Schultz, Chicago, 1945, pp. 36–57.

44

Philip Kreager

Pool, I., ‘Age Structural Transitions and Policy Frameworks’. Paper presented at the Conference on Age Structural Transitions and Policy Implications, 8–10 November 2000, Phuket, Thailand. Powles, J., ‘Home and Homelessness: the Life History of Susanna Mwana-uta, an Angolan Refugee’, Journal of Refugee Studies 15, no.1 (2002): 81–101. Pressat, R., The Dictionary of Demography, ed. C. Wilson, Oxford,1988. Prioux, F., ‘L’infecondité en Europe’. In European Population, Vol. II, Demographic Dynamics, ed. A. Blum and J.-L. Rallu, Paris, 1993, pp. 228–251. Rallu, J.-L., Les Populations Océaniennes aux XIXe et XXe Siècles, Paris, 1990. Randall, S., ‘Issues in the Demography of Mongolian Nomadic Pastoralism’, Nomadic Peoples 33 (1993): 17–27. Reher, D.S., ‘Family Ties in Western Europe: Persistent Contrasts’, Population and Development Review 24, no. 2 (1998): 203–234. Rubinstein, R.L., B.B. Alexander, M. Goodman and M. Luborsky, ‘Key Relationships of Never Married, Childless Older Women: A Cultural Analysis’, Journal of Gerontology 46, no. 4 (1991): 270–277. Santow, G., ‘Coitus interruptus and the Control of Natural Fertility’, Population Studies 49, no. 1 (1995): 19–44. Schneider, J.C. and P.T. Schneider, Festival of the Poor: Fertility Decline and the Ideology of Class in Sicily, 1860–1980, Tucson, 1996. Schofield, R., ‘English Marriage Patterns Revisited’, Journal of Family History 10 (1985): 2–20. Schröder-Butterfill, E., ‘Inter-generational Family Support Provided by Older People in Indonesia’, Ageing and Society 24, no. 4 (2004): 1–34. Szreter, S., Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860–1940, London, 1996. Thane, P., Old Age in English History: Past Experience, Present Issues, Oxford, 2001. Thomson, D., ‘The Welfare of the Elderly in the Past: A Family or Community Responsibility’. In Life, Death and the Elderly: Historical Perspectives, ed. M. Pelling and R. Smith, London, 1991, pp. 194–221. Turner, V., The Ritual Process, Chicago, 1969. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Ageing, 1950–2050, New York, 2002. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, International Population Reports: An Aging World II, Washington, D.C., 1992. Wall, R., ‘Elderly Persons and Members of their Households in England and Wales from Preindustrial Times to the Present’. In Aging in the Past: Demography, Society, and Old Age, ed. D.I. Kertzer and P. Laslett, London, 1995, pp. 81–106. Watkins, S.C., ‘Spinsters’, Journal of Family History, Special Issue 9, no. 4 (1984): 310–325. Weir, D., ‘Rather Never than Late: Celibacy and Age at Marriage in English Cohort Fertility, 1541–1871’, Journal of Family History 9 (1984): 341–355. Wenger, G.C., ‘Ageing Without Children: Rural Wales’, Journal of CrossCultural Gerontology 16 (2001): 79–109.

Where are the Children?

45

Wrigley, E.A., ‘Fertility Strategy for the Individual and the Group’. In Historical Studies of Changing Fertility, ed. C. Tilly, Princeton, 1978, pp. 135–154. –––––, Population and History, London, 1969. Wrigley, E.A. and R.S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction, Cambridge, 1989. Wrigley, E.A., R.S. Davies, J.E. Oeppen and R.S. Schofield, English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580–1837, Cambridge, 1997.

PART I ASIA

CHAPTER 2

PROBLEMS OF ELDERLY WITHOUT CHILDREN: A CASE-STUDY OF THE MATRILINEAL MINANGKABAU, WEST SUMATRA Edi Indrizal

Introduction

T

he Indonesian population today stands at roughly 217 million, of which some 17.3 million are aged sixty and over. In the last two decades the proportion of older people has doubled and, according to Indonesian Bureau of Statistics (BPS) estimates, this amount will continue to increase to 24.5 million, or 10 per cent of the total population, by 2015 (Millah 2002). Overall, the projected increase of Indonesia’s elderly population from 1990 to 2025 is estimated at 414 per cent, the highest rate of increase in the world (Kinsella and Taeuber 1992). On this estimate the elderly population will rise to 25.5 million in 2020, or 12 per cent of the population, and by that time will constitute the fourth largest elderly population in the world after China, India and the United States. Owing to the ethnic diversity of Indonesia, however, these broad statistical patterns need to be reinterpreted and supplemented by detailed local and regional studies if we are to understand the true impact of population ageing on Indonesian society.

50

Edi Indrizal

The material presented here was collected as part of a comparative anthropological and demographic study of elderly support networks in three Indonesian sites, located in West Sumatra, West Java and East Java. In this chapter, only the findings from West Sumatra will be presented, which refer to the largest ethnic population in Sumatra, the Minangkabau. All three studies followed the same research schedule: semi-structured and in-depth interviews with elderly people and their families; collection of detailed life histories and kin mapping for a sub-sample of elderly; observational data; and two randomised surveys, one on elderly health and health-care use and the other on household economy and inter-household exchange. The research in West Sumatra was conducted in a village (nagari) named Rao-Rao, in the district of Tanah Datar, located in the hilly heartland of Minangkabau culture, about thirty kilometres from the principal regional market city of Bukittinggi. Intensive field research was conducted from December 1999 until July 2000, and additional site visits were carried out in 2001 and 2002. Rao-Rao is in many ways a typical traditional Minangkabau village. Its local economic base is predominantly agricultural, with the vast majority of households (87 per cent) deriving at least some income from the cultivation of rice, coffee or cinnamon (see also van Reenen 1996 for details about the village). However, most of the village’s wealth derives from labour migration, the fruits of which find their way back to the village via remittances or with the periodic return of the migrants. Most migrants are engaged in the trade of cloth and clothing, both within Sumatra and across the entire archipelago. Migrants from Rao-Rao are said to have a particular penchant for trade, and as a result the village is rich in comparison with other villages in the area. The total population stands at roughly 2,300, of which 18 per cent are aged sixty and over, a figure more than double that of West Sumatra as a whole (see Table 2.1). This extreme age-structure imbalance again reflects the importance of migration by young and middleaged adults for the village economy. All inhabitants are Muslim, and religion plays an important role in the community. Scores of villagers have made the pilgrimage to Mecca, some repeatedly.

Ageing and the Value of Children in Indonesia Central to the Indonesian population programme is a well-known motto, which may be translated as ‘A small family is a happy family! Two children are enough, boy or girl – it makes no difference!’

Elderly Minangkabau in West Sumatra

51

Popularised by the National Family Planning Coordinating Board (BKKBN), the slogan was proclaimed at a national level in the 1970s as part of a programme aimed at reducing fertility within a wider framework of improving Indonesian social welfare (Niehof and Lubis 2003). After three decades, the motto has been internalised in the norms and values of family life in Indonesia. At the same time, widespread improvements in health have driven down mortality rates and improved life expectancy. The effort to reduce fertility in Indonesia is widely considered a success, but attention has only recently begun to turn to one of its principal consequences, the increase in numbers and proportions of elderly people. This ageing of the population has become the new demographic challenge for Indonesia. As Millah (2002) states, while fertility no longer poses a threat, this does not mean that no new and complex demographic problems have arisen to take its place. One impact of health improvements is the substantial rise in life expectancy at birth, from only 45.7 years in 1970 to 61.3 years in 1990. By 2004 this figure is expected to have reached 64.5 years – an improvement of nineteen years over a period of little more than a generation! These changes imply growing absolute and relative numbers of the elderly population. As the proportion of young people under age fifteen declines, so the proportion aged sixty and over in the population is increasing (Singarimbun 1996: 182; Ananta et al. 1997). For most Indonesian families children are still very much valued, and parents look to them for help. While children are still young, they may represent a burden on their parents, especially when families are very large. However, several studies have shown that children make significant contributions to their families and households from quite an early age (White 1973; Nag et al. 1980). The importance of children becomes more pronounced as parents grow older. Then it is hoped that children will provide financial and social support to their elderly parents, especially if they suffer physical impairments. There is even a saying, ‘No matter how kind other people are, in old age it is your children who will make you more comfortable!’ Having several children is seen as offering more choice and a greater assurance of support and security in old age. According to this view, elderly who have many children are unlikely to suffer loneliness in their dying days. Elderly with few or no children, in contrast, enjoy far fewer options in regard to support. Such elderly are widely looked upon as suffering a most unfortunate fate, facing loneliness and fearing social and physical vulnerability. Here, too, there are popular sayings, such as ‘Many children – much good fortune’ or ‘Children

52

Edi Indrizal

are a precious gift from God’, which still carry a real meaning for elderly people. Clearly, there is now a tension to be observed in the systems of norms people adhere to. On the one hand, the objectives of the national family-planning programme have been accepted and widely implemented. Small family sizes are recognised as a precondition of family welfare, human capital investment and socioeconomic development. Previous family values did not stipulate particular numbers of children, so it has been possible to carry out the reduction in overall numbers whilst reinforcing traditional values of having children. On the other hand, the reality is that lower levels of reproduction are not uniformly distributed across all family groups. The continuing importance of children as sources of valuable and respectable old-age support and the vulnerability of the elderly without children cannot be ignored and are a subject of popular comment. Meanwhile, among certain social groups and regions in Indonesia there are further crucial considerations. Among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, it is clear that the perceived value of children differs according to the gender of the child. In contrast to patterns elsewhere in South and South-East Asia, Minangkabau favour daughters. In the context of the elderly without children, gender issues deserve particular attention from two points of view. The first concerns the question of whether children of a certain sex are considered more important with reference to elderly welfare. Secondly, are there gender differences in the vulnerability of childless elderly? More specifically, do elderly men suffer more or less than elderly women from a lack of children, and do their strategies for coping with childlessness differ? As we shall see, among the Minangkabau, parents may judge themselves childless as long as they have no daughter. Moreover, childless elderly men tend to be in a worse position than their female counterparts when it comes to security in old age. These patterns are closely related to the matrilineal kinship system and aspects of social organisation among the Minangkabau, which will be discussed in detail below.

The Development of the Elderly Population in West Sumatra The province of West Sumatra, where the majority of the Minangkabau people live, comprises 2 per cent of the total Indonesian population. Compared with other provinces on the

Elderly Minangkabau in West Sumatra

53

large island of Sumatra, the proportion and number of elderly people are highest in West Sumatra and steadily increasing (Taifur 1995; Afrizal 2001). Census data show that in 1980 the elderly population – people aged sixty and over – stood at almost 240,000, or 7 per cent of the total population. This increased to 290,000, or 7.3 per cent, in 1990, and 340,000, or 8.1 per cent, in 2000 (Biro Pusat Statistik 1982, 1992b, 2002). Census data on the elderly population can be reclassified into two age groups, young elderly (aged sixty to sixty-four years) and old elderly (aged sixty-five and over). This reveals a more significant increase among the old elderly over the period 1980 to 2000. The young elderly experienced an increase of 22 per cent, from 92,900 to 118,500, compared with an increase of 36 per cent, from 143,800 to 224,100, among the old elderly. In terms of the trend over time, the increase in the elderly population was more pronounced between 1990 and 2000 than between 1980 and 1990. This is not surprising, given the relatively recent fertility declines and mortality improvements in Indonesia, which occurred from roughly 1970 onwards. As the large cohorts that reduced their fertility will not begin to reach their sixties until after 2010, an even greater bulk of population ageing will occur in the future. The increase for all elderly between 1990 and 2000 was 2.3 times greater than in the earlier decade; for the old elderly the increase was as much as 3.8 times higher (see Table 2.1). Meanwhile, differences between men and women may also be noted. The proportion of elderly who are female is higher than the proportion who are male (see Table 2.2). Whereas 7.1 per cent of the male population in West Sumatra in 2000 were elderly, the corresponding figure for women was 9 per cent. Among the ‘old old’ in 2000, 59 per cent were women and only 41 per cent were men. Of course, the numerical predominance of Table 2.1. The Development of the Elderly Population in West Sumatra

Young elderly (N) Young elderly (%) Old elderly (N) Old elderly (%) Total elderly (N) Total elderly (%) Total provincial population

1980

1990

2000

92,878 2.7 143,777 4.2 236,655 7.0 3,406,132

116,695 2.9 175,235 4.4 291,930 7.3 3,999,764

118,634 2.8 224,129 5.3 342,763 8.1 4,241,605

Sources: Population census data for West Sumatra for 1980, 1990 and 2000, Biro Pusat Statistik (1982, 1992b, 2002).

54

Edi Indrizal

Table 2.2. Sex Differences in the Size of the Elderly Population in West Sumatra 1980 Men

Women

1990 Men

Women

2000 Men

Women

Young elderly (N) 44,409 48,469 55,152 61,543 54,786 63,848 Young elderly (%) 2.67 2.78 2.82 3.02 2.56 2.95 Old elderly (N) 60,571 83,206 74,060 101,175 92,984 131.146 Old elderly (%) 3.64 4.78 3.78 4.95 4.55 6.06 Total elderly (N) 104,980 131,675 129,212 162,718 147,770 194.993 Total elderly (%) 6.31 7.56 6.6 7.97 7.11 9.01 Total province 1,664,169 1,741,963 1,957,815 2,041,949 2,078,572 2,163,033

Sources: Population census data for West Sumatra for 1980, 1990 and 2000, Biro Pusat Statistik (1982, 1992b, 2002).

Table 2.3. The Development of the Young Population (People Aged Under Fifteen Years) in West Sumatra

Boys (N) Boys (%) Girls (N) Girls (%) All young (N) All young (%)

1980

1990

2000

741,309 44.5 704,128 40.4 1,445,437 42.4

807,771 41.3 762,610 37.3 1,570,381 39.3

731,578 35.2 697,746 32.3 1,429,321 33.7

Sources: Population census data for West Sumatra for 1980, 1990 and 2000, Biro Pusat Statistik (1982, 1992b, 2002).

women over men in old age is not unique to the Minangkabau but is observed in almost all ageing populations. Singarimbun (1996: 185) notes that female life expectancy at birth is commonly between three and six years higher than male life expectancy. In Indonesia in 1993, life expectancy was 60.8 years for men and 64.5 years for woman, that is, a difference of 3.7 years (Iskandar 1997: 231). Similarly, Chen and Jones (1989: 22) observed a sex ratio among the Indonesian elderly population of 84 men per 100 women in 1980. The ratios for the age groups sixty to sixty-four, seventy to seventy-four and eighty and over are 93, 84 and 72, respectively. It is interesting to compare developments in the elderly population with those in the youngest age groups. The relevant figures for the population aged under fifteen years can be seen in Table 2.3. Although the young still comprise a significantly larger part of the population of West Sumatra than the elderly, their numerical importance is declining quite rapidly as a result of the recent fertility declines. (These are, of course, offset in part by dramatic

Elderly Minangkabau in West Sumatra

55

Table 2.4. Percentages of Ever-married Women of Various Age Groups Who Have Never Given Birth or Have No Surviving Children, West Sumatra and Indonesia No children ever born

No children surviving

30 and over

45 and over

60 and over

30 and over

45 and over

60 and over

West Sumatra 1971 urbana 1971 rurala 1980 urbanb 1980 ruralb 1985 urbanc 1985 ruralc 1990 urband 1990 rurald Rao-Rao, 2000e

7.2 8.0 4.3 3.7 4.0 4.1 4.4 2.9 –

– – 4.9 4.2 4.6 5.0 4.3 2.8 –

– – 6.2 5.7 8.1 6.3 5.3 2.6 6.0

9.0 9.6 5.4 5.5 4.0 5.4 5.3 4.2 –

– – 6.4 6.8 4.6 6.9 6.0 5.3 –

– – 9.1 9.2 8.1 9.3 7.9 6.3 9.5

Indonesia total 1971 urbana 1971 rurala 1990 urband 1990 rurald

14.2 11.6 5.6 5.2

– – 7.3 6.7

– – 8.7 7.6

16.4 13.7 6.6 6.4

– – 9.2 8.6

– – 11.2 10.0

Notes: The 1985 intercensal survey data for urban areas appear unreliable because they show no difference whatsoever between children ever born and children surviving. Sources: (a) Hull and Tukiran (1976), based on the 1971 population census. (b) Calculated from 1980 population census data for West Sumatra, Biro Pusat Statistik (1982). (c) Calculated from the 1985 intercensal survey (SUPAS) for West Sumatra, Biro Pusat Statistik (1987). (d) Calculated from 1990 population census data for West Sumatra, Biro Pusat Statistik (1992b). (e) Household survey data from Rao-Rao collected in 2000–2001.

improvements in infant and child mortality.) Thus the proportion of the population aged under fifteen has declined from over 40 per cent in 1980 to one-third in the year 2000. This trend is set to continue, with the size of the young dependency ratio dropping below the elderly dependency ratio by the middle of this century. Males are over-represented among the youngest age groups, reflecting naturally occurring sex ratios at birth in favour of boys. There can be no doubt, in short, that significant age-structural transformations are under way in West Sumatra which are leading to a considerable ageing of the population. Data relating specifically to childlessness are as follows. According to Hull and Tukiran’s (1976) pioneering study on childlessness in Indonesia, based on 1971 census data, almost one in ten married women aged thirty and over in rural West Sumatra were estimated to have had no surviving children; the figures for apparent sterility are not much lower (see Table 2.4).

56

Edi Indrizal

Older women invariably show higher levels of sterility and childlessness than younger women. This reflects the effects of infant, child and adult mortality on top of the underlying levels of sterility, which were also higher in the past, due to poorer health and nutritional conditions, divorce and spousal separation (see below). Sterility and childlessness decline over time, as would be expected given improvements in health, health care and general living standards. Although the figures for West Sumatra are consistently below the national averages for Indonesia as a whole, and considerably lower than for East Java (see Schröder-Butterfill, Chapter 4, this volume), they none the less point to the fact that a lack of children is a problem that affects a sizeable minority of elderly people. In our research community in West Sumatra, 6 per cent of elderly people reported never having had a child, and almost one in ten have no children surviving. These figures, however, must be interpreted with caution in view of the more detailed picture which becomes available when ethnography and demography are combined at the village level. Our research shows that province-level statistics disguise local variation of considerable interest and concern, especially when gender is added as a dimension of elderly childlessness. Village survey data show that the proportion of elderly without daughters rises to 23 per cent. The significance for Minangkabau society of almost one in four families without daughters will emerge in the following discussion.

An Introduction to Minangkabau Matrilineal Society The Minangkabau are the fourth largest ethnic group in Indonesia. According to the 2000 census, which for the first time in several decades includes a question on ethnicity, 5.5 million Indonesians, or 2.7 per cent of the population, are Minangkabau (Biro Pusat Statistik 2001). Alternatively, if we use data on mother tongue from the 1990 census, we find that 2.4 per cent of all Indonesians have Minang as their mother tongue (Biro Pusat Statistik 1992a: 171). This suggests a Minangkabau population of around five million in 1990. Within the province of West Sumatra, the homeland of the Minangkabau people, 89 per cent state that their mother tongue is Minang; the remainder of the population is largely made up of migrants from other parts of Indonesia, as well as of the Mentawai people, who live on the island of Mentawai, which is administratively part of West Sumatra province. Thanks to strong traditions of migration, Minang-

Elderly Minangkabau in West Sumatra

57

kabau people are found throughout Indonesia and the wider South-East Asian region, although they commonly maintain ties to their natal communities in West Sumatra. In the anthropological literature the Minangkabau are celebrated as possibly the largest matrilineal community in the world. Minangkabau family structure is not based on the nuclear family, with its emphasis on the conjugal pair and their children, but on the matrilineal descent line. Women enjoy a central position, the succession of grandmothers, mothers and daughters over time acting both as guarantors of the continuation of the descent line and as heirs to communally held family property (harta pusaka). Minangkabau society has a specific social system in which community structures closely reflect matrilineal kinship. Every newborn child in a Minangkabau family is automatically the member of his or her mother’s kinship group or matrilineal family. Each matrilineal family is an extended descent group that ranges from small family units to progressively larger units. These different kin groupings compose a hierarchy that embraces the increasingly larger units which make up the social structure, and are referred to as samande, saparuik, sapayuang and sasuku. Samande is the smallest matrilineal family unit, a unit usually consisting of three generations, the descendants of the same grandmother. The term is also used to refer to the units of each mother and her children within this three-generational group (van Reenen 1996: 47). Several samande families make up a saparuik, usually consisting of four to five generations. It is the matrilineal saparuik which usually occupies a rumah gadang – a large traditional house communally owned by an extended family and consisting of the several mother and child units related to each other within a samande or saparuik. The kinship unit linking several saparuik, and which therefore combines several rumah gadang, is called sapayuang. This is the collective entity which normally holds rights in communal property (saharato pusako), including agricultural land and burial-grounds (sapandam pakuburan). Several sapayuang groups make up one sasuku. Members of one matrilineal kin grouping, be it at the level of the samande, saparuik, sapayuang or sasuku, identify themselves as ‘one family’ (keluarga awak), displaying – at least vis-à-vis other groupings – a sense of group solidarity because they share one honour (saina samalu), one body of communal wealth (saharato) and one line of inheritance (sapusako). This can have political implications, as when members of a matrilineal group dispersed throughout Indonesia rally around, or confront, a prominent member of their group. It can also have implications for social welfare, as when

58

Edi Indrizal

successful members of a matrilineal kin group cooperate to pay for the hospitalisation, pilgrimage, house renovation or other needs of a humble but respected individual living in the village of origin. Sasuku are the reference groups for defining marriage preferences and, strictly speaking, marriage is only permitted between people of a different suku (that is, of different matrilines), whilst marriage among people of the same suku is strongly disapproved of even today. An ideal marriage is called pulang ka bako marriage, in which a woman marries her father’s nephew (kemenakan ayahnya) or a man from her father’s matriline. All marriage matters, including the selection of marriage partners, are not usually the private concern of the couple to be married. According to the kinship system, the mother’s brother (mamak) is most responsible for finding a marriage partner for his sister’s children (kemenakan). One of the implications of arranged marriages among relatives is a tendency towards village endogamy. Following a wedding, the husband usually joins his wife in the rumah gadang, or at least the neighbourhood, of the wife’s family. In other words, Minangkabau household formation patterns are matrilocal or uxorilocal. However, to understand the post-marital settlement patterns, it is necessary to relate them to the tradition of labour migration (rantau) in Minangkabau society. According to a Minang proverb, ‘A young man is of no use in the village until he has gone on rantau’. Hence in practice the uxorilocal settlement pattern has traditionally been augmented by gender-specific migration, and many, or even most, husbands may stay on rantau (i.e. in their respective migration sites) after marriage whilst their wives remain behind in the wife’s natal village. An appreciation of the social organisation, value system and customs of Minangkabau society as just outlined provides the key to understanding the position and role of elderly people. Traditionally the older generation has occupied a unique position of respect. This is reflected in the saying, ‘Ask [members of the older generation] for their advice before leaving, and consult with them when you return’. Ideally, the structure of family relationships and the bonds it establishes throughout a community constitute the most important institutions for the security of old people. Indeed, one manifestation of the sense of group solidarity is the goal of providing for elderly people, integrating them into daily life so that they do not feel ignored in old age. As some respondents put it, ‘The elderly must not live neglected in the village’. An abandoned elderly person would bring disgrace to his or her children, matrilineal family, even the whole village.

Elderly Minangkabau in West Sumatra

59

Research on contemporary Minangkabau society, however, indicates that relationships in the extended family are changing (von Benda-Beckmann 1979; Kato 1982; Naim 1984; Saleh 1992; van Reenen 1996; Afrizal 2001; Erwin 2001). Increasing population size and the sustained involvement in the national economies of South-East Asia that is a direct consequence of rantau have increased and accentuated the tradition of migration and, with it, a tendency towards neo-local post-marital settlement patterns. Although it is difficult to generalise the impact of these changes on Minangkabau family patterns, a number of themes are prominent in the literature just cited. The functions of the samande family – the smallest family unit – are becoming more important, while the functions of larger family units (saparuik, sapayuang and sasuku) are less well defined. Although these changes have not resulted in the breakdown of the structure or principles of the matrilineal system, they none the less have important implications for the lives of elderly people, not least those who are childless. It is to an examination of this group that we now turn.

The Phenomena of Elderly without Children in Minangkabau Anthropological interest in the matrilineal structure of Minangkabau society has given rise to a large specialist literature, but the study of the elderly population remains extremely limited (exceptions include Taifur 1995; Afrida 1998; Afrizal 2001). As the preceding discussion shows, any account of the position of older people in this society must begin by locating them in the longterm history of descent groups. The Minangkabau conceive marriage as the key to the continuity of generations, but have traditionally accepted that whether a marriage gives descendants or not, and whether it gives many children or few, is all in God’s hands. Yet the situation of elderly with several children, as opposed to those who are childless, is radically different. To understand how Minangkabau cope with such differences requires us to consider both the social demography and the biology of infertility in their society. Non-marriage, delayed marriage and time spent out of marriage in consequence of temporary separation of spouses or divorce are important issues. All of these variables were also traditionally considered part of God’s intentions for each individual. Our research into contemporary Minangkabau society in West Sumatra indicates three broad categories of elderly without children, which are as follows.

60

Edi Indrizal

Never-married elderly In Minangkabau society two terms are commonly used to identify the never-married: bujang lapuak for bachelors and gadih gadang indak balaki for spinsters. The status of bujang lapuak and gadih gadang indak balaki is very low, because lacking a spouse is usually regarded as unpleasant and a sign of weakness. These statuses are usually due to health problems, such as lifetime congenital and mental defects, or are attributed to bad individual personality. These are people whose destiny as determined by God is to have no marriage partner even into old age. It is very rare for women never to marry. This reflects their central position in Minangkabau society. The responsibility of the family to find a marriage partner for a daughter is much greater than for a son. A girl who becomes an ‘old maid’ is a disgrace. The much smaller likelihood that women will not marry shows clearly that the phenomenon is not only a psychological or biological matter, but has a more fundamental sociological dimension. In the extreme case, custom allows a family to put to auction or to sell communal property in order to raise money as bridewealth rather than face the stigma of a gadih gadang indak balaki in the family. It is accepted, however, that spinsters as well as bachelors may be unavoidable, since in the end God is the only one who has the might to determine the marriage partner of someone, and it is beyond human power to control this. In Rao-Rao we encountered a single case of an elderly women who had never married because she was somewhat mentally handicapped. She lived with other members of her matrilineal family in an ancestral house (rumah gadang), where she occupied the social and practical status of a household help (pembantu). She was responsible for washing dishes and clothes and keeping the house clean. Although not respected, she was cared for and given small sums of money out of pity (kasihan) and a sense of kin solidarity. It was when discussing her case, for example, that people referred to the saying that ‘The elderly must not live neglected in the village’. Childless married elderly Although married couples may be childless for physiological reasons, the matrilineal organisation of Minangkabau society provides a number of alternative sources of support from the younger generation, especially as a sister’s sons and daughters are normatively enjoined to assist their maternal kin. Indeed, no terminological distinction is made between a woman’s own children and the children of her sister, both being referred to simply as anak (child). Children will refer to their matrilateral aunts as man-

Elderly Minangkabau in West Sumatra

61

deh ketek (‘small mother’, if the aunt is junior to the mother) or mandeh gadang (‘big mother’, if the aunt is senior to the mother). A woman without children can thus take a positive and respected place in the family as classificatory mother of her sister’s children (van Reenen 1996: 214). Problems arise particularly where there are no sister’s children, both as a question of support and as the overriding practical and ideological issue of the absence of female heirs to inherit family property and continue the descent line. Van Reenen reports one unusual solution where polygyny provides an additional wife who is fertile; she notes that relations between wives may be very positive where the two women raise a second wife’s children jointly (1996: 231–232). Thus, in various ways classificatory motherhood can provide a secure solution for childless women within the matrilineal system. A more troubling cause of childlessness, as indicated by our research, is the very common pattern of male and female elderly who have experienced long periods of living separately from their spouse, which has a major influence on the frequency of sexual intercourse and the likelihood of divorce. As noted above, in RaoRao endogamous, arranged marriages are common, and most elderly we interviewed had married according to this pattern. Marriage appropriate to relations between families are, of course, not necessarily to the liking of the sons and daughters most immediately concerned, and refusal of such arrangements does occur. We found three cases in which men had refused to go through with a marriage, even though both families had long agreed upon arrangements while the young men were still on rantau. In such cases young men tend simply to run away from the village and return to their migration site. On the other hand, the proposed bride is not in as strong a position as she is likely still to be resident in the village. She often does not refuse, as both families would be disgraced. Such conflicts generally do not cause permanent deterioration of family relationships, but they have long-term implications for spouses and their procreation. Spousal separation in such cases is facilitated by the institution of rantau and the steady involvement of young Minangkabau men in the regional economy, which has encouraged more and more migration. Traditionally men departed either before or after marriage, subsequently spending many years outside the village in distant locations in areas such as Riau, Aceh, North Sumatra, Bengkulu, Java, Malaysia and other countries. Young men returned to their migration sites shortly after their wedding, while their wives remained in the village. Nowadays, migrants visit their home village at least once a year, usually to celebrate Idul

62

Edi Indrizal

Fitri (the end of the fasting month) together with their family, relatives and friends. In the past, return was often even less frequent, and most wives whose husbands were far away could not predict when they would return home. While the husbands were away, they would get news, letters or some money via other migrants who did return. In some cases amongst the elderly we studied, husbands never returned home for years on end. When home, they would stay in the village only a short time, perhaps one or two months, until, for example, the celebration of Idul Adha, which follows Idul Fitri. Long distances, poor transportation and the political chaos which characterised the 1940s and 1950s, when currently-elderly couples were in their prime reproductive years, became widespread reasons for the low intensity of marital contact between husbands and wives. Polygyny in such circumstances became a further complicating factor, as some men took second wives in their migration sites without divorcing their village wives. Divorce none the less often occurred subsequently, as village wives refused to accept new cowives. In some cases women only learnt of their co-wives indirectly while their husbands were still on rantau, and not from the husbands themselves. A further factor, as Schröder-Butterfill (2002) notes, is that polygyny and extramarital relations may have affected sexual health and reproductive capacity, owing to sexually transmitted diseases. The following case-study illustrates the combined effect of spousal separation, labour migration and divorce on childlessness. Case 1: Dahlia Dahlia, aged seventy, is a childless elderly woman who lives alone. The youngest of four children, she used to be spoilt by her parents and siblings. Her brother arranged her marriage to a man from Rao-Rao, who left on labour migration to North Sumatra immediately after the wedding, leaving Dahlia behind with her family. Whenever the husband returned on brief and infrequent visits, he urged Dahlia to accompany him, but her family would not hear of it. Instead, they continued indulging her as though she were unmarried, not allowing her to work and spoiling her with pocket money. Dahlia’s husband, in contrast, rarely sent news and never sent any money. When after ten years of marriage he returned with a second wife, Dahlia was indignant and asked for a divorce. She never remarried and lived with her mother until the mother died. The loss of her parents was the greatest tragedy in Dahlia’s life. As she puts it, ‘When my father died, at least I still had my mother to keep an eye on me. When

Elderly Minangkabau in West Sumatra

63

Mother (mandeh) also died, I didn’t know where I belonged. I cried for days, but then had to face the fact that I had been left all alone.’ Not long afterwards, her brother also died. Nowadays Dahlia lives alone in the ancestral home (rumah gadang) she inherited from her mother. She manages on her own: she still cooks, shops, cleans and washes her own clothes. Apart from problems with her eyesight, she is rarely ill. She does not wish to be a burden on others and feels most comfortable in her own surroundings. For these reasons she has so far declined the invitation by her older sister’s daughters to come to live with them and her sister in Medan (North Sumatra). Although she has no children of her own, Dahlia is not worried about her old-age security. She knows that her sisters’ children care deeply about her. One nephew, for example, visits every two weeks and gives her some money (Rp. 12,000–25,000 (£1–2)). Another nephew comes every couple of months and brings money and items for her daily needs, such as soap, sugar and cloth. Meanwhile, a niece routinely sends money every three months (Rp. 25,000–100,000 (£2–8)). Most nephews and nieces try and visit at least once a year, during Idul Fitri, when it is customary to return to the village of origin and pay respects to relatives, especially those who are elderly. Despite receiving support from her sisters’ children, Dahlia is also given financial support from rich villagers and successful migrants (perantau), which is distributed via the mosque. In addition, she has income in money and kind from the fruit and vegetable crops grown on the land (parak) surrounding the ancestral house; this land is communally owned by her matrilineal kin group (sapayuang). All in all, she is comfortably off in her old age. Nowadays Dahlia is no longer able to do any hard work on the parak, although most mornings she will put in a few hours of light work to keep herself busy. Her main limitations so far are in the area of social participation: because she can no longer walk far, she finds it hard to take part in customary ceremonies, like weddings or funerals. In Dahlia’s case, her matrilineal network is able to provide material and emotional support, although her lack of a younger relative permanently in the vicinity entails some loneliness and may leave her vulnerable as she grows frailer. Dahlia’s sister’s daughter will on her death be able to inherit the ancestral home – an issue that, as we shall see, greatly troubles other childless old people in the community. A contrasting example is necessary to illustrate the potential impact of separation, labour migration and

64

Edi Indrizal

divorce in the case of men. Negative implications are likely to be compounded when a man proves unsuccessful in his career as migrant worker, as the case of Jamain demonstrates. His situation is further confounded by the absence of sister’s children (kemenakan), which leaves him without the safety net of support which the Minangkabau family system normally provides. Case 2: Jamain Jamain is a man in his seventies who lives alone in a simple hut located on the edge of Rao-Rao village. He provides an archetypal example of a childless man who is highly vulnerable in his old age. Jamain’s father died when he was still a child, and as a result the family were thrust into poverty. When he was still quite young, Jamain went on labour migration to Riau, where he worked for a cloth seller. However, he soon returned to his natal village without having made a success of his rantau and never departed again. To earn a living Jamain works the land surrounding his house. He has some banana trees, coconut palms and cassava, but the harvest is insufficient to fulfil his daily needs. Hence on market-days he usually begs for money at the market and in the houses of rich villagers. This is not looked upon kindly: by begging Jamain lowers his status and dignity and deviates from what is considered characteristic of the enterprising, successful Minangkabau. People who have known him for many decades comment that he was always lazy and unambitious. They describe him as someone who found it hard to get along with people and failed to participate in village social life. Jamain was married twice but has remained childless. His first marriage was arranged by his uncle, who found him a wife from the same village. This marriage ended in divorce after only two years. Jamain then married a woman from another village, who failed to win his family’s approval, not least because she was from outside. This marriage, too, failed. Since that time Jamain has not remarried and has lived on his own. His only brother, who had also lowered himself in the eyes of fellow-villagers by marrying a newcomer to the village, died some years ago. His only sister, who died after completion of the main fieldwork period, was also childless and poor and lived in Rao-Rao. As she was frail and unable to leave the house, Jamain periodically visited her and sometimes asked her for rice from the family rice-fields, which were managed by the sister after their mother’s death. At Idul Fitri, Jamain, like other elderly people, receives charity (zakat) in the form of money, food and clothes, donated by fellow-villagers and successful migrants and redistributed by the mosque elder (pengurus mesjid).

Elderly Minangkabau in West Sumatra

65

Until recently, Jamain’s main source of material and moral support in old age was a neighbour, Siti. When illness forced Jamain to sell his house and plot of land several years ago, they were bought by Siti with the understanding that Jamain could continue occupying the house and working the land. Siti invariably sent food for the elderly man and cared for him when he was ill. Although there were no bonds of kinship between them, Siti felt pity for Jamain because he has no close relatives to whom he can turn. Her help was based on feelings of responsibility and moral obligation towards a fellow human being who is alone and miserable in old age. Since his sister’s death, Jamain has moved into her house – the ancestral house of his matrikin – as he is now the only remaining member of his samande. Neighbours provide him with a plateful of food each day. Jamain now has control over the small plot of family land, which will, however, revert to being property owned by the lineage after his death. With the failure of his only sister to produce offspring, Jamain’s matriline has become extinct (keluarga punah). The case of Jamain demonstrates how more extreme cases of isolation and vulnerability are the outcome of a series of failings and misfortunes over the life course. Jamain’s childlessness is directly due to the collapse of his marriages, which was doubtless influenced by his social and economic shortcomings according to Minangkabau standards. His siblings’ behaviour and Jamain’s own subsequent readiness to beg complete the picture, which, from a Minangkabau point of view, typifies the worst possibilities of ‘lost kinship’. We shall return to the latter expression below, as it carries potentially far-reaching implications for matrilineal social organisation among the Minangkabau. De facto childless elderly As several chapters in this volume show, an important consideration in the study of childless elderly are older people who are de facto childless, that is, where children do not contribute significant moral or material support for their parents. Whilst clearly relevant to the Minangkabau, de facto childlessness needs to be discussed carefully, owing to the major differences that exist between societies having bilateral kinship systems with nuclear families (like the Javanese described by Schröder-Butterfill and Marianti, Chapters 4 and 5, respectively, this volume) and societies with a matrilineal system and extended families (like the Minangkabau). Both the structural implications of such systems and their different responses to social change require attention.

66

Edi Indrizal

The web of matrilineal kinship frequently confounds the assumptions ordinarily made in the study of bilateral systems. On the one hand, elderly who have sons may none the less feel, because they have no daughters, that they are childless. The randomised survey we conducted in the community revealed some 23 per cent of elderly with no daughters. On the other hand, there are elderly without their own offspring who none the less feel that they do have children. As noted above, a woman with a sister who has children will usually consider her nephews and nieces as her own, and these children will normally consider duties and responsibilities towards their biological mother and all their aunts as identical, since they are still of the same samande family. The prevalence of labour migration can, none the less, create problems of de facto childlessness for women with daughters, as the following case-study shows. Case 3: Asnima Asnima, aged seventy-five, is the youngest of eight siblings. The last of her remaining sisters, who used to live next door, recently died. Asnima comes from a respectable family associated with the original founding of the village and is a descendant of a line of clan headmen (penghulu datuk); one of her sons is a present penghulu datuk. Asnima helped the guerrilla army fighting for Indonesian independence in the 1940s and receives a small veteran’s pension in recognition. When she was young, her family arranged her marriage to a man whom she never loved. From that marriage stem nine children, seven sons and two daughters. Her husband secretly took a second wife when their youngest child was still a baby and, since that time, Asnima has distanced herself completely from her husband, although legally they never divorced. All of Asnima’s children are married and living in rantau, that is, in their respective migration sites. The closest child, a son, lives about ten kilometres away. Both her daughters married men from different ethnic groups, in other words, men who are not Minangkabau. One married a man from Java, the other someone from Aceh (the northern tip of Sumatra). Her elder daughter has a successful, permanent job in Jakarta, and the other recently moved from Aceh to Padang, which is still a good three hours away. Naturally, these facts are a great source of concern to Asnima. She is worried that there will not be a female heir living in the village to take care of the family inheritance (saharato pusako) and burialgrounds (sapandam pakuburan) and to ensure the continuity of the

Elderly Minangkabau in West Sumatra

67

rumah gadang as the focal point of their lineage. For the time being, it is Asnima who spends most of her time looking after the family property when she is not visiting her children and grandchildren in rantau. She is financially secure in old age, because in addition to her pension her children regularly support her. She also still has control of rice-fields, which are worked by someone else on her behalf. None of this, however, can allay her fears about the long-term future of the family property. Although Asnima frequently visits her various children, she has never considered settling permanently in one of her children’s houses. She feels much more comfortable in Rao-Rao. As she puts it, ‘Living in our own homeland, in our own house, is much better than living in rantau, even if it is in our own child’s house.’ In any case, living with a son is not an option, as this would violate Minangkabau tradition and reflect badly on daughters. Asnima nowadays occupies the ancestral home on her own, although sometimes a young, unrelated woman called Masni sleeps in the same house so that the elderly woman is not alone. Masni, the daughter of a mosque guard who moved to Rao-Rao many years ago, helps Asnima with cooking and takes care of her when she is ill. Apart from being a source of practical support, Masni helps to stem the sense of loneliness induced by living alone in a huge house. If she had her own way, Asnima would raise her only granddaughter, Weni, because it will ultimately be Weni’s responsibility to continue the matriline. As it is, all she can do is visit her daughter Azah, Weni’s mother, who lives with her family in Padang, more often than any of her other children. A number of observations may be made on the basis of this casestudy. One is that the impact of migration works in contrary ways in matrilineal societies like the Minangkabau. On the one hand, as pointed out by Afrizal (2001), the tradition of migration continues to function as a major social guarantee of material support for elderly in the village. The development of modern infrastructure (for example, transport and advanced communication technology) makes much simpler the maintenance of relationships through visiting, communicating and transmitting support. The development and continuity of migration traditions among the youth in Minangkabau have not caused elderly who live in the village to lose their fundamental family networks. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the central importance of daughters to the continuity of descent lines and inheritance now poses problems that some families are finding very difficult to resolve. Asnima’s concern that her granddaughter will actually

68

Edi Indrizal

take up her responsibility and return to the rumah gadang in RaoRao is clearly genuine and reflects practical as well as psychological vulnerabilities experienced by the elderly in Minangkabau culture. Asnima is not alone in this problem: some 32 per cent of elderly do not have a child in the village, and it is increasingly uncertain whether many daughters living in rantau will eventually return to the village. Our research in Rao-Rao shows that to date traditional ancestral homes in Minangkabau continue to be occupied by their families. Some, like Asnima’s, at present look quiet since only the elderly occupy them without young women and men. The future of these rumah gadang is clearly in doubt. The conventional Minangkabau term keluarga punah, or ‘lost kinship’, acknowledges that the lack of a daughter to carry on the matriline in the village is not a new problem. In addition, living away from the community has given young people experience of nuclear family household arrangements. Some young families in the village now tend to build their own houses, often on ancestral land and thus very close to the original rumah gadang, and live in their own mother and child units with the husband resident with them. This tendency resembles in some respects neo-local household formation. Although nuclear in form, these arrangements still function within the wider norms of matrilineal family structure, since they continue to contribute to support networks as a samande family, whether resident in the village or not. In other words, kinship links via the wife, mother or daughter remain crucial. Here it is important to keep in mind that levels of moral and material support received by the elderly have always varied from one case to another. Some young men who leave for migration do not maintain any communication with their parents or families in their natal villages for a long time. If the elderly receive support from migrant children, this assistance will also vary from one family to another. Among children there will be those who give support routinely and in great quantity and those who provide very little. Some children visit frequently, some rarely. A common aphorism is that ‘Of all the children, one or maybe two will usually be hampa’, that is, unsuccessful or not inclined to care for their parents. Older people whose children have all or mostly left the village may spend some time visiting them in their migration sites, although the preference for their ancestral home, particularly for women, almost always leads them to return. Once frailty or ill-health makes some form of practical assistance necessary, the choice may end up being between two less than perfect solutions, for instance, accepting help from a non-relative, as in the

Elderly Minangkabau in West Sumatra

69

case of Asnima, or leaving the ancestral home to be with a daughter who has moved away. As will be discussed below, the economic success which has accrued to the community via inflows of support from young migrant labour has enabled the growth of a number of community institutions which assist poor older Minangkabau. First, however, we need to consider two other aspects of the matrilineal system which have an important bearing on the situation of the elderly and which may leave them de facto childless. One is the gender issue, specifically the factors that may isolate older men in a system in which property and status are transmitted through women. The second issue, which we have already encountered in the case of Jamain, is the implications of divorce for support networks. Minangkabau household formation, as already noted, is normally based on the wife’s household, focused on the prime ancestral house, the rumah gadang. Residence is therefore matrilocal, with men moving in with their wife’s family or establishing a household in a separate dwelling on the wife’s family property. Men do not thereby acquire rights of inheritance in this property; any rights they do have remain vested in their own ancestral home, with their mother, sisters and nieces. The set of dilemmas faced by elderly men without a wife, irrespective of whether they have children or not, may be illustrated through the examples of Nurman and Hamid. Cases 4 and 5: Nurman and Hamid Pak Nurman is a well-respected elderly man from Rao-Rao. For several decades he held the important position of mosque elder (pengurus mesjid). He married a woman from Rao-Rao who was distantly related to him and also from a reputable and wealthy family. The couple have no children, but Nurman has several nephews and nieces (kemenakan) via his older half-sister Fatimah, who have all become successful. After his wife died, he maintained cordial relations with his wife’s family and, unusually, was encouraged to remain living in the wife’s house. The elderly man nevertheless opted for the more customary solution of returning to his own ancestral home (rumah gadang), which is occupied by his sister and nieces. According to Minangkabau culture, it is his sister and her offspring who are now responsible for him. However, thanks to the high regard in which Nurman is held in the community, he continues to receive some support from his wife’s relatives, who would not ordinarily be expected to give it. As the most senior male in his matriline (mamak), Nurman enjoys

70

Edi Indrizal

respect, although in reality his position is weakening, partly due to his declining health and partly because his chief function of arranging good marriages for his kemenakan has long been discharged. Hamid, a man in his seventies, is at first glance in a more favourable position than Nurman. He has four sons in rantau and a daughter who lives in Rao-Rao. When his wife died, he first continued living with his daughter, who is married and has several children. However, the situation was delicate because fathers ultimately remain outsiders in the home of their children, who belong to their mothers’ lineage. Quarrels soon became frequent, and Hamid decided to return to his own ancestral home (rumah gadang). As he has no sisters, the rumah gadang is occupied by a distant matrilineal relative, who is also in charge of the family’s rice-fields. She provides him with food, and occasionally Hamid receives gifts from his children. Aware of the marginal position he occupies in the house he lives in, Hamid spends much of his time outside. If a man’s wife dies and the marriage is childless or if his relation with their children is not positive (which can often be the case where he has been largely absent on rantau), then there is little likelihood of continuing support from his wife’s family when the man grows old. Nurman is in this regard truly exceptional. If the marriage ended in divorce, he is similarly likely to be cut off from his wife’s family, and children’s first loyalty after parental divorce is invariably with their mother and mother’s kin (see also Gerrits 2002). The man in this situation has the option of returning to his sister’s household. Although his material needs may in this way be catered for adequately, his status is unlikely to be high unless his success in labour migration has given him a substantial reputation in the wider community. If lacking a strong reputation, a man may well prefer to live alone. A man’s well-being may be further vulnerable, however, where he has no sister or niece and his natal descent line faces extinction. These several issues are illustrated in the following case-study. Case 6: Abdul Abdul, aged seventy-eight, is native to Rao-Rao. Originally one of six children, all of his siblings died before they reached marriageable age. His grandmother had only one daughter, his mother, and no sisters. From the point of view of a matrilineal system, this means that Abdul’s matriline will be extinguished (keluarga punah).

Elderly Minangkabau in West Sumatra

71

Like other men in Rao-Rao, Abdul departed on labour migration in his youth. He spent time in Riau, Aceh and North Sumatra and returned to Rao-Rao only when he was quite old. Abdul was married three times. His first wife, who was from Rao-Rao, bore him a son; this son lives in Rao-Rao but has remained childless. Abdul spent most of the duration of his first marriage away on rantau. When his wife died, he did not return for her funeral, on account of the fact that transportation and communication were poor and news thus took a long time to get through. Soon after his first wife’s death, Abdul married another woman, Mutiara, also from Rao-Rao. They had two children, a son, who died in childhood, and a daughter called Nurul. Once again, Abdul departed on labour migration and rarely returned home for visits; according to Mutiara, he also rarely sent any letters or money. When in 1980 Abdul’s mother died, he again did not return for the funeral. In 1990 he decided to settle back in RaoRao for good. Initially he stayed in his wife’s house, where their daughter Nurul was also staying. However, their marriage quickly deteriorated. Mutiara complained that Abdul consistently neglected his family. After many quarrel, the couple divorced and Abdul had to move out. Meanwhile, Mutiara continues living in her rumah gadang with Nurul, who has eight children. The long history of neglecting his family and community responsibilities has left Abdul with a bad social reputation. Like other socially isolated men, he decided initially to live alone. For this purpose he built a small house on the land that his mother had left to him, as there were no sisters, aunts or nieces who could inherit the property. Abdul, however, has officially no right to pass this land on, as it can only be transmitted via the women in his matriline, of whom none are extant. He thus faces a double loss of face: that of living alone and of having no surviving matrilineal kin. Soon after divorcing his second wife, Abdul decided to do something at least about the first of these problems. He married Sasmi, a woman in her fifties from a village nearby. Like Abdul, she had been married before and has two sons and a daughter from previous marriages. A key motivation for Abdul’s marriage to Sasmi is his hope that she will take care of him in his old age; having further children is, of course, out of the question. Through his marriage he has also widened his family network; specifically, he has gained three stepchildren. Of late, Abdul has ceased to feel comfortable in his home in Rao-Rao. Although he has two children of his own, he has low expectations for support from his unsuccessful son and, given the

72

Edi Indrizal

fact that he has divorced his daughter’s mother, he cannot expect much help from Nurul, at least not as long as Mutiara is alive. He is therefore planning to move to Sasmi’s village and spend his dying days there, being cared for by his new wife. In order to be able to afford to do so, he intends to sell his land and house in Rao-Rao. Half of the money from the sale would go towards his and Sasmi’s new home, half to his son and daughter. Of course, according to Minangkabau tradition, the sale of communally owned family property is strongly disapproved of, and the passing on of wealth from a father to his children highly irregular. Yet, because Abdul belongs to a family that has gone extinct, if he does not sell the land he inherited from his mother, it will revert to more distantly related members of his matriline (saparuik or sasuku) and not benefit his offspring at all. The case of Abdul is a reminder that de facto childlessness refers not to reproductive failure, but to the absence of children, in this case, an absence of children of the right category: girl children able to inherit family property and carry on the line of descent by having girls of their own. These children, as we have noted, do not have to be daughters: they can be nieces in the matriline, that is, sisters’ daughters. Abdul has surviving children of his own, as well as stepchildren, but they cannot resolve his problem of a lack of sister’s children or the loss of family reputation which lineal discontinuity inevitably entails. Nor have his marriages resulted in lasting ties to any other ancestral property in the community, since his current wife comes from a different village and he has divorced his wife from Rao-Rao. The combination of long periods spent away from family and community, with consequent marital disruption and the absence of other ties to the community, leaves men like Abdul with no effective access to a later life in which older men, as is normally preferred, have around them a dense network of their own and their sisters’ children. Abdul faces a bundle of problems. Children should support him, but, because of the divorce, combined with the normal matrilineal residence pattern, his access to his daughter is effectively cut off. He cannot live with his son, who in any case is not successful. He lacks a sister and nieces, which adds the stigma of keluarga punah, as well as the practical dilemma that if he were to respect the wishes and customs of prominent Rao-Rao people – with whom his relations are not warm – he would face the loss of his family property to the lineage, rather than being able to benefit his children and secure a more amenable old age with his new wife.

Elderly Minangkabau in West Sumatra

73

There is a double, or even triple, negative symbolism to Abdul’s decision to sell the part of his mother’s family property that he controls. First, it is public admission of the end of his matriline. Secondly, he needs the capital to secure influence over the stepchildren, on whom he may perhaps need to depend. And, thirdly, he nonetheless feels obliged to give a portion of the value of the sale to his own children, even though they are at present unprepared to help him. Abdul feels responsible for his children and wants to provide for them, rather than allow land to go to the benefit of strangers. At least implicitly, there is some question here as to which set of children he may actually expect help from, should his current wife die before him. An alternative to this dilemma was pointed out in interview with a senior member of the community unrelated to Abdul: If only Abdul had a stronger feeling of loyalty to Rao-Rao, he would not think of selling his land, or moving to another village. He could instead share his property by giving it to the village. People would then not neglect him. At Idul Fitri there is financial support from the mosque, taken from zakat and given by many migrants. On Idul Adha there is also meat. Basically, people will not let elderly who have helped the community go without any support. That would be an embarrassment. If Abdul feels vulnerable in his old days, that is simply on account of his own unconfident feelings due to his youthful mistakes. Actually, he still has a chance to improve himself and go back to the community.

Certain cultural institutions or practices do exist in Rao-Rao at the level of the village (nagari) which assure the welfare of poor and elderly people in the village. One is the mosque, through which regular charitable donations (zakat) enjoined by Islamic law are distributed to the needy, especially around the time of Idul Fitri. The sum of money available for distribution is boosted significantly by charitable remittances from successful migrants (perantau). Their contributions have meant that all poor elderly people in Rao-Rao receive money at least once a year, in the range of Rp. 25,000 (about £2), depending on the economic situation and individual reputation and need. In addition, elderly people sometimes receive help directly and voluntarily from successful young people when they return home. For migrants, who are mostly traders, religious donations are a means of sharing benefits in socially approved ways and are believed to increase their own livelihood as given by God. The institutionalised role of charity in Islam is, of course, characteristic of many parts of the

74

Edi Indrizal

Muslim world. Its significance in Rao-Rao is perhaps indicated by the fact that other institutional arrangements for the elderly without children that are common elsewhere in Indonesia, notably adoption, do not occur in this community.

Conclusion The problem of elderly without children brings together five recognised social and psychological sources of vulnerability in Minangkabau society. These may be listed briefly as: first, the fact or perceived likelihood of living alone in poverty; secondly, the lack of a daughter or sister’s daughter; thirdly, the lack of a sister, compounded by an absence of reliable children; fourthly, the decision by all children of a family to migrate and remain permanently away from the community; and, fifthly, a failure to maintain social ties and observe accepted moral values, resulting in a bad social reputation. None of these characteristics are exclusively problems of childless older people, but there can be little doubt that not having children increases the likelihood of one or several of these sources of vulnerability affecting an older person. The vulnerability of childless older people is much more likely to be a social, rather than biologically induced, problem. Reproductive failure, when it occurs, tends to reflect difficulties experienced in customary arrangements of marriage and labour migration. De facto childlessness, defined here by the apparently permanent absence of children who have left the community or a failure to reproduce daughters or sister’s daughters crucial to the continuity of matrilineal descent groups, stands out as a social manifestation of central importance in Minangkabau culture.

Note The author would like to thank Philip Kreager and Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill for their detailed comments and editorial assistance. Thanks are also due to Professor Imran Manan (Universitas Negeri Padang) for his support and advice in the early phases of the research; and to Afrida (Universitas Andalas) and Vita Priantina Dewi (Universitas Indonesia) for many meaningful discussions of the data and comparison with other research sites. The author also gives particular thanks to Tengku Syawila Fithry, who has given much help in collecting the data and enriching the information on which this chapter is based; and to Ririn, who translated the draft into English. The research was made possible by a generous grant from the Wellcome Trust.

Elderly Minangkabau in West Sumatra

75

References Afrida, ‘Reinterpretasi Tanggung Jawab Sosial Terhadap Orang Tua dan Mamak Dalam Masyarakat Minangkabau’. Master’s thesis, Program Pascasarjana, Yogyakarta. 1998. Afrizal, ‘Hubungan Keluarga, Manajemen Kekayaan, Perubahan Sosial dan Kesejahteraan Lanjut Usia di Minangkabau Matrilinial Kontemporer’. In Sumber Daya Alam dan Jaminan Sosial, ed. F. von Benda-Beckmann, K. von Benda-Beckmann, J. Koning and Kamdani. Yogyakarta, 2001, pp. 398–410. Ananta, A., E.N. Anwar and D. Suzenti, ‘Some Economic Demographic Aspects of “Ageing” in Indonesia’. In Indonesia Assessment: Population and Human Resources, ed. G. Jones and T. Hull. Canberra and Singapore. 1997, pp. 181–203. Biro Pusat Statistik, Penduduk Sumatera Barat: Hasil Sensus Penduduk 1980. Jakarta, 1982. –––––, Penduduk Sumatera Barat: Hasil Survei Penduduk Antar Sensus 1985. Jakarta, 1987. –––––, Penduduk Indonesia: Hasil Sensus Penduduk 1990. Jakarta, 1992a. –––––, Penduduk Sumatera Barat: Hasil Sensus Penduduk 1990. Jakarta, 1992b. –––––, Penduduk Indonesia: Hasil Sensus Penduduk 2000. Jakarta, 2001. –––––, Penduduk Sumatera Barat: Hasil Sensus Penduduk 2000. Jakarta, 2002. Chen, A.J. and G.W. Jones, Ageing in ASEAN: Its Socio-economic Consequences. Singapore, 1989. Erwin, ‘Dinamika Pengorganisasian Jaminan Sosial dalam Keluarga pada Masyarakat Petani di Pedesaan Minangkabau: Suatu Kasus Masyarakat Desa Sungai Tanang, Kabupaten Agam’. In Sumber Daya Alam dan Jaminan Sosial, ed. F. von Benda-Beckmann, K. von BendaBeckmann, J. Koning and Kamdani. Yogyakarta, 2001, pp. 379-397. Gerrits, T., ‘Infertility and Matrilineality: The Exceptional Case of the Macua of Mozambique’. In Infertility Around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies, ed. M. Inhorn and F. van Balen. Berkeley, 2002, pp. 233–246. Hull, T.H. and Tukiran, ‘Regional Variations in the Prevalence of Childlessness in Indonesia’. Indonesian Journal of Geography 6, no. 32 (1976): 1–25. Iskandar, M., ‘Health and Mortality’. In Indonesia Assessment: Population and Human Resources, ed. G. Jones and T. Hull, Canberra and Singapore, 1997, pp. 205–231. Kato, T., Matriliny and Migration: Evolving Minangkabau Traditions in Indonesia. Ithaca, 1982. Kinsella, K. and C.M. Taeuber, An Aging World II. US Bureau of the Census, International Population Reports P25/92–3, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC., 1992. Millah, S., ‘Lansia, Tantangan Baru Kependudukan Indonesia’. Harian Media Indonesia, 27 May 2002: 9.

76

Edi Indrizal

Nag, M., B. White and R.C. Peet, ‘An Anthropological Approach to the Study of the Economic Value of Children in Java and Nepal’. In Rural Household Studies in Asia, ed. H. Binswanger. Singapore, 1980, pp. 248–288. Naim, M., Merantau: Pola Migrasi Suku Minangkabau. Yogyakarta, 1984. Niehof, A. and F. Lubis, ed., Two is Enough: Family Planning in Indonesia Under the New Order (1968–1998). Leiden, 2003. Saleh, A.A., Jaminan Sosial dalam Keluarga Minangkabau di Perkotaan. Research Reports of the Pusat Studi Pengembangan Keluarga, Universitas Andalas, Padang, 1992. Schröder-Butterfill, E., ‘Ageing in Indonesia: A Socio-Demographic Approach’. DPhil. thesis, Oxford University, 2002. Singarimbun, M., Penduduk dan Perubahan. Yogyakarta, 1996. Taifur, W.D., ‘Analysis of Elderly Work Force in Sumatra’. In Penduduk Lanjut Usia di Sumatra, ed. Elfindri, W.D. Taifur and Azleri, Padang, 1995, pp. 1–11. van Reenen, J., Central Pillars of the House: Sisters, Wives and Mothers in a Rural Community in Minangkabau, West Sumatra. Leiden, 1996. von Benda-Beckmann, F., Property in Social Continuity: Continuity and Change in the Maintenance of Property Relationships through Time in Minangkabau, West Sumatra. The Hague, 1979. White, B., ‘Production and Reproduction in a Javanese Village’. Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, New York, 1973.

CHAPTER 3

‘THEY DON’T NEED IT, AND I CAN’T GIVE IT’: FILIAL SUPPORT IN SOUTH INDIA Penny Vera-Sanso

C

entral to the Indian system of old-age support is the norm that sons support their parents; that is, they provide financial and practical support for their elderly parents. This norm is undisputed in popular discourse, is enshrined in legislation and gives rise to a welfare system that only provides non-contributory oldage pensions to destitute people without surviving adult sons. In practice, however, there is considerable variation in the extent of economic and practical support that parents receive from sons. Indeed, it is not uncommon for sons to ask their elderly parents for periodic financial help. In terms of the norm of old-age support, many parents are effectively childless: they receive negligible or no financial and practical support from sons or daughters. For others, practical and economic support is at best intermittent. My objective is to explain why this lack of congruence between norm and practice has not unseated the norm’s persistence. I shall argue that the reason why it has not done so can be explained, first, by the norm’s underlying assumptions that elderly people need support and sons are able to provide it and, secondly, by ambiguities about what constitutes elderly, need, support and ability to provide. The extent to which elderly people need support and sons are able to provide it varies not only by class or caste but also by economic location, that is, by the way people of

78

Penny Vera-Sanso

different ages, genders and abilities are included (or excluded) from the specificities of their local economies.1 Drawing on anthropological field research undertaken in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, I argue that it is divergent concepts of persons and their needs, rights and obligations as mediated by economic location which largely determine whether and to what degree elderly parents receive economic support from their sons. This chapter is divided into three main sections. The first looks at the provision of old-age support in South Asia. It begins with an acknowledgement that there are few alternatives to filial support. The main focus is on accounts claiming that parents receive support from sons in old age. These are scrutinised for assumptions regarding the kinds of relations that occur within households and between elderly parents and adult sons. Evidence from studies of nutritional status and mortality rates supports the contention that there is no easy association between having sons, filial support and older people’s welfare and survival. Taken together, sections two and three lay out the grounds for the claim that sons commonly make in relation to their parents’ need for support, that is, ‘they don’t need it, and I can’t give it’. Section two focuses on the slippage between the norm of filial support and the evidence that elderly people may not be receiving the levels of support the norm implies. It examines a number of local concepts regarding persons and their needs, rights and obligations, in order to understand how these concepts, as mediated by economic location, determine whether and to what degree elderly people receive economic and practical support from their sons. Specifically, this section looks at concepts of masculinity, independent households, parental need and the need for privacy before contesting oversimplified assertions regarding the relationship of economic status and filial support. It argues that many parents receive no or intermittent support from their sons and that in relation to the norm of filial support these parents could be described as ‘effectively childless’ or ‘intermittently childless’, respectively. Section three, entitled ‘We Look After Our Families’, argues that a man’s first responsibility is to his conjugal family. His duties to his parents are only secondary. Rising longevity and post-independence economic and social policy have greatly expanded demands on household resources. This increases the likelihood that filial support for elderly parents will be less readily forthcoming, more intermittent or even negligible. The chapter’s conclusion argues that from a theoretical perspective, in relation to filial support in old age, there is no easy distinction between people who have sons and people who do not.

Filial Support in South India

79

Old-Age Support in South Asia Old-age support in South Asia is, and always has been, predominantly the responsibility of sons. Although all children are considered indebted to their parents for giving them life and bringing them up, it is only sons who are expected to repay that debt. A daughter’s debt is discharged on her wedding day, because, once a woman marries, her labour and hence her income belong not to herself but to her husband. Consequently couples without sons may try to adopt one, usually a relative or a daughter’s prospective husband. This strategy to secure economic or practical support in old age is only viable where there is something, usually property, to inherit and where there are several potential heirs.2 Other than this, support is extremely limited both for elderly people without sons and for those whose sons are unwilling or unable to provide for them. The alternatives to filial support are regionally specific, are difficult to secure and may not meet basic medical and nutritional needs. Support from relatives other than sons is generally very rare throughout South Asia, although it may be slightly more forthcoming in India compared with Bangladesh, and in south India compared with north India (Cain 1988; Dreze 1990; Dharmalingam 1994; Panda 1998). Nor is its impact on welfare in old age significant (Caldwell et al. 1988; Rahman 1999). Old-age homes are rare and fall mainly into two categories: first, charitable institutions, the majority of which are located in south India and cater for the Christian minority (James 1994); secondly, private homes where emigrant professionals can send their parents. State provision does not provide a realistic alternative to support from sons. State non-contributory pensions for the elderly are only made available to impoverished people over sixty years old without a surviving adult son. Not only are these pensions notoriously difficult to secure, even when individuals meet the state’s criteria for entitlement (Prasad 1995), but government officials readily acknowledge that it is not possible to survive on the pension alone. In summary, for the vast majority of people who are unable to work or fund themselves in old age, viable alternatives to a son’s support do not exist. The lack of alternatives to filial support, combined with concerns about the impact of post-colonial economic and social changes, has stimulated a number of surveys of older people’s residential patterns in an attempt to chart the persistence of the ‘traditional’ system of old-age support. The surveys seem to suggest that in relative – rather than absolute – terms few elderly

80

Penny Vera-Sanso

people live alone, with the percentages found to be varying between zero and 35 per cent (Vatuk 1982a; Dreze 1990). It has been suggested that this wide variation could reflect a regional difference between north and south India (Vatuk 1982a). It is more likely that inconsistencies regarding definitions of ‘old’ and of household boundaries make residential surveys incomparable. More problematic still are assumptions regarding older people’s access to household and family resources. The first difficulty faced by people researching ageing and oldage support is determining who to research, that is, who to class as ‘elderly’. In the case of the residential surveys cited above, the lower age limit for the category of ‘elderly’ varied considerably, ranging between age forty-five and over sixty. To some extent this wide range reflects the uncertainties of gathering data from people who, while not knowing their exact year of birth, intentionally underestimate their age. This tendency is particularly prevalent among manual labourers wishing to present themselves as more youthful and hard-working than their real age might imply. More significant than uncertainties regarding chronological age is the fact that ageing is an uneven process. In objective terms the speed and impact of the ageing process on an individual’s physical capacities will vary according to their life history, social status and access to material resources. Thus, for example, the ageing process is much faster and more debilitating for landless labourers forced to endure arduous working conditions, periodic undernutrition, chronic malnutrition and inadequate levels of medical care than it is for big landowners. The latter are generally healthier and better able to afford medication and medical equipment as well as labour and labour-saving devices to sustain their capacities in later life. Consequently, surveys taking age forty-five as the starting-point for investigating old-age support are less likely to miss the objective level of need of particularly poor sections of the population than are ones beginning at age over sixty. At the other extreme, surveys which identify the ‘elderly’ as those aged over sixty are assuming that which should be investigated, namely, older people’s capacities and need for support. This is the crux of the problem in any investigation of old age. The issue is not just one of deciding who should be categorised as ‘elderly’, but of identifying who is and who is not categorised as such, and in what contexts. It is in relation to old-age support that the category of ‘elderly’ is most contested within families and, as will be argued below, this contestation varies by gender and economic location. In regard to this chapter, the term ‘elderly’ is used not just to signify the outcome of the ageing

Filial Support in South India

81

process – a final stage of frailty, disability or dependence. Rather, it is shorthand for the phrase ‘ageing and elderly people’, that is, people who are in some way or in some contexts affected by the ageing process. It refers to people, irrespective of chronological age, who are – or who are considered by themselves or by others to be – ageing or aged. The remaining methodological problems identified above, that is defining household boundaries, assessing access to household resources and identifying inter-household resource flows, means that there can be no easy correlation between residential patterns and old-age support. The view that there might be is based on a number of assumptions regarding intergenerational and household relations: first, that elderly people need support; secondly, that it is younger adults who are doing the supporting; thirdly, that filially related families residing on the same piece of property or sharing one dwelling ‘live together’; and, fourthly, that it is parents who ‘live with’ sons rather than the reverse. The phrasing that residential surveys employ, that elderly people ‘live with’ their married sons, is both inaccurate and misleading. It disregards the fact that South Asians differentiate between households, which comprise those who eat together, and families, which include people who may or may not reside on the same property. Tamils, for instance, distinguish between those who are vittle, literally ‘in the house’, and those who are sondakarangal, that is, ‘our people’. The former refers specifically to those who eat together. The reference group for sondakarangal can vary considerably in size depending on the subject under discussion: it can range from family members who live on the same premises but eat separately right through to people from the same caste, many of whom will not be genealogically related. Surveys failing to distinguish between households and families give the misleading impression that filial support for the elderly is more widespread than it is.3 The phrasing that elderly people ‘live with’ married sons is inaccurate and misleading on a further count. In most South Asian families it is not parents who live with married sons but married sons who live with their parents, either in their parents’ household or as separate households in adjacent rooms or dwellings located on their parents’ property. In many instances, people aged over sixty who have married sons living with them will be supporting unmarried sons and daughters, as well as providing practical and financial assistance for relatively recently married sons and their families (Caldwell et al. 1988; Vatuk 1990; Vera-Sanso 1999). Nor is there any guarantee that married sons

82

Penny Vera-Sanso

will remain with their parents into what is known in gerontological literature as ‘old-old’ age or after the various forms of assistance can no longer be provided by parents. Indeed, there is some evidence that the likelihood of a man or woman ‘living with’ a married son declines after the age of seventy and with the loss of a spouse (Panda 1998). The assumptions of old-age dependency and filial support do not reflect the extent to which married sons are reliant on the downward resource flows from ageing parents that occur in practice. Rather than investigating the actual extent of old-age support, surveys of residential patterns rely on the assumption that if a family ‘lives together’ all members are equally provided for. Yet we know from research on gender and household relations that the consumption of household resources can be highly unequal (Papanek 1990). We also know that, despite local definitions of what constitutes a household, in practice a household’s boundaries can be context-dependent and highly contested (Vatuk 1989; Vera-Sanso 1997). For example, in urban and rural Tamil Nadu, not all people who eat together have equal rights to all household resources, and the head of household and his wife may not agree that all the people who actually eat in their household have the right to do so without making a visible financial or practical contribution to the household (Vera-Sanso 1997). Some household members may be classed as guests with the more tenuous right of hospitality. This means that, in order to grasp the degree of security which old-age support provides for older people, we need to investigate not only the extent of support elderly people receive within households but also the terms under which it is given. The failure to investigate the issue of resource flows means that, even when residential surveys make the distinction between households and families, that is, between consumption units and co-resident units, respectively, they still have difficulty capturing the full extent of old-age support and the security it provides. This is because they cannot differentiate between elderly people who live next door to their sons and receive adequate support, inadequate but systematic support, conditional support or no support whatsoever (see also Vatuk 1982b; Dreze 1990). Gathering accurate data on intra-household and inter-household resource flows is notoriously difficult, irrespective of research methodologies. A potential alternative is provided by the study of nutritional status and mortality rates. However, studies of correlations of mortality, fertility and residential patterns which begin with the assumption that elderly parents receive adequate

Filial Support in South India

83

access to household resources also tend to assume that it is largely only those people who do not have surviving adult sons who risk destitution and increased mortality. Rather than examining the significance of filial support for older people’s welfare and survival, this approach focuses on the mortality rates and class mobility of people without surviving adult sons (see, for example, Cain 1988). More recent studies, which do not assume a positive relationship between old-age support and parental welfare and survival, provide a more nuanced picture of filial support. For instance, Rahman’s (1999) longitudinal study in Bangladesh finds that having one son does not significantly improve parental survival but having two does. This is because two sons ‘increase the options for the elderly’ by providing a margin for manoeuvre where one son is unreliable or has a low income (Rahman 1999: 232). Gillespie and McNeill’s seminal village-based study in Tamil Nadu contrasts the anthropometric measures of men and women aged between twenty and forty-nine with those aged over sixty. They found that the latter’s ‘nutritional status is considerably worse than that of younger adults’ (Gillespie and McNeill 1992: 98). The authors attribute this to older people’s much lower energy intake, which could in turn be due to ‘the very common physical handicaps and/or to a low priority of this age group for the household food resources’ (1992: 99). This study found that in the over-sixty age group men and women from wealthier households were disproportionately represented compared with other socio-economic groups and that a higher proportion of men than women survive beyond their sixtieth birthday.4 Differential survival rates between men and women, which vary across the subcontinent and between classes, undermine arguments for the importance of filial support for parental survival. Cain (1988: 29), for example, presents male to female ratios that suggest that turning age sixty significantly lowers women’s chances of survival but not men’s. In a context where men marry women several years younger than themselves this declining ratio of women to men after the age of sixty supports the view that a spouse may be more significant for older people’s survival – irrespective of gender – than filial support (Panda 1998; Rahman 1999). This work on mortality highlights a fundamental problem with surveys of parental residence: they cannot reveal how many parents have not survived and how much excess mortality is attributable to filial neglect – a neglect which may equally occur in contexts where parents live with, adjacent to or at a distance from their sons. The mismatch between the evidence regarding older people’s welfare and survival and the norm that sons provide economic

84

Penny Vera-Sanso

and practical support for their elderly parents suggests that filial relations are much more complex and contingent than is generally acknowledged. Co-residence with a married son, whether within the same household or living adjacently, provides no certainty that parents will receive the level of support that the norm of filial support would imply. Part of the difficulty in understanding the complexity and contingency of filial relations lies in common assumptions regarding ageing and dependency and regarding intergenerational and household relations. This section has tried to expose a number of assumptions embedded in research which finds the traditional system of filial support unproblematic and persistent. I have argued that we cannot assume that the category of ‘elderly’ is fixed; it is more likely to be contextually variable and contested. Nor can we assume that rights to household and family resources are equal, unconditional, or uncontested, or that resource flows from ageing and elderly people to married sons are not more significant than upward transfers.

The Slippage between Norm and Practice In order to explain the apparent slippage between the norm of filial support and evidence that elderly people may not be receiving the levels of support the norm implies, I examine concepts of persons and their needs, rights and obligations that shape filial relations. This discussion draws on two extended periods of residential fieldwork I undertook in urban and rural Tamil Nadu. The first period of sixteen months was undertaken between 1990 and 1992 and involved the investigation of 120 households living in squatter settlements, municipal tenements and governmentallotted plots in Chennai, formerly Madras. These informants were either low-caste or scheduled caste, and the latter, formerly known as ‘untouchables’, comprised 17 per cent of the sample. The overwhelming majority of informants worked in the informal sector. The second period of research was undertaken in the twelve months between 1999 and 2000 and examined intergenerational relations in a wide range of classes and castes in Chennai and urban and rural western Tamil Nadu. The main focus in the rural setting was intergenerational relations within two Chakkliyar castes resident in two villages. These castes, the Arundhadhyar and the Mathari – traditionally drummers and night-soil sweepers – occupy the lowest rung of the scheduledcaste ladder. Now they are overwhelmingly landless labourers,

Filial Support in South India

85

several of whom are or were bonded. A few are sweepers. Following residential surveys, research was primarily based on informal interviews and conversation as well as casual observation of interaction between generations. In both periods of research, informants included not only elderly people but also their families, relatives and neighbours. Most informants were visited on a number of occasions. On the basis of this research it is clear that, while old-age support is strongly conditioned by economic factors, they do not by themselves determine the nature, extent and timing of support. Rather, it is conceptual frameworks regarding family boundaries and the relative needs of specific identities that determine the impact of economic factors on old-age support. The South Asian domestic cycle is critical to the system of filial support, but rather than ensuring economic and practical support for older parents – as is generally assumed – the domestic cycle facilitates the slippage between the norm of filial support and the support, or lack of support, that occurs in practice. Central to understanding the cycle’s significance for old-age support and household formation is the recognition that family members do not necessarily see the ‘normal’ family trajectory from the same perspective. They do not do so because there are three co-existent trajectories, all of which are equally ‘traditional’: the nuclear–joint trajectory, the nuclear–joint–nuclear trajectory (see also Caldwell et al. 1988) and the nuclear–jointnuclear–joint trajectory.5 The latter occurs where a son moves out of his natal family some time after marriage, and after a period as the head of a nuclear household, either returns with his marital family to his parents’ household or has them join him. Three concepts of need determine which trajectory each son will follow after marriage: first, that men need to be financially independent; secondly, that sons are obliged to support their parents but only when the parents need it; and, thirdly, that young couples need privacy. These needs are open to interpretation and contestation. When is a man financially independent? How much support do parents need at any particular time? Is there enough room for privacy? It is this indeterminacy that underlies the slippage between the norm of filial support and what happens in practice. The following sections discuss these concepts in turn. Masculinity and independent households The first need arises out of the view that people are accountable to and must comply with the wishes of those on whom they are dependent. Hence adult masculinity is predicated on being the head of a financially independent household. In the Tamil idiom,

86

Penny Vera-Sanso

in order to have a life (varkkai) a man must stand on his own feet; that is, he must be financially independent in order to be selfdetermining (Vera-Sanso 2000). This is the pressure which promotes the move from joint household to nuclear household, from joint budgeting and consumption to separate budgeting and consumption. The split can be initiated by either a married son or his parents. As most sons marry when their parents are still self-supporting, it is the son’s wish for self-determination which lies at the heart of separate budgeting in the vast majority of families. The timing of son-initiated splits varies from family to family. The availability of separate and affordable premises, the need for parental help during the early part of a marriage, especially in relation to the protection and semi-seclusion of young wives, and the need to establish livelihoods are the main factors determining when sons will initiate a separation.6 There is little that parents can do to prevent sons setting up independent households. Recognising the need to maintain good relations with sons and their families in order to safeguard the possibility of filial support in the future, self-supporting parents usually consent when a son seeks permission to form a nuclear household. The difficulty lies with disabled parents who are not entirely self-supporting. These parents feel forced to refuse their son’s request for separation, despite knowing that it is only a matter of time before the son or his wife provoke a complete breakdown in filial relations. Unless these parents have other sons who come forward to support them, they will be effectively childless in terms of the norm of filial support: that is, they will receive no practical or financial help in old age. In a minority of families, parents initiate the split but only do so when they consider a son slow to take on the financial responsibilities of married life. It is common practice for parents to continue paying for basic household expenses even after a son’s marriage and for the latter to keep a significant portion of his income for his own and his conjugal family’s use (see also Vatuk 1990 on north India). Unable to force sons to work or to hand over their earnings to contribute to household expenses – a demand which would demean a father – parents’ only leverage is to initiate separate budgeting. As it is common for each married son to remain in his parents’ household for a period of time, parent-initiated splits risk the possibility that sons will refuse filial support in old age if they feel prematurely or unjustifiably forced out of the natal household. Thus, unless parents are entirely dependent at or soon after a son’s marriage, most sons will want to set up independent homes. For parents, all separations carry the risk that sons will not support them

Filial Support in South India

87

in old age, but these risks are significantly heightened where parents attempt to prevent separations or initiate the split themselves. The discourse predicating masculinity on financial independence not only propels young married men out of the joint family but makes elderly men and their wives ambivalent about being incorporated into their sons’ households. The romantic ideal of the joint household is one where the elderly are surrounded by the love and respect of married sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren, all of whom are engaged in compensating for the suffering that parents, parents-in-law and grandparents endured in giving life to and bringing up successive generations (see also Vatuk 1990; Lamb 2000). The primary expression of a son’s (and daughter-in-law’s) affection and willingness to care for ageing parents is the prompt and solicitous service of food. It is through the service of food that elderly parents are made to feel welcome or unwelcome in their children’s homes. Yet being financially dependent on another person, expressed in terms of ‘who is feeding whom’, is a vulnerable position. It necessitates a degree of subservience and acquiescence, an avoidance of conflict for fear of damaging or even breaking the relationship. Given the highly personalised nature of most economic exchanges, it is in the giving and receiving of financial support, whether it be food, loans or wages, that people experience gender, age, caste and class hierarchies on a daily basis (Marriott 1976; Vera-Sanso 1994). In this way, it is not only that age hierarchies become inverted for the dependent old, although in theory they should not, but also that men experience a significant loss of masculine status. In better-off joint households, where informants tend to be more guarded about family reputation, old men admit with a wry smile that ‘when you stop earning nobody listens to you’ (see also Caldwell et al. 1988). Several studies have shown that with this inversion of domestic hierarchy can come not only a greater degree of humiliation but also of maltreatment (Mahajan 1992; Dharmalingam 1994; Vera-Sanso 1999). A corollary of the association between manhood and financial independence is that households are expected to be financially independent. While few households in South Asia do not rely on a network of support – which belies the claim to independence – the household’s status and that of its head are dependent on appearing economically autonomous. In these circumstances all economic transfers, from whatever source, which fall outside what is demanded at ritual and life-cycle events (such as marriage, female maturation, retirement) are not seen as constituting

88

Penny Vera-Sanso

economic support but are construed as loans, gifts or earnings.7 It is not just in the interest of the recipient person and household that economic transfers are not defined as support. For the donors such a definition would expose them to expectations of further transfers. In the squatter settlements and municipal tenements of Chennai, for instance, an older person in need of some financial help is more likely to be lent a piece of jewellery or some other household item to pawn than to be given food or money. These ‘independent’ households maintain a strict balance of reciprocal relations, even where households are filially linked. In north India, for example, ‘if a married son and his father live separately (nyare), they will rarely help each other to cultivate, though one may be found to lease in the other’s land on “standard” contractual terms, or even to hire his labour at the “going wage”’ (Dreze 1990: 97; see also Caldwell et al. 1988 on south India). Similarly, where a son who does not live in the same household cultivates land for his mother’s support, the produce she receives is equal to what a landowner would receive from a sharecropper. It is not only in the formal arrangements landed families make around the exchange of land, labour and their products, where either party can be replaced by someone outside the family, that the concept of independent households can be seen to operate. It can also be seen among landless scheduled caste people in rural Tamil Nadu, who generally own the plots on which their homes are built, and among people living in Chennai’s squatter settlements and government-allotted plots. They exchange their obligation of filial support for the right to inherit; sons discharge their obligations to support parents by forgoing their share of the parental home in favour of a brother or sister, or may reject all obligation to support parents on the grounds that their parents have nothing they wish to inherit. These intergenerational exchanges not only underscore the extent to which filially related households are seen as separate and properly self-provisioning but also reveal how similar concepts manifest themselves in different classes. The expectation of financial independence means that parents are not deemed by sons to require support until they are too sick or old to support themselves. Where possible, impoverished older people attempt to reconfigure their work to fit their declining physical capacities (Dharmalingam 1994; Vera-Sanso 2001). Urban areas tend to provide greater scope to do so than do rural areas. People working in the informal service sector, such as domestic workers, hawkers or snack-makers, can reduce the hours they work or the distances they travel. Unable to do heavy manual labour, men can look for work as night-watchmen. This

Filial Support in South India

89

move to less intensive labour disproportionately reduces incomes. Hawkers, for example, switch from buying from wholesalers to buying from retailers and from selling in markets or around middle-class neighbourhoods to trading in their own, low-income neighbourhoods (Vera-Sanso 1995). Opportunities in rural areas tend to be less consistent. In richer villages there may be some scope for service work (such as cleaning toilets) or begging; in poorer ones there are no such opportunities (Vera-Sanso 2001). The majority of ageing landless labourers are forced to continue taking on casual work in the fields. However, their inability to work fast or carry heavy loads means they are only offered work during labour shortages (see also Kapadia 1995). Additionally, their need to recuperate from a day of work prevents them from taking full advantage of periods of high labour demand. For the vast majority of elderly landless labourers work is at best intermittent. The view that adult masculinity necessitates independence encourages the move from joint to nuclear households, while placing barriers to a subsequent move from nuclear to joint households. The corollary, that households should be independent, requires elderly parents to remain self-supporting for as long as they are able to do so. In short, expectations of, or perhaps more accurately pressures towards, household independence facilitate the slippage between the norm of filial support and actual practice by adding a sub-clause: sons should support parents in old age but only when parents need support. Because parents have no means of compelling sons unwilling to support them and because sons are expected to come forward, unbidden, at the appropriate moment, parents receive support only when sons deem parents to be in need of it – not when parents feel it is needed – and only to the extent that sons deem it necessary (see also Dreze 1990). Combined with the risks to filial relations that the process of household separation poses, this forces parents to support themselves until much later in life than the norm of filial support would at first glance seem to require. Parental need In India the ageing process is thought to be one of declining sensual appetites (Vatuk 1990). This process, which is linked to lifestage rather than chronological age, is one of cooling and drying – a process considered both inherent in the body and requiring self-discipline (Lamb 2000). In Tamil Nadu, for instance, the elderly are described as having had their life, vaalkai mudinchi pochu (literally, ‘life, having finished, has gone’). What is meant by

90

Penny Vera-Sanso

this phrase is that older people have enjoyed the pleasures of life, pleasures that are considered to be the prerogative of younger people, and, that period being over, older people are expected to turn to a simpler way of life without the luxuries of youth. Starting from a period shortly after their first son’s marriage or daughter’s maturation, men and women begin to move away from styles of dressing which draw attention to the sexed body. Men and women gradually exchange bright, bold or intricately designed clothing for more simple styles and neutral colours and shoes and bodily adornments, such as jewellery and flowers, are discarded or simplified. They are no longer deemed to require privacy, as relations between husband and wife are expected to simulate those between brother and sister once their children begin to marry. Similarly their need for physical comfort and entertainment is also expected to decline below the needs of younger people. Exactly what older people forgo depends on social status. In part this is because what constitutes a young person’s luxury amongst impoverished classes, such as beds, toothpaste and hair oil, is considered a basic necessity for others; in part it is because younger people’s right to experience the pleasures of life requires that resources are made available for them to do so. Thus, in rural areas, scheduled caste people consider toothpaste and toothbrushes a young person’s luxury which older people will not use in case their daughters-in-law make disparaging comments about their use. Except among the wealthy, new saris are the preserve of younger women, older women wear cast-offs from patrons, employers, daughters and daughters-in-law or, in the case of the impoverished scheduled castes, second-hand clothes bought in the market-place. This class-based and age-based variation in need also extends to medical treatment. While most families must ‘ration’ medical treatment, it is noticeable that in the poorer sections of society older people are expected to endure ill-health with no treatment or less treatment than is expected for younger people. Similarly, older people are expected to control their appetite for food, in terms of both quantity and flavour, a practice which the wealthy also follow. It is this expectation that may partly explain Gillespie and McNeill’s (1992: 98) finding that even in better-off households the nutritional status of people aged sixty and over is ‘considerably worse’ than that of younger people. Thus, older parents are expected to have few needs, mainly focused around the need for a small quantity of food per day, although what counts as a need will vary by class. Consequently, once parents’ duties to their children are met, that is, after all their children are settled in marriage and are self-supporting,

Filial Support in South India

91

parents, no matter what their chronological age, are considered to have limited financial needs, which in the case of the poor are considered by sons to be readily met by very small incomes or pensions. The fact that parental need relates to lifestage and not chronological age is significant. A parent whose children are married may be classed as ‘old’ (vaiyasu in Tamil) in relation to needs while not being classed as ‘old’ in other contexts. In the context of need for filial support the issue revolves around parents’ capacity to support themselves. ‘Old’ is seen in relation to an activity: for example, too old to do housework, too old to undertake or secure work of an appropriate status. For many government and organised-sector employees, ‘too old to work’ is deemed to be the age of official retirement, usually between age fifty-eight and sixty. For people working in family businesses, the informal sector or as agricultural labourers, however, there is no equivalent cut-off at which they can be deemed to be ‘too old to work’. In practice there is little agreement between parents and sons as to when the former have reached that stage. Among the landed and those engaged in family businesses, sons may consider this point as arriving earlier than do fathers, but among those working in the informal sector or as agricultural labourers sons may only regard their parents as ‘too old to work’ when they are consistently refused work during periods of high labour demand. This is frequently long after parents consider they should no longer be required to work.8 Thus, whether a parent is deemed by sons to be in need of financial or practical support rests on concepts of need relating to age and gender as mediated by economic location. Generally only two categories are deemed to be unequivocally in need of financial support. The first consists of those for whom work is not parrakkam (literally, ‘habit’), that is, those who are not habituated to work, such as those women and disabled people who have never worked. The second comprises people whose sons deem them to be too old or to have become too disabled to work. Excepted from these two categories are those who receive a pension or have other sources of independent income, because their incomes are generally assumed to meet their reduced needs. In terms of practical support, men – who are by definition unable to cook or do their own washing – are more likely to be deemed in need of practical support than are women (see Vera-Sanso 1994). The latter are considered able to cook and clean and therefore not in need of a daughter-in-law’s help unless they are very frail or disabled. However, where practical support is onerous, as in cases of

92

Penny Vera-Sanso

old-age incontinence or stroke-induced paralysis, many parents fear and experience ill-treatment, neglect and premature death (see also Vatuk 1990). Consequently, the vast majority of impoverished people in urban and rural Tamil Nadu at best only receive intermittent financial or practical support when work is scarce or during longer illnesses. As filial support is predicated on perceived parental need, sons may take the position that parental income – no matter what its source or scale – obviates their duty to support their parents. Thus the sons of elderly landless scheduled caste people, who have the opportunity to beg from landed high-caste families, consider themselves no more obligated to support their parents than do the sons of wealthy people. While wealthy parents may agree with this view, parents from the scheduled castes will generally express another view: they consider their sons to be flouting the norm of filial support. Even those receiving intermittent support from sons concur with the latter view. Oscillating between periods of selfsupport and dependence or circulating between the households of a number of sons, they claim they are being made to feel like beggars and that this is a tactic used by younger people to encourage parents to be self-supporting. The most common complaint is that food is not offered when they are hungry and occasionally it is not offered at all – they are being forced to ask for food. As food is the key marker of filial support, this is seen by parents as a rebuttal of filial obligation. To avoid humiliation parents turn to other potential sources of food: for example by visiting another son or daughter as guests or by returning to self-support as soon as work becomes available. While this humiliation can be meted out to anyone irrespective of gender or marital status, widows and widowers experience it more frequently than married people and widows more often than widowers. This is because women are generally ten to fifteen years younger than their husbands, so couples are more likely to be self-supporting and wives are more likely to outlive husbands than the reverse.9 While many parents may consider their case for support indisputable, it is up to their sons, not themselves, to determine whether they need support, when and how much. It is this indeterminacy around parental need and ability to be self-supporting that allows sons to assert that they uphold the norm of filial support while not supporting their parents in practice: it allows them to claim ‘they don’t need it’. The need for privacy The combination of these concepts regarding men’s need for an independent household, the needs appropriate to old age and the

Filial Support in South India

93

contingent nature of filial duty determines whether sons remain in the joint household or initiate the move to independent households. However, it is the need for privacy – the requirement that young couples have a separate space in which to sleep – that determines how many sons, if any, remain on the same property as their parents. Initially this space is for sleeping, but, as most young people pursue the nuclear–joint–nuclear cycle, they must also be able to set up independent households in the space; that is, they have to be able to cook separately. The poorer a family the less likely it is to have the kinds of property that can be subdivided. It is not just the size of a family’s property but its tenure, that is whether it is owned, squatted or rented, that determines whether families can sustain the more inclusive arrangements of joint or adjacently living households (Vera-Sanso 1997). Thus in Chennai people living on low incomes in rented accommodation are generally in small properties or properties which do not lend themselves to subdivision. Their sons move away within months of marriage. In terms of the norm of filial support, elderly parents in these circumstances are effectively childless: they receive no financial or physical support from their sons. In contrast, people in Chennai who own small areas of land or occupy squatted land are usually able to retain one or more sons in a separate room or dwelling. This is proof that joint or adjacent living is not so much correlated with wealth but with space. In the future, as land becomes increasingly subdivided, fewer parents will be able to provide the space needed to keep their sons close by. In rural Tamil Nadu housing is similarly subdivided, or elderly people are forced on to open verandas to sleep (see also Dreze 1990; Lamb 2000). Where sons form nuclear households, parents have to cook separately. Considered to be in less need of privacy, protection and comfort than young couples and children, parents cannot resist this push towards the periphery of the house. In some instances government housing policies aimed at raising the living standards of the poorest in rural Tamil Nadu have exacerbated the trend towards old-age abandonment by assuming that married sons need independent homes in order to set up nuclear households. Their policy of providing house sites and sometimes houses for married sons living with their parents not only leaves parents alone in their home but undermines what leverage property ownership can offer (see also Caldwell et al. 1988). Located on the outskirts of villages these new house sites hinder a son’s ability to keep an eye on the degree to which elderly parents are able to support themselves. The situation is in stark contrast to that in which a son’s family lives adjacent to his parents. In these

94

Penny Vera-Sanso

circumstances it is difficult to be unaware of whether a fire has been lit to boil up some basic food each day. Compared with joint households, however, adjacent living makes it ‘much easier for sons to abandon their [parents] when times are hard, and it would be surprising if they did not do so from time to time wherever the system of adjacent living prevails’ (Dreze 1990: 114). Thus the view that young people need privacy acts as a further stimulus to sons leaving the parental household. Whether they leave the parental property altogether, set up separate households within it or force parents on to the margins of their own home depends on the size and tenure of the property and its capacity for subdivision. As it is sons who determine whether their parents need support, and parents are reluctant to prompt them for fear of a hostile response, the significance of proximity lies not in ensuring filial support – which it does not do – but in its direct impact on a son’s awareness of parental need. The economics of filial relations Many studies find a correlation between intergenerational relations and economic status and give the impression that filial relations are the outcome of a son’s struggle between economically motivated self-interest or constraint and filial duty. In relation to property, families with large property holdings are found to be more likely to live in families containing three or four generations (Vatuk 1982b), whilst elderly people without property have a much higher risk of being ‘deserted’ or left ‘destitute’ by their children (Caldwell et al. 1988; Panda 1998; Vera-Sanso 1999). Similarly, in relation to incomes, opportunities for individual incomes are found to weaken the dependence of young adults on their parents (Caldwell et al. 1988; Dharmalingam 1994; VeraSanso 1999), whereas independent incomes for older people encourage married sons to remain with their parents (Caldwell et al. 1988).10 In order to understand how economic status shapes filial support these correlations need to be examined within the framework of local concepts of persons and their needs and obligations. When framed through concepts regarding a young family’s need for privacy and a son’s need to establish an independent household, we can see why large property holdings are more likely to give rise to joint households containing three or four generations, which in turn give way to families of three or four generations living in filially linked, adjacent households. On the same basis, we can see that the common correlation that parents without property have an increased risk of being ‘deserted’ by their children

Filial Support in South India

95

should really be interpreted as indicating that ‘parents without sufficient property to provide privacy for their married sons have a higher risk of sons moving to other premises’. This risk is much greater where elderly parents, whose needs are deemed to be small, are in receipt of a pension or are thought to be capable of earning a small income. It must be remembered, however, that the issue is size of property rather than wealth per se. In Chennai, for example, many families have divided squatted land, to which they do not have legal title, into several small rooms, each of which houses a separate household based around a married son (Vera-Sanso 1997). Equally we can see that the combination of local concepts and differential opportunities for independent incomes shapes intergenerational relations with diverse outcomes. The combination of early marriages and the practice that married sons share premises with their parents for a few years while their wives and children are young means that, in virtually all families that have several sons, independent parental income coincides with long periods where one son after another marries and lives on the same premises as his parents. This co-residence does not necessarily imply joint living, nor does it indicate filial support. Rather parents generally subsidise their son’s conjugal family. The widespread nature of this process makes the assertion that a parent’s independent income encourages married sons to remain in the parental home misrepresentative of filial relations and sons’ motivations: usually a parent’s independent income either encourages parents to initiate separate living or justifies a lack of filial support. It is only where sons are heavily dependent on their parents’ income for their day-to-day expenses that sons will attempt to remain with their parents longer than is usual. Similarly, by weakening a son’s dependence on his parents opportunities for young people to earn individual incomes merely hasten the move to separate living required by the association of adult masculinity with independent households. They do not determine whether sons support parents. Caldwell et al. (1988) report that many fathers keep a share of their property at partition, which is then often worked by day labourers, explicitly in order to guarantee the quality of filial support.11 This is a misreading. Two principles operate here: first, men are expected to be self-supporting and, secondly, each man has a right to a share of his family’s patrimony to support his household. As a man’s need for income declines, both with age and with the marriage of his children, he is expected to divide the property between himself and his sons. Where the

96

Penny Vera-Sanso

real significance of an independent income lies is in the respect and quality of care physically dependent parents can expect if they are acknowledged as ‘feeding themselves’. The question is not just one of having an independent income but of matching income to need. If elderly parents are deemed by sons to be keeping large family resources or independent incomes for their own use despite their supposedly minimal needs, or failing to partition property to allow sons to become the heads of independent households, good relations can seriously founder. In Chennai’s squatter settlements elderly women earning minimal incomes in the informal sector may suffer physical and verbal abuse from sons living in adjacent households if they refuse to turn over what sons assume to be earnings in excess of their mother’s perceived needs (Vera-Sanso 1994). Consequently humiliation and maltreatment of the old can occur irrespective of wealth, household form and residential proximity, and occur both where older generations are financially dependent on the young and where the young are financially dependent on the old (see also Mahajan 1992).

‘We Look After Our Families’ The slippage between the norm of old-age support and practice cannot be fully explained as long as our focus is limited to relations between elderly parents and their sons. Instead our perspective must be multigenerational for two reasons. First, support of elderly parents should be seen within the context of a family’s need to support the young (Collard 2000; Kabeer 2000). Secondly, changing demographic patterns are creating new burdens on families. The current life expectancy at birth in India is sixtyone years (WHO 2003), and by 2025 the World Health Organisation predicts it will have reached seventy years (WHO 1998). Not only does this represent a rapid rise but to achieve this figure many people are now living well beyond age sixty-one. In India, where age at marriage is frequently below twenty and people expect to have children within two years of marriage, the usual three-generation model of intergenerational relations (parents, adult children and grandchildren) is no longer applicable. Instead of three generations, it is becoming increasingly common amongst all communities, irrespective of their wealth, to find families of four generations, two or three of which may be in need of some level of support. Taking a multigenerational perspective not only raises questions about the ability of the system

Filial Support in South India

97

of filial support to cater for the needs of two dependent ageing generations but also sidesteps debates over whether contemporary sons are ‘good’ or ‘bad’, in favour of unravelling the complex nature of multigenerational relations and the challenges that a rapidly rising life expectancy poses for the current system of oldage support. Indians have long prided themselves on the primacy they place on their family’s welfare over their personal desires. Individual identities and family reputations are closely bound to the appearance of good family relations, rising family status, hard work and the sublimation of individual desires. What exactly these entail varies, but the objective is to meet the standards considered appropriate to a family’s economic location. A man’s first responsibility is to meet the needs of his wife and children, a responsibility he formally shares with no one, although in practice women are often significant family providers. Additionally men are expected to work for the benefit of future generations. The generality of this expectation is found in an inheritance system in which men do not inherit land from their fathers in their own right but as stewards for their sons. Concomitant with this orientation down the family tree is the view that a man’s responsibility for his elderly parents is both secondary and shared with all his brothers. As a man’s primary responsibility is towards his conjugal family, his obligations towards elderly parents are based on his assessments both of their needs and access to other sources of support and of his ability to support his parents while meeting his conjugal family’s needs. As discussed earlier, sons only consider themselves obliged to help their parents when all other means of support are exhausted. It is this balancing of need that explains why sons appear complacent in the presence of their parents’ hardship (for example, see Dreze 1990). It also provides the key to understanding why parents consider themselves effectively childless while their sons assert that ‘in India we look after our parents’. It would be wrong to write sons off as callous. Discourses generated in the political and economic arena have raised expectations of children’s rights and scheduled-caste rights, as well as increasing and generalising the expectation that everyone can have access to material markers of status. Social and economic policy generated at national and state levels in relation to education, globalisation, untouchability and infrastructural development has significantly increased the costs sons face in providing for their conjugal families. These increased costs, in combination with rising longevity, are jeopardising men’s ability to support

98

Penny Vera-Sanso

their elderly relatives. In the following pages each of these factors will be discussed in turn. Research undertaken by Caldwell and his colleagues (1988) in large and small villages of the south Indian state of Karnataka found that many of the politically generated changes since independence have had an impact on intergenerational relations. Alongside the widespread penetration of concepts of childhood, dependency and immaturity have come the right of children to education, a decline in the amount of work required of them and their greater access to modern medical facilities and goods purchased in the monetarised economy. In rural Tamil Nadu, for example, several of my male scheduled-caste informants were bonded as agricultural labourers when they were children. In 2000 the situation was very different. Although there were still a few bonded children, no families had used their children to set up new relationships of bondage. Additionally, if unmarried, nonbonded sons worked, they kept their earnings for their sole use. (Unmarried daughters, in contrast, gave all their money to their mothers and in doing so released married sons of their duty of filial support.) Children are now more ‘expensive’ not only because of the loss of income but also because educational costs are comparatively high and escalating. Despite these costs, education is widely recognised as vital for success in life. Although schooling is ostensibly free, the costs of uniforms, books, etc. have to be met by parents. Subsidies for scheduled-caste families do not meet all costs and are based on a system of reimbursements. As basic teaching qualifications in government schools require only eight years of education – typically reached by a thirteen-year-old – many parents, even among the poor, are buying in tuition or sending boys and girls to private schools in an attempt to improve their children’s education. In a context where expectations regarding the rights of children have not been matched by support for the rights of older people, sons feel increasingly pressurised to overlook their parent’s need for support. Since the research by Caldwell and colleagues, India has been opened up by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and this has extended the demands conjugal families are placing on household resources. Globalisation has created new economic opportunities for young people. In Tamil Nadu, for example, the children of mill-hands now expect their parents to put them through degrees in business studies and information technology. While these children are attempting to move into the global market-place, their parents are confronted not only by rising educational costs but also by pay cuts and job insecurity consequent on

Filial Support in South India

99

cheap imports since barriers were dropped in the 1990s. A further effect of globalisation has been the edging of a culture of resource building for future generations towards one of conspicuous consumption. Traditionally a father’s duty towards his children was to arrange their marriages, foster his son’s livelihood and meet ritually defined obligations between his family and his children’s marital families. The expenses this entailed varied according to region and social status. Unlike in the past, when there was little socio-economic differentiation within sub-castes, today’s arranged marriages are predicated on a family’s social and economic status (Kapadia 1995). Long-standing transfers of food, goods and wealth from a parent’s household to an adult child’s household or in-law’s family occur on the occasion of the son’s or daughter’s marriage and when grandchildren reach locally significant developmental stages, such as first birthday, circumcision or ear piercing. The spread and inflation of dowry payments are well known (Sax 1991; Kapadia 1995). Less well known, perhaps, is the extent to which families across all classes and castes – including the poorest – are increasingly under pressure to spend money on markers of social status (for example, modernised housing, consumer goods or livestock) in order to attract husbands and wives for their children and to prevent the whole family, but especially adult children, from losing face in relation to in-laws. Failure to meet standards of provision for sons and daughters or to maintain appearances appropriate to a family’s social status lowers the family’s social standing and can sour relations between husband and wife as well as between parent and child. This shift of a culture of resource building for future generations towards one of conspicuous consumption does not relieve men of the expectation of building resources for the future generation: it adds to it. As parental need is secondary to the needs of the conjugal family, these heightened demands on a household’s resources jeopardise elderly people’s access to filial support. In India people from what were once known as ‘untouchable castes’ were forced to mark their untouchability not just through their occupation, specified social relations with higher castes and exclusion from education but also through their appearance. They were not allowed to wear upper garments, footwear, clean clothes or silver and gold jewellery nor were they allowed to put oil or flowers in their hair. These were status markers reserved for caste Hindus, as was educating one’s children. Tamil Nadu has a long political history of opposing what is locally defined as the Brahminically imposed caste system. The emphasis was on selfrespect, on valuing the non-Brahminical, Dravidian culture and

100

Penny Vera-Sanso

on opposing blatant forms of untouchable discrimination, such as barring untouchables from temples or insisting on the two-tumbler system.12 Initially this movement was urban-based, but in recent years it has penetrated rural areas to the extent that there is now no concerted effort to stop children from scheduled castes attending school or to prevent scheduled-caste people from dressing in a manner similar to caste Hindus. A heightened consciousness of their rights, combined with their increased access both to state schools and marketed goods, has raised the aspirations of scheduled-caste people, who now feel a strong need to maintain the markers of a socially valued identity that other castes take for granted. Not only are these needs seen as the prerogative of younger scheduled-caste people, again raising the level of their needs in relation to those of older people, but they place a significant burden on households whose incomes are generally the lowest and most insecure. Alongside these massively increased needs generated within a son’s conjugal family, post-independence infrastructural developments and globalisation have radically restructured labour opportunities. Taking rural Tamil Nadu as an example, a biannual irrigation system permits the growth of sugar cane and rice one year and dry crops the next. While wet crops provide work for both men and women, growing dry crops is mainly women’s work. With the spread of electrification to farmland, many farms growing labour-intensive food crops are now being sold and turned into coconut and banana plantations reliant on semi-automated irrigation or into semi-intensive chicken farms, all of which require minimal labour input. The small number of large farmers who have gone over to intensive production methods are importing workers from more impoverished areas of Tamil Nadu. Consequently, for local people work is becoming increasingly scarce and is consistently more in the hands of women than men, although daily wages remain considerably higher for men than for women. Failing to provide adequately for their conjugal families, men feel they are not able to provide for their parents. In the words of one scheduled-caste agricultural labourer, ‘Our wives are feeding us, how can we ask them to feed our parents?’. The final challenge to the system of filial support to be discussed here is the extension of life expectancy. As mentioned earlier, many people are now living to the point where in theory they are dependent on sons, who in turn are themselves dependent on their sons. In practice, however, some of these ‘old-old’ people will have outlived sons, and others will have remained in their independent households while their sons have managed to

Filial Support in South India

101

retain or re-establish joint households with their own sons. The widespread view that those unable to meet their obligations have no right to ask others to do so means that men dependent on their sons cannot ask them also to take on the responsibility of elderly grandparents. With no voice in a grandson’s household pressing for their inclusion, grandparents are dependent on the willingness of grandsons and their wives to support them. The high level of care that the very elderly require frequently makes young families less able or willing to extend support to them. This is especially true of households reliant on women’s incomes. In practice, grandparents are more likely to be taken in when their own elderly children are able to meet their practical needs. Others appear to live on the margins of related households, either in their own homes or in the yard of a relative. These people are effectively childless, silently waiting for charity, that is, the offerings of food made by nieces, nephews and neighbours on an ad hoc or temporary basis.

Conclusion Studies of old-age support in South Asia take the norm that it is a son’s duty to look after his parents in old age as their startingpoint. Many, although by no means all, assume that elderly people are indeed supported by their sons. Yet the Indian system of old-age support is considerably more complex and contingent than the norm suggests. A multigenerational perspective on needs, rights and obligations reveals that Indian families are oriented towards the young and away from the old. A man’s first responsibility is to meet the needs of his wife and children. His duty to his parents is secondary and shared with all his brothers. An ageing father’s duty is to be self-supporting, to minimise his needs and to transfer resources down the family tree to those considered more in need of them. Consequently a son’s duty is merely to contribute to the support of his parents when they need it, and even then only if – and to the extent that – he is able to do so. Wealthy parents do not require support; impoverished sons struggle to provide any. Indeed, the latter may be relying on transfers from their elderly parents. The system leaves old people open to a number of vulnerabilities. Parents cannot control what support they receive from their sons and when they receive it. Instead, it is sons who determine when parents need support, what their needs are and how much they are able to provide. The placing of elderly people’s needs

102

Penny Vera-Sanso

below those of the young, which is done both by families and by governments intent on raising the nation’s capacities through education, medical services, infrastructural provision and globalisation, has not only widened the gap between the needs of the old and the young but made it more difficult for men both to fulfil their responsibilities to their conjugal families and to support their parents. While it is generally acknowledged that the South Asian system of old-age support fails those without surviving sons, the recent rise in life expectancy is exposing another failing. The system does not cater directly for the needs of old people who are dependent on sons who are themselves dependent. From a theoretical perspective, it is clear that systems of oldage support are based on often opposing concepts of persons and their needs, rights and obligations and that these concepts shape the influence that economic factors have on filial support. The combination of opposing concepts and economic factors generate diverse patterns of intergenerational relations, ranging from filial support or neglect to support of sons by elderly parents. It is also clear that there is no easy distinction between people who have sons and people who do not. It is not just those without sons who lack filial support. Many people are effectively childless. It would be a mistake, however, merely to broaden the category of the childless to include those whose sons do not support them financially or physically. Instead, a large proportion of old people oscillate between shorter or longer periods of receiving some practical or financial help and periods of having to be what might euphemistically be called ‘self reliant’. These people suffer ‘intermittent childlessness’. Until governments accept their role in local systems of old-age support, first, by putting older people’s needs on a par with those of younger people and, secondly, by not assuming filial support is forthcoming, sons will be able to claim that ‘They don’t need it, and I can’t give it.’

Notes The author would like to thank Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill, Philip Kreager, Janet Verasanso and Gordon Talbot for comments on earlier drafts. 1. Elderly people’s access to work can vary significantly depending on their villages’ economic history and infrastructural provision. Urban areas generally offer more scope for elderly people to engage in work tailored to their physical capacities, such as informal-sector trading (Vera-Sanso 1999, 2001). 2. For example, support in old age is more likely to be realised where a person selects one of several people equally entitled to inherit that person’s property,

Filial Support in South India

103

say, one of several nephews or sons-in-law. However, where there is only one obvious heir, for example an only daughter, then adopting the son-in-law does not increase the likelihood of support in old age (Vera-Sanso 1999). 3. Commenting on residential surveys, Panda (1998) rightly argues that, when old people living with their spouse, unmarried children or other relatives are deducted from those not classed as ‘living alone’, the number of people ‘living with’ married sons falls considerably. He found that in rural Orissa, while 18 per cent of people over age sixty live alone, only 57 per cent ‘live with’ one or more married sons, either in one large household or in adjacent households. This leaves unanswered the question of how much, if any, filial support parents living in adjacent households receive from married sons. 4. From the age of seventy onwards women in India have an advantage over men in terms of life expectancy (Caldwell et al. 1988). 5. ‘Joint’ here refers to two or more families linked by a father–son relationship. While ‘stem family’ is the more usual anthropological term, the use of ‘joint’ is more common in research on India and reflects the local distinction between families which are ‘joined’ and ‘separate’. 6. Due to the view, widespread among all castes and classes, that young women need protection from both predatory men and their own indiscriminative sexuality, young couples are keen to have parents at home who can chaperon the bride in order to protect her as much from malicious gossip as from sexual harassment (Vera-Sanso 1994). 7. People who have contributed to a provident fund receive a lump sum at retirement. In Tamil Nadu sons and daughters, irrespective of their marital status, are thought to have a right to a share of the money; a significant proportion is divided equally between them as a form of pre-mortem inheritance. 8. In the case of villages with a tradition of supporting scheduled-caste beggars, families may consider ‘too old’ only to have been reached when parents are no longer able to move around the village begging. 9. Ill-health and old age are justifiable, relatively non-emasculating reasons to be dependent on one’s wife (Vera-Sanso 2000). It may be reliance upon a wife’s income and her domestic services that lies behind Rahman’s (1999) finding that a spouse is more significant for men’s survival than it is for women’s. 10. Several authors claim that the rapid expansion of off-farm and urban employment has reshaped filial relations by providing independent incomes for the young (Caldwell et al. 1988; Dharmalingam 1994). However, these opportunities are not available to the vast majority of uneducated, low-caste people. More significant for understanding the relationship between economic conditions and co-residence is the collapse of the village-based jajmani system in favour of a monetarised system. Under the jajmani system, workers were paid in kind, and access to work and services depended on long-standing relations between families (see also the section on patronage in Schröder-Butterfill, Chapter 4, this volume). Monetarisation of agricultural labour enhanced young, including low-caste, people’s access to work, goods and services outside their family’s networks, which, in turn, facilitated the move to separate living. 11. The situation is quite different for Indian women: because they are seen as properly dependent on fathers, husbands or sons, they rarely inherit property from any relative (Agarwal 1998). Unlike other parts of India, women in West Bengal do inherit a share of their deceased husband’s property. See Dreze (1990) for the impact inheritance has on a mother’s bargaining power in relation to her sons.

104

Penny Vera-Sanso

12. Under the two-tumbler system, which operated largely in tea stalls, one tumbler would be chained to the side of the stall for the exclusive use of all untouchables, while caste Hindus would be given tea in a separate set of tumblers.

References Agarwal, B., ‘Widows Versus Daughters or Widows and Daughters? Property, Land and Economic Security in Rural India’. Modern Asian Studies 32, no. 1 (1998): 1–48. Cain, M., ‘The Material Consequences of Reproductive Failure in Rural South Asia’. In A Home Divided: Women and Income in the Third World, eds D. Dwyer and J. Bruce. Stanford, 1988, 20–38. Caldwell, J., P. Reddy and P. Caldwell., The Causes of Demographic Change: Experimental Research in South India. Madison and London, 1988. Collard, D., ‘Generational Transfers and the Generational Bargain’. Journal of International Development 12 (2000): 453–462. Dharmalingam, A., ‘Old Age Support: Expectations and Experiences in a South Indian Village’. Population Studies 48, no. 1 (1994): 5–19. Dreze, J., Widows in Rural India. Development Economics Research Programme, Discussion Paper No. 26, London School of Economics, 1990. Gillespie, S. and G. McNeill., Food, Health and Survival in India and Developing Countries. Delhi, 1992. James, K.S., ‘Indian Elderly: Asset or Liability’. Economic and Political Weekly 3 September (1994): 2335–2339. Kabeer, N., ‘Inter-generational Contracts, Demographic Transitions and the “Quantity-Quality” Tradeoff: Parents, Children and Investing in the Future’. Journal of International Development 12 (2000): 463–482. Kapadia, K., Siva and her Sisters: Gender, Caste and Class in Rural South India. Boulder and Oxford, 1995. Lamb, S., White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender and Body in North India. Berkeley, 2000. Mahajan, A., ‘Social Dependence and Abuse of the Elderly’. In The Elderly Population in the Developed and Developing World: Policies, Problems and Perspectives, ed. P. Krishnan and K. Mahadevan. Delhi, 1992, 414–423. Marriott, M., ‘Hindu Transactions: Diversity Without Dualism’. In Transaction and Meaning: Directions in the Anthropology of Exchange and Symbolic Behaviour, ed. B. Kapferer. Philadelphia, 1976, 109–142. Panda, P.K., ‘The Elderly in Rural Orissa: Alone in Distress’. Economic and Political Weekly 20 June (1998): 1545–1549. Papanek, H., ‘To Each Less Than She Needs: From Each More Than She Can Do: Allocations, Entitlements and Value’. In Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development, ed. I. Tinker. New York and London, 1990, 162–181. Prasad, K.V.E., ‘Social Security for Destitute Widows in Tamil Nadu’. Economic and Political Weekly 15 April (1995): 794–796.

Filial Support in South India

105

Rahman, O., ‘Family Matters: The Impact of Kin on the Mortality of the Elderly in Rural Bangladesh’. Population Studies 53, no. 2 (1999): 227–235. Sax, W., Mountain Goddess: Gender and Politics in a Himalayan Pilgrimage. Oxford, 1991. Vatuk, S., ‘Old Age in India’. In Old Age in Preindustrial Society, ed. P. Stearns. London, 1982a, 70–103. –––––, ‘The Family Life of Older People in a Changing Society: India’. Studies in Third World Societies 23 (1982b): 57–82. –––––, ‘Household Form and Formation: Variability and Social Change among South Indian Muslims’. In Society from the Inside Out: Anthropological Perspectives on the South Asian Household, ed. J.N. Gray and D.J. Mearns. New Delhi, 1989, 107–139. –––––, ‘To Be a Burden on Others: Dependency Anxiety among the Elderly in India’. In Divine Passions: The Social Construction of Emotion in India, ed. O. Lynch. Delhi, 1990, 64–88. Vera-Sanso, P., ‘What the Neighbours Say: Gender, Personhood and Power in Two Low-Income Settlements of Madras’. Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1994. –––––, ‘Community, Seclusion and Female Labour Force Participation in Madras, India’. Third World Planning Review 17, no. 2 (1995): 155–167. –––––, ‘Households in Madras’ Low-Income Settlements’. Review of Development and Change 2, no. 1 (1997): 72–98. –––––, ‘Dominant Daughters-in-Law and Submissive Mothers-in-Law? Co-Operation and Conflict in South India’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5, no. 4 (1999): 577–593. –––––, ‘Masculinity, Male Domestic Authority and Female Labour Participation in South India’. European Journal of Development Research 12, no. 2 (2000): 179–198. –––––, ‘Ageing and Intergenerational Relations in Urban and Rural South India’, Paper presented to Development Studies Association Annual Conference, ‘Different Poverties, Different Policies’, 10–12 September 2001, Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, 2001. World Health Organisation (WHO). World Health Report. Geneva, 1998. World Health Organisation (WHO). World Health Report. Geneva, 2003.

CHAPTER 4

ADOPTION, PATRONAGE AND CHARITY: ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE ELDERLY WITHOUT CHILDREN IN EAST JAVA Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

Introduction

A

t the centre of Old Batavia in Jakarta lies a square with a Dutch colonial canon. This canon, as any guidebook will inform the visitor, is mounted by childless women in the hope of capturing its magical powers of fertility. The brass knob on the top of the canon is shiny from centuries of rubbing. Closer to my fieldwork site, in the town of Malang in East Java, I noticed a brand-new sign advertising ‘medical treatment for husbands and wives who do not have offspring’. In short, one need not look far to find evidence of popular concern with childlessness in contemporary and historical Indonesia. Nor are such concerns unfounded, as I discovered during research on support for elderly people in rural East Java. The elderly without children emerged as a sizeable minority – one in four – in the research community. Their presence in an environment in which the abundant availability of children is taken for granted raises the question of whether the elderly without children are perforce vulnerable. The present chapter addresses this question by examining the availability and reliability of alternatives to old-age support from chil-

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

107

dren. Specifically, I shall focus on three common social institutions in Indonesia – adoption, patronage and charity. To date most research on ageing in Asia has concentrated on the role of children in providing old-age support. This applies to Indonesia in particular: formal provisions for the elderly, like pensions, health care or nursing homes, are lacking. Thus, children are considered responsible for ensuring elderly welfare (Guinness 1986: 134; Ihromi 1989: 143; Wirakartakusumah 1999: 17). Care for currently elderly people is widely presumed to be unproblematic from a demographic point of view, because they belong to cohorts who experienced aggregate levels of fertility of four or more children. Indeed, the apparent absence in many developing countries of alternatives to old-age support from children has prompted some authors to seek explanations for high fertility in parents’ concerns about their old-age security (for example, Nag et al. 1980; Nugent 1985; Cain 1986; Friedman et al. 1994; for a sceptical view, see Vlassoff and Vlassoff 1980). As demographer Paul Demeny has put it: ‘In the traditional society there … existed [a] powerful prop to high fertility. As adults, children provided economic sustenance for their aged parents; in fact no safe alternative for assuring oldage security existed’ (1987: 130; see also Nugent 1985: 76; Cain 1991: 522). Empirical research has on the whole failed to establish that old-age security is a determinant of fertility, even if intuitively the notion of children as a means to eventual security remains plausible (see Clay and Vander Haar 1993; Lee 2000). There are simply too many intervening variables affecting fertility choices and ultimate outcomes: the costs and benefits of childbearing may be borne by kinship networks, rather than individual couples alone; in changing social, economic and health environments, the relative risks of survival of children and parents, of eventual need for support or of children’s loyalty and local availability are impossible to estimate at the time of reproductive decision-making; and more immediate benefits, such as emotional or reputational gains, may dominate over concerns which will only be salient decades later. Dramatic falls in fertility across the developing world, which occurred in advance of formal provision of social security, are further grounds for questioning the plausibility of a primary insurance motive in reproductive decisions. A different line of enquiry, also arising from the assumed centrality of children in old-age support, has, in contrast, not been pursued in social and economic demography or in the anthropological literature: are there really no adequate alternatives to

108

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

assistance from children? If care of the elderly is normally the responsibility of adult children and general state provision is lacking, the implication would appear to be that all elderly without children are vulnerable. Yet this logic ignores the fact that in rural communities of Asia support may also be sought in the space between the family and the state. It further disregards the heterogeneity of elderly people’s economic and social situations, which are likely to shape the range of options available to them. A number of authors have examined the role of informal social institutions in providing social security in developing countries (see von Benda-Beckmann et al. 1988; Midgley 1994; van de Ven 1994). However, an investigation of their implications for old-age security is as yet lacking. Moreover, there has been a tendency to invoke kin or community assistance without examining the logic underlying such support (Niehof 1995). I shall argue that we need to understand under what circumstances others may substitute for children and what the impact of non-familial support is on recipients’ security and social status. These questions are important even in settings where cross-sectional data indicate low levels of elderly childlessness, because many elderly may at some stage in their elderly life course experience a lack of children due to the migration, death, enmity or incompetence of offspring. I draw on ethnographic and demographic fieldwork in East Java to examine the alternatives for childless elderly people to support from own children. Three major social mechanisms will be investigated, namely, adoption as a strategy for overcoming childlessness and patronage and charity as alternatives to assistance from children. Far from the various solutions being equivalent, important differences in the desirability and reliability of arrangements emerge. These depend crucially on the social roles in which relationships are cast. Only once the logic of alternative sources of old-age support has been assessed can we evaluate whether the elderly without children are indeed vulnerable. As will become clear, this depends in part on how vulnerability is defined. On the one hand, the availability of acceptable arrangements like adoption and patronage means that the elderly without children are not inevitably at risk of material or physical insecurity. If, on the other hand, vulnerability is understood chiefly in terms of avoiding ostracism, exclusion and a ‘bad death’, then childlessness is clearly a major determinant of vulnerability.

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

109

The Setting and Fieldwork Methods Indonesia, with 210 million people the fourth largest population in the world, is ageing rapidly. East Java was selected for study because it is a province with one of the highest proportions of people aged sixty and over. In 2000, 10 per cent of the population was elderly, and this is expected to rise to 16 per cent by 2020; for Indonesia as a whole the figures are 7 and 11 per cent, respectively (Ananta et al. 1997). Moreover, because of East Java’s large total population size (35 million), more than one in five elderly Indonesians live in this single province. The current disproportion of elderly people in East Java is a consequence not only of recent rapid fertility declines but also of longer-term depressions in fertility caused by infertility, divorce and social and economic instability. In particular, a slump in reproduction in the 1940s left many currently elderly with few, if any, offspring (Hull and Tukiran 1976). East Java thus provides a particularly germane setting for a study of adjustments to a lack of children in old age. Other features that make Java interesting are the presence of a traditionally nuclear family system and bilateral kinship reckoning (Geertz 1961; Jay 1969; see also Hionidou, Chapter 9, this volume). All children ideally set up independent households soon after marriage, and inheritance is divided equally. There is no ‘designated carer’ for elderly parents. In theory, all children, irrespective of gender or birth order, are expected to provide support for elderly parents in need. In practice, support has to be negotiated through ongoing small-scale exchanges, and it is usually, at best, one or two children who provide assistance (Schröder-Butterfill 2002). Members of the wider family, including grandchildren, nephews and nieces, are not normatively obliged to help elderly relatives to any significant extent unless a particularly close bond has been developed (Koentjaraningrat 1957: 91; Geertz 1961: 4). Frequent divorce and remarriage lead to discontinuities in the composition of family networks (Jones 1994). These characteristics of the Javanese family mean that the identity of key support providers cannot be prejudged but has to be investigated. In the case of elderly without children, this entails attention to kin and community. Fieldwork was conducted in a rural area of the Malang district in East Java. The research village, given the pseudonym Kidul, reflects the changing nature of Indonesian society and economy. Metaphorically speaking, Kidul has one foot in the rice basket of East Java’s agricultural economy and another in the expanding rural industrial and commercial sectors, while reaching into the

110

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

diverse formal and informal urban economies of Malang and Surabaya. Nowadays merely 15 per cent of the adult population have agriculture as their main source of employment; only a quarter of these own land – the remainder are sharecroppers or agricultural labourers. Thanks to the village’s proximity to several markets, the most common activity is trade (25 per cent of the working population). Other important sources of income include transport, factory and construction work. Almost one in ten adults are current or retired civil servants or army members. All respondents are ethnically Javanese. The majority of inhabitants are Muslim (88 per cent), the remainder Hindu (10 per cent) and Christian (2 per cent). The population of Kidul stands at roughly 2000 inhabitants living in 500 households; one in ten villagers are aged sixty and over.1 Fieldwork was spread over two visits, the first lasting ten months from April 1999 until February 2000, the second two months from October until December 2000. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with virtually all elderly people (N = 203, or 97 per cent of the total elderly population), giving rise to information on life histories, availability of children and other kin, work, daily activities, health and support. In the process of revisiting respondents and conducting open-ended interviews, increasingly detailed data on these topics were collected. Reinterviewing was crucial for gaining reliable information on sensitive issues, as reportage of facts concerning divorce, childbearing or adoption changed with increasing familiarity. In more than half of all cases, I interviewed at least one other family member and sometimes got to know all local members of the extended kin network. Towards the end of fieldwork, two randomised surveys were conducted: one on household economy and inter-household support and the second on elderly people’s health and health-care use.

Childlessness in East Java During fieldwork elderly people were routinely asked about any children they had and their present location. This information was obtained from men and women, as divorce and remarriage may leave spouses with different numbers of children. Figure 4.1 summarises data on fertility, childlessness and availability of children in the village. Clearly, childlessness affects a large minority of elderly people. One in five respondents state that they have never had a child. This figure may overestimate primary sterility, as

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

111

Figure 4.1. Percentage of Elderly Respondents (Men and Women) by Number of Children Ever Born, Number of Children Surviving and Number of Children in the Village Notes: Data refer to a total of 203 elderly; information on children ever born is incomplete (N = 145), as probing for this information only started after childlessness emerged as important. Data on respondents not reinterviewed are thus often lacking or untrustworthy. Source: Field data 1999–2000.

some people without children may not admit that they had a child who died. Data on children surviving and children resident in the village are more easily verifiable. The main challenge here is to identify adopted children as adopted rather than own. A quarter of elderly people have no surviving children, and a third do not have a child living in the village. Figure 4.1 reveals a strikingly polarised distribution of the numbers of children ever born and surviving. Half of the respondents have two or fewer children and the other half three or more. Forty per cent have no, or only one, surviving child. Thus childlessness in East Java needs to be understood as part of a wider picture of sub-optimal fertility in a pre-transitional population where marriage was universal (Jones 1997) and deliberate avoidance of pregnancy – although not altogether lacking – is likely to have been rare (Hull 2001). These findings of high levels of childlessness can be placed in a wider historical pattern of sub-optimal fertility in Indonesia,

112

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

which has been little commented on in the demographic literature. On the basis of the 1971 Indonesian census, Hull and Tukiran (1976) identified East Java as an area particularly affected by childlessness, with 17–23 per cent of women aged thirty and over childless. Levels for total Indonesia were also high (14–16 per cent). Vaessen (1984), analysing World Fertility Survey data for twenty-eight developing countries, found Indonesia ranking fifth in levels of infecundity and childlessness. Indonesian Family Life Survey data from 1993 and 1997 confirm Hull and Tukiran’s earlier observations of above-average childlessness in East Java (see Kreager and Schröder-Butterfill 2003 for details). Because many respondents will not admit to a complete stranger that a child is adopted, conventional ageing surveys are likely to underestimate childlessness. For instance, surveys on Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines found only between 4.2 and 4.4 per cent of elderly to be without surviving children (Hermalin 2002: 465). These figures are unbelievably low when compared with standard demographic estimates for non-pathological childlessness of roughly 8 per cent (Henry 1961). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to review the reasons for the observed levels of childlessness. Briefly stated, extremely severe economic and political conditions in the 1940s meant that roughly one in four children died before reaching their fifth birthday (Singarimbun and Hull 1977; Utomo and Iskandar 1986). Divorce and remarriage have traditionally been high in Java. In Kidul, for example, more than one in five elderly people were married three or more times, and among the childless one in four were. Childbearing is likely to have been affected by this via curtailment of marital sexuality and increased possibility of multiple sexual contacts, which carry the risk of pathological sterility due to sexually transmitted disease (see Hull and Tukiran 1976: 21; Jones et al. 1995; Van der Sterren et al. 1997). Improved economic and health conditions in the period after 1970 have reduced involuntary childlessness for future generations of elderly. The majority of women in Indonesia today can expect to have two to four surviving children (Central Bureau of Statistics et al. 1995). For currently elderly people in East Java, however, recent demographic history has made certain that significant proportions do not have children of their own. However, as several chapters in this book show, a lack of children in old age is not only due to demographic processes but may also be the outcome of social or cultural forces. Not all people with surviving children benefit from them. To demographic childlessness we must add de facto childlessness – the lack of access to

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

113

support from existing children. De facto childlessness has various causes and different degrees of finality, which affects estimates of the size of this group. Unlike parents in patrilineal or matrilineal societies, the Javanese have no preference for children of a particular sex (see Haughton and Haughton 1995; Ochiai 2001; Indrizal and Vera-Sanso, Chapters 2 and 3, respectively, this volume). Therefore the lack of a son – or daughter – is not a reason for considering a person de facto childless. Instead, the following four causes predominate. First, out-migration of children may leave parents without any source of support locally (see Figure 4.1). In Kidul absent children usually contribute only sporadic and inadequate material assistance to their elderly parents (Schröder-Butterfill 2002; in contrast, see Keasberry 2002: 236 and Indrizal, Chapter 2, this volume). The second factor, divorce, can leave parents de facto childless if it results in loss of contact with children. Children usually remain with their mother following a divorce and may then have little contact with their father, especially if he has remarried or moved away. (The same has, of course, also been observed for European societies; see Grundy 2003; Ogg 2003.) Sometimes a child is placed in the care of grandparents or other relatives, in which case it may later feel little or no loyalty towards either biological parent. A third group of de facto childless people are those with handicapped children, who are not in a position to provide material or practical support, although their emotional support must not be underestimated. Finally, the most distressing cases of de facto childlessness are those in which elderly people have become estranged from their children as a result of conflict. The lack of support is then exacerbated by the pain of a failed relationship. Moreover, in Java outward concord (rukun) is a key criterion on which families are evaluated (Geertz 1961: 147ff.; Jay 1969: 66; Guinness 1986). Where harmony is obviously lacking, social avoidance may follow, making it less likely that alternative sources of old-age support, like charity, will be forthcoming. On a strict definition of de facto childlessness as a lack of any material or practical support, almost 7 per cent (N = 10) of all elderly with at least one surviving child are affected. Where oldage security is concerned, these elderly are indistinguishable from the elderly with no surviving children. Indeed, they may be worse off, both because of the ostracism attached to open neglect and because they are less likely to be able to mobilise alternative arrangements. This highly vulnerable group is impossible to detect with surveys, as the existence of negligent children may not be admitted at all or their lack of support may be taken to

114

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

indicate elderly independence, which is also common. On top of these de facto childless in the narrow sense, we find 9 per cent (N = 14) of elderly parents who do not have any children in the village. Although they occasionally receive visits or small gifts, the support is insufficient to be relied upon for daily survival. In sum, depending on the criterion, between 7 and 16 per cent of elderly parents can be classed as de facto childless. On this count childlessness rises to 31–37 per cent of the total elderly population. However, this paints too negative a picture of the availability of children. Almost half of those without children have overcome childlessness by means of adoption or marriage to someone with children. A summary measure that discounts childless people who have successfully acquired a child but includes the de facto childless may be termed actual childlessness. According to this definition, 18 per cent (N = 36) of all elderly people in Kidul are childless: they have no access to support from a child in their old age.2

Anak Angkat: Overcoming Childlessness through Adoption Most societies in which children are highly valued have more or less institutionalised mechanisms by which adults without offspring may gain access to children. In most of South-East Asia and the Pacific adoption – in some form or another – is common (Djamour 1959; Carroll 1970a; Brady 1976; Carsten 1991; but see also Pashigian 2002: 149; Indrizal, Chapter 2, this volume); Java is no exception (see Koentjaraningrat 1957; Geertz 1961; Jay 1969: 72ff.; Sriono 1992). In rural East Java various forms of adoption are referred to as acquiring an anak angkat (literally, ‘raised child’). I use the term adoption with hesitation, as it may conjure up images of adoption in Europe, where it entails the complete, irreversible and legally binding transfer of all rights and duties relating to a child from its biological to its adoptive parents (Goody 1969; Carroll 1970b). Until recently, in Indonesia formal adoption was extremely rare, although legally permissible despite Qur’anic prohibition (Sriono 1992). Instead, Javanese adoption is traditionally ‘strictly a matter between the two families involved. It is not an act by law, and in village communities people rarely bother to report it to the village head’ (Koentjaraningrat 1957: 65). Moreover, the degree to which parenting responsibilities are unequivocally or permanently transferred in Javanese adoptions varies from case to case.3

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

115

In the vast majority of instances in Java, the anak angkat is the child of a relative. Children of the wife’s siblings are the most common source of anak angkat, although the husband’s nephews and nieces as well as grandchildren also feature prominently (see also Koentjaraningrat 1957; Geertz 1961; Jay 1969: 73; Sriono 1992: 21). In some societies – especially those that are lineagebased – the exchange of children among kin is an important aspect of strengthening kin solidarity (Marshall 1976; Carsten 1991; Terrell and Modell 1994). Among the bilateral Javanese this motivation for adoption is lacking. Here the transfer of children among kin is preferred because parents needing to place a child feel they can trust kin more than non-kin, and because prospective adoptive parents know that close kin find it hard to refuse the request for a child, as this would be considered selfish (see also Jay 1969: 72; Damas 1983). Adoption in Kidul occurs almost exclusively in response to a lack of children or a family crisis. Thus, 62 per cent of childless elderly people reported ever having acquired an anak angkat, compared with only 20 per cent among those with children. Other authors have also pointed to sterility as the main motivational force behind adoption in South-East Asia and the Pacific. They predict, and in some cases have observed, a decline in the prevalence of adoption with improved demographic distribution of children (Fisher 1970; Goodenough 1970; Damas 1983; Sriono 1992; but see Marshall 1976). Yet, as Ritter has pointed out, in societies where the nurturing of children is highly valued and enjoyed, childlessness may also be understood as a ‘mental state resulting from not having babies [or children more generally] available in a household or family’; in such cases ‘the condition of childlessness is both the result of infertility and of the normal stages of the adult life cycle’ (1981: 49). In Java, for example, it is not uncommon for grandparents living alone to request a grandchild for company and help with minor tasks. Although such a grandchild may be referred to as an anak angkat, the arrangement is often temporary and without ramifications for longer-term responsibilities or property transfer. Adoption may also provide a solution to crises in the family of origin, be they divorce, widowhood, illness or even metaphysical incompatibility of parents and children, as when the birthday of a child falls on the same day as that of a parent (see also Djamour 1952: 163). Again, potential adoptive parents will in the first instance be sought from among close kin, and the delegation of child-rearing responsibilities may be intended as short-lived.

116

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

Adoption and the challenge of loyalty One of the main implications of adoption among kin in Java is that the anak angkat maintains contact with the family of origin. Very small children may not be told that they are adopted, but it is considered inevitable and indeed important that older children know who their biological parents are. This aspect of South-East Asian adoption gives rise to ambiguities which are often glossed over in the literature. Thus many authors interpret ‘dual parenthood’ as positive and unproblematic, as a proliferation of links and choices: ‘Instead of substituting one identity for another, an adopted child gains additional sets of relationships whilst retaining old ones’ (Ritter 1981: 46); similarly, ‘adoption cannot wipe out a child’s claim to his own identity … but it does give the individual an alternative set of obligations and rights for as long as he chooses to exercise them, as well as giving him parents to care for him in his growing years’ (Goodenough 1970: 330; see also Sriono 1992: 4). This view inevitably leads to ambiguous observations about the child’s old-age support obligations and entitlements to inheritance. Sriono (1992: 25) observes that an adopted child should serve and be loyal to (berbakti) both sets of parents, and Djamour (1952: 163) notes that ‘when the period of temporary adoption has extended over many years … he or she has a special obligation to look after the welfare of both the real and adoptive parents – although the true parents often have greater rights’. Hildred Geertz (1961: 38f.) comments on the lack of consensus regarding an adopted child’s loyalties and inheritance rights in Java and yet concludes that the adoptive parents are owed greater loyalty, even though formal inheritance rights from adoptive parents are lacking (see also Koentjaraningrat 1957: 5; Jay 1969: 75f.). Once actual cases of adoption are examined, it becomes clear that in practice dual allegiances are often difficult to sustain, because the participants in an adoption triad have conflicting interests and complex emotional involvements. As a result, unless the biological parents have died or moved away, the adoptive relationship often breaks down (see also Goodenough 1970: 326; Jenkins et al. 2002: 182ff.; Ritter 1981). For the elderly without children this means that acquiring an anak angkat is at best an uncertain strategy for overcoming childlessness.4 In fact, each adoption faces two challenges before support in old age ensues. First, the bond with the anak angkat has to be successfully established and maintained. In other words, there is a challenge of loyalty. Secondly, the anak angkat must actually provide support for his or her elderly adoptive parents. Hence

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

117

there is a challenge of reliability, which affects biological and adoptive parents alike. The following case-study highlights the potential reversibility of adoption in East Java. Bu Dinah is a widow in her sixties. As a domestic servant and occasional agricultural labourer, her economic situation is constrained. Dinah and her husband never succeeded in having children. Instead they raised Rudi, the youngest son of Dinah’s cousin. This cousin has seven surviving children, all of whom live locally. The cousin and her husband, a former religious official (modin), live a stone’s throw from Dinah. In separate interviews with Dinah and her cousin, a telling conflict in adoption narratives emerges. Dinah refers to Rudi as her anak angkat and says she and her husband cared for Rudi since he was small. They schooled him and looked after his everyday needs. According to the biological mother, Rudi used only to sleep in Dinah’s house but was given food and money for schooling by his biological parents. The cousin does not use the term anak angkat when talking about the relationship between her son and Dinah. A few years ago, after her husband had died, Dinah offered her house to Rudi. The house was formally put into Rudi’s name, although Dinah, of course, continues living in it. Soon afterwards, however, Rudi’s biological parents, who are well off, decided to divide up their inheritance. They gave land and a complete house to each of their children, Rudi included. Sometime later, Rudi married and moved into the house his biological parents had provided. Dinah is distraught. She says that Rudi now never comes to visit her despite living so close. Indeed, she has the feeling he no longer wishes to know her. At the heart of the failure of Bu Dinah’s adoption lie the ambiguities surrounding adoption in Java which I outlined above. Given the wide variety of delegated child-rearing arrangements, which range from part-time child care to supposedly permanent adoption, and allowing, too, for the fact that arrangements often start off as temporary and become permanent or vice versa, different participants in an adoption may come to view the resultant arrangement differently. This is compounded by the fact that a range of social norms surrounding the rights and obligations in an adoption coexist, which enables social actors to try and negotiate an interpretation which best benefits them (compare Lockwood 1995: 2; Bledsoe and Hill 1998: 273). In Java deliberate or genuine misunderstandings can easily be prolonged indefinitely by

118

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

rules of conduct which discourage people from making their feelings known and addressing problems head on (Geertz 1993 [1973]: 135). Clearly, not only did Rudi’s parents maintain contact with him throughout but they also still consider him their son, at best ‘on loan’ to Dinah. For Dinah, however, Rudi is the only hope for a filial bond and thus respectable support in old age. Aware of her contested status, Dinah attempts to reduce the ambiguity and tie Rudi closer to herself by passing on her house to him. In doing so, she states publicly that she considers him her child and therefore entitled to inherit from her. This is a perfectly respectable thing to do, as it reflects parents’ love (sayang) and responsibility (bertanggung jawab) towards offspring. However, the biological parents do not concede: they ignore the fact that Rudi now already has ownership of a house and offer him another, better one.5 Villagers emphasise that it is ultimately up to the anak angkat to choose allegiances. Where status differentials are large, the tendency is invariably to side with the better-off parents. As Rudi’s biological parents enjoy much higher social and economic standing, they succeed in getting their interpretation of the situation accepted: no one in the neighbourhood commented on Dinah’s loss. Clearly, for childless elderly people who do not have wealth and status on their side, maintaining the loyalty of an anak angkat is fraught with difficulties. Among childless adoptive parents in the lower two economic strata, almost half (47 per cent) experienced the breakdown of an adoption, compared with only 15 per cent in the upper two economic strata. Where arrangements fail, the elderly without children face a vulnerable old age. Dinah now no longer owns assets nor does she know whom to turn to should she need help. She currently faces the risk of dying reliant on charity. Dinah’s case is by no means exceptional. Dominant themes in the life histories of childless elderly people centred on the tactics they pursued to maintain the loyalty of an anak angkat. Several adoptive parents had moved village to escape interference from biological parents, not always with success. Others made generous material sacrifices, for example, by selling assets to pay for a child’s wedding or hospitalisation. Like elderly parents generally in East Java, adoptive parents strive to avoid outright dependence on their children and continue contributing to their children’s welfare even in old age (Schröder-Butterfill 2004). The majority (71 per cent) of elderly adoptive parents still work or have other income and use at least some of their wealth to support their families. Those who no longer work provide housework or child care.

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

119

In the light of evidence about the uncertainty of adoption in Java, it is hard not to interpret some of these practices as defensive strategies to strengthen tenuous ties to anak angkat. The attempts are far from foolproof, as the example of Bu Dinah showed. In total, one-third (34 per cent) of childless elderly who had acquired an anak angkat experienced an adoption breaking down; the failure per adoption is even higher, namely, 42 per cent. Overall, although almost two-thirds (62 per cent) of childless elderly had adopted, fewer than half (46 per cent) can be said to have successfully overcome childlessness through adoption. These elderly are regarded with envy by their persistently childless peers, as they can enjoy the companionship and fulfilment attendant upon having children. They are also, on the whole, assured of material and physical support should it be needed. The challenge of reliability Children – whether adopted or own – are not always reliable sources of old-age support. The concept of de facto childlessness, used throughout this book, tries to capture some of the major patterns and dimensions of children’s unreliability. In some cases, talk of a lack of children is too strong. Instead, children exist and may be important for emotional welfare, social identity and avoidance of destitution but fail to provide support in a manner or consistency that is desired. In the case of adoptions, this means that even where loyalty is not at issue the anak angkat may nonetheless be providing little assistance in old age. The following example highlights this unreliability. In addition, it introduces a further kind of intergenerational support arrangement, which, although couched in the terminology of adoption, differs fundamentally from the arrangements hitherto discussed. Mbah Haji Lina is a rich elderly widow in her late seventies, one of only two elderly women in the village who have been on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Her father was a respected village head in colonial times. Lina was married three times; all marriages remained childless. With her third husband, she adopted three children from various relatives. All children were educated to a high level and given land and houses upon marriage. The daughter established a successful career in the nearby town. The eldest son died, leaving only one son in the community. When in her early seventies, Lina found herself going blind. Suddenly she could no longer rely merely on her wealth but needed someone to look after her practical daily needs. Her two anak angkat proved unhelpful in this regard. The daughter was unwilling to move

120

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

back to Kidul, nor did her career permit her to care for her mother in her own home. Lina’s surviving son, although locally available, considered his own family priority. Lina could have moved in with him, but the prospect of being cared for by her daughter-in-law in a house in which she would be a guest was unattractive. As Lina explained, she would have felt uncomfortable (sungkan). Lina therefore decided to offer inheritance of her house to one of her granddaughters on condition that she care for her. The granddaughter, Ririet, in her early twenties and recently married with a small child, moved in and now cooks, shops and cleans for her elderly blind grandmother. In addition to the house, she receives money for the daily shopping. Interestingly, during the first few interviews the elderly woman always referred to her granddaughter as one of four anak angkat. Only later interviews established that Ririet was in fact a granddaughter. Like Bu Dinah, Mbah Haji Lina overcame childlessness by raising the children of relatives and thus creating a family of her own. It is clear that having three children and doing the right thing – for example, in terms of wealth distribution – in regard to these children are important sources of identity and respect for the elderly widow. These adoptions cannot be understood as old-age security strategies in the sense implied by the socio-demographic literature on the value of children referred to in the introduction (e.g. Nag et al. 1980: 266; Cain 1986). Indeed, only one adoptive parent in Kidul mentioned old-age security concerns as a reason for adoption; in this case, a close and supportive bond with the anak angkat had been established, which may have coloured the elderly woman’s motivations retrospectively. Instead, adoptions usually reflect a more basic desire for children in their own right, as essential members of nuclear families and objects of affection and nurture (see also Djamour 1952: 159f.; Geertz 1961; Damas 1983; Pashigian 2002). It is no accident that Lina’s first two marriages failed before she adopted children with her third husband: without children a marriage is not considered complete. The presence of children also integrates parents into the wider community, for example, through the hosting of life-cycle rituals (slametan) and arranging of marriages (see Carsten 1991; Hüsken 1991; White and Schweizer 1998; van Balen and Inhorn 2002: 8f.). Although Lina’s relationship to her two surviving anak angkat is good, they do not turn out to be reliable sources of support when she needs it. Her experience in this regard is unexceptional. Among childless elderly who have established a lasting bond with

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

121

an anak angkat, a quarter receive no support at all from their child and a further quarter receive only sporadic support. This is not to say that these adoptive children would not step in to prevent absolute destitution when the elderly can no longer support themselves. If we consider adoptions failed due to the breakdown of the adoption, as in the case of Bu Dinah, and successful adoptions where support is nonetheless lacking, we find that one-third of elderly adoptive parents receive no old-age support whatsoever and that fewer than half (44 per cent) benefit from more or less regular and reliable support. Thanks to Lina’s favourable economic and social position, she is able to secure quality old-age support, the unreliability of her children notwithstanding: she persuades her granddaughter to care for her (for similar arrangements see Koentjaraningrat 1957; Ritter 1981; Damas 1983: 330). The existence of this support arrangement is not premised on kinship: grandchildren in Java are not normatively obliged to care for grandparents, even less so if the middle generation is still alive. Similarly, grandparents are not expected to bequeath anything to grandchildren. Instead, the arrangement Lina arrives at with her granddaughter is the result of a carefully negotiated contract, its logic resting firmly on the principle of balanced reciprocity, where the needs of and benefits to both parties are perceived as roughly commensurate (Sahlins 1965). When asked who is now responsible for her welfare Lina replies vehemently, ‘Ririet, of course! She has already been given everything, she has been given a house and garden, everything!’ I encountered three further cases in Kidul where a well-off elderly person or couple instituted a young relative as an anak angkat late in life. In all cases, this was closely tied to the transmission of wealth to a person who would otherwise not inherit, and the staking of a claim for support that would otherwise not be forthcoming or would at best be unreliable and tinged with pity (kasihan). The resultant relationship was invariably described as adoptive despite the so-called adoption occurring when the adoptee was grown up and married. The use of the idiom of adoption highlights the importance for a person’s status of who is providing intimate care in old age. Although her wealth would allow Lina to purchase the practical support she needs, for example, by employing a domestic help (pembantu), such a commercial solution would detract from her elevated status in the village by drawing attention to inadequacies in intergenerational family relations. Thus, although a granddaughter (or a niece, nephew, etc.) can take on the role of a daughter, appearance of good practice is

122

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

maintained by couching an essentially contractual arrangement in the conventional language of filiation. Clearly, late-life adoptions are qualitatively different from adoptions that occurred when the respondents were young. Where the latter aimed at creating a family and fulfilling an emotional and social desire, the former may be considered explicit strategies for old-age support, often sought in response to a specific need or crisis. This difference is reflected in respectively different ways in which intergenerational flows of material wealth are understood. In Java, the passing on of bequeathable wealth from parents to children, as well as smaller, more frequent instances of gift-giving, is central to parental love and identity. Given the common occurrence of divorce, remarriage, migration and adoption, they represent an important way of affirming filial bonds that may otherwise weaken (see also Li 1989: 41; Yan 1996: 14). In Java such flows cannot, however, be understood as trade-offs in an ‘intergenerational market-place’, as bargaining theories in ageing research would have us believe (see Dowd 1975; Bernheim et al. 1985; Lillard and Willis 1997). Large gifts from parents to children may carry the hope that reciprocal support will later be forthcoming, but they are not perceived as establishing debts on the basis of which a return may be expected. Neither Dinah nor Lina conceived of their generosity towards their anak angkat in this way: it would be anathema to villagers’ understanding of the parent–child bond.6 In contrast, in the more instrumental late-life adoptions, it is legitimate, even appropriate, to attach conditions to the transfer of wealth, because in such cases support is being sought from someone who would not normally be obliged to help. Here the mutually beneficial exchange stands in the foreground, even if the material side of the relationship is dissimulated by use of the idiom of adoption. In fact, adoption as an explicit old-age support strategy is open only to the fortunate few childless elderly who, like Mbah Haji Lina, still have wealth to dispose of at the end of their lives. Even adoption at younger ages relies on a modicum of wealth and a good reputation; otherwise access to someone else’s children will be denied. Moreover, as the examples showed, the success of an adoption partly depends on the status differentials between adoptive and biological parents. Where the family of origin is of markedly higher status, the pull may be away from the acquired family. In contrast, the legitimacy of parenthood is unlikely to be questioned in the case of wealthy and respected adoptive parents, of whom Lina is a prime example. Those childless elderly people who lack the material and reputational weight to create and

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

123

maintain an adoptive relationship have to rely on arrangements that are less desirable as they diverge from the normative family idiom. Two such arrangements will now be introduced and their reliability for old-age support discussed.

Patronage: An Alternative Avenue to Support As we have seen, childlessness in East Java is high and adoption, although common, often does not result in old-age support. This brings us back to a question raised in the introduction: what alternatives exist to support from a child, be it an own or adopted child? To date, little research has investigated help for the elderly by people other than children or spouses (see Keasberry 2002: 256ff.; Marianti 2002: 100ff.). However, the small body of literature on informal social security for the poor, ill, unemployed, bereaved or otherwise unfortunate provides a useful startingpoint (see Ravallion and Dearden 1988; von Benda-Beckmann et al. 1988; Nooteboom 2003). Midgley offers the following description of such social security: Traditional social security systems consist of those indigenous cultural mechanisms which obligate individuals, groups and communities to provide assistance to others … to remedy a condition of unmet need, to restore autonomous functioning, or to maintain resource flows to certain individuals or groups. … Traditional systems are also comprised of institutional mechanisms which foster cooperative endeavour and which enhance the well-being of the community in a more positive, promotive sense. (1994: 223)

According to Franz and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann (1994: 12ff.), social security functions may be embedded in social practices, relationships and institutions – including kinship, village membership, patronage, rituals and savings clubs – even though these do not pursue specific social protection aims (for examples see Mulder 1994; van de Ven 1994; Blackwood 1997; Lont 2002). In rural East Java, the avenues to old-age support that do not involve filial relations may be grouped into two broad kinds of arrangement, which cut across kindred and community. One may be glossed as patronage, where an elderly person receives support in return for current or past services to a rich family. This is considered a good arrangement because it respects Javanese values of balance and reciprocity. The other is reliance on charity. Charity confers only a minimum of support and entails serious loss of social status and participation; it is the lot of the poorest, most

124

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

excluded elderly without children. Contrary to expectations, support from wider kin does not represent a markedly distinct type of old-age support but can be subsumed under adoption, patronage and charity (for a contrast, see Indrizal, Chapter 2, this volume). By this I mean that assistance from non-nuclear kin tends to take one of three forms. It follows the logic either of filiation, such that a particular younger relative takes on the identity and role of a child; or of patronage, in which case the arrangement is considered hierarchical but mutually beneficial; or of charity, with its connotations of condescension (see also von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann 1994: 21). In this section I shall discuss the role of patronage and of kin qua patrons in providing security for elderly people. The notion of patronage is construed broadly here to include any hierarchical dyadic relationship involving reciprocal obligations that are not merely confined to economic exchanges but extend into the social sphere. James Scott provides the following useful definition of patronage based on his research on rural South-East Asia: The patron–client relationship – an exchange relationship between two roles – may be defined as a special case of dyadic ties involving a largely instrumental friendship in which an individual of higher socio-economic status (patron) uses his own influence and resources to provide protection and/or benefits for a person of lower status (client) who … reciprocates by offering general support and assistance, including personal services, to the patron. Two characteristics of the patron–client dyad require emphasis in this context: its basis in inequality and its diffuse flexibility as a system of personal exchange. … As a diffuse pattern of reciprocity, the goods and services exchanged by patron and client reflect the evolving needs and resources of each. (1972: 8–9, see also Pelras 2000: 394)

Patronage is most commonly found in agrarian labour relations. In Java, for example, a villager with rice land (sawah) will often hire sharecroppers and agricultural labourers from among neighbours and kin (Jay 1969: 252ff.; Hüsken 1989; Koning 2001). The understanding that the same people should be hired repeatedly assures labourers of regular employment. Among the lower economic strata in modern-day rural Java, access to work – more than actual wage levels – is a crucial determinant of economic welfare and security (Hart 1986; Breman and Wiradi 2002). Employment security is greatest in the case of sharecroppers, who often work a patron’s land for years or even decades. As labourers and employers know each other as members of the same com-

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

125

munity and participate in the same rituals, such contractual arrangements have a marked social aspect, which increases with the duration of the labour relationship. Apart from ensuring access to work, a patron acquires certain normative obligations towards his or her client (Blackwood 1997). In Kidul a patron is expected to give gifts of money or clothes at Idul Fitri (the main Muslim holiday) and to provide loans or help with ritual or medical expenditures. Conversely, a patron may legitimately expect a client to provide practical assistance, often for days on end, in the event of a large feast or family crisis. A patron also relies on clients to offer political support, both in the broad sense of vouching for the generosity and trustworthiness of the patron and more specifically in the event of a patron running for office.7 This chapter has a specific and novel focus on relations of patronage, namely, the implications of patron–client ties for oldage support. In this context, two aspects of patronage may be distinguished, although in reality they often overlap. One is the role of patronage in providing access to employment and thus income in old age when a person’s productivity may no longer be optimal. The other involves the support ensuant on patron–client relations after ‘retirement’. Although patron–client relations are not exclusive to childless elderly people, they are more likely to play a crucial role where family support is lacking. Among the fifty-one demographically childless elderly people nine (18 per cent) owe most of their support to a patron; among the thirty-six actually childless, the proportion is as much as one-third. Patronage providing access to work Most elderly people in Kidul, irrespective of whether they have children or not, are concerned with maintaining economic, physical and even residential independence in old age (Schröder-Butterfill 2002). Outright physical or material dependence is comparatively rare; thus for most elderly concern with independence protection takes priority over the question of who will care once independence becomes impossible. For the majority – roughly 80 per cent – of elderly who do not have pensions, land or large savings, the ability to maintain economic independence is premised on continued access to paid work. This is not trivial in present-day East Java, where competition for work is fierce and most unskilled occupations require a modicum of physical strength or capital. For this reason, elderly people’s access to work often rests on long-established work relations with a patron who is prepared to continue employing them in old age. This is particularly important for agricultural labourers (buruh tani), share-

126

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

croppers (petani bagi-hasil), domestic servants (pembantu) and people who do ‘odd jobs’ (buruh seadayna); these types of work make up 14 per cent, 4 per cent, 4 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively, of the work of the elderly working population. The other main types of work among elderly people are trade (34 per cent), farming own land (12 per cent) and traditional medicine (12 per cent). Patron–client relationships are not confined to relations among non-relatives. Quite often it is a rich relative who provides employment for a poorer relation, although in Kidul rarely a member of the same nuclear family. Within such a context, kin of widely differing social and economic status can interact without upsetting Javanese sensitivities to hierarchy: Between relatives within the village references to the moral imperative for co-operation and reciprocity are common. Kinship ideology stresses the fundamental egalitarianism of members of the same ‘family’. This is, however, only one side of the coin. … When social statuses of relatives differ considerably, … it is not so much co-operation between equals and mutual help which are stressed, but rather the generosity of the seniors and the reciprocal loyalty of the juniors. (Hüsken 1991: 91)

An awareness of rank is embodied in Javanese kinship terminology (Robson 1987), which distinguishes senior and junior members of one generation, and in the Javanese language with its distinct language levels (Uhlenbeck 1978; Anderson 1990; Errington 1988). The combination of age, kinship, social and economic status and religious affiliation means that no two individuals are ever equal in status and the attendant respect (hormat) due (Geertz 1960: 248; Geertz 1961: 20). Where status imbalances among kin or neighbours are considerable, interaction is avoided. Sensitivity to social position is embodied in sungkan, an archetypal Javanese disposition which may be approximated as a sense of respect mixed with shame and avoidance, or an ‘embarrassed shrinking into the self, the graceful constraint of one’s own personality out of deference to the other person’ (Geertz 1961: 152). People experience sungkan when confronted with individuals of appreciably higher status, and failure to feel sungkan is considered evidence of immaturity or of not being properly Javanese (jowo) (cf. Geertz 1993 [1973]: 129). However, sungkan is sensitivity not only to imbalances in status but also to imbalances in dependency or relative need. Situations of exchange in which one party is obviously needful of assistance whilst having nothing appropriate to offer in return are shunned, for they threaten humiliation and

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

127

the loss of personal detachment and equilibrium. As a result, the poor feel reluctant to approach rich kin for fear of seeming opportunistic or being on the receiving end of pity (kasihan). Wellmeaning kin thus tend to channel their support through arrangements of two-way exchanges in order to set it apart from charity. The following case illustrates this interweaving of kinship and patronage. Mbah Mis, a man in his late seventies, was married at least five times. He admits that his frequent divorces and remarriages were related to his childlessness. Eventually, with his penultimate wife, Mis had a son. Sadly his son died soon after he had married and started a family. Mis’s wife also died. Mis remarried but had no further children. Despite his advanced age, he still works as a farmer. He inherited agricultural land from his parents. Some of this was sold a long time ago in order to pay for the circumcision of his son. When his previous wife was ill, he also sold land to buy her medication and then to pay for costly funerary rites. Finding it impossible to make ends meet, Mbah Mis decided to sell the remainder of his agricultural land. Upon hearing this, Pak Jumadi, Mis’s nephew and a successful village official, tried to dissuade his uncle from selling the land. When Mis insisted, Jumadi offered to buy the land under very favourable conditions for the old man. He bought the land but allows his uncle to continue working it for a weekly wage and with the added concession that Mis may keep the bulk of the produce. This arrangement now represents the main source of livelihood in Mis’s old age. Pak Jumadi’s actions are acknowledged as being very generous by Mbah Mis and other members of Mis’s family. The support Mbah Mis receives from his nephew does not take the form of a so-called pure gift but rather of regular payment in exchange for services, even if these are of an almost symbolic nature. Mis can thereby retain moral and material autonomy, which would vanish were he simply handed money or food. Once the element of reciprocal benefit ceases, the support he receives will in all likelihood be limited to fulfilling his daily needs rather than taking the shape of money that the elderly man can dispose of freely. Jumadi’s generosity is already limited in certain respects: he did not, for example, pay for the hospitalisation of Mis’s wife when she suffered a stroke, whereas he did cover the cost of expensive hospital treatment for his own father. It is telling that the arrangement was initiated by Jumadi, the person of higher social and economic standing. Mis – being poor

128

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

– would not have approached his nephew directly for help, although the kinship link between the childless uncle and rich nephew is sufficiently close for some support to be normatively expected. Jumadi’s siblings, for example, give their elderly uncle small gifts of money or clothing at Idul Fitri or when they visit; however, their support is far from sufficient. In other words, although Mis’s kinship network is extensive and his reputation within his wider family and community good, the quality of his old-age support relies on the fact that he has been able to forge a special, reciprocal link with a particular wealthy nephew. The fact that Jumadi decides to assist his uncle in a way that protects the old man’s social identity as a participant in mutual exchanges rather than making him a recipient of charity is evidence of his generosity and sensitivity, which is not lost on fellow-villagers: Jumadi’s actions reflect positively on his reputation. This is of no small significance as he was at the time preparing to run for the position of village head. In other cases, where the kinship link is less close and normative obligations to provide for a childless elderly relative are therefore weaker, the emphasis is even more on the reciprocal flows of support. The following case will serve as an illustration. Mbah Karim is a man in his seventies. He was married five times, his current wife Suniwati is also a divorcee. They have neither own nor adopted children. The couple live in a tiny bamboo house with an earthen floor, sparse furniture and no running water or electricity. Karim was not always poor. He comes from an established village family and inherited land from his parents and an aunt. Most of his wealth, Karim admits, was lost gambling and womanising in the 1970s. When he was younger he was married to the daughter of a famously rich landowner. The marriage remained childless and ended in divorce, and his ex-wife subsequently died. Since the time of that marriage, however, Karim has had a close relationship with an affinal nephew, Pak Tiwon, the son of his ex-wife’s sister. For a while, Tiwon and one of his brothers lived with Karim and his then-wife and, had the marriage, wealth and reputation lasted, the children might well have become anak angkat. Tiwon is now married, has three small children and lives close by. He is well off. Karim and Suniwati’s only regular source of income in old age is the money they receive for child-care services they provide for Tiwon. Tiwon also gives rice, sugar, clothes and cigarettes. The elderly couple do not receive any significant support from Tiwon’s brother, who also lived with Karim for a while. Nor are they given help by Mbah

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

129

Haji Mustafa, Tiwon’s immensely rich father, Karim’s former brother-in-law. As in the case of Mbah Mis, the defining characteristic of the support for the elderly childless couple is the existence of a reciprocal exchange between individuals of widely differing statuses; as such the relationship can be understood as one of patronage rather than of charity. Although Karim’s network of locally available kin is large and wealthy, his relatives are unlikely to look favourably on requests for assistance. Tiwon, like Jumadi, has his reputation to consider. In this case outright support may be interpreted as dubious sponsorship of someone who has blown his own fortune, whereas payment in exchange for a service is legitimate. The relationship of mutual support that exists between Karim and Tiwon cannot be explained in terms of their kin relationship per se: as Karim is Tiwon’s uncle by marriage only, this link would have been expected to erode following the divorce from and subsequent death of Mbah Karim’s former wife. Indeed, none of Tiwon’s other six siblings, all of whom live nearby, lend any support worth mentioning. The affectionate link between Karim and Tiwon was kept alive, despite their diverging fortunes, through the ongoing exchanges of goods and services. There is not, in Java, any notion of simple substitution between different categories of kin. In the absence of a child, a nephew, niece, grandchild, stepchild or cousin will not automatically take on the responsibilities of a child. If a support relationship is to arise, it has to be worked for and negotiated (see von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann 1994: 21). This point is worth stressing: thanks to the legacy of structural-functionalist approaches to the family, it is sometimes implicitly assumed that in developing countries distant kin may simply be assimilated to the role of nuclear families and that the boundaries between degrees of relatedness are fluid (e.g. Goode 1964: 50). It is too early to say what long-term support Mbah Karim is likely to receive from Tiwon and whether such support will cover medical or physical care. Indisputably their current arrangement is an important step in the consolidation of a relationship that could easily have faded. Based on their current ‘patron–client’ relationship, it will be easier for Tiwon to justify supporting his uncle in future and for Karim and his wife to accept support even when they are no longer providing a service. It is to the question of long-term old-age support arising from patronage that I shall now turn.

130

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

Patronage providing old-age security after ‘retirement’ Old-age support arising from patronage arrangements is often not conditional upon the continued service by the elderly person. Instead, it may be motivated by a shared history of mutual interdependence and based on notions of balance, reciprocity and obligation (see Sahlins 1965; Peterson 1993: 576). This was put most clearly by the employer of a childless, now-blind domestic servant who had worked for him and his family for thirty-five years: ‘Poor old woman! She now has no one. When she was still strong, she used to work for us; now that she is old we can’t just send her back. How social would that be? No longer sweet – so throw her away? Surely not!’ The childless servant’s current support is explicitly situated within the context of long-term services rendered by her. The quote also highlights the social imperative of honouring the obligations that a patron has acquired towards his or her clients. Rich people’s social standing in the village rests in part on their being generous towards the less fortunate, not least towards those who have provided loyal service in the past (Sahlins 1965: 148; Scott 1976: 41; Nugroho 1996). The following case captures many of the characteristics of old-age support arising from a long-term relationship of employment. Mbok Parjiah is a childless divorcee. Her parents and siblings are long dead and she has no nephews or nieces. She is listed as a domestic help (pembantu) in the household register of a rich farmer called Pak Bambang, to whom she is distantly related (masih saudara). She has worked for the family since 1979, even before they moved to Kidul. In the past she cooked, cleaned, washed and provided child care. Now that she is old, she only does a little cooking. Parjiah has never received a regular wage, but all her daily needs have been well covered by Bambang. Whenever she needs money, for example, for medicine, she is given a generous sum and told to keep the rest. She regularly sees the village nurse when ill and can afford to visit a traditional masseuse (dukun pijat) and buy traditional medicine (jamu) whenever she wishes to. She is one of very few elderly people in the village with dentures, which were paid for by Bambang. When asked who will care for her until her death, Mbok Parjiah is in no doubt: ‘Pak Bambang’s family! They are already like a family to me (seperti saudara)!’ This commitment was also expressed by Bambang in a separate interview. Domestic service of the kind described here is a common institution in Java, especially in urban areas but also among rich vil-

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

131

lagers. For elderly servants without children, the family they work for often takes on a key supportive role in old age. As Parjiah puts it, Bambang’s family has over the years become ‘like her own family’, the family she no longer has. It is from them that she receives accommodation and daily support and can expect care until she dies. As in the previous cases, the nature and extent of the support relationship cannot be explained by the kinship link, which is too distant to elicit normative obligations for support, although occasional charity may be expected. Kinship will merely have played a role in the genesis of the employment. What counts is the long-term relationship between the poor servant and the rich family, which allows Parjiah not to feel awkward (sungkan) about her relative dependence now. The relationship is one of balance, at least over the long run. I encountered many other examples which confirm the fact that childless elderly prefer support arrangements that arise from a mutually beneficial relationship over those that are more one-sided, even if the latter involve closer kin. Apart from the comparatively favourable moral identities involved in patron–client relationships, patronage as an avenue to old-age support is desirable for the extent of support it entails. As the example of Mbok Parjiah showed, a rich patron can afford to provide good-quality medical care and benefits socially from doing so. The importance of patronage as a labour relationship is, however, subject to conflicting forces in modern-day Indonesia, which may in future work against the elderly poor. On the one hand, a growing middle class may increase the demand for domestic service and thereby continue to benefit elderly childless women. On the other hand, there is a growing tendency in Java – where land is individually owned – for people to sell their small, barely profitable plots of land to large landowners living outside the community. These landowners often work in conjunction with agribusinesses and bring in their own external working parties rather than hiring locals. Even villagers who still own land are increasingly relying on wage labour, which carries fewer obligations, and have begun to contract out harvest work, which used to provide employment for many, by selling standing crops to external harvesting firms (penebas) (see also Blackwood 1997; B. White 2000; Koning 2001). The motives were made beautifully clear by a younger-generation respondent in Kidul: ‘If we organise the harvest ourselves by hiring neighbours and relatives, we have to pay in kind (bawon) as well as having to share some of the harvest with close relatives. If we sell the standing crop, we can keep all the money ourselves!’ For the elderly who depend on

132

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

access to unskilled work, these changes seriously undermine the possibility of maintaining economic independence in old age. For the elderly with children, this may be a matter of relinquishing independence for less welcome dependence on children (SchröderButterfill 2002). For those without children, the implications are more serious: for them dependence on charity may be the inevitable outcome.

Charity: A Measure of Last Resort The practices and institutions discussed so far may be referred to as strategies which childless people pursue in part to reduce material insecurity and find a positive social identity in an environment in which children are hugely valued. These strategies are far from foolproof and, given the constraints faced, they are often defensive rather than proactive. Nonetheless, they involve agency on the part of the childless, who exchange gifts and services in order to create and maintain ties to particular individuals, from whom they may then legitimately expect support should they come to need it. Complete reliance on charity, in contrast, is far from a strategy but an outcome of last resort. State-sponsored social security measures to guarantee a minimum standard of living for the general population are non-existent in Indonesia (Esmara and Tjiptoherijanto 1986; Ramesh 2000). The onus was and is on families and communities to care for their members in need (Ihromi 1989). The only forms of regular state support encountered in Kidul are pensions for former civil servants and members of the army. In addition, following the onset of the economic crisis in 1997, the government introduced a Social Safety Net programme (JPS) backed by World Bank money (see Breman and Wiradi 2002). In Kidul this programme consisted of basic and unreliable medical subsidies for the poor and the monthly sale of 10 kg of subsidised rice (sembako) per disadvantaged household. Twenty per cent of elderly households I surveyed in Kidul drew a pension, half reported receipt of sembako and 30 per cent benefited from subsidised health care. Given the glaring insufficiency of formal measures, the institution of informal charitable support is well established in Indonesia and SouthEast Asia more generally (for example, Scott 1976; Ravallion and Dearden 1988; von Benda-Beckmann 1988; von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann 1994; Nooteboom 2003). One form of charity prevalent across the archipelago is the institution of zakat: the donation of rice and money by well-off

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

133

villagers to religious institutions at the end of the fasting month. These donations are then redistributed to the poor. In the case of zakat, giver and recipient know each other as members of the same community, but, because the distribution is indirect, no sense of personal indebtedness or obligation arises, making this form of charity less stigmatising than others. In Kidul all of the poorest (kurang mampu) elderly households and 44 per cent of those in the second-poorest stratum (cukup-cukupan) received zakat. The childless elderly are vastly over-represented among recipients, with two-thirds reporting that they had been given zakat at the previous Idul Fitri, compared with only 35 per cent of elderly with children. This underscores the fact that the elderly without children are perceived to be particularly vulnerable by fellow-villagers (cf. von Benda-Beckmann 1988: 349f.). In addition, occasional support from neighbours or kin is common and includes the giving of cooked or uncooked food, small sums of money or inexpensive medicine. For example, women will often take a plate of food to a poorer neighbour, playing it down with a comment like: ‘Oh, it’s nothing – I’ve just cooked too much’ or ‘It’s her favourite dish.’ Moreover, the lines dividing the charitable giving of food from exchanges of food as part of ritual life are blurred. On occasions like weddings, circumcisions or deaths, families prepare food as part of a brief ceremony (slametan). This is then distributed among neighbouring households, irrespective of social, economic or kinship status. These exchanges are not understood in terms of charity, but nonetheless represent important sources of indirect material support (see also Marianti, Chapter 5, this volume). For instance, 91 per cent of poor households stated that they only ever consumed meat when given it as part of a slametan meal. Equally, for some elderly women, assisting with the preparations for celebrations represents an avenue to occasional income in money or kind. Slametan feasts are important arenas in which villagers can strengthen social networks and gain a favourable reputation as generous hosts or hard-working, willing helpers. These social and reputational resources are important in deciding the support that neighbours and distant kin are willing to provide in times of need (see also Peterson 1989: 139ff.; McAllister 1990; Mulder 1994). Zakat, sembako, occasional charitable gifts and ritual exchanges alleviate material need, but they are insufficient to guarantee a living for those without any supplementary income. For the very poor, sustained charity in the form of regular gifts of food and, more rarely, money from a diffuse network of neighbours or kin may become the main source of livelihood. In this form of

134

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

support, which is motivated by pity and sometimes condescension, the contributions by kin are largely indistinguishable from contributions by neighbours. Complete reliance on charity for everyday survival is much rarer than occasional receipt. Because the need for it only arises in the absence of support from children, patrons or close kin, its occurrence is confined to the childless or de facto childless. Thus outright dependence on charity affects five out of fifty-one demographically childless elderly people; in addition, half of the de facto childless fall in this category. Charity is not able or designed to lift people out of their position of poverty and exclusion, and there are clear limits to the extent of support that such charity affords. Moreover, the recipient is left with little autonomy or positive reputation (harga diri). The following example illustrates the support available to an elderly person with no family ties in the village who can no longer support herself economically. Mbah Putih was an extremely poor childless widow in her late seventies who lived alone in a tiny bamboo shack. As a group of well-to-do women told me, this shack had been erected for her in an act of mutual neighbourly support (gotong royong). The house did not have water or electricity, so Putih had to fetch water from a neighbour, cook on a firewood stove and walk to the river to wash and go to the toilet. The women emphasised Mbah Putih’s dependence on others: ‘Unless she is given it by neighbours, she doesn’t have anything to eat.’ They hastened to add that she never had to go hungry. Putih, whose two children died in childhood, used to work as a seller of snacks in the nearby market but had stopped a long time ago because she was too frail. She acknowledged that for her daily needs she depended on various neighbours, who gave her small sums of money to buy food. The only relatives Putih still had were an older brother and some nephews in another village. The brother had apparently sold the inheritance from their parents without giving her a share; hence Putih had no contact with him. On my first visit, the elderly woman claimed never to be ill and thus not in any need of medical treatment. Soon after, however, Putih did fall ill. Although the women from the neighbourhood still brought her water and food, they openly gossiped about her, complaining about her smell and her apparently huge appetite. A few days later the old woman was collected by her nephew, the son of her estranged brother. Someone had let him know that she was ill. Clearly, no one in the neighbourhood was prepared to provide physical care or medicine during her illness. Not long after, Mbah Putih died in

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

135

her nephew’s house. Any trace of her existence in the village was quickly erased. The shack was pulled down and her name never mentioned again. The most striking characteristic of Mbah Putih’s support arrangement is its unidirectional nature. The elderly woman received housing, food and money but was by popular definition incapable of reciprocating. This fact is at first glance obscured by the neighbours’ use of the term gotong royong (mutual assistance) when describing the provision of a house for Putih. This emotive term implies interdependence and equality of villagers. As John Bowen has put it, the term gotong royong ‘calls up images of social relations in a traditional, smoothly working, harmonious, selfenclosed village on Java, where labor is accomplished through reciprocal exchange, and villagers are motivated by a general ethos of selflessness and concern for the common good’ (1986: 546). Central to gotong royong is the notion of reciprocity – not immediate or necessarily balanced reciprocity but rather a general understanding that equivalent support will be forthcoming should it be needed (Sahlins 1965: 147). The existence of such a generalised scheme of mutual help provides a minimal informal social safety net. It is reciprocal at an abstract level, such that membership of the community carries normative responsibilities and – given basic prerequisites like social participation and moral worth – entitles the member to a modicum of support should it ever be needed. Yet, although at the level of the community gotong royong is premised on reciprocity, individual instances of assistance within this general scheme are not: they are hierarchical, if not oppressive. Even a person who has reliably participated in informal neighbourly exchanges cannot indefinitely evoke past exchanges as legitimisation for receipt of support, because long-term imbalances are not tolerated in diffuse support networks. (That said, it is often people who have failed to conduct themselves correctly in the eyes of fellow-villagers, for instance by under-participating in small-scale gift exchanges, who are unable to draw on dyadic support relationships and have to rely on charity instead.) By being entirely dependent, Mbah Putih and people in similar situations bestow morally superior status on their neighbours, whilst themselves becoming subordinated to the decisions and judgements of their benefactors. Thus charitable giving is part of a mechanism whereby social and economic stratification is maintained and emphasised: those least dependent on others are at the top, those most dependent at the bottom (see Mauss 1954 [1925]: 72;

136

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

Sahlins 1965: 160f.; Scott 1976: 41). Bourdieu (1977: 191) refers to such domination which has been euphemised by the giving of gifts as ‘symbolic violence’ – the creation of hierarchies by means other than overt power. Undertones of symbolic violence are certainly present in the ostracism, removal and eventual erasure of Mbah Putih.8 Moreover, when Mbah Putih broke with the mould of ‘never being ill’, the exact parameters of her support network became apparent. Neighbours were prepared to provide her with food, shelter and occasional money. Yet no one volunteered to take Mbah Putih to see a doctor or buy her medicine, much less to provide physical care. Charitable support is clearly premised on the recipient not falling seriously ill or otherwise making excessive demands on his or her diffuse support network. Thus, when Putih does fall ill, her relatives are contacted, despite the fact that she never otherwise associated with them. She is no longer in a position to decide her own fate or determine her treatment: she has become a passive agent whose fate is decided by others. Related to the loss of power is a severe decline in status attendant upon full dependence. Putih’s lack of moral worth is reflected in the way the women gossip about her. Such open revelation of negative sentiments in front of an outsider was otherwise extremely rare. These observations on the limitations and implications of charity counterbalance overly idealistic assumptions about the operation of informal community support in developing countries (see Ravallion and Dearden 1988; but see also von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann 1994: 9). Institutions of charity are important in providing basic assistance, but they do so at a cost. Mbah Putih’s fate is a spectre of all that elderly people without children try to avoid: destitution, loss of status and autonomy, social exclusion and ultimately a miserable death.

Conclusion This chapter set out to investigate whether the elderly without children in rural Indonesia are vulnerable or whether adequate alternatives to support from children exist. The question is of obvious empirical interest in an environment like East Java, where as many as one in four currently elderly people have no children of their own. The picture that emerges from socio-demographic research in rural East Java is complex. If vulnerable elderly are those who lack material or practical support in old age, then childlessness

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

137

does not inevitably lead to vulnerability. This is both because alternatives to having children of one’s own exist, and because the availability of children – be they own or adopted – is no guarantee for adequate support. Adoption is considered an ideal solution to childlessness, because in acquiring an anak angkat Javanese villagers fulfil deep-seated desires for raising a family. Elderly adoptive parents enjoy the satisfaction that customary parental generosity and children’s companionship and attentions provide. Moreover, once elderly parents are no longer able to maintain themselves independently, children generally step in to provide basic and often loving support. Social protection from a rich patron emerged as an acceptable and reliable alternative to filial support in old age. Despite their hierarchical nature, patron–client relations are viewed positively, because they are rooted in present or past reciprocal exchanges and thus respect the Javanese emphasis on balance and avoidance of dependence. Charitable support affords minimal assistance – food and shelter, but not medication or physical care – to the most needy childless elderly. Because outright dependence on others entails loss of status and exclusion from social participation, reliance on charity is considered a measure of last resort. Adoption and patronage are also not without their problems. Given the challenges from biological parents to the loyalties of an anak angkat, adoptions quite commonly break down. If this occurs late in life, the childless adoptive parent may be left extremely insecure, as it is then difficult to mobilise alternative arrangements. Even where a child’s loyalty is not in question, support in a manner desired may not be forthcoming, parents’ past generosity notwithstanding. This commonly observed unreliability of children means that the elderly both with and without children face the risk of being without support in old age. Access to assistance from a patron is limited and increasingly so, as it relies on long-standing employment relations in specific economic sectors. Moreover, given Javanese villagers’ reluctance to approach people of higher social or economic status, patronage arrangements usually depend on the superior party making the first move. In sum, the material presented here suggests that there is no simple connection between a lack of children and the availability of support in old age. Vulnerability attendant upon childlessness is thrown into sharper relief when questions of social identity, destitution and exclusion are considered. Once we take avoidance of certain bad outcomes – as defined by the elderly themselves – as the startingpoint for assessing people’s imperilment, then childlessness does

138

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

emerge as a major source of risk. Among well-off childless elderly, the fear of having to rely for intimate care on the ‘wrong’ kind of person (e.g. a grandchild, non-co-resident daughter-in-law or paid help) may predominate. For the less materially secure elderly without children, vulnerability is ultimately understood in relation to the threat of reliance on charity and the negative implications this entails. Children or other individuals with whom close dyadic links have been established over time will as a rule intervene to prevent destitution and thus reliance on charity. As a consequence, only childless or de facto childless elderly find themselves in danger of being entirely at the mercy of the community’s condescending kindness. An important finding has been that support from kin is not automatically forthcoming as a substitute for help from children. Instead, it has to be negotiated. The quality and extent of assistance from non-nuclear kin depend heavily on the social relationship in which the arrangement is cast. This, in turn, is affected by the relative social and economic status of the kin involved and on the degree to which people are willing and able to invest materially and practically in a relationship. By adopting a younger relative, people come closest to fashioning the unique parent–child bond. Access to children for adoption requires a modicum of wealth and a good reputation. Moreover, in raising a child, adoptive parents take on a lifelong responsibility for investing emotionally and materially in their charge. Such investment does not elicit expectations of return: filial relations in Java do not rest on a logic of debt and reciprocity. Elderly people who are wealthy and enjoy high status may also succeed in redefining an essentially contractual old-age support arrangement with a younger relative positively, by resorting to the idiom of filiation. In such cases, explicit mutual obligations – material wealth in exchange for old-age care – are entered into with a relative who would otherwise not be expected to help. The logic of kin support cast in relations of patronage is not dissimilar from that of late-life adoptions. In such arrangements, a poor elderly person benefits from often generous assistance from a rich relative who would not normally be obliged to provide more than occasional, small-scale support. The reliability and generosity of support from a patron and the favourable identity granted to the poorer, socially inferior client are a result of both parties agreeing that a close dyadic bond of long-term mutual benefit and obligation has been created. The least reliable and most socially damaging kind of kin support is that deriving from a diffuse network of better-off relatives and neighbours, where notions of personalised obligation are minimal or lacking.

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

139

What is the outlook for future cohorts of elderly in Java? Fortunately, the number of childless elderly is set to decline. Greater prosperity, better health and improved health care have reduced the confluence of factors which historically contributed to pathological sterility and the death of children. The uneven distribution of children among elderly will become much less pronounced and involuntary childlessness less common.9 However, this changing demographic situation will also leave future cohorts of childless elderly with fewer avenues to security in old age. With reproduction in Indonesia now under deliberate control, there are likely to be few ‘surplus children’ for the childless to adopt. In addition, the projected increase in the proportions of prime working-age people in the population over the coming decades will exacerbate competition for jobs. Already there is evidence that work opportunities for the elderly are becoming more and more constricted. Some types of unskilled work have disappeared altogether, and informal labour relations in agriculture, which were commonly based on patronage, are frequently being replaced by less personalised ones.

Notes This chapter is based on doctoral research at Oxford University, which was part of a comparative project on ageing in Indonesia. I am grateful to the Wellcome Trust and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for generous support of the research and to Philip Kreager for useful comments. 1. Identifying exact ages was impossible except for the ‘young’ elderly, who often know their date of birth. For those aged roughly sixty-five and over I relied on notable events, such as the marriage of Princess Juliana (1937) (marked by festivities in the then Netherlands East Indies), the Japanese occupation (1942–1945) or the Indonesian war of independence (1945–1950), to date births sufficiently accurately to allow five-year age groups to be constructed. 2. In this measure I include the ten de facto childless people who receive no support at all from children but not those who receive occasional support. Among childless people with adopted children or stepchildren, only those with an ongoing bond are counted as having children. 3. Some authors have attempted a categorisation of different ‘degrees’ of adoption by resorting to a variety of terms, such as ‘adoption’, ‘fostering’, ‘temporary adoption’ and ‘child care’ (e.g. Djamour 1952; Geertz 1961: 38ff.; Jay 1969: 72ff.; Goodenough 1970: 321f.; Ritter 1981). For rural East Java I would argue that this does not work as it imposes a conceptual neatness that is actually lacking. Often arrangements start off as one thing and become another, or outcomes are interpreted differently by different participants in the child transfer. 4. Like adoption, acquiring children by marriage to someone with children seems an obvious way of overcoming childlessness, especially in Java, where divorce

140

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

and remarriage are widespread. In reality, step-parents often fail to establish a close bond with their stepchildren (anak tiri), and as a result old-age support is rarely forthcoming (see Schröder-Butterfill 2002: 298ff. for details). As noted, there is no consensus on whether anak angkat should inherit from their adoptive parents. Several authors have claimed that rights to inheritance only exist from biological, not adoptive, parents (Geertz 1961: 39; Jay 1969: 75f.); this is also the Islamic position (Sriono 1992: 29). Most cases I encountered involved childless parents; therefore competition with biological offspring was ruled out. Nonetheless, adoptive parents tended to formally pass on their property to their anak angkat well in advance of their death in order to avoid demands by more distant kin and – as in the case of Bu Dinah – to state unequivocally their commitment to their adoptive child. Where anak angkat inherited from adoptive parents, it was then considered at the biological parents’ discretion whether they, too, wanted to benefit the anak angkat in their division of property. Doing so tended to indicate that the adoption was not entirely recognised by the original parents. Djamour recorded similar sentiments for Malay parents: ‘An elderly couple, unless they are infirm, must attempt to earn their living, and even if in the past they have shown great generosity towards their sons and daughters, they do not believe themselves entitled to regular financial help in return. In other words, there is hardly any personal reciprocity between parents and children: for the former it is always more blessed to give than to receive’ (1959: 166). Burridge (1969, quoted in Yan 1996: 8) has also argued that, while sibling relations are governed by norms of reciprocity, filial relations are not. There is a sizeable critical literature on patronage which draws attention to the often exploitative nature of patron–client bonds or to its role in defusing labourers’ opposition to iniquitous working relations (for example, Scott 1976; Breman and Wiradi 2002; Hart 1991). However, other authors have responded to these concerns by observing that patronage has distinct advantages over pure wage-labour relations, especially in the current Indonesian situation, where unemployment is high and a minimum wage non-existent (see Blackwood 1997; Koning 2001). Given the ostracism that people fully reliant on charity face, some impoverished childless elderly who are still mobile prefer to survive by begging in villages away from Kidul. In this way, they rely on strangers, who are unable to pass judgement on them at a personal level and do not gain control over them. In the long term, of course, voluntary childlessness and childlessness as a result of delayed marriage may emerge as a new source of elderly without children (see Poston and Trent 1982; Jones 1997). In addition the HIV–AIDS epidemic, which is only just coming under scrutiny in Indonesia, may have implications for the availability of children to elderly people (see Knodel and Saengtienchai 2002 for Thailand).

References Ananta, A., E.N. Anwar and D. Suzenti, ‘Some Economic Demographic Aspects of “Ageing” in Indonesia’, In Indonesia Assessment: Population and Human Resources, ed. G. Jones and T. Hull, Canberra, 1997, 181–203.

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

141

Anderson, B., ‘The Languages of Indonesian Politics’. In Language and Power. Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia, ed. B. Anderson, Ithaca, 1990, 123–151. Bernheim, B.D., A. Shleifer and L.H. Summers, ‘The Strategic Bequest Motive’, Journal of Political Economy 93, (1985): 1045–1076. Blackwood, E., ‘Women, Land, and Labor: Negotiating Clientage and Kinship in a Minangkabau Peasant Community’, Ethnology 36, no. 4, (1997): 277–293. Bledsoe, C. and A. Hill, ‘Social Norms, Natural Fertility, and the Resumption of Postpartum “Contact” in The Gambia’. In The Methods and Uses of Anthropological Demography, ed. A.M. Basu and P. Aaby, Oxford, 1998, 268–297. Bourdieu, P., Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge, 1977. Bowen, J.R., ‘On the Political Construction of Tradition: Gotong Royong in Indonesia’, Journal of Asian Studies 45, no. 3 (1986): 545–561. Brady, I., Transactions in Kinship: Adoption and Fosterage in Oceania, Honolulu, 1976. Breman, J. and G. Wiradi, Good Times and Bad Times in Rural Java, Leiden, 2002. Cain, M., ‘The Consequences of Reproductive Failure: Dependence, Mobility, and Mortality among the Elderly of Rural South Asia’, Population Studies 40, no. 3 (1986): 375–388. –––––, ‘Widows, Sons, and Old-Age Security in Rural Maharashtra: A Comment on Vlassoff’, Population Studies 45, (1991): 519–528. Carroll, V., Adoption in Eastern Oceania, Honolulu, 1970a. –––––, ‘Introduction: What Does “Adoption” Mean?’ In Adoption in Eastern Oceania, ed. V. Carroll, Honolulu, 1970b, 3–17. Carsten, J., ‘Children in between: Fostering and the Process of Kinship on Pulau Langkawi, Malaysia’, Man (NS) 26, no. 3 (1991): 425–443. Central Bureau of Statistics, National Family Planning Coordination Board, Ministry of Health and Macro International, Indonesia Demographic and Health Survey 1994, Calverton and Jakarta, 1995. Clay, C. and J. Vander Haar, ‘Patterns of Intergenerational Support and Childbearing in the Third World’, Population Studies 47, no. 1 (1993): 67–83. Damas, D., ‘Demography and Kinship as Variables of Adoption in the Carolines’, American Ethnologist 10, no. 2 (1983): 328–344. Demeny, P., ‘Re-Linking Fertility Behavior and Economic Security in Old Age: A Pronatalist Reform’, Population and Development Review 13, no. 1 (1987): 128–132. Djamour, J., ‘Adoption of Children Among Singapore Malaysians’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 82, no. 2 (1952): 159–168. –––––, Malay Kinship and Marriage in Singapore, London, 1959. Dowd, J.J., ‘Aging as Exchange: A Preface to Theory’, Journal of Gerontology 30, no. 5 (1975): 584–594. Errington, J., Structure and Style in Javanese. A Semiotic View of Linguistic Etiquette, Philadelphia, 1988.

142

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

Esmara, H. and P. Tjiptoherijanto, ‘The Social Security System in Indonesia’, Asean Economic Bulletin 3 (1986): 53–69. Fisher, J.L., ‘Adoption on Ponape’. In Adoption in Eastern Oceania, ed. V. Carroll, Honolulu, 1970, 292–313. Friedman, D., M. Hechter and S. Kanazawa, ‘A Theory of the Value of Children’, Demography 31, no. 3 (1994): 375–401. Geertz, C., The Religion of Java, Chicago, 1960. –––––, The Interpretation of Cultures, London, 1993[1973]. Geertz, H., The Javanese Family: A Study of Kinship and Socialization, New York, 1961. Goode, W.J., The Family, Englewood Cliffs, 1964. Goodenough, R., ‘Adoption on Romonum, Truk’. In Adoption in Eastern Oceania, ed. V. Carroll, Honolulu, 1970, 314–340. Goody, J., ‘Adoption in Cross-Cultural Perspective’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 11, no. 1 (1969): 55–78. Grundy, E., ‘Looking Beyond the Household: Intergenerational Perspectives on Living Kin and Contacts with Kin in Great Britain’. Paper presented to the meeting ‘Kinship and Relationships Beyond the Household’, Royal Statistical Society, London, 4 February 2003. Guinness, P., Harmony and Hierarchy in a Javanese Kampung, Singapore, 1986. Hart, G., Power, Labor, and Livelihood: Processes of Change in Rural Java, Berkeley, 1986. –––––, ‘Engendering Everyday Resistance: Gender, Patronage and Production Politics in Rural Malaysia’, Journal of Peasant Studies 19, no. 1 (1991): 93–121. Haughton, J. and D. Haughton, ‘Son Preference in Vietnam’, Studies in Family Planning 26, (1995): 325–337. Henry, L., ‘Some Data on Natural Fertility’, Eugenics Quarterly 8 (1961): 81–91. Hermalin, A., ed., The Well-Being of the Elderly in Asia: A Four-Country Comparative Study, Ann Arbor, 2002. Hull, T.H., ‘Indonesian Fertility Behaviour Before the Transition: Searching for Hints in the Historical Record’. In Asian Population History, ed. T.-j. Liu, J. Lee, D.S. Reher, O. Saito and W. Feng, Oxford, 2001, 152–175. Hull, T.H. and Tukiran, ‘Regional Variations in the Prevalence of Childlessness in Indonesia’, Indonesian Journal of Geography 6, no. 32 (1976): 1–25. Hüsken, F., ‘Cycles of Commercialization and Accumulation in a Central Javanese Village’. In Agrarian Transformations: Local Processes and the State in Southeast Asia, ed. G. Hart, A. Turton and B. White, Berkeley, 1989, 303–331. –––––, ‘Power, Property and Parentage in a Central Javanese Village’. In Cognation and Social Organization in Southeast Asia, ed. F. Hüsken and J. Kemp, Leiden, 1991, 151–167.

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

143

Ihromi, T.O., ‘Social Support Systems in Transition in Indonesia’. In An Aging World: Dilemmas and Challenges for Law and Social Policy, ed. J. Eekelaar and D. Pearl, Oxford, 1989, 133–144. Jay, R., Javanese Villagers: Social Relations in Rural Modjokuto, Cambridge MA. 1969. Jenkins, G.L., S. Vargas Obando and J. Badilla Navas, ‘Childlessness, Adoption, and Milagros de Dios in Costa Rica’. In Infertility Around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies, ed. M. Inhorn and F. van Balen, Berkeley, 2002, 171–189. Jones, G., Marriage and Divorce in Islamic Southeast Asia, Singapore, 1994. –––––, ‘The Demise of Universal Marriage in East and South-East Asia’. In The Continuing Demographic Transition, ed. G. Jones, R.M. Douglas, J.C. Caldwell and R.M. D’Souza, New York, 1997, 51–79. Jones, G., E. Sulistyaningsih and T.H. Hull, Prostitution in Indonesia, Working Papers in Demography 52, Australian National University, Canberra, 1995. Keasberry, I.N., ‘Elder Care, Old-Age Security and Social Change in Rural Yogyakarta, Indonesia’. Ph.D. thesis, Wageningen Agricultural University, Wageningen, 2002. Knodel, J. and C. Saengtienchai ‘Older Aged Parents: The Final Safety Net for Adult Sons and Daughters with AIDS in Thailand’. Paper presented to the IUSSP Regional Population Conference ‘Southeast Asia’s Population in a Changing Asian Context’, Bangkok, Thailand, 10–12 June 2002. Koentjaraningrat, A Preliminary Description of the Javanese Kinship System, New Haven, 1957. Koning, J., ‘Livelihood and Sustainability: The Case of Rikmokeri Village in Central Java’. Paper presented to the Third EUROSEAS Conference, SOAS, London, 6–9 September 2001. Kreager, P. and E. Schröder-Butterfill, Actual and De Facto Childlessness in East Java: A Preliminary Analysis. Oxford Institute of Ageing Working Papers 203, Oxford University, 2003. Lee, R., ‘Intergenerational Transfers and the Economic Life Cycle: A Cross-Cultural Perspective’. In Sharing the Wealth: Demographic Change and Economic Transfers between the Generations, ed. A. Mason and G. Tapinos, Oxford, 2000, 17–56. Li, T., Malays in Singapore: Culture, Economy and Ideology, Oxford, 1989. Lillard, L.A. and R.J. Willis, ‘Motives for Intergenerational Transfers: Evidence from Malaysia’, Demography 34, no. 1 (1997): 115–134. Lockwood, M., ‘Structure and Behavior in the Social Demography of Africa’, Population and Development Review 21, no. 1 (1995): 1–32. Lont, H., ‘Juggling Money in Yogyakarta: Financial Self-Help Organisations and the Quest for Security’. Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2002. Marianti, R., ‘Surviving Spouses: Support for Widows in Malang, East Java’. Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2002.

144

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

Marshall, M., ‘Solidarity or Sterility? Adoption and Fosterage on Namoluk Atoll’. In Transactions in Kinship: Adoption and Fosterage in Oceania, ed. I. Brady, Honolulu, 1976, 28–50. Mauss, M., The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, London, 1954 [1925]. McAllister, C., ‘Women and Feasting: Ritual Exchange, Capitalism, and Islamic Revival in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia’, Research in Economic Anthropology 12, no. 1 (1990): 23–51. Midgley, J., ‘Social Security Policy in Developing Countries: Integrating State and Traditional Systems’, Focaal 22/23, (1994): 219–229. Mulder, K., ‘The Javanese Celebrations in Surinam: Social Security Through an Alliance of Costs and Culture’, Focaal 22/23, (1994): 113–138. Nag, M., B. White and R.C. Peet, ‘An Anthropological Approach to the Study of the Economic Value of Children in Java and Nepal’. In Rural Household Studies in Asia, ed. H. Binswanger, Singapore, 1980, 248–288. Niehof, A., ‘Ageing and the Elderly in Indonesia – Identifying Key Issues’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 151, no. 3 (1995): 422–437. Nooteboom, G., ‘A Matter of Style: Social Security and Livelihood in Upland East Java’. Ph.D. thesis, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, Nijmegen, 2003. Nugent, J., ‘The Old-Age Security Motive for Fertility’, Population and Development Review 11, no. 1 (1985): 75–97. Nugroho, H., ‘The Social Meaning of Money in Java’, Internationales Asienforum 27, no. 3–4 (1996): 301–326. Ochiai, E., ‘Myth and Reality of Asian Traditional Families: Living Arrangement of the Elderly in Tokugawa Japan’, Asian–Pacific Center Journal of Asian–Pacific Studies 9 (2001): 7–21. Ogg, J., ‘Grandparents: Generational Aspects, Attitudes and Matrilineal/Patrilineal Differences’. Paper presented to the meeting ‘Kinship and Relationships Beyond the Household’, Royal Statistical Society, London, 4 February 2003. Pashigian, M.J., ‘Conceiving the Happy Family: Infertility and Marital Politics in Northern Vietnam’. In Infertility Around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies, ed. M. Inhorn and F. van Balen, Berkeley, 2002, 134–151. Pelras, C., ‘Patron-Client Ties among the Bugis and Makassarese of South Sulawesi’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 156, no. 3 (2000): 393–432. Peterson, J.T., ‘Interhousehold Exchange and the Public Economy in Three Highland Philippine Communities’, Research in Economic Anthropology 11, (1989): 123–142. –––––, ‘Generalized Extended Family Exchange: A Case from the Philippines’, Journal of Marriage and the Family 55, (1993): 570–584.

Adoption, Patronage and Charity in East Java

145

Poston, D.L. and K. Trent, ‘International Variability in Childlessness: A Descriptive and Analytical Study’, Journal of Family Issues 3, no 4 (1982): 473–491. Ramesh, M., ‘The State and Social Security in Indonesia and Thailand’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 30, no. 4 (2000): 534–546. Ravallion, M. and L. Dearden, ‘Social Security in a “Moral Economy”: An Empirical Analysis for Java’, Review of Economics and Statistics 70 (1988): 36–44. Ritter, P., ‘Adoption on Kosrae Island: Solidarity and Sterility’, Ethnology 20, no. 1 (1981): 45–61. Robson, S., ‘The Terminology of Javanese Kinship’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 143, no. 4 (1987): 507–518. Sahlins, M., ‘On the Sociology of Primitive Exchange’. In The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology, ed. M. Banton, London, 1965, 139–187. Schröder-Butterfill, E., ‘Ageing in Indonesia: A Socio-Demographic Approach’. DPhil. thesis, Oxford University, 2002. –––––, ‘Inter-generational Family Support Provided by Older People in Indonesia’, Ageing and Society 24, no. 4 (2004): 1–34. Scott, J., ‘The Erosion of Patron-Client Bonds and Social Change in Rural Southeast Asia’, Journal of Asian Studies 32, no. 1 (1972): 5–37. –––––, The Moral Economy of the Peasant, New Haven, 1976. Singarimbun, M. and T.H. Hull ‘Social Responses to High Mortality Which Act to Support High Fertility’. In IUSSP International Population Conference, Mexico, vol. 1, Liege, 1977, 225–239. Sriono, E., Pengangkatan Anak di Bangkalan, Madura. Working Paper Series Bidang Kajian Madura 20, Universitas Jember, East Java, 1992. Terrell, J. and J. Modell, ‘Anthropology and Adoption’, American Anthropologist 96, no. 1 (1994): 155–161. Uhlenbeck, E.M., ‘The Use of Respect Forms in Javanese’. In Studies in Javanese Morphology, ed. E.M. Uhlenbeck, The Hague, 1978, 300–320. Utomo, B. and M. Iskandar, Mortality Transition in Indonesia 1950–1980. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok, 1986. Vaessen, M., Childlessness and Infecundity. World Fertility Survey Comparative Studies 31, Voorburg, 1984. van Balen, F. and M. Inhorn, ‘Introduction. Interpreting Infertility: A View from the Social Sciences’. In Infertility Around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies, ed. M. Inhorn and F. van Balen, Berkeley, 2002, 3–32. Van der Sterren, A., A. Murray and T.H. Hull, ‘A History of Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the Indonesian Archipelago since 1811’. In Sex, Disease and Society: A Comparative History of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, ed. M. Lewis, S.B. Bamber and M. Waugh, Westport, 1997, 203–230.

146

Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill

van de Ven, J., ‘Members Only: Time-Sharing Rice Fields and Food Security in a Sumatran Valley’, Focaal 22/23, (1994): 85–96. Vlassoff, M. and C. Vlassoff, ‘Old Age Security and the Utility of Children in Rural India’, Population Studies 34 (1980): 487–499. von Benda-Beckmann, F., ‘Islamic Law and Social Security in an Ambonese Village’. In Between Kinship and the State: Social Security and Law in Developing Countries, ed. F. von Benda-Beckmann, K. von Benda-Beckmann, E. Casino, F. Hirtz, G.R. Woodman and H. Zacher, Dordrecht, 1988, 339–366. von Benda-Beckmann, F. and K. von Benda-Beckmann, ‘Coping with Insecurity’, Focaal 22/23, (1994): 7–31. von Benda-Beckmann, F., K. von Benda-Beckmann, E. Casino, F. Hirtz, G.R. Woodman and H. Zacher, eds. Between Kinship and the State: Social Security and Law in Developing Countries, Dordrecht, 1988. White, B., ‘Rice Harvesting and Social Change in Java: An Unfinished Debate’, Asia–Pacific Journal of Anthropology 1, no. 1 (2000): 79–102. White, D. and T. Schweizer, ‘Kinship, Property Transmission, and Stratification in Javanese Villages’. In Kinship, Networks, and Exchange, ed. T. Schweizer and D. White, Cambridge, 1998, 36–56. Wirakartakusumah, D., ‘Household Structure and the Elderly in Indonesia’, unpublished report, Lembaga Demografi, Fakultas Ekonomi, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia, 1999. Yan, Y., The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village, Stanford, 1996.

CHAPTER 5

IN THE ABSENCE OF FAMILY SUPPORT: CASES OF CHILDLESS WIDOWS IN URBAN NEIGHBOURHOODS OF EAST JAVA Ruly Marianti

How Important is Family Support in Indonesia?

I

n Indonesia the importance of family support is often stressed in ideological terms. The idea that family members should and will assist each other in times of distress has a significant influence on the country’s welfare policy. Policy-makers tend to perceive matters such as care and housing for the elderly as family matters, because whenever it is needed the family is said to take care of and protect its vulnerable members (Niehof 1997). Apart from this kinship ideology, the circumstances in Indonesia, notably limitations of other sources of support, such as the community or the state, further strengthen the idea that the family is the most important source of support. Community-based help, such as neighbourly assistance, represents one real alternative, but it is not without its limitations. In practice, family and neighbourly support are often intertwined in the sense that help from neighbours complements or substitutes for family support. Neighbourly support is very important for coping with emergency situations or sudden crises. In an emergency, people who can be reached easily because they live nearby tend to be the ones who provide

148

Ruly Marianti

immediate assistance. However, when compared with family support, help from neighbours usually does not include intensive and durable forms of assistance, such as major nursing tasks (e.g. washing or dressing a person, helping them with going to the toilet, etc.). Moreover, the extent to which support can be rendered is, among others things, determined by the availability of means. When means are limited, priorities have to be set and choices made. Support is then provided according to the degree of the donor’s commitment to helping certain recipients. In this situation, it is not uncommon for people to opt, in the first place, for their own family. In my study of widows in urban Java, I uncover a tiered landscape of support relationships, what I call a ‘hierarchy of rights and duties’ (Marianti 2002). The study demonstrates that family members occupy a higher place within that hierarchy than neighbours do, in the sense that people are commonly more obliged to help family members than neighbours. The lack of state interventions is a further reason why family support is considered so important in Indonesia. The number of people who benefit from state social security insurance schemes is still small. In the mid-1980s only 11.5 per cent of the labour force was covered, although the total proportion of beneficiaries was 20.5 per cent of the total population, because dependants are also protected under the scheme (Esmara and Tjiptoherijanto 1986: 56). The majority of people thus do not have direct access to state resources. Consequently, for them there is no alternative but to turn to their families – and to some extent their neighbours – for assistance in times of hardship. Despite these general circumstances, the actual importance of family support remains debatable. Family relationships are often complex and ambivalent. They are commonly portrayed not only in terms of unconditional affection, protection and loyalty, but also in the opposed terms of conflict, insecurity and abandonment. This ambivalence emerges as a persistent theme, particularly when support relationships among family members are examined. Several studies have shown how assistance from relatives can play a significant role in helping family members to cope with a variety of problems but at the same time also note the changing and even weakening of supportive relationships among family members (Lopata 1987; Finch 1989; Finch and Mason 1993; Niehof 1995; Vatikiotis 1996, 1998). In other words, family ties do not automatically make people help each other. In this chapter I shall begin from one extreme, analysing the importance of family support in Java by focusing on situations where this support is absent. Attention is devoted to a particular

Childless Widows in Urban East Java

149

population subgroup, namely widows, for whom family support is likely to be of great importance. The group under study consists largely of middle-aged and elderly women, for whom adult children are ordinarily the most likely source of support. The absence of family support for widows is commonly connected to childlessness. The following section shows that, besides one’s spouse, it is first-degree relatives – parents, children and siblings – who are generally most obliged to provide assistance. The important role played by children points to potential vulnerabilities among those without children. In the remaining sections I examine the problems and coping strategies of childless widows. Widows in Java, unlike in some other cultures, are not a marginalised or excluded social category.1 As I outline below, widowhood as such does not place these women in a distinct set of circumstances, and therefore in many respects Javanese widows form a heterogeneous group. Problems pertaining to widowhood are likewise very diverse. Nevertheless, because the majority of widows are middle-aged or elderly and many of them work in the informal sector, old-age care and economic security are among their chief concerns. Like the majority of Indonesians, most of the widows studied do not have direct access to state support. One of the ways they cope with widowhood is therefore by winning family and community-based support. This raises the main questions to be addressed in this chapter: if adult children are the most important providers of support for widows, what happens to widows who are childless? Which widows suffer most from the absence of family support, in particular support given by children, and how do they cope? What kinds of support are available to them?

The Research: A Focus on Widows In urban Java widowhood is very much a part of people’s day-today experience, either firsthand or within the wider family or neighbourhood. Given patterns of adult mortality, most women outlive their husbands. Widowhood as a common stage in women’s marital life is simply one of the inherent risks of being married. The spouse’s death, whilst obviously not something to be celebrated, is also not an event for which the surviving spouse is blamed, nor does it burden her reputation for the rest of her life. There are, for example, no moral, religious or cultural restrictions on the remarriage of widows in Java. The segregative element of widowhood that is often found, for example, in Mediterranean, Middle Eastern or South Asian

150

Ruly Marianti

societies is largely lacking in South-East Asia. Although the death of a spouse can dramatically change the life of a married person, widows do not mark their widowhood in their physical appearance. A widow is not expected to withdraw from economic, cultural or social life, and her identity as widow does not override alternative identities, such as mother, grandmother, neighbour, food trader or representative of an organisation. Indeed, the absence of strong mourning customs and of outward identification of widows and the availability of alternative valued identities for Javanese women suppress the construction of a clear-cut widow identity. Thus, unlike in other societies, where emotional and economic hardships experienced by widows may be the direct result of the sociocultural exclusion of widows, the potential deprivations experienced by Javanese widows are usually not caused by their identity as widows as such (cf. Jansen 1987; Lopata 1987; Bremer and van den Bosch 1995). Most of the problems they face are basically practical consequences of losing their husbands. Their problems are not exclusive to widowhood but part of a wider set of social problems, notably ageing, gender discrimination, poverty and the exclusivity of many Indonesian welfare schemes. These problems are also encountered by other spouseless women, such as divorcees, deserted women or spinsters. Indeed, when I first started interviewing women at the beginning of my research, I simply translated ‘widow’ using the common Indonesian word janda. However, it quickly became obvious that this translation was inexact. Each time I asked about janda in the neighbourhoods (kampong) under study, people gave me the names of widows, divorcees and deserted and never-married women. According to the general Indonesian dictionary (Kamus Umum Bahasa Indonesia 1987), a janda is a person – female or male – who has lost her or his spouse because of death or divorce. Thus the term does not specify the gender aspect or the cause of the loss. Yet in day-to-day practice the term janda is used only with reference to women and actually means ‘spouseless woman’ in general. The term duda is the masculine equivalent. The exact translation of widow is janda mati (mati meaning dead). A divorced woman is categorised as janda cerai (cerai meaning divorce) and a spinster as perawan tua (literally, old virgin). A deserted woman is often vaguely referred to simply as janda or as having been abandoned by her husband (disia-siakan suaminya). However, if most of the challenges facing widows are comparable to problems encountered by divorcees or abandoned women and to some extent by middle-aged and elderly women in

Childless Widows in Urban East Java

151

general, then why focus on widows? This question was echoed by my very first respondent, who asked: ‘Why widows? I am a widow myself and I have problems like other people. Is it that interesting to do research on widows? I think that widows’ problems are not that much different from other women’s problems except that their husbands are dead.’ In my view there are practical, empirical and analytical reasons for a focus on widows. From a practical point of view, widowhood – compared with other kinds of marriage dissolution – has a more or less clearly defined boundary. Although widows are far from being homogeneous, the individual variations among them can be placed within two specific conditions, namely that they have outlived their husbands and have not remarried. Empirically, not much is known about the specific situations, problems and coping strategies of widows, because there are no studies addressed specifically to widows in Indonesia. Widows and widowhood are usually investigated as a part of other research themes – for example, female-headed households (Hetler 1990) – and have been discussed only sparingly. This is all the more surprising given that widows form a significant part of the female population in Indonesia. In 1996, for example, widows formed 8.8 per cent of the female population while widowers only represented 1.6 per cent of the male population. In my research location in East Java, between 20 and 30 per cent of all households have at least one widowed person – usually a woman – as a household member or household head. This also means that many people who are not widows themselves are faced with the phenomenon of widowhood in their daily lives. Clearly, dealing with problems of widowhood is a widely shared experience that deserves further investigation. At the very least, these problems should not be overlooked when trying to understand the lives of Indonesian women in general. Arguably the greatest value of a study of widows lies in the broader insights it can provide into social relationships – especially support relations among families and neighbourhoods – in urban Java. Examining widows’ lives is illuminating because widows as a group are likely to be in need of support by others, and because on the whole their lives are closely intertwined with those of the people around them. As noted above, most problems faced by widows are practical matters having to do with economic hardship, ageing, gender discrimination and the need for support. Although none of these problems are exclusive to widows, widows are specifically disadvantaged by their involuntary lack of a husband. This lack may entail loss of an additional breadwinner

152

Ruly Marianti

in the household or the absence of a potential carer during illness or simply of a companion. Economic deprivations may in turn prevent widows from participating in social activities, for example, savings clubs (arisan), women’s organisations or weddings and funerals. Non-participation can then further exclude a widow from various forms of neighbourly assistance embedded in such social organisations and practices. As many social practices in Java are organised along gender lines, the lack of an adult man in the household may exclude women from certain sources of support. For example, only men participate in the ritual feasts known as slametan, and thus households without men tend to lose out on the distribution of food (berkat) that follows these ceremonies, when the choicest food packages are given to the men to take home after attending the ceremony. All of these observations point to the likelihood that widows are on the whole disadvantaged. By studying widows and their relations with other social categories – be they family, kin, neighbours or the state – we can quickly gain insight into a whole range of practices and relationships. In sum, the value of a study of widows lies not so much in a disclosure of the distinctness of Javanese widows as a social category but in the exposition of how different social identities in urban Java relate to each other and how aspects of people’s lives intertwine in unusual as well as everyday circumstances. Compared with other spouseless women, widows are likely to be more closely integrated into social networks because of their emotional and social association with irrevocable loss. This makes them more likely to be looked upon with compassion. Legally widows are entitled to inheritance and a widow’s pension (assuming their husband had pension entitlements), which again distinguishes them from other categories of spouseless women and opens up the possibility of including the role of the state in an investigation of support arrangements.

The Field Site Fieldwork for my research on widows was carried out between 1997 and 1999 in Malang, a city in East Java (van Schaik 1996). Malang is a municipality with roughly 700,000 inhabitants, which is growing at a rate of 2 per cent per year. The city, located in a fertile valley, has a bustling centre with shops, markets, restaurants, hotels and banks. Distributed across the municipal area are a number of small industries, chiefly producing textiles,

Childless Widows in Urban East Java

153

food and cigarettes. Most of Malang’s income derives from these manufacturing activities and from retailing, which encompasses anything from street vendors to air-conditioned department stores. In addition Malang is renowned as a university town, with several state and private institutions of higher education, and is home to several army barracks. Thanks to its proximity to the impressive Bromo volcano and its pleasant climate Malang also boasts a modest tourist industry. The research population consists of 111 widows. I collected data on thirty-one widows through in-depth interviews and eighty widows through a survey. Almost all widows studied live in three kelurahan (administrative unit above the neighbourhood level). These kelurahan are called Kauman, Kotalama and Purwodadi. The first two are among the oldest inner-city neighbourhoods in Malang. Kauman has a relatively low population turnover. Most of its residents are Javanese Moslems. Kotalama has a long history as a migrant neighbourhood that is now densely inhabited by migrants from Madura, an island off the north coast of East Java. Purwodadi is a more recent neighbourhood located on the city outskirts. In broad terms all three kelurahan can be pictured as lower-middleclass neighbourhoods with Kotalama being poorer than the other two. Yet within each neighbourhood there are considerable differences in wealth between households, depending on the type and scale of economic activity in which people are engaged. There are petty food sellers, shopkeepers, tailors, student boarding-house owners, lower-echelon civil servants, members of the armed forces, pensioners and employees of small enterprises and shops. Within the three kelurahan selected as general research areas, I focused on two inner-city alleys as the sites for my in-depth interviews. Semeru alley is situated in the Kauman kelurahan and Kacangan alley in the Kotalama kelurahan. Initially I had intended to compare different ethnic groups living in the alleys. Semeru alley is mostly inhabited by Javanese people and Kacangan alley mostly by migrants from Madura. Later, however, I found that the Javanese and migrant Madurese widows are very similar in many respects, because the Madurese in Kacangan alley (and Kotalama kelurahan in general) are mostly second- or thirdgeneration migrants. These migrants are long-term inhabitants of the city, who often no longer maintain their connection with their villages of origin on Madura. Many of these Madurese migrants, especially the older generations, speak Javanese better than the national language Bahasa Indonesia.

154

Ruly Marianti

Widows and Their Sources of Support Most of the widows interviewed are elderly. Only 16 per cent are under age fifty, 59 per cent are between age fifty and seventy and one-quarter are over the age of seventy.2 Consequently, the widows often face problems associated with ageing, like poor health, decreasing ability to work and a consequently growing need for old-age support. Nevertheless, the fact that the majority of the widows are middle-aged or old does not mean that they necessarily share similar life situations. In fact, they represent a wide of range socio-economic positions, from the poor petty trader who does not always earn enough to buy her daily food to the respectable pensioner or successful shop owner. More than 90 per cent of the widows have been living in Malang for more than twenty years, and some were actually born in Malang (orang Malang asli). As long-term residents of the city, most of those who migrated to Malang no longer maintain links with their rural areas of origin, because most of their relatives, and especially their children, also live in cities. Even those who have relatives in their village of origin are not always able to maintain good relations with kin who still live there. Family conflict, lack of financial resources for a visit and simple lack of interest were often mentioned as reasons for losing familial contact. Widows live in various household arrangements. One in ten live alone, usually because they are childless or their children have migrated, although in a few cases a son or daughter resides next door or nearby.3 More than a quarter (27 per cent) live with their school-age, unmarried, never-married, widowed or divorced children, 8 per cent live with their siblings or parents and about 2 per cent have non-relatives as tenants. The majority of widows (53 per cent) live with a married child. However, coresidence with a married child does not necessarily mean that the widows are dependent members in their children’s households. Some of them are household heads, as it is the married children who have moved in with them rather than vice versa. The fact that three-quarters of the widows are the owners of their house also confirms the view that they cannot automatically be interpreted as being dependent. Young widows usually return to their parental home until they remarry. This is especially true if they do not have sufficient income to raise their children independently. In order to cope with economic, practical and emotional problems, widows may obtain various forms of family support. Economic support can be given in the form of money transfers (gifts,

Childless Widows in Urban East Java

155

loans, payments), gifts in kind or accommodation. Depending on the purpose, economic support can be divided further into daily support and support for special circumstances, like funerals, weddings or hospitalisations. Practical support is usually provided in the form of personal care, assistance with household chores, child care and assistance with running a business or in dealing with bureaucracy (for example, arranging a funeral or applying for a widow’s pension). Compared with economic and practical support, emotional support is less visible. In general, Javanese people tend to restrain their emotional expression, including emotions aroused by death (Geertz 1960: 70). Consequently, emotional support tends to be provided in less intensive ways, notably through daily contact, exchanges and conversations. Table 5.1 summarises the relative importance of various sources of support for widows. In general, family members are more likely to provide support than other categories of providers such as neighbours. It is interesting to note that, although in-laws are perceived as family members, only a small number of widows (10 per cent) still maintain frequent contact with their in-laws after the death of their husband. Apart from the fact that some widows’ in-laws have already died, relationships with affinal kin in Java are often tense (Geertz 1961: 27). Across all kinds of support, be they economic, practical or emotional, children are the main providers. There are several reasons for their dominant role. First, in most cases, children have the Table 5.1. Support Providers Mentioned by the Widows by Type of Support Rendered (per cent) Support providers

Economic support Practical support Emotional support

Children Parents Siblings Combination of sources1 In-laws Neighbours Servants None

61 1 3 16

73 2 5 4

60 1 6 16

0 2 0 17

0 1 2 14

0 172 0 1

Total (N = 111)

100

100

100

Notes: 1. This is usually a combination of parents and siblings. 2. Neighbours are often mentioned as confidants in combination with relatives who live in the same neighbourhood. Source: Fieldwork data 1997–1998, 1999.

156

Ruly Marianti

strongest emotional bond with their mothers. Secondly, most of the widows’ children are economically active adults. Thirdly, many widows’ siblings and in-laws belong to the same age group as the widows and are thus potentially recipients of support themselves. Finally, most of the widows’ parents have already died. The empirical data leave no room for doubt that any examination of family support needs to pay special attention to the role of children. The absence of family support for widows, indicated in the table by the categories neighbours, servants and none, points strongly to childlessness. However, before analysing the situation of childless widows, I shall first highlight some general points about support relations among family members, including parent–child relationships.

Support Relationships among Family Members People are usually involved in different sets of support relations, either as providers or as recipients of support, or both. This ‘multiplicity of social security’, as Franz and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann (1994: 9) have remarked in the context of legal pluralism, is a general feature of social organisation. The engagement in multiple support relations among family members is made possible by the fact that relations among family members are not limited by their residential arrangements. Safilios-Rothschild (1980: 314) argues that: ‘Men, women and children may be involved in a number of different sets of relations with kin who may not reside in the same household. These different sets of relations, each with distinct rights and obligations, may be partially overlapping in membership and may extend over several residentially separated households’. Widows receive support from different combinations of family members. If we look at specific support arrangements, we often find that providers take care of several family members, for example, a widowed mother, parents-in-law and school-age siblings. The Javanese kinship system is bilateral, a characteristic which may particularly encourage multiple support relations. In this system descent is reckoned through both the male and the female line, with relatives on both sides being – at least normatively – equally important (Geertz 1961: 15; Niehof 1995: 434; Mulder 1996: 95). However, the equal importance of family lines can raise ambiguities in the practice of providing and receiving support. On the one hand, people can choose, at least to some extent, for whom they wish to provide support and from whom they

Childless Widows in Urban East Java

157

wish to receive it. On the other hand, providers can be burdened by claims for support from both sides of the family. The degree of relatedness may influence the quality of support relationships. Hildred Geertz (1961: 25), writing about Javanese kinship in the 1950s, observed the following: The limits of spread of kinship are indefinite, but the Javanese make some distinction between ‘near kin’ (sedulur tjedak) [and] ‘distant kin’ (sedulur adoh). The first group are, usually, one’s four grandparents and their descendants, that is, one’s uncles, aunts, and grandparents (the immediate family of one’s own parents), their children and grandchildren, and one’s own children and grandchildren – with the possible addition of one’s great-grandparents, and great-grandchildren.

However, the distinction between near and distant kin is too general for analysing the reliability of support from different providers. The quality of support relations among those described by Geertz as near kin is not necessarily commensurate. ‘Near kin’ need to be differentiated further into first-degree relatives (one’s parents, children and siblings), those of second degree (one’s grandparents, grandchildren, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces) and third-degree relatives (cousins, nephews’ and nieces’ children). The following sections will illustrate that, in general, it is firstdegree relatives who are primary providers of assistance. A support relation is fluid because it is continuously renegotiated by the parties involved. These adjustments, whether positive or negative, may be stimulated by a number of different factors, such as the following. First, differing needs for support are not always compatible with the ability of families and neighbours to provide assistance. A difficult situation may arise when the availability of means (money, goods, labour or time) is not elastic enough to deal with increasing demands for support. Thus, a widow in Kemirahan alley complained that she was short of money because her daughter had not sent her uang bulanan (monthly financial support) that month. The support was withdrawn because the money was used by the daughter to cover another expenditure: one of the widow’s besan (son-in-law’s parents) was ill and needed extra resources for hospitalisation. Consequently, the widow’s uang bulanan had been reallocated. Clearly, financial support from widows’ children may be reduced or postponed because the children face other additional expenditures, such as buying new school uniforms or books, paying tuition fees for their children or making house repairs. Such cases show the uncertainty of multiple support relationships in a bilateral kinship

158

Ruly Marianti

system. Multiple support relations are not mutually exclusive. They are connected to each other like the threads of a web in the sense that changes and adjustments in one support relation can influence other support relationships. Secondly, changes in the quality of a relationship may result in an adjustment of support provision. This factor is related to the differentiation of ‘near’ and ‘distant’ kin (Geertz 1961), or ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ circles of kin, to use Janet Finch’s (1989: 239) terminology in her study of kinship in England. These differentiations entail not only a person’s position in a family network but also the emotional distance between relatives. It is commonly assumed that people are more emotionally attached to those who are considered near kin or belong to the ‘inner circle’. They are also assumed to be more obliged to provide support and to have a stronger right to claim it. However, studies in different contexts have shown that the boundaries of ‘near – distant’ and ‘inner – outer’ are not fixed. According to Finch (1989: 239), ‘there are considerable variations between kin groups in precisely who gets defined in, and this itself can change over time’. Thus, occupying a certain position within a family network cannot assure a fixed support relationship. In practice, the obligations and rights relating to this position have to be effectuated by the actual emotional bonds, which are, of course, changeable. Some of the reasons why the quality of a relationship among relatives may change are noted by Hildred Geertz (1961: 25): ‘A close relative may become, in effect, distant as a result of a quarrel, geographic distance, or his moving into another class; one who is distant kin may, through prolonged geographical proximity, or by joining the household, develop a more intense personal relationship with a group of his distant kin and come to be considered one of the family’. Changes in marital situation due to widowhood, divorce or abandonment may also alter genealogical memory and position. As mentioned above, many widows have lost contact with their in-laws since their husbands died. However, bearing in mind the complexity of family ties, these reasons – although noteworthy – should not be understood in absolute terms. Let us take geographical distance as an example. It is true that people, including relatives, tend to be less close emotionally when the geographical distance between them increases. But there are enough cases to show that family members, especially first-degree relatives, still support each other even when they do not live near each other. In other words, the quality of their relationship is less bound to propinquity. Hashimoto et al. (1992: 298) have also argued that ‘changes in residential pattern result

Childless Widows in Urban East Java

159

in a shift in the kind of support given, but not necessarily in the inherent value of family support’. A daughter who has moved to another place may no longer be able to provide a certain form of support, for example, personal care, for her widowed mother. Nevertheless, in such circumstances a support relationship between mother and child is more likely to survive – albeit in other forms – than among distant kin or neighbours who have moved out of the neighbourhood. Thirdly, the roles of provider and recipient change in the course of changing life stages. Where continuity of family support is concerned, Hashimoto et al. (1992: 297) have highlighted one of the specific characteristics of family support, that is, the presence of ‘personal bonds of intergenerational affection, obligation, and care’, which imply ‘an interdependency among generations across the lifespan’. It is not unusual for a widowed mother, now receiving support from her married child, to have been a provider for the young couple during the first years of their marriage. It is conceivable that intergenerational interdependency and reciprocity are also maintained by younger and older neighbours. Personal bonds among people from different generations in a family, however, are commonly more intensive and stable, because they are coloured by stronger emotional ties and connected with enduring genealogical positions. This issue will be highlighted again below when the role of children as providers is examined in more detail. The idea of a special bond between parents and children is commonly accepted, even romanticised. This is certainly true of Javanese families (Geertz 1961: 26). The dominant role of children in providing support for their widowed mothers, as shown in Table 5.1, is in this respect hardly surprising. But support that flows between parents and children is not only from the younger to the older generation. Indeed, it is often emphasised that flows of support from parents to children – especially wealth flows in the form of inheritance – are even more prevalent than reverse flows (Finch 1989: 17–20; Schröder-Butterfill 2004). The phenomenon of widows providing family support is not uncommon among the research population. These widows are often household heads and important providers of economic support for their family, including their married children. Two-way support flows between parents and children parallel the issue of changeability of roles in support relationships throughout different life-course stages. In other words, I would like to emphasise that the dominant role of children as providers does not represent the whole picture of parent–child support relations. The relationship needs

160

Ruly Marianti

to be understood relative to the changing situation of adjacent generations in their life courses. The fact that the widows are on average middle-aged or elderly biases the picture towards their being net recipients of support. However, if we look at very young widows (aged under 40 years), who form only a small minority (2.7 per cent) of the research population, the direction of support flows is overwhelmingly from parents to children. Another important issue is the reliability and sufficiency of support. In general, support relationships have two dimensions. The first is a normative dimension, which relates to ideals of what should be done or achieved. The second is an actual dimension, which relates to what people are really able to do in certain circumstances and what the real outcome is. Although these dimensions are usually connected to each other, they are none the less two distinct realities. Reliability of family support relates to the normative side of a relationship. According to Finch (1989: 233), ‘the real importance of family support in practice seems to be its reliability: not that it is being used constantly, but you know that you always can fall back on it’. Widows’ acknowledgement of the main role of children as providers may reflect their belief that they can indeed always turn to them. The higher frequency of actual support rendered by children strongly underpins such beliefs. The extent to which support is sufficient, however, is another question. In my analysis of support relationships during the economic crisis in Indonesia, which started at the end of 1997 and is ongoing, I show that almost 60 per cent of the widows in Semeru and Kacangan alleys stated that they received economic support from their children, but only a quarter (26 per cent) could entirely depend on such support (Marianti 1999, 2002). In other words, in many cases economic support is insufficient. If sufficiency is perceived as belonging to the actual dimension of support, a gap between the normative (reliability) and actual dimensions (sufficiency) will regularly appear. The insufficiency can be caused by various problems, notably an outright lack of means at the providing end or material constraints which force people to make difficult choices about how to allocate scarce resources. Poor children may not be able to provide sufficient economic support for a widowed mother even if there is willingness to do so. In this situation duty is not denied, but the capacity to perform the duty is lacking. How, then, should the important role of certain support providers, in this case family members and especially children, be perceived in relation to this gap?

Childless Widows in Urban East Java

161

Childlessness among Widows: Cases, Problems and Coping Efforts More than one in ten widows (11 per cent) are childless. Five of the twelve childless widows will be described in detailed casestudies below. To begin with, however, it will be helpful to place the childless widows in context. Table 5.2 compares childless widows with the general research population of widows according to several characteristics. Both percentages and absolute numbers are given, in view of the relatively small number of childless widows under discussion. The average age of the childless widows is higher than the average age of the total research population. This is likely to be due to older cohorts having been exposed to greater risks of childlessness. Child mortality and economic hardship were particularly severe in Java during the 1940s, and treatment of sterility was introduced by the Indonesian government only much later. Higher ages generally entail a greater likelihood of experiencing problems of physical inability, ill-health and therefore a greater need for personal care. These problems are exacerbated by the Table 5.2. Characteristics of Childless Widows and the Research Population of All Widows (percentages and absolute numbers) Childless Widows %

Average age Residential arrangement Living alone Living with children1 Living with other relatives2 Living with tenants Work status Paid work Pensioner Not engaged in paid work3 House ownership Owner of house

N

70 years

All Widows %

No

63 years

41.6 33.3 16.6 8.3

5 4 2 1

9.9 80.1 8.1 1.8

11 89 9 2

41.6 25.0 33.3

5 3 4

34.2 27.9 37.8

38 31 42

83.3

10

85.6

95

Notes: 1. This refers to biological or – in the case of childless widows – adopted children, and may or may not also include children’s spouses and children. 2. This usually means siblings and parents. 3. Most of these depend either entirely or partly on economic support from various support providers. A few of them raise some income by renting out rooms in their houses. Source: Fieldwork data 1997–1998, 1999.

162

Ruly Marianti

fact that the percentage of widows who are living alone is also much higher among the childless than among the general research population. The comparison of work status and house ownership reveals broadly similar patterns for the childless widows and the research population in general. In other words, childless widows’ access to economic resources is comparable to that of widows as a whole. That said, childless widows are more likely to work, and this is doubtless related to their lack of financial assistance on a day-to-day basis. As noted by Esterman and Andrews (1992: 286) ‘the chances of receiving financial support from family increased with the number of children. Those who were childless were much less likely to have financial assistance from family and generally were in a less favourable family position.’ I shall come back to this point later in this section. The five examples of childless widows selected for further analysis have both similar as well as different aspects. All of the widows are quite elderly, with an average age of seventy-one years, and have health problems, either permanently or periodically. However, they are different in their economic position and engagement in various social relationships. The case-studies will first be related and then discussed. The first example is Niti, who was in her seventies. She was a pensioner living in a house inhabited by four households. Niti had inherited half of the house but decided to share it with two of her nieces. These nieces were acknowledged as Niti’s daughters (anak angkat). As a pensioner Niti had a sufficient and independent income. Most of the time she was able to perform all household chores, including doing her own laundry. But, whenever she fell ill, the two nieces would assist her. When Niti died suddenly in 1998 of a heart attack, the two nieces were financially as well as practically responsible for her funeral. However, they also inherited the part of the house which was Niti’s. The second case is provided by Juari, aged sixty-seven at the time of fieldwork. Before she had a stroke at the end of 1998 Juari was a rujak (a kind of fruit salad) seller. She lived alone although she had adopted one of her nephews. The adopted son and his family live in their own house in another part of the city. Juari entertained good relations with several next-door neighbours. Every time Juari fell ill, these female neighbours called the adopted son, took her to a doctor and regularly dropped in and brought meals for her. Whenever the illness became serious, Juari would be taken to the adopted son’s house for a few weeks. After her stroke, Juari was not able to continue working. However, she did not experience serious financial problems because she was

Childless Widows in Urban East Java

163

able to draw on her savings. Had Juari not died sometime after the fieldwork period she might well have become materially vulnerable with the gradual depletion of her savings. As it turned out, her adopted son was even able to inherit a small sum of money left over in her bank account. The third example is that of Prapti, who is more than seventy years old. She lives alone in a beautiful old house, which is located on one of the big avenues in Malang. Prapti’s husband was vice-director of a regional bank; therefore she is entitled to a good widow’s pension. The couple never adopted a child. According to Prapti an adopted child can never be relied on for love and loyalty; thus she consciously decided against adoption. Prapti has devoted much of her time to a local women’s organisation. She led the organisation for many years before deciding to resign and to function only as an informal adviser. During the last couple of years, Prapti has suffered from health problems. Although most of the time she is still able to take care of herself, she has begun to think about the problems she will encounter when her health deteriorates further. Her first strategy was to try and hire a servant, but all of the candidates gave up their job after only a few weeks. Prapti admits that she was maybe too strict with the young girls. In 1999 she then attempted to sell her house to one of her nephews or nieces at a price well below its market value but on condition that the buyer should take care of her in that house until her death. None of her relatives were interested in her offer. Her situation therefore remains uncertain. Eighty-two-year-old Sarah is one of the oldest inhabitants of Semeru alley. For her monthly income Sarah rents out a few rooms in her house. According to neighbours, she also generates additional income as a moneylender. When she was young, Sarah was quite a successful jewellery and cloth merchant. She had a much larger income than her husband, who worked as a driver. As the main breadwinner and a woman of independent means, Sarah used to have an important role in the decision-making processes among the members of her household. She took care of her old parents, her ill sister and her husband until their deaths. When Sarah was younger, she adopted one of her nieces. However, the relationship to the adopted daughter has been severed for many years following a big conflict because Sarah did not approve of the daughter’s future husband. During the last few years, Sarah has suffered from rheumatism. Sometimes she cannot walk for days because of the severe pain in her legs. During these difficult periods Sarah is usually helped, both economically and practically, by a next-door neighbour. This neighbour is

164

Ruly Marianti

Sarah’s best friend and confidante. One of her nephews has suggested that Sarah should sell her house and move in with him, but Sarah does not like the idea of being a dependent member of her nephew’s household. Finally, there is the example of Nah, a sixty-four-year-old widow. She lived alone in a one-room wooden house located at the local market of Semeru alley. Although she had relatives – including a brother – in her village of origin, she no longer had any contact with them. According to Nah, her family relationships were a closed book and belonged to the past. Nah was also a person who did not wish to engage in close neighbourly relationships. Her next-door neighbour called her socially awkward and inflexible (kaku). This is because Nah was not one for joining in with neighbourly chats and gossip. She liked keeping her distance and was quite prepared to tell people to ‘mind their own business’. Her lack of social integration was exacerbated by her poverty, which made it impossible for her to participate in neighbourhood social activities, such as savings clubs (arisan), condolence visits, or weddings, all of which require financial contributions (sumbangan). Nah’s main daily activity was selling vegetables. However, her income from this was very low – barely enough to cover her daily expenditures and the rent. Since petty trading was her only source of income, whenever she fell ill she had to draw on her savings. In early 1999, just before I returned to Malang for further fieldwork, Nah died alone one night after having been ill for almost two weeks. Her neighbours, who were curious when Nah did not open her window and door as usual, found her body the following day. Nah’s funeral was organised by her neighbours, and none of her relatives attended. As mentioned above, the five elderly widows are similar in that they have permanent or periodic health problems, but they differ in their economic positions and in the ways they have established and maintained social relationships. As pensioners and the owners of their houses, Prapti and Niti both have access to a sufficient, independent and stable income, apart from owning a valuable asset, namely, their houses. Juari and Sarah also own a house, but unlike the pensioners they do not have a good monthly income. They can draw on savings, but these are, of course not unlimited. Nah experienced the most severe economic insecurity, because she had neither valuable assets nor savings nor a sufficient and stable income. Concerning their social engagement Niti, Prapti, Juari and Sarah are examples of widows who are able and willing to main-

Childless Widows in Urban East Java

165

tain relations with relatives, neighbours and friends. By living with her nieces and their families, Niti is closely and permanently surrounded by relatives. Juari and Sarah do not live with relatives but can stay at their relatives’ houses or invite them to their own house whenever they need care during a period of illness. In addition, Juari and Sarah also have good relations with next-door neighbours, who also provide help and in whom they confide. Nah is an example where social relationships, both familial and neighbourly, have deteriorated, and therefore only a very limited amount of help was ever provided for her. The fact that almost half of the childless widows in the research population have adopted children is noteworthy (see Niti, Juari and Sarah). However, the created parent–child bond does not always bring about a good result. I shall come back to this issue in my discussion of coping efforts (see also Schröder-Butterfill, Chapter 4, this volume). In general terms, the childless widows are similar to most widows in the problems they face, be they economic, emotional or practical problems. However, children, as the prime providers for most widows, are missing from the potential sources of support for the childless. How, then, does the lack of children affect the security or insecurity of widows and the strategies that they can pursue? Economic insecurity is a general problem for elderly people in Java who are no longer able to work, do not possess valuable assets and are not entitled to pensions or other formal assistance. Therefore economic insecurities have to be dealt with through other forms of economic back up, namely, gifts, loans or small payments from a variety of sources, chiefly family and neighbours. Economic support can be further differentiated into support for coping with daily needs and support for dealing with special circumstances, like hospitalisation, funerals, slametan (ritual feasts), weddings or extra expenditures around the time of Lebaran (the feast at the end of the Islamic fasting month). Dayto-day assistance can be provided weekly, monthly or even irregularly, that is, whenever the provider’s economic situation permits it. It is the closest relatives, especially children, who most commonly provide this kind of support which is often referred to as uang jajan (pocket money) or uang bulanan (monthly money). More distant relatives and neighbours usually do not render regular economic support. Rather, they may provide ad hoc economic assistance in response to a special circumstance or crisis. Therefore the absence of children and close relatives may entail a lack of daily economic support. Indeed, most childless widows

166

Ruly Marianti

interviewed do not receive uang jajan or uang bulanan, although some of them, like Nah, have a real need for it. Although neighbours rarely provide financial support, they may play an important supportive role in other ways. Thus, neighbours may bring meals as a combined form of economic and practical support for widows whenever they are ill and cannot cook for themselves (see, for example, Sarah and Juari). Once they recover, this assistance usually stops. This underlines another important dimension of family support by close relatives, which tends to be lacking from assistance rendered by distant relatives or neighbours, namely, its permanence. In a previous section I have argued that family support is not always sufficient or regularly provided. However, longer-term economic support, where it occurs, is commonly given by close family members, not by distant relatives, neighbours or the state.4 As most widows are elderly and struggling with health problems, their need for practical support – especially personal care – is obvious. In the case of Niti, the care is fully provided by the adopted daughters, who live in the same house with Niti. For the research population in general, personal care, where needed, is also taken care of primarily by children, especially daughters. The examples of Juari and Sarah illustrate the role neighbours can have in providing personal care. However, such care rendered by neighbours only covers minor nursing tasks. Neighbours and distant relatives are commonly not expected to perform intensive or long-term nursing. I was often told by widows that they could not even expect their daughters-in-law to nurse them in this way. Consequently they preferred to reside with their own daughters. Not surprisingly none of the cases of childless widows I encountered involved neighbours helping a sick widow with cleaning herself, dressing or going to the toilet. At best a widow can ask her neighbours to do shopping (titip belanja) for her. I did encounter cases outside the research sites that show what might happen to elderly childless widows who are very ill and have to be nursed intensively. One of these cases was of an old widow who lived in an urban neighbourhood in Salatiga, Central Java, where I lived for several years. Towards the end of her life, this old widow was no longer able to walk and had to be nursed permanently. None of the widows’ relatives could be approached for this responsibility. Therefore the neighbours, represented by the neighbourhood head, decided to inform the regional social affairs office (Dinas Sosial) about the problem. A few days later several men from the Dinas Sosial came to take the widow to an elderly people’s home (panti jompo).5 The old

Childless Widows in Urban East Java

167

widow, who had not been informed that she was going to be taken to a home, tried to refuse the move and cried. It was an upsetting situation for everybody, but there was unanimous agreement among the neighbours that they should not be burdened with intensive nursing tasks for too long. As one of them put it, ‘none of us can be expected to clean up after her when she soils herself’. It would be simplistic to presume that children will perform intensive nursing tasks voluntarily. As shown in a previous section, the obligations to support parents are continuously renegotiated among children. Such negotiation may end in conflict, tensions and jealousy. However, children are much more constrained by social norms from sending their sick parents to an elderly home than are neighbours. There are two broad coping strategies that can be inferred from these cases. First, economic resources, such as income, assets or savings, can be converted into support. Secondly, when such resources are not available or are modest, social relationships, including those based on charity, can be drawn on. It is important to note that in practice these two courses of action are not mutually exclusive, nor are they equally open to everyone. An analysis of coping behaviour must thus focus on the questions of who has access to which strategy and to what extent the strategies are able to solve the problems vulnerable elderly widows face. Wealth transfers from older to younger generations can be examined from different perspectives. Finch (1989), for example, discusses wealth transfers from parents to children, including inheritance, in terms of economic support by the older generation for the younger generation. From this perspective, parents are seen primarily as providers and less as future recipients of support. However, giving away assets to younger kin may also be recognised as one means of securing old-age care (Hetler 1990). According to this view – and setting aside the issue of uncertainty of potential sources of support – parents and older kin more generally are regarded as future recipients of help. The first coping strategy, namely, converting economic resources into old-age support, thus belongs to this latter perspective on intergenerational wealth transfers, because the transfer of wealth is expected to be reciprocated in the future. In interviews I noticed that, although expectations of reciprocity were not outright denied, there was agreement that they should also not be overemphasised. Especially when it involved widows’ own children, the expected reciprocation of wealth transfers was often expressed in term of mutual affection and care.

168

Ruly Marianti

Childless widows also transfer wealth to members of their kindred in various ways. Mostly transfers are done gradually over a long period and may be coupled with adoption, as in the cases of Niti and Juari. But transfers also take place in more drastic ways. One childless widow in Kacangan alley sold her house, invested the money in extending her sister’s house into a two-storey building and now lives in one of the rooms on the second floor. In this example the investment resulted in an entitlement to co-residence and a more secure old age. Prapti made a similar effort by offering her beautiful house at a much-reduced price to her relatives in return for continued residence in a room of that house until her death. None of Prapti’s relatives were interested in the offer because they were too wealthy themselves. In this case, the prospect of a wealth transfer was not sufficiently attractive for the potential support providers to take on the responsibility of possibly having to provide intensive old-age care. Although it is not my intention to reduce support relations to a strictly economic calculation, the trade-off between a potential gain and that which is expected in return can nevertheless be important, especially where it concerns those who are less obliged to give support in the first place. Converting economic resources into support is a strategy that is in the first instance only available to those with relevant resources. However, because there is an element of exchange in the conversion, it additionally requires two parties who agree upon their rights and obligations. Although this is rare, a wealth transfer may be refused and may thus fail to create a support relationship. A childless widow in an economically severely constrained situation like Nah’s is totally excluded from pursuing the first strategy – wealth conversion – to secure old-age care. Her case is made more tragic by the absence of significant family ties and good neighbourly relations. Other childless widows who were in a similar situation to Nah’s were still able to draw upon neighbourhood networks and charity to obtain daily material support in the form of meals and small-scale credit at local shops. Not so in the case of Nah. Quite apart from the stigma of being ‘awkward’ towards her neighbours, Nah lived in a social environment where charity is a luxury. Most of Nah’s neighbours are economically not much better off than she was. In interviews with other inhabitants of this particular neighbourhood, the idiom of ‘people are only busy with their own stomach’ was often used. In other words, the second strategy, of drawing on long-term social and charitable relations, is only effective if the means to provide support are available within the wider social network.

Childless Widows in Urban East Java

169

Conclusion The cases of childless widows discussed above allow us to conclude that the absence of children can lead to a lack of intensive and durable support, especially support provided on a regular basis. However, the cases also show that the problem of childlessness can be dealt with in different ways and with varying results. The limitations of community-based support and the exclusivity of state-organised support in Indonesia contribute to widows’ greater need for and dependency on families. However, widows’ personal circumstances, including their age, health status, economic position and social contacts, determine to what extent a widow actually suffers from her lack of family support and how she can deal with it. In other words, the problems pertaining to childlessness do not affect all widows in the same way. The gradual or abrupt conversion of economic resources, such as income, assets or savings, is often an attempt to create reciprocal intergenerational support relationships within the familial sphere. Adoption is an example of this, although people may not directly connect adoption with economic motivations. However, this strategy entails much uncertainty and not infrequently fails to deliver on expectations. Moreover, family ties in general, including constructed, ones as in the case of adoption, provide no guarantee of actual fulfilment of obligations to support. Childless widows who only posses limited economic resources can to some extent draw upon non-kin relations and relations based on charity. However, this strategy, too, is precarious. A childless widow who lives in a neighbourhood where most people ‘are only busy with their own stomach’ has to face the fact that her own problems are bound to be seen as secondary. In conclusion, the extent to which family support is important for widows needs to be understood in relative terms, vis-à-vis widows’ access to other sources of support. In most cases both donors and recipients are agents who act within the constraints of what are often, at best, precarious support networks. They have to struggle against the limitations of their material and social means in looking for possible sources of assistance.

Notes The research on which this chapter is based would not have been possible without the generous funding of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. I would like to thank Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill and Philip Kreager for their

170

Ruly Marianti

invitation to participate in the Oxford seminar ‘The Elderly Without Children’ and for feedback on earlier versions of this chapter. 1. For interesting comparisons of widowhood in different sociocultural contexts see Potash (1986), Jansen (1987), Dreze (1990), Bremer and van den Bosch (1995), van Os (1997) and Chen (1998). 2. Establishing the exact ages of respondents was fraught with difficulties, as elderly people often do not know their date of birth. Probing questions were used and where possible reported ages cross-checked by referring to the ages of respondents or family members on the household registration cards. The information obtained was in any case reliable enough to make three broad age categories, that is, ‘young’ widows (aged under fifty), ‘middle-aged’ widows (aged fifty to seventy) and ‘old’ widows (aged over seventy). 3. In all three neighbourhoods studied most of the children who have migrated are those who have a better education. By migrating to bigger cities – Jakarta or Surabaya, for example – they enhance their chances of finding jobs which suit their qualifications. In places with lower economic conditions, such as Kacangan alley and the Talun market in Semeru alley, many widows have their own children as next-door neighbours. Most of these adult children only completed primary school, have low-paid jobs (for instance, as petty traders, parking attendants or tailors) and have settled down in Malang without any intention of migrating. 4. Only 29 per cent of the widows interviewed are entitled to a pension. Although low, this percentage is nevertheless much higher than in most rural settings in Indonesia, where fewer former civil servants or members of the army are found. For example, a study in a village near Malang found only 16 per cent of elderly people in receipt of a pension (Schröder-Butterfill 2004: 29). 5. There are several nursing homes in the Malang district and municipality, mostly run by religious organisations such as the Muhammadiyah. According to a representative of Dinsos (Office for Social Affairs) whom I interviewed about social services for widows, the referral of elderly people to nursing homes is one of the routine responsibilities of Dinsos. Usually either an elderly person presents himself or herself directly to Dinsos with a request for being placed in a nursing home or ‘society’ – represented by the head of a neighbourhood – reports to Dinsos the existence of an elderly person ostensibly in need of institutionalisation.

References Bremer, J. and L. van den Bosch, eds, Between Poverty and the Pyre: Moments in the History of Widowhood, London and New York, 1995. Chen, M.A., ed., Widows in India: Social Neglect and Public Action, New Delhi, 1998. Dreze, J., ‘Widows in Rural India’, Development Economics Research Programme, Discussion Paper No. 26, London School of Economics, 1990. Esmara, H. and P. Tjiptoherijanto, ‘The Social Security System in Indonesia’, ASEAN Economic Bulletin 3 (1986): 53–69. Esterman, A. and G.R. Andrews, ‘Southeast Asia and the Pacific: A Comparison of Older People in Four Countries’, in Family Support for Elderly: The International Experience, ed. H.L. Kendig, A. Hashimoto and L.C. Coppard, Oxford, 1992, 271–89.

Childless Widows in Urban East Java

171

Finch, J., Family Obligations and Social Change, Cambridge, 1989. Finch, J. and J. Mason, Negotiating Family Responsibilities, London, 1993. Geertz, C., The Religion of Java, Chicago, 1960. Geertz, H., The Javanese Family: A Study of Kinship and Socialization, New York, 1961. Hashimoto, A., H.L. Kendig and L.C. Coppard, ‘Family Support to the Elderly in International Perspective’. In Family Support for Elderly: The International Experience, ed. H.L. Kendig, A. Hashimoto and L.C. Coppard, Oxford, 1992, 293–308. Hetler, C.B., ‘Survival Strategies, Migration and Household Headship’. In Structures and Strategies: Women, Work and Family, ed. L. Dube and R. Palriwala, New Delhi, 1990, 175–99. Jansen, W., Women Without Men: Gender and Marginality in an Algerian Town, Leiden, 1987. Kamus Umum Bahasa Indonesia (General Indonesian Dictionary), Jakarta, 1987. Lopata, H.Z., Widows, Vol. I: The Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, Durham, 1987. Marianti, R., ‘Widows, Krismon and Some Lessons from the Past’, Paper presented at workshop on ‘The Economic Crisis and Social Security in Indonesia’, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 7–9 January 1999. –––––, ‘Surviving Spouses: Support for Widows in Malang, East Java’. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 2002. Mulder, N., Inside Southeast Asia: Religion, Everyday Life, Cultural Change, Amsterdam, 1996. Niehof, A., ‘Ageing and the Elderly in Indonesia: Identifying Key Issues’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde 151, no. 3 (1995): 422–437. –––––, ‘Kinship Networks and Safety Nets for the Elderly’. Paper presented at workshop on ‘Social Security and Social Policy in Java’, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 5–7 August 1997. Potash, B., Widows in African Societies: Choices and Constraints, Stanford, 1986. Safilios-Rothschild, C., The Role of the Family: A Neglected Aspect of Poverty. World Bank Staff Working Paper No. 403, Washington, DC, 1980. Schröder-Butterfill, E., ‘Inter-generational Family Support Provided by Older People in Indonesia’, Ageing and Society 24, no. 4 (2004): 1–34. van Os, G., De Vrouwen van de Doden: Betekenis en Beleving van het Weduwschap in Extremadura (Spanje), Amsterdam, 1997. van Schaik, A., Malang: Beeld van een Stad, Purmerend, 1996. Vatikiotis, M., ‘Family Matters: Modern Day Tensions Strain Southeast Asia’s Social Fabric’, Far Eastern Economic Review (1 August 1996): 38–40. ––––– , ‘No Safety Net’, Far Eastern Economic Review (8 October 1998): 10–13. von Benda-Beckmann, F. and K. von Benda-Beckmann, ‘Coping With Insecurity’, Focaal 22/23 (1994): 7–26.

PART II EUROPE

CHAPTER 6

DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE IN EUROPE: IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE FAMILY SUPPORT FOR OLDER PEOPLE Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham

Introduction

T

he proportion of the population of Europe that is aged sixtyfive and over is increasing and with it the likely demand for health and social care in later life. At the same time trends in family formation and dissolution point to a change in the availability of family care for older people. This chapter examines recent demographic trends in Europe and discusses their implications for family support in later life. Although European comparisons are made where data allow this, we shall primarily focus on the situation in Britain. The chapter begins by examining changes in the number of older people in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. Patterns of marriage, divorce and childbirth, and in particular the trend towards greater childlessness, are explored. As an illustration, the experiences of two British cohorts currently in old and late-middle age (born in the late 1910s and early 1930s) are compared with those of two younger cohorts taken to represent those entering retirement in 2020 to 2030 (i.e. born in the late 1940s and early 1960s). This sheds light on the likely living arrangements of the elderly population in thirty years time and on how they may differ from those of older people today.

176

Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham

Current patterns of living arrangements and social support for older people in Europe are detailed in the third section. The two preceding sections are then brought together in the fourth section, where the implications of recent demographic changes for the future support of older people are evaluated. Gaps in existing knowledge concerning the ‘choices’ older people may face in terms of old-age security are highlighted, and the limitations of existing data sources in filling these gaps are discussed, before concluding and commenting upon a future research agenda.

Demographic Change in Europe At the start of the new millennium around one in six of all members of the European Union (EU) were aged sixty-five and over, and this figure is set to continue to rise well into the twenty-first century. The greying of the populations of western and northern Europe has been well documented (Johnson et al. 1989). These countries have had ‘aged’ populations for at least the last quarter of a century. For example, as early as 1960, 12 per cent of the populations of Belgium, Sweden and the United Kingdom were aged sixty-five and over (OECD 1996a). In contrast, the age structure of most southern European countries was much younger, with older people making up just 8 per cent of the populations of Portugal, Greece and Spain and 9 per cent in Italy. However, by 2000, Italy ranked among her European counterparts as having the highest proportion of older people in the population (18 per cent), whilst the United Kingdom is currently located towards the bottom of the European league table at 15 per cent (see Figure 6.1). Population ageing is the product of changes in both mortality and fertility. Changes in mortality are conventionally argued to be less important than fertility in determining the age structure of a population. Unless mortality levels are very unstable, they will affect each cohort in turn in a similar fashion, leaving the underlying age structure relatively unchanged. The level of fertility, along with the level of infant mortality, determines the number of persons feeding into the base of the population pyramid and so the relative size of different cohorts. Thus, the most important factor determining the proportion of elderly people in the population has been not the improvement in the capacity to survive to pension age but rather the changes in the sizes of generations available to survive (Johnson and Falkingham 1992). However, it is now recognised that improvements in mortality at older ages can contribute significantly to the ageing of the elderly population itself. The recent increase in

Demographic Change in Europe

177

Figure 6.1. Percentage of Population Aged Sixty-five and Over, Europe, 2000 Source: Council of Europe (2000).

the numbers of very old people, i.e. those aged eighty-five and over, has been larger than expected because of unanticipated falls in mortality at older ages (Office of National Statistics 2000). As we shall see below, significant changes in fertility combined with increasing longevity have resulted in rapid ageing of the populations of southern Europe. Italy can be said to have experienced some of the most dramatic changes in demographic behaviour in Europe, with a halving of total fertility from 2.66 to 1.33 in the space of just one generation, that is, between 1965 and 1990 (Council of Europe 2001). Before looking at changes in family formation in more detail, it is useful to briefly examine recent trends in mortality and improvements in life expectancy. Greater longevity Improvements in mortality and the concomitant lengthening of the lifespan are among the greatest achievements of modern society. The expectation of life at birth is a useful summary measure to describe the mortality of a population. It is a hypothetical measure, representing the average length of time an individual would live if they lived their entire life under the mortality conditions prevailing in any given year. Dramatic improvements in the expectation of life at birth were observed in the first half of the twentieth century, when improvements in living standards, nutrition, and sanitation, as well as medical breakthroughs, reduced infant and child mortality. In the last twenty years there have been significant improvements in expectation of life at age sixty-five for both men and women in all European countries (see Table 6.1). Despite being at the bottom of the European league table with regard to life

178

Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham

Table 6.1. Life Expectancy at Age Sixty-five among Men and Women in Europe, 1980 to 1999/2000 1980

1999/2000

Country

Men

Women

Men

Women

Austria Belgium Denmark France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Netherlands Norway Portugal Spain Sweden United Kingdom

12.9 12.9 13.6 13.9 12.7 14.6 12.6 13.4 13.9 14.3 13.1 14.5 14.3 12.9

16.2 16.6 17.5 18.1 16.1 16.7 15.7 16.8 18.2 18.0 16.0 17.5 17.9 17.0

16.2 15.4 15.2 16.31 15.5 16.3 14.6 16.0 15.3 16.0 14.7 16.4 16.7 15.6

19.6 19.4 18.3 20.81 19.2 18.7 17.7 19.9 19.2 19.7 18.2 20.6 19.8 18.9

Notes: 1. Data for 1998. Source: Council of Europe (2001).

expectancy at age sixty-five in both 1980 and 2000, Irish women at sixty-five can now expect to live on average two years longer than they did twenty years ago, that is, 17.7 years compared with 15.7 years. France enjoys the best female life expectancy, whilst Sweden has the highest male life expectancy. A sixty-five year old French woman can expect to live, on average, for a further 20.8 years and a sixty-five-year-old Swedish man for a further 16.7 years. Again the United Kingdom is among the lower-ranking EU countries. Although it is clear that we are living longer, a key question for both individuals and policy-makers is whether these changes in life expectancy have been accompanied by changes in morbidity. Are the extra years of life healthy years? If yes, then this is something to be celebrated. If no, then there are obvious implications for the demands placed on health and social services and for the quality of life of older people. A measure of the additional years in good health that people of a certain age can expect to live can be calculated by combining mortality data with information on the prevalence of ill-health and disability from surveys. Table 6.2 shows trends in disability free life expectancy (DFLE) for Britain. For example, in 1998 men aged sixty-five to sixty-nine could expect to live on average for a further 15.4 years. Of these, 14.2 years were likely to be disability-free. Thus, 92 per cent of their remaining years of life will be disability-free.

Demographic Change in Europe

179

Table 6.2. Trends in Total Life Expectancy, Disability-free Life Expectancy and Proportion of Healthy Life Left, Great Britain 1980 to 1998 1980 Age

TLE (years)

1998

DFLE DFLE/TLE (years) (%)

TLE (years)

DFLE DFLE/TLE (years) (%)

Men 65–69 70–74 75–79 80–84 85+

12.9 10.0 7.6 5.7 4.3

11.6 8.6 6.2 4.1 2.7

90 86 82 72 61

15.4 12.1 9.3 7.0 5.3

14.2 10.9 8.1 5.6 4.2

92 91 87 83 79

Women 65–69 70–74 75–79 80–84 85+

16.9 13.3 10.1 7.4 5.3

14.4 10.8 7.7 5.0 2.7

85 81 76 68 52

18.8 15.0 11.7 8.8 6.6

16.1 12.4 9.1 6.4 4.3

86 82 78 63 65

Notes: TLE is total life expectancy at a given age; DFLE is disability-free life expectancy at a given age; DFLE/TLE gives the percentage of remaining life at a given age that will be free from disability. Source: Table 2, Bebbington with Comas-Herrera (2000).

From Table 6.2 it is clear that between 1980 and 1998 both total life expectancy and DFLE have risen at each age for men and women. The question, however, is whether DFLE has been rising as fast as life expectancy. Are the extra years of life disability-free? If we look at the proportion of remaining life that is expected to be disability-free, there has been little change at younger ages (that is, up to age eighty). However, at older ages, especially after eighty-five, there have been significant improvements. In 1998 men aged eighty-five and over could expect to live 79 per cent of their remaining years disability-free, compared with just 61 per cent in 1980. It is important to note that other calculations using different data have shown reverse trends. Thus trends in healthy life expectation based on current data in the United Kingdom are inconclusive. Research indicates that, as life expectancy increases, there will be a rise in the proportion of people experiencing light to moderate disabilities but a fall in those with severe disabilities (Bone et al. 1995). Research for other developed countries has shown that, from the early 1980s, DFLE at birth for all disability levels combined increased for both men and women in France (Robine and Mormiche 1994), Germany (Bruckner 1997), The Netherlands (Perenboom et al. 1997) and the USA (Crimmins et al. 1997).

180

Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham

Thus, the fact that we are living longer must not on its own be taken to imply that there will be an increased demand for health and social care in later life. Returning to the factors behind population ageing, it is the changing pattern of fertility over this past century that has had the most influence on population age structures. Falling fertility Europe currently has the lowest fertility in the world. Table 6.3 shows that, following a substantial increase in most countries after the Second World War, period fertility has declined across Europe in all countries. The pace was fastest in northern and western Europe during the 1960s – for example, between 1960 and 1970 fertility fell from 2.57 to 1.95 in Denmark – and reached southern Europe in the mid-1970s. In the 1990s a number of northern and western countries experienced a slight recovery in fertility, largely as a result of an increase in childbearing at older ages and the realisation of previously postponed births. The fertility rate in any given year – the total period fertility rate – is calculated as the sum of the fertility rates for women of different ages and as such can be heavily influenced by changes in the timing of births. If, on average, couples change their behaviour to have their children earlier, then the period rate will rise – as it did in Greece, Ireland and Italy between 1960 and 1970. Conversely, if couples choose to have their children later the period fertility rate will fall. A better indicator of the change in the overall quantum of births is given by cohort fertility which is not Table 6.3. Total Period Fertility Rate, Europe 1960 to 2000

Austria Belgium Denmark France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Netherlands Norway Portugal Spain Sweden United Kingdom Source: Council of Europe (2001).

1960

1970

1980

1990

1995

2000

2.70 2.56 2.57 2.73 2.37 2.22 3.76 2.41 3.12 2.91 3.16 – 2.20 2.71

2.29 2.25 1.95 2.47 2.03 2.40 3.87 2.43 2.57 2.50 3.01 2.88 1.92 2.43

1.65 1.68 1.55 1.95 1.56 2.22 3.24 1.64 1.60 1.72 2.25 2.20 1.68 1.90

1.45 1.62 1.67 1.78 1.45 1.39 2.11 1.33 1.62 1.93 1.57 1.36 2.13 1.83

1.40 1.55 1.80 1.71 1.25 1.32 1.84 1.20 1.53 1.87 1.40 1.18 1.73 1.71

1.34 1.66 1.77 1.89 1.36 1.29 1.89 1.23 1.72 1.85 1.52 1.26 1.54 1.65

Demographic Change in Europe

181

Figure 6.2. Trends in Completed Fertility by Birth Cohort, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom Note: Rates for women born after 1955 are estimates as these women have yet to complete their reproductive lifespan. Source: Council of Europe (2001).

affected by changes in the timing of births. Figure 6.2 shows completed family sizes (i.e. cohort fertility) for women born from 1930 onwards in Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In Sweden and the United Kingdom the falls in completed family size are significantly less marked than falls in period fertility. However, in Italy it is estimated that completed family size among women born in 1962 will be just over one and a half children (1.56). Given the focus of this chapter, it is important to consider the implications of lower fertility for future family support. Children are the second most important source – after a partner or spouse – of emotional and practical support in later life (Evandrou 1996). However, although completed family sizes are falling, this does not necessarily mean that there will be fewer children to provide support for their parents in later life. In terms of the potential support for elderly people from their children, it is whether you have any children at all rather than the number of children that is of central importance (Knodel et al. 1992). Several studies have shown that responsibility for providing care tends to be assumed by one child rather than shared among siblings (Kendig 1986). Thus, if lower fertility has been achieved through reductions in the number of children per union rather than an increase in the proportion who never have a child, then the implications for future support will be more favourable. The proportion of each cohort remaining childless is thus the critical indicator.

182

Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham

Figure 6.3. Proportion of Women Remaining Childless by Birth Cohort, England and Wales Source: ONS 2000.

Figure 6.3 shows the proportions of women who remain childless by age for four different birth cohorts of women in England and Wales. As we can see, historically there were relatively high rates of childlessness in England and Wales: at age forty-five, 21 per cent of women born in 1920 remained childless. Over time this proportion fell and among women born in 1946 only 9 per cent were childless by their mid-forties. However, we can see that among women born in 1964 over a quarter (27 per cent) had yet to give birth to their first child at age 35. It is likely that this gap will close as women born in 1964 give birth during their late thirties and early forties. Nevertheless, it is estimated that one in five women born in 1964 will remain childless (Evandrou and Falkingham 2000). Similar rises in childlessness are found elsewhere in Europe (Prioux 1993; Rowland 1998). Cohort data for Italy show that, among women born between 1946 and 1950, 84 per cent had given birth by age thirty and 90 per cent by age forty. However, among Italian women born in 1961 to 1965, only two-thirds had given birth by their thirtieth birthday (Table 14, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe 2000). It is difficult to forecast the extent of childlessness among younger cohorts. Many women have postponed childbearing until their thirties, and it is not clear to what extent they will ‘catch up’ during their thirties and forties with the reproductive behaviour of older cohorts. Only 6 per cent

Demographic Change in Europe

183

of Italian women born between 1961 and 1965 who are currently childless ultimately expect to have no children (Table 24, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe 2000). Changes in medical technologies, such as IVF, have extended women’s reproductive lifespans, and it is already the case that a woman in her sixties has given birth to a healthy child. However, given the size of the gap in childbearing behaviour between cohorts, it appears unlikely that, even with medical advances, this gap will be closed completely. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that a higher proportion of European women born in the 1960s will be childless in later life compared with their mothers’ generation. Although today’s rates of childlessness are not unprecedented, there are several differences between the experiences of historical and contemporary cohorts, the most important of which concerns ‘choice’. In the past, marriage was the gatekeeper to fertility, and the high rates of childlessness among English women born in the 1920s were the result of relatively low rates of marriage during a period when extramarital births were not condoned. Today births outside marriage are commonplace and women are increasingly choosing childlessness even when in a partnership (McAllister with Clarke 1998). Most commentators agree that the trend towards low fertility in Europe is the result of a number of fundamental changes in society that have altered the way in which children are viewed (e.g. Lesthaeghe and Meekers 1986; van de Kaa 1987). The shifts from family-based to capitalist mode of production, from rural to urban life, and from family to non-family safety nets that have occurred over the last century or more have all influenced the economic utility of large numbers of children. Furthermore, more recent changes in employment opportunities for both women and men, the increasing length and cost of education and greater leisure opportunities have all acted to increase the opportunity cost of bearing and rearing children. These changes in society have been accompanied by changes in the orientation of basic values – growing secularisation and individualisation – that have served to reinforce the trend towards lower fertility. Motives for parenthood have moved from the economic and social to the emotional sphere, and it is likely that such motives can be satisfied by having just one or two children. Thus, it would appear that low fertility is here to stay in Europe. Accompanying the fall in fertility and increased longevity there have been significant changes in family formation and dissolution across Europe, which may also have an impact upon the availability of familial care in later life.

184

Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham

Figure 6.4. Crude Marriage Rate, Europe, 1960–2000 Source: Council of Europe (2001).

Family formation and dissolution The last forty years have witnessed a steep decline in marriages, particularly first marriages. Before the 1960s marriage was almost universal and occurred at young ages. The fall in marriage rates was observed first in the Scandinavian countries in the second half of the 1960s, followed by most western European countries in the 1970s and southern Europe in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Figure 6.4 shows the change in the crude marriage rate between 1960 and 2000. As with all demographic rates that are calculated per 1,000 population, the crude marriage age is influenced by changes in the age structure of the population over time, particularly changes in the proportion of the population in the peak marriageable ages (ages twenty to forty). Other things remaining equal, if there is a rise in the proportion of the population in the peak marriageable ages, as has been the case in every European country over the last thirty years as the postwar babyboom cohorts mature, one would expect to see a rise in the crude marriage rate. However, Figure 6.4 shows that over the last forty years the crude marriage rate has actually fallen in every country, and the rate in virtually all countries except Portugal and Denmark is currently below six per 1,000 population. A better indicator of the decreasing tendency towards marriage is provided by the total period female first-marriage rate. This can be interpreted as the number of first marriages a woman would have during her lifetime if as she aged she experienced the current

Demographic Change in Europe

185

Figure 6.5. Trends in Total Female First-marriage Rate Below Age 50, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom Note: The peak in Sweden in 1989 was the direct result of a change in pensions policy, which created a strong incentive for cohabiting couples to marry before the end of 1989. It is, of course, not possible for a woman to have more than one first marriage in her lifetime. Source: Council of Europe (2001).

cross-sectional probability of getting married for the first time. It is a hypothetical measure as in reality no woman lives her life in a single year. Figure 6.5 shows the total period female first-marriage rate for Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom. During the 1970s this indicator fluctuated around one. By 1998 it had fallen to 0.41 in Sweden, 0.52 in the United Kingdom and 0.62 in Italy, indicating that if current age-specific marriage rates continue to prevail, then only 40 to 60 per cent of European women will ever marry. As with fertility, period-based marriage rates tend to overestimate the decline, as there has been an increasing tendency towards the postponement of marriage. This is reflected in the rising mean age at marriage in all countries: in Italy the mean age of women at their first marriage rose from 23.7 years in 1975 to 27.0 years in 1997; in Sweden from 24.8 years in 1975 to 30.2 years in 2000; and in the United Kingdom from 22.5 years in 1975 to 27.3 years in 1999 (Council of Europe 2001). A clearer picture is provided by cohort data. Turning again to our four birth cohorts from England and Wales, the proportion of women remaining ‘never married’ among the four cohorts is shown in Figure 6.6. A higher proportion of women from the 1960s cohort remain unmarried in

186

Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham

Figure 6.6. Proportion of Women Remaining Unmarried by Birth Cohort, England and Wales Source: ONS 2000.

their early thirties than in previous cohorts at the same age. Similar trends are found for men. These trends partly reflect a shift towards later marriage. The key question here is whether a higher proportion of the 1964 cohort will never marry or whether they will eventually catch up. Looking at the position and slope of the line to date in Figure 6.6, it seems unlikely that this will be the case. If these trends continue, the UK Office of National Statistics projections indicate that over 10 per cent of women and 16 per cent of men from the 1960s cohort will not have formed a union by the time they reach the age of fifty. In comparison, only 4 per cent of women and 8 per cent of men born in 1946 never married. The decline in marriage has in part been compensated by an increase in cohabitation. In some European countries it has become the norm for the first partnership to be a consensual union, and legal marriage is often subsequent to the birth of the first child. For example in Sweden in 2000 extramarital births comprised over 55 per cent of all births. In the United Kingdom births outside marriage made up 40 per cent of all births in 2000, up from 28 per cent in 1990, 12 per cent in 1980 and 8 per cent in 1970. However, this trend is not shared by all European countries. In Italy both premarital cohabitation and births outside marriage are still the exceptions rather than the rule, although this is also gradually changing. In 2000 extramarital births accounted for

Demographic Change in Europe

187

Figure 6.7. Crude Divorce Rate, Europe, 1960–2000 Source: Council of Europe (2001).

10 per cent of all births in Italy, compared with 7 per cent in 1990, 4 per cent in 1980 and 2 per cent in 1970. The fact that fewer young people are marrying combined with the fact that births outside marriage are still culturally unacceptable may account for the much sharper decline in completed family size in southern Europe than in northern Europe. Not only do couples appear to be marrying less and later but also marriages seem to be less long-lived. Figure 6.7 shows that the total divorce rate has doubled in most European countries between 1960 and the late 1990s. However, the picture is far from uniform across the continent, with divorce rates being significantly higher in northern Europe than in southern Europe. In Italy the annual number of divorces in 2000 was less than one per 1,000 population. In Ireland, where divorce was only legalised during the 1990s, rates are still almost negligible. If such divorce rates continue into the future, it is estimated that over half of all marriages in Sweden, four out of ten marriages in the United Kingdom and ‘just’ one in ten marriages in Italy will end in divorce. Returning to the four cohorts in England and Wales, among those who have married a greater proportion of the younger cohorts will also have experienced divorce or separation. In fact, nearly one in six women (16 per cent) born in 1964 have already witnessed the break-up of their marriage or union by their thirty-third birthday (see Figure 6.8). On the other hand, with increasing longevity fewer of this cohort will have experienced the breakup of their union through the death of their spouse by the time they retire. This will not, however, be sufficient to offset the rise in divorce.

188

Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham

Figure 6.8. Proportion of Women Ever Divorced by Birth Cohort, England and Wales Source: ONS 2000.

Before discussing the implications of these demographic trends for social support of older people in the future, it is informative to look at the living arrangements and sources of social support among today’s older population. Whether or not elderly people live alone or with others and whether those living with others live with an elderly spouse or a younger person will shape their patterns of social interaction and their need for support.

Living Arrangements and Sources of Social Support for Older People Today The growth of the elderly population in Europe has led to a growing interest in their living arrangements. Although patterns of coresidence alone are not sufficient indicators of the strength of conjugal and intergenerational ties, they do provide a measure of potential intra-household support for elderly people (Glaser 1997). As is shown below, the majority of support for older dependent people living in the community is provided by co-resident family members. Over the last half century there has been a rise in the number of ‘elderly only households’ and co-residence with an adult child is now rare in many European countries. For example, in Norway in 1953, 44 per cent of elderly people lived with at least one adult child. By 1988 this proportion had declined to 11 per cent. In

Demographic Change in Europe

189

Table 6.4. Changes in Living Arrangements among Persons Aged Sixty-five and Over, Europe, 1950s and 1960s to 1980s and 1990s (percentages) Living with children Country Denmark France Germany Italy Netherlands Norway Spain Sweden UK

Living alone

1950s/1960s

1980s/1990s

1950s/1960s

1980s/1990s

20 – – – – 44 60+ 27 –

4 17 23 39 8 11 30 5 8

35 16 – – – – – 27 22

53 28 41 31 31 – 20 41 38

Source: Tables 1.A.4 and 1.A.5, OECD (1996b).

Britain and The Netherlands in the late 1980s, 8 per cent of older people co-resided with an adult child, and in Denmark this proportion was just 4 per cent (see Table 6.4). Countries in southern Europe, where the changes in family systems, as reflected in the trends in fertility and marriage discussed earlier, have occurred more recently, have shown remarkably quick adaptation. For example, as recently as 1970, 58 per cent of elderly people in Spain lived with their adult children. However, just two decades later, in 1988, this proportion had halved to 30 per cent in 1988 (OECD 1996b). Nevertheless, the proportion of older people living with a son or daughter remains significantly higher in southern European countries than in the north, and it will be important for any European initiative to take into account these cultural differences in living arrangements. Examining the position in Britain in a little more detail, in 1998 just over half of those aged sixty-five and over in Britain lived with their spouse only (51 per cent), more than a third lived alone (36 per cent) and about one in eight lived in ‘miscellaneous’ households (see Table 6.5). This latter group lived in a variety of household types, being almost equally divided between those who lived with their spouse and others and those who lived with a sibling or child. Living arrangements in later life vary according to the elderly person’s sex, age and marital status. A higher proportion of women than of men (47 per cent compared with 24 per cent) lived alone in 1998, reflecting the higher proportion of widows than widowers. More than four out of five single or widowed older people lived alone. The likelihood of living alone increases with age, from 19 per cent of men and 31 per cent of women in the sixty-five to sixty-nine-year age group to 43 per

190

Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham

Table 6.5. Living Arrangements among Persons Aged Sixty-five and Over by Sex and Age, Great Britain 1998 (percentages) 65–69

70–74

75–79

80–84

85+

All 65+

22 67 8 1 1

27 63 6 0 2

33 63 3 0 1

43 47 1 1 6

24 64 7 1 2

1

1

1

0

1

1

Women Lives alone 31 Lives with spouse only 56 Lives with spouse and others 6 Lives with sibling 0 Lives with son or daughter 6

40 47 4 0 7

57 32 2 1 7

65 26 2 1 6

72 13 1 4 9

47 41 3 1 7

1

1

1

0

1

1

All elderly Lives alone 25 Lives with spouse only 61 Lives with spouse and others 8 Lives with sibling 1 Lives with son or daughter 4

32 57 6 1 4

45 45 4 1 5

52 41 2 1 4

62 25 1 3 8

36 51 6 1 5

1

1

0

1

1

Men Lives alone 19 Lives with spouse only 66 Lives with spouse and others 10 Lives with sibling 2 Lives with son or daughter 2 Other

Other

Other

1

Source: Authors’ own analysis of 1998 General Household Survey (ONS, 2000a).

cent of men and 72 per cent of women aged eighty-five and over. Co-residence with an adult child is rare in Britain and is most frequent among persons aged eighty-five and over. However, even among this age group, only 8 per cent live with a son or daughter, compared with 4 per cent of those aged sixty-five to sixtynine. Historical work by Peter Laslett and colleagues at Cambridge (Laslett and Wall 1972) and by Falkingham and Gordon (1990) shows that co residence between older people and their adult children has never been commonplace in Britain (see also Kreager, Chapter 1, this volume). We shall end this section with a brief look at patterns of social support for the elderly. Family members supply the majority of social care provided in the community. In 1998, over three-quarters (76 per cent) of older people in Britain who reported suffering from mobility problems were helped by their spouse or other household members (see Figure 6.9). Relatives were also the main source of support for getting in and out of bed (68 per cent), for walking down the road (56 per cent), and for help in using

Demographic Change in Europe

191

Figure 6.9. Sources of Help with Mobility Tasks among Persons Aged Sixty-five and Over, Great Britain, 1998 Source: Authors’ own analysis, GHS 1998.

public transport (55 per cent). Apart from getting in and out of bed, for which 20 per cent of respondents used services provided by the National Health Service or local-authority social services, only a small proportion used help from anyone other than a household member or relative outside the household. There is a strong relationship between the elderly person’s living arrangements and use of formal services to provide assistance

Figure 6.10. Sources of Help with Self-care and Domestic Tasks among Persons Aged Sixty-five and Over Living Alone, Great Britain, 1998 Source: Authors’ own analysis, GHS 1998.

192

Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham

Figure 6.11. Sources of Help with Self-care and Domestic Tasks among Persons Aged Sixty-five and Over Living with a Spouse, Great Britain, 1998 Source: Authors’ own analysis, GHS 1998.

with self-care and domestic tasks (see Figures 6.10 and 6.11). Elderly people living alone are significantly more likely to use a local-authority home help or private domestic help than elderly people living with other household members (see Table 6.6). Table 6.6. Use of Personal Social Services in the Last Month among Persons Aged Sixty-Five and Over Who are Unable to Walk Out of Doors Unaided, by Household Composition, 1980–1998, Great Britain (percentages)

Reporting a home help Lives alone Lives with others Reporting a private domestic help Lives alone Lives with others Reporting meals on wheels Lives alone Lives with others Reporting a district nurse or health visitor Lives alone Lives with others

1980

1985

1994/5

1998

62 15

55 17

45 15

40 10

– –

– –

19 6

– –

18 4

18 3

17 3

– –

33 24

30 18

30 18

25 15

Notes: The percentage of all persons aged sixty-five and over who were unable to walk outside unaided was between 12 and 13 per cent in all years. Source: Table 6.18, Evandrou and Falkingham (1998) and authors’ own analysis of 1998 General Household Survey (ONS, 2000a).

Demographic Change in Europe

193

Among elderly people who were unable to walk unaided, 40 per cent of those living alone reported receiving a local-authority home help compared with just 10 per cent of those living with others. Thus, it appears that, within state-funded services, an implicit assumption is being made that, where there are co-residing family members, these family members will provide support for their dependent elderly relative.

Implications of Demographic Trends for the Future Social Support of Older People The flow of resources – be they financial, practical or emotional – between family members across households has been established as an important contributor to the well-being of individuals across generation and this in turn affects demand for public services (Spitze and Logan 1989). Analysis for Britain shows that at the end of the twentieth century the overwhelming majority of social care for people in later life was being provided by family members. Current policy recognises this role and implicitly relies upon its continuance. The same is true for elsewhere in Europe, and in some countries the obligation of the extended family to provide support for its members is enshrined in law (Millar and Warman 1996). But to what extent will policy-makers be able to continue to rely on family support in 2020 and beyond? The trends in marriage and divorce described above will have important implications for social care in 2020 and beyond, especially in regard to the availability of co-residential kin and, in particular, spouses. It is forecast that in Britain over two-fifths of the 1940s birth cohort and close to a half of the 1960s birth cohort will be living alone by age seventy-five (Evandrou and Falkingham 2000). The majority of this growth is due to greater marital instability. Of course, spouses are not the only providers of care. Children are also an important source of social care and not just in later life. We have already seen that fertility is falling, with women having smaller completed family sizes and higher proportions remaining childless. It is forecast that one in five British women born in the early 1960s will be childless, and similar proportions are likely elsewhere in Europe. These women and their partners will not have adult children to turn to for support. Rising divorce rates may also have an impact upon the availability of adult children to care for their elderly parents and parents-inlaw. On the one hand, divorce and subsequent re-partnering may

194

Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham

mean that there are more children per parent, i.e. both natural and stepchildren. But, on the other hand, little is known about how divorce may affect family ties and feelings of intergenerational obligation. Will children of divorced parents, and in particular of fathers who failed to maintain regular contact with them, show the same willingness to care? Similarly, will ex-daughtersin-law be prepared to offer care to their ex-mothers- or fathersin-law? Evidence from America found that divorced parents, especially fathers, are more likely than married parents to live longer distances from their adult children (Clark and Wolf 1992), and divorced mothers are less likely than widows to receive support from their adult children even when their needs are broadly comparable (Eggebeen 1992). Moreover, adult children who had experienced marital disruption themselves provided less help for elderly parents than those with intact marriages (Cicirelli 1983). There is no evidence to date on whether the children of divorced parents will show a greater or weaker tendency to care for their own parents. However, data from the British Household Panel Survey show that adult children moving back in with their parents is the fourth largest source – after death of a spouse, adult children moving out and institutionalisation – of change in living arrangements in later life (Evandrou et al. 2001). This indicates that parents may be continuing to provide support for their adult children rather than the other way round. Increasing rates of student debt and rising house prices, combined with higher rates of relationship breakdown and growing career instability, have meant that more adults are returning to their parental home than in the past. A recent survey of more than 3,300 adults found that 27 per cent of leavers return to live with their parents at least once, while one in ten returns four times before leaving for good (Mintel 2002). Thus, it appears that the direction of intergenerational support continues to be from parent to child well after the child reaches adulthood. Given rising divorce and increased childlessness, relations with other relatives, such as grandparents, grandchildren, nephews and nieces, may also assume greater importance (McGlone et al. 1999). Similarly, friendship networks will be more important among elderly people in the twenty-first century. Certainly, we are seeing the emergence of increasingly complex family structures and new forms of family ties. Although there is no doubt that there will be more persons in terms of absolute numbers requiring support in 2020 than today, it is less clear who will provide it, what mix of care will be available and whether this will match the preferences of older people.

Demographic Change in Europe

195

Future demand for social care will depend not only on the existence of family members to provide care but also on changes in their propensity to provide such care and their ability to do so. However, although current household surveys provide information regarding patterns of co-residence between older people and their children, they tell us very little about the reciprocal relationships within the household and virtually nothing about relationships with non-co-residential kin, despite the fact that the majority of care for older people living alone in Britain is necessarily provided by non-household members. Currently over a third of people aged sixty-five and over live alone, and it is likely that this will rise to around two-fifths by 2020. In order to be better able to forecast future patterns of family support for older people in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, we need to examine not only the likelihood of co-residence with kin but also proximity to other relatives. Recent research indicates that the educational and occupational status of both the older and younger generations have an impact on social networks. Better-educated and better-off adult children tend to live further away from their family (Glaser and Tomassini 2000) and have much lower levels of contact with their parents (Grundy and Shelton 2001) than those with lower qualifications; this reflects longer-distance migration for education and work. Will increasing education and greater occupational mobility mean that in future fewer adult children will live close to their elderly parents? Or will more flexible working practices mean that we no longer have to move to where the work is but can work at home and so have greater choice in deciding to live near our parents? Finally, how will demographic, social and economic changes affect relationships with non-co-residential kin and our propensity to care? To address such questions adequately, new data sources that look beyond the household and that are longitudinal will be needed.

References Bebbington, A. with A. Comas-Herrera, Healthy Life Expectancy: Trends to 1998 and the Implications for Long Term Care Costs. PSSRU Discussion Paper No. 1695, Kent, PSSRU, December 2000. Bone, M., A. Bebbington, C. Jagger, K. Morgan and G. Nicolaas, Health Expectancy and Its Uses, London, 1995. Bruckner, G., ‘Health Adjusted Forms of Life Expectancy in Germany: What Do We Learn from the Reunification Process?’. Paper presented to the 10th Work-group Meeting REVES, International Research Network for Interpretation of Observed Values of Healthy Life Expectancy, Tokyo, October 1997.

196

Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham

Cicirelli. V., ‘A Comparison of Helping Behaviour to Elderly Parents of Adult Children with Intact and Disrupted Marriages’, Gerontologist 23 (1983): 619–625. Clark, R. and D. Wolf, ‘Proximity of Children and Elderly Migration’. In Elderly Migration and Population Redistribution, ed. A. Rogers, London, 1992, 77–99. Council of Europe, Recent Demographic Trends in Europe 2001, Strasbourg, 2001. Crimmins, E., Y. Saito and D. Ingegneri, ‘Trends in Disability Free Life Expectancy in the United States, 1970–90’, Population and Development Review 23, no. 3 (1997): 555–572. Eggebeen, D., ‘Family Structure and Intergenerational Exchanges’, Research on Aging 14 (1992): 427–447. Evandrou, M., ‘Paid and Unpaid Work: The Socio-economic Position of Informal Carers in Britain’. In Working Carers and Older People, ed. J. Phillips, London and Avebury, 1996, 20–41. Evandrou, M. and J. Falkingham, ‘The Personal Social Services’. In The State of Welfare: The Economics of Social Spending, ed. H. Glennerster and J. Hills, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 189–256, 1998. Evandrou, M. and J. Falkingham, ‘Looking Back to Look Forward: Lessons from Four Birth Cohorts for Ageing in the 21st Century’, Population Trends 99 (2000): 21–30. Evandrou., M, J. Falkingham, K. Rake and A. Scott, ‘The Dynamics of Living Arrangements in Later Life’, Population Trends 105 (2001): 37–44. Falkingham, J. and C. Gordon, ‘Fifty Years On: the Income and Household Composition of the Elderly in London and Britain’. In Welfare and the Ageing Experience, ed. B. Bytheway and J. Johnson, London, 1990, 148–171. Glaser, K., ‘The Living Arrangements of Elderly People’. Reviews in Clinical Gerontology 7 (1997): 63–72. Glaser, K. and C. Tomassini, ‘Proximity of Older Women to Their Children: a Comparison of Britain and Italy’. The Gerontologist 40 (2000): 729–37. Grundy, E. and N. Shelton, ‘Contact Between Adult Children and Their Parents in Great Britain 1986–1999’, Environment and Planning A, no. 33 (2001): 685–98. Johnson, P. and J. Falkingham, Ageing and Economic Welfare, London, 1992. Johnson, P., C. Conrad and D. Thomson, Workers Versus Pensioners: Intergenerational Justice in an Ageing World, Manchester, 1989. Kendig, H., ‘Intergenerational Exchange’. In Ageing and Families: A Support Networks Perspective, ed. H. Kendig, Sydney 1986, 85–109. Knodel, J., C. Napaporn and S. Siriboon, ‘The Impact of Fertility Decline on Familial Support for the Elderly: An Illustration from Thailand’, Population and Development Review 18, no. 1 (1992): 79–103.

Demographic Change in Europe

197

Laslett, P. and R. Wall, eds, Household and Family in Past Time, Cambridge, 1972. Lesthaeghe, R. and D. Meekers, ‘Value Changes and the Dimensions of Familism in the European Community’, European Journal of Population 2 (1986): 225–68. McAllister, F. with L. Clarke, Choosing Childlessness, Family Policy Studies Centre, London, 1998. McGlone, F., A. Park and C. Roberts, ‘Kinship and Friendship: Attitudes and Behaviour in Britain 1986–1995’. In Changing Britain: Families and Households in the 1990s, ed. S. McRae, Oxford, 1999, 141–155. Millar, J. and A. Warman, Family Obligations in Europe, Family Policy Studies Centre and Joseph Rowntree Foundation, London, 1996. Mintel, Marketing to Tomorrow’s Consumers, Mintel, London, 2002. OECD, Ageing in OECD Countries: A Critical Policy Challenge, Paris, 1996a. OECD, Caring for Frail Elderly People: Policies in Evolution, Paris, 1996b. Office of National Statistics, Living in Britain: Results from the 1998 General Household Survey, London, The Stationery Office, 2000a. Office of National Statistics, National Population Projections – 1998 Based, Series PP2, no. 22, The Stationery Office, London, 2000b. Perenboom, R., L. van Herten, H. Boshuizen and H. van de Water, ‘Trends in de Gezonde Levensverwachting in Nederland 1983–1993, Met een Verdeling Naar Arnst van Ongezondheid’. In Volsgezondheid Toekomst Verkennig 1997, ed. P. Maas and P. Kramer, Bilthoven, 1997, 129–143. Prioux, F., ‘L’Infécondité en Europe’. In European Population, Volume 2: Demographic Dynamics, ed. A. Blum and J-L Rallu, Paris, 1993, 231–54. Robine, M. and P. Mormiche, ‘Estimation de la valeur de l’espérance de vie sans incapacité en France en 1991’, Solidarité Santé 1 (1994): 17–36. Rowland, D., Cross-National Trends in Childlessness. Working Papers in Demography no. 73, Canberra, ANU, 1998. Spitze, G. and J. Logan, ‘Sons, Daughters and Intergenerational Social Support’, Journal of Marriage and the Family 52 (1989): 420–430. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Fertility and Family Surveys in Countries of the ECE Region. Standard Country Report: Italy. Economic Studies No. 10, United Nations, Geneva, 2000. van de Kaa, D., ‘Europe’s Second Demographic Transition’, Population Bulletin 42, no.1 (1987): 1–55.

CHAPTER 7

BRITISH PAKISTANI ELDERLY WITHOUT CHILDREN: AN INVISIBLE MINORITY Alison Shaw

Introduction

T

oday’s elderly British Pakistanis are mostly first-generation immigrants from rural Punjab, whose expectations of support in old age are shaped by values derived from the South Asian joint-family system. There is a strong expectation that children, especially sons, will care for their elderly parents. British Pakistanis may also say that care for elderly parents is a duty (farz) for Muslims and contrast their treatment of the elderly with what they perceive as the English system in which elderly people are abandoned by their children to be looked after by the state. But what does family-based support for the elderly consist of in practice? In what ways can it be problematic for both carers and recipients, and how might it conflict with support offered by the state? Under what circumstances might elderly British Pakistanis become de facto childless, living alone because their children do not or cannot care for them? And what forms of support are available to elderly people who have never had any children of their own? This chapter argues that the situations confronting British Pakistani elderly without children can be understood in terms of two distinct and potentially conflicting systems of support, one

British Pakistani Elderly

199

embedded in the obligations of family, kinship, and community and the other based upon an individualistic engagement with the agencies of the state. The chapter begins by reviewing the normative ideals of family support in terms of the duties and responsibilities of parents towards children and of adult children towards elderly parents. Against this background it is possible to understand how the logic of filial support can extend to situations that in practice depart from the ideal form of family support. These variations in practice also reveal some of the tensions and contradictions inherent in the system of filial support for the elderly, which occasionally result in situations that render the elderly de facto childless, that is, people ‘whose children, present or absent, are unwilling or unable to take a caring role’ (Kreager and Schröder-Butterfill 2003: 4). The final section discusses rare cases of actual childlessness among elderly people who never married and therefore never had children, or who married but remained childless. Examination of the circumstances that may result in de facto and actual childlessness reveals the fragility and uncertainty of support in the joint-family system in respect of childless elderly people. Reliance on state support may seem an obvious alternative in the absence of children. However, accessing state provisions can be very difficult as a result of language barriers, unfamiliarity with processes of application, the shame attached to seeking state support and the continuing expectation of familybased care. For the childless elderly, engagement with UK state provisions is thus often tentative, partial or temporary.

Normative Ideals of Filial Support The majority of today’s elderly British Pakistanis are first-generation immigrants from rural Punjab and Mirpur who came to Britain as relatively young adults. They represent the initial outpost in Britain of families divided by labour migration. The men came during the 1950s and 1960s and were joined by their wives and children in the 1970s and 1980s. Within this generation marriage was nearly universal, reflecting its centrality in traditional Pakistani Muslim society, where daughters may be engaged when young and married at puberty. A very small minority of men remained unmarried or did not bring dependent wives to Britain. For this generation childbearing was also of central importance. In contrast to other parts of the developing world, such as East Java (see Schröder-Butterfill, Chapter 4, this volume), Pakistan’s fertility rate is among the highest in the world, nearly double that

200

Alison Shaw

of the average of all low-income countries (Weiss 2002: 165). In Pakistan a woman can expect to have six or more children, and a family of four children is smaller than average. Nearly all firstgeneration British Pakistanis have had children, and their fertility rate is high in comparison with other ethnic-minority groups. The high value accorded to marriage and childbearing is linked to maintaining the South Asian joint-family system, which, in principle, provides care and support for all family members in situations where state provisions are absent. In this system men are expected to be the breadwinners, and wives and daughters-in-law are expected to take on domestic responsibilities, including the care of children and elderly or infirm adults. A sense of mutual dependence is instilled from childhood, and the obligations of mutual care are perceived as extending from parents to children and from children to parents. Parents consider it their duty to care for their children to the best of their abilities, at least until their children are married and often beyond that. It is their duty to arrange their children’s marriages and to take responsibility for the success of these marriages. Children, in turn, expect that in adulthood they will care for elderly parents or parents-in-law. These responsibilities include providing financial support, ensuring appropriate day-to-day personal care, shouldering parental responsibilities towards unmarried siblings and enabling elderly parents to fulfil any outstanding social obligations of their own, such as assisting with the marriages of nieces and nephews or ensuring that an elderly parent or grandparent is being properly cared for. The fulfilment of religious obligations is also of increasing importance in old age, ‘in preparation for meeting Allah’, as one man put it. Namaz (prayer) should ideally be done five times daily and, for men at least, it usually includes attending the mosque. Muslims also hope to perform haj (pilgrimage to Mecca during the month of zu’ul hajj) or umra (pilgrimage to Mecca at any other time) at least once in their lifetime, ideally only after their worldly duties have been fulfilled. Adult children frequently provide financial assistance to enable their parents to make this much-desired journey to Saudi Arabia, and sometimes one of them will accompany their parents on pilgrimage. Finally, children are responsible for making appropriate burial arrangements when elderly parents die. These filial responsibilities have different implications for men and women. Adult sons are expected to provide financial support for elderly parents and any unmarried siblings when their fathers are no longer earning a living. When parents die, sons also become formally responsible for arranging the marriages of

British Pakistani Elderly

201

unmarried sisters and providing for sisters whose marriages have failed. Married daughters are expected to provide day-to-day care for elderly parents-in-law, since on marriage they move to their husbands’ parents’ households. These aspects of family-based care for the elderly are thus to a large extent embedded in the structure of the joint family, especially when its members reside in one household. In practice, though, there is much variation on the ideal of joint family living, both in Pakistan and in Britain. Sometimes an adult never marries and remains living in the parental household after the parents’ death. Sometimes married couples are childless or have children who die in infancy, childhood, youth or adulthood. Sometimes parents lose contact – temporarily or permanently – with children after a divorce, remarriage or family dispute, or when they move away to take up employment elsewhere, be it in other parts of Pakistan or Britain or elsewhere in the world. In rural and urban Punjab, many elderly parents, particularly widows, are dependent on the income of a son or sons living abroad (Shaw 2000; see also Gardner 1995 on rural Sylhet, Bangladesh) and may be able to pay for local domestic help. Joint households also divide due to a lack of space, resulting in more attenuated patterns of family-based care. When more than one son marries, or as married sons have children, one of the younger couples and their children may move into an adjacent or nearby property, leaving one son and his wife in the original house. In some urban havelis (walled residences occupied by extended families) in Pakistan the living space is arranged over several floors, each with independent hearths, in order to accommodate several marital units from the same extended family within the same property (see Weiss 2002). In parts of rural Pakistani Punjab, married adult children may live in a house next door or near to parents with whom they maintain regular contact (Shaw 2000), and, although daughters move out of their natal home at marriage to join their husbands’ households, they often remain in the same neighbourhood, usually as a result of marrying relatives such as first cousins. This reinforces patterns of local kinship and family support, enabling married daughters (who have their own responsibilities in their husbands’ households) to visit the natal home on a regular basis. Patterns of local kinship extending across several households are important features of day-to-day life in some other parts of South Asian, even where marriage rules and patterns differ, as studies in urban north India, and in parts of rural non-Brahmanical south India illustrate (Vatuk 1972; Kapadia 1995). There is, then, a strong ideal of

202

Alison Shaw

caring for the elderly, which may be supported through the structure of the joint family and through local patterns of kinship, where close and more distant relatives are living in the same urban neighbourhood or village. To what extent has the structure of the joint family – the foundation of family-based care for the elderly – been maintained in Britain? Many of the sons, daughters and, indeed, grandchildren of first-generation Pakistanis are now married or getting married, and most marriages have been with relatives who are, typically, cousins from Pakistan (Shaw 2001). As in Pakistan, a married couple usually first lives in the husband’s parents’ household, although men from Pakistan marrying British Pakistani women often first live with their wives’ parents in Britain. (In Pakistan this would be considered shameful for it implies that the boy’s parents cannot support their son and his wife.) It is unusual for middle-aged or elderly British Pakistanis with adult children to be living alone, at least when their children are first married. An early study of 169 South Asian elderly in Birmingham showed that only 5 per cent lived alone (far fewer than among any other ethnic minority group), 56 per cent lived in households of five to eight people and 15 per cent lived in households of more than nine persons (Bhalla and Blakemore 1981). Over time, as married children have children of their own, some of these large households have divided in broad conformity with the pattern of household division common in South Asia, but with some particular local characteristics. British houses are not structured to accommodate several distinct marital units of a single extended family in the manner of an urban haveli in Pakistan, and local-authority planning permission is necessary for substantial alterations to household dimensions and layout. Some families have adapted and extended their homes to accommodate several marital units over several floors, but a more favoured strategy is to purchase the house next door or in the same street when a son marries or in anticipation of his marriage. These strategies enable family members to live in close contact while allowing a young couple to maintain more independence of the parental household than is possible when living with the husband’s parents. This reduces the potential for tensions and conflicts that can arise in joint households, some of which are discussed below. It is now common practice for young married couples to live in the parental household for a relatively short period of some months or years or until one or two children have been born. They then move out to a council flat or their own house in the same area. The resulting pattern of local kinship is

British Pakistani Elderly

203

similar to that noted for working-class East London in the 1950s (Young and Willmott 1957). It has been suggested that, despite the heterogeneity of Britain’s ethnic minorities, recent trends in family formation for the ethnic majority and minorities alike point in the direction of ‘modern individualism’ for all (Berthoud 2000). However, it does not necessarily follow that people who live in ‘nuclear’ family units have abandoned altogether the ideas of joint family living. My own research among Pakistanis settled in southern England (Oxford and High Wycombe) suggests that adult children living separately from but in the same neighbourhood as their parents generally visit their parents or in-laws regularly and often provide considerable practical support for elderly relatives living nearby (see Shaw 2000, 2004). Many elderly British Pakistanis can reasonably expect at least some form of support in their old age from at least one of their married children, even when they are not living in the same house. Formally this responsibility falls in the first place to the eldest son and his wife, who ideally remain living in the parental home. However, responsibility for an elderly couple may also be shared or rotated among married children, as the case of Fiaz and Farida illustrates. Case 1: Fiaz and Farida Fiaz is a retired factory worker, now seventy years old but in good health. His wife Farida is sixty-six. They live with and are cared for by their eldest son and his wife and children. A younger son and his wife live with their children in the house next door, which Fiaz purchased when his sons were married. A third son and daughter-in-law live with their children three doors away in the same street. Cooking for both households is shared between the first two daughters-in-law and is done in the house in which Fiaz and Farida live. This gives Farida time for namaz, for reading the Qur’an, and for participating in khatme-Qur’an (communal reading of the Qur’an) in her friends’ and neighbours’ homes. When the eldest son and his wife are away visiting the wife’s parents in Pakistan, the second son and his wife take on the day-today responsibility for Fiaz and Farida, calling upon the third son and his wife if they have to be out for the day. Fiaz and Farida also have three married daughters with children living locally, with whom they speak almost daily and who visit their parents frequently. Two years ago Fiaz and Farida performed haj accompanied by their eldest son and his wife. The eldest son paid for Fiaz to travel afterwards to his village in Pakistan so that he could fulfil an outstanding obligation to a sister by contributing money to

204

Alison Shaw

her youngest daughter’s wedding. The sons, daughters, sons-inlaw, and daughters-in-law in this family network all place a high value on mutual family care and support, especially on care of the elderly. The three married sons and their wives also operate an informal rota of support for an elderly English bachelor, who lives opposite Fiaz and Farida’s house and who eats an evening meal with Fiaz and his sons in Fiaz’s house on one or two nights a week. Like many British Pakistanis, this family considers that the value they place on ‘family’ in general and on care of the elderly in particular is something that makes them ‘not like English people.’

Variations in Practice The ideal system of family support for the elderly is premised upon having at least one married son who is capable of offering financial and practical support to elderly parents, primarily through the day-to-day care provided by his wife. If elderly parents own their own house and receive state pensions and other benefits, the financial burden upon sons – who might be studying or unemployed – may be relatively small. The transfer of socioeconomic responsibility to sons is very often not completed until after the father’s death. Meanwhile there may remain the practical burden of day-to-day care, and this falls ideally to the eldest son’s wife. My use of the word ‘burden’ reflects a much less clearly articulated discourse of family duty and responsibility as ‘burden’ (bojh). Women I have talked to sometimes use the word bojh to describe the duty or obligations of kinship and express the idea of shouldering responsibility by using the verb bojh uthana, ¯ which literally means ‘to carry a burden’. The burden of family-based care often falls particularly heavily upon a daughter-in-law living in her husband’s parents’ house and may constitute a part of the tensions and conflicts that conventionally characterise the relationship between a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law and which are depicted in many popular jokes, songs and stories. First-generation women often said that, after their initial feelings of loneliness on arrival in Britain, they enjoyed having greater control over their households than they would have done had they remained in Pakistan. This expectation of freedom from the mother-in-law’s authority appears to have been transferred to their daughters (most of whom marry men from Pakistan rather than moving there themselves) and, to an extent, to their daugh-

British Pakistani Elderly

205

ters-in-law, many of whom come from Pakistan. For, while in the ideal joint family household the senior woman may have more than one son’s wife under her authority, the constraints of British household structure provide good reasons for at least one young married couple to move to a separate house. Young wives from Pakistan sometimes say that freedom from the direct authority of a mother-in-law is a particular advantage of coming to England for or after marriage. What does this imply for the day-to-day care for elderly in-laws? When sons and their wives move out, day-to-day household responsibilities may fall to a remaining daughter-in-law or to an unmarried daughter. This workload may be heavier than it might have been in Pakistan if the joint household had not divided, because of the absence of other female carers in the household. Where daughters-in-law – or, indeed, daughters – are preoccupied with child care, out at work during the day or for some other reason unwilling to share the burden of care, family-based care may sometimes be supplemented with state-provided nursing care at home and supported by relevant allowances and benefits, usually applied for with the help of an adult child or other relative. Thus, over time, a range of variations from the ideal of family-based care may evolve in relation to changes in family circumstances and the nature of the personal relationships involved. Changes towards less conventional patterns of care often occur following the death of the senior male head of the household, when property held in the father’s name is formally transferred to the sons. In this situation the circumstances of widows – vulnerable to claims to their property by sons and daughters-in-law – may become particularly precarious. In fact families may eventually divide along lines that draw upon close affective ties between mothers and their married daughters living nearby rather than upon the links between a mother and her married sons. Zahida, for instance, is a widow who now lives with her married daughter. Case 2: Zahida Zahida was fifty-five when her husband, Zafar, retired. At the time they were living with their eldest married son and his wife. This daughter-in-law cooked, washed, and cleaned for them and cared for their youngest child, an unmarried student, when Zafar and Zahida went on haj. Their sons supplemented Zafar’s savings so that Zahida and Zafar could also visit relatives in Pakistan. Three years later, following a stroke, Zafar became bedridden. He was looked after mainly by his eldest son and daughter-in-law,

206

Alison Shaw

with occasional assistance from his other married children living nearby. When the eldest son and his wife had to return unexpectedly to Pakistan for a funeral, regular assistance was provided by the second son and his wife. Zafar died eight months later. His eldest son travelled with his father’s body to Pakistan so that his father could be buried in the family graveyard, as he had wished. Within two months of her husband’s death, Zahida moved out of her eldest son’s house in order to live with her youngest daughter, Shabnam. There were two reasons for this. One was the tension between Zahida and her daughter-in-law (Zafar’s sister’s daughter), who thought that Zahida should have done more of the nursing care for Zafar. The other was the fact that Zahida has a very close relationship with Shabnam, Shabnam’s husband (Zahida’s brother’s son) and their children, who were born while Shabnam was living with her parents and waiting for her husband to obtain a visa to come to England. Case 3: Miriam Another variation on the theme of filial care may be represented through the case of Miriam. Miriam is a widow who initially lived with her eldest son and his wife after her husband’s death, then alternated between her elder and middle sons’ households, and now lives with her youngest son and his English wife. Miriam acknowledges this as being somewhat ironic, given that she has two Pakistani daughters-in-law: The biggest problem for me is that I don’t speak English, and I can’t read, and I can’t fill in forms. My husband used to do the paperwork. After he died, my sons helped me with the paperwork. I did not want to stay in the house, so my youngest son put it up for rent. At first I used to stay with my eldest son for one week, then with my middle son for one week. But I know their wives did not like it. They made me feel like a burden (bojh). My eldest son’s wife always complained because she had not only the house to look after but also the shop, as her husband also drives a taxi. She has three children to care for. She said she had no time to talk to me. I would go out to see friends, but my arthritis is bad, and I cannot easily walk on my own. My youngest son says someone should always be with me. And you can’t go out visiting every day, it looks bad. I did stay with my middle son for a while, but they have such a small flat and three very young children, the space there was tight, and I did not feel comfortable. My youngest son is the most attentive, and he realised that I was not happy. But he had married an English girl. You know the English don’t feel any duty to look after their parents, so how could I expect to live with them? Initially they had a small council flat, and first one, then two, and

British Pakistani Elderly

207

then three small children; I did not think I could live with them. But he has done well. He went into the property business and decided we should rent out the house his father had bought. In a few years he could afford his own house, and later he bought a larger house and asked me to come to live with them. Look at this, I have two Pakistani daughters-in-law, one of them my own brother’s daughter, yet I don’t live with them, I live with the English daughter-in-law. I know it is because my son has insisted. It is difficult for his wife. She has a lot of work with seven children, and I know she feels I am a burden. And I can’t talk to her. I don’t speak all day. Ten people in the house, and I feel very alone for much of the time. Their ways are different – they like to eat fish fingers, they speak English more than they speak Punjabi. I speak a little with the children, and I play with the baby, but now they are all at school or out doing something after school. Mostly I wait for my son to come home in the evenings. He is a very good son. He likes me to tell him stories about people in our village in Pakistan, and then he tells his children. He took his family to Pakistan and showed them Islamabad and Lahore. But they don’t understand my Punjabi, so my son has to be there to tell them my stories, and he is often out or away on his business.

Miriam’s case illustrates how isolated elderly Pakistanis may feel even when living with their children and grandchildren. They may miss the company of their own generation or of people with similar values and experiences, despite being probably better off than they would be in the Punjab. Some are dependent on impoverished families with many difficulties of their own. Saber Khan (1997) presents a poignant case of an elderly Punjabi man who spends his days in the park to avoid a family dependent on one daughter’s wage, in which the children are ‘out of control’. Sometimes, wishing to avoid such situations, elderly Pakistanis opt for a measure of independence from their children, for example, by obtaining a small council flat. However, the high value that is placed on traditional family-based care may make alternative arrangements difficult to contemplate and execute. Relatives and neighbours can be highly critical of families who arrange for or allow elderly parents to live on their own. This is illustrated by Parveen’s example. Case 4: Parveen Parveen was fifty-six years old when her husband died. An outgoing person with a relatively good knowledge of English and several English friends, she decided to apply for her own council flat, rather than become a burden (bojh) on any of her daughtersin-law who all have children to care for; one of them also works

208

Alison Shaw

in a shop. Parveen remembered all too vividly the heavy burden of care for her mother-in-law that she had carried when she was first married in Pakistan, before coming to live in England. Now that her husband was dead she was looking forward to living independently. Her six sons, however, were initially dismayed at her proposal, considering it an insult to their abilities to care for their mother. Parveen none the less persisted with her application and obtained a council flat. Until recently, she was able to look after and get around by herself and was a regular and welcome visitor at one or another of her son’s households during the day. Her sons and their wives came to regard the arrangement as a very sensible one, even though it continued to invite a degree of criticism from families who have not attempted to break with conventional patterns. However, when Parveen suffered a stroke and became seriously ill, her eldest son and his wife brought her to live with them in the house in which Parveen had raised her own family, where they could look after her more easily. She is now ‘rotated’ among her sons’ households, spending two weeks at a time in each. One of her sons is in the process of purchasing her flat from the council. Parveen made a positive choice to live separately. However, sometimes the elderly are encouraged – if not coerced – by their children to apply for council flats so as to reduce the day-to-day burden upon daughters-in-law or in order to free a room for grandchildren or a house that can be let. In principle, the elderly in these situations may continue to have regular contact with their children, for example, by being collected in the mornings by a married son, daughter or daughter-in-law. In practice these arrangements cannot necessarily be relied upon if the elderly person becomes seriously ill, if children move away from the neighbourhood or if they are for other reasons incapable of providing care. The elderly in these situations may become de facto childless, at least temporarily, if not on a permanent basis.

Transitions to De Facto Childlessness The de facto childless are those who cannot rely on care from their children because relationships have broken down or because children have physical or mental disabilities, lack the resources to offer support or have moved away. They are a minority that is extremely difficult to quantify, and their circumstances may be temporary and subject to change. My respondents estimated that

British Pakistani Elderly

209

perhaps 3 per cent of the elderly in their communities receive no care at all from their children and rely on state provisions instead. Services for the elderly are, in general, strikingly underutilised by ethnic minorities – an observation that raises welfare-rights issues. Ethnic-minority elderly may be unaware of provisions such as home help, meals on wheels, nursing care or day care and of their entitlements to them. Blakemore and Boneham write that it was difficult for many South Asian elderly, especially women, to articulate their welfare needs because ‘often the first person to discuss the range of social services with them was an interviewer for one of the community surveys’ (1994: 114). Similarly, relatives caring for the elderly may not know of their entitlements to services and benefits as carers. Lack of command of English among South Asian elderly can significantly hamper their access to information about entitlements and prevent them from contacting social services and other statutory or voluntary agencies, from completing the various application forms for benefits and services properly or from asking for further information and assistance. That services are underused by South Asian elderly is a reflection not simply of the fact that the majority ‘look after their own’ (Murray and Brown 1998) but of problems with accessing provisions. The elderly themselves and their carers or relatives may feel ashamed to admit to a need for assistance where the burden of care falls unduly upon one person – usually a daughter-in-law or a daughter; they often consider it their duty as kin to conceal their difficulties. Equally, though, they may not know of their entitlements to services and provision. Blakemore and Boneham (1994: 114) found that 45 per cent of older Asian men in one survey said they would be very interested in attending a day centre if it could be available locally. There is, however, also the issue of culturally appropriate service provision (see, for example, Qureshi 1998: 45), discussion of which is beyond the scope of this chapter, but which would include, at a minimum, providing same-sex carers for home-help services, halal ¯ food in meals on wheels, and provisions for religious observance in day and residential centres. Inadequate provision of interpreters or advocates also makes provisions and services difficult to access. Children may be reluctant or unable, as a result of other commitments, to assist in a process that they believe may reflect badly on their ability to care for their parents. A de facto childless elderly person might arrange an interview with social services, stating their need for an interpreter, only to find that the interpreter is unavailable; the

210

Alison Shaw

resulting interview may be inadequate, delayed for many months or never take place. A national postal survey of Social Services Departments and District Health Authorities demonstrated the striking inadequacy of interpreting service provision for elderly South Asians. Two-thirds of the social services and health authorities were unable to estimate the need for services in languages other than English, and half of them relied on clients’ relatives or volunteers to interpret. Very few South Asian elderly reported ever having been offered interpreting services (Askhan et al. 1995: 100f.). It is not the case that many elderly return to Pakistan to be cared for by relatives there, although the ‘myth of return’ is widely acknowledged as having justified the migration in the first place. Pakistani elderly may say they wish to spend their last days in their villages of origin, where they may still have siblings or cousins, children or very elderly parents. They make return visits if they can afford to, sometimes staying for several months or more, but these visits are primarily to fulfil obligations to relatives in Pakistan. It is also more likely for men rather than women to return on this basis, for instance in order to arrange marriages of children and grandchildren, to ensure that someone is caring for an elderly relative – such as a mother who cannot be persuaded to come to Britain – or to assist a sibling or cousin with arranging the marriages of their children. Some men return more permanently to live in houses built with remittances from England. Equally they may feel the need to attend to the management of land and property in their natal villages or of new property and businesses in cities – often held jointly with brothers, sons or other relatives – where they enjoy the elevated status of ‘England-returnees’. Women, in contrast, tend to remain in England, where most of their children and grandchildren are. In the more extreme cases of de facto childlessness, however, a return to Pakistan may seem to be the only viable option. The case of Khalida, a widow with two daughters with mental illnesses, illustrates this point. Case 5: Khalida Khalida came to Britain in 1973 with her two sons and daughters in order to join her husband, who first came to England in 1969. A few years later her elder daughter developed a mental illness, which her parents attribute to the cultural changes involved in coming to England. It was soon clear that this daughter was unlikely ever to marry. In the early 1980s the household was joined by a daughter-in-law, one of Khalida’s husband’s sister’s

British Pakistani Elderly

211

daughters who came to England after marrying Khalida’s eldest son. This couple had three children. The family lived as a joint household for seven years, and during this time the younger son married a cousin from Pakistan, who also came to live in the same household. Khalida and her husband were able to perform haj. However, conflict between Khalida and her first daughter-in-law, conflict between this daughter-in-law and her husband’s younger brother and conflicts over financial commitments eventually resulted in the eldest son moving to another house with his wife and children. Khalida’s younger son remained with his parents for a few years, and his wife had three children. Meanwhile Khalida’s younger daughter married in Pakistan. Khalida’s younger son and his family then moved out in order to live nearer his workplace. He eventually persuaded his parents to apply for a council flat so that the family home could be let to lodgers. Khalida, her now retired husband, who was suffering from a heart condition, and their mentally ill daughter moved into a council flat, where they had no daughter-in-law to cook or clean for them. They lived there for two years but found the experience isolating and stressful, and they complained that their sons did not visit them as much as they should. During this time, the second daughter’s marriage collapsed, and she returned to her parents, showing signs of the same mental illness that afflicts her older sister. When her husband died, Khalida felt she had no one on whom she could rely to make contact with the council or the social and health services. She found dependence on outsiders, with whom she could not communicate adequately, frustrating and shameful. Increasingly suffering from depression, she decided that a return to her village of origin in Pakistan was the most sensible option. As she still has many relatives of her own generation, including two brothers, living there, she felt she would have congenial company. Moreover, her younger son was in the process of moving his wife and children back to Pakistan to settle about fifteen minutes’ drive away, in a suburb of the nearest town. He, too, encouraged his mother to go. They reasoned that in the village, where her ancestors have lived for generations, where there are other elderly widows cared for by more distant relatives and neighbours, and where her wider family is well thought of, it would be easier for Khalida to obtain daily help with housework and caring for her daughters. Without the resources or good reasons for returning to Pakistan, the de facto childless may fall through the safety net provided by

212

Alison Shaw

the extended family of close and more distant kin, which is in any case likely to be less extensive in the UK than in Pakistan. In such cases it may only be at death that contact with children is renewed: the final filial obligation is to ensure that a parent is properly buried. I was told about an unusual case in which the son and daughter living in the United States of a man who had been living for three years in an old people’s home in Britain returned to arrange for his body to be sent to Pakistan for burial. Men of the pioneer generation usually wish to be buried in the same village cemetery as their ancestors. In the early years of settlement they established funeral committees as a form of insurance to provide the funds for returning the dead to Pakistan for burial (see Ballard 1990). Pioneer-generation women, however, many of whom are younger than their husbands and are now widows, often prefer to be buried where their own children and grandchildren are still living. Women who were not close relatives of their husbands but brides ‘from outside’ are also less closely tied to the land associated with their husbands’ ancestors. Thus women or infants and children born in Britain have mostly been buried in the Muslim sections of local cemeteries in Britain. I was told about an unusual case in which the children living in Britain of a man who had chosen to return to Pakistan and die there decided to return their father’s body to England for burial, so that they could visit his grave. Although the bodies of most deceased men continue to be flown to Pakistan for burial, this event was a symbol – perhaps especially for the first generation – of changing commitments to place among second-generation Pakistanis.

Actual Childlessness Given the importance of children in Pakistani society and the strong value placed on care of the elderly by their children, how do those who have no children experience their old age? Are the problems that may be encountered by the elderly with children – and which may make them de facto childless – exacerbated for the small and generally unrecognised minority of elderly who never had children of their own? Here I shall consider the cases of three childless women in their late fifties. Rubina chose not to marry and therefore never had children; Saleema married but decided to become divorced, rather than live as a co-wife when her husband took a second wife after three years of childlessness; and Shenaz is a married woman who had three miscarriages but bore no live children.

British Pakistani Elderly

213

Actual childlessness is uncommon in Pakistani society and regarded as anomalous. It may result from biological infecundity or infertility, which women generally go to considerable lengths to counter (Shaw 2000). It may be the outcome of not marrying or of a couple divorcing before they have had any children. Failure to produce children may be an explicit reason for divorce. A man whose wife does not produce children may choose – or be under considerable pressure from his mother and other relatives – to marry again, without necessarily divorcing his first wife (as is permitted under Muslim law). In such cases, the first wife may choose to return – shamed – to her parents’ home, rather than live in the same house as the second wife where her status may be reduced to that of a domestic servant, especially if the second wife, quickly produces children. In general, the consequences of childlessness are more serious for a woman than for a man, especially in families where women are not expected to take paid work outside the family. A childless woman cannot gain the security and autonomy in her husbands’ parents’ house that usually accompany the birth of children, especially sons; and she never benefits from the eventual arrival of a daughter-in-law to care and provide for her in her old age. Formal adoption through agencies is rarely considered, but occasionally a childless couple will raise a nephew, niece or step-sibling as their own. One man with four children gave his second wife’s first baby to his childless daughter and her husband so that his daughter would at least have one child; this child is now regarded as belonging to its adoptive parents. A woman who does not marry, or whose marriage fails, usually remains a dependant in her natal household for the rest of her life. In rural Pakistan, women in such circumstances may try to obtain a degree of financial independence by becoming teachers in infants’ or girls’ schools, but they generally remain living in their natal home, under the authority of a brother or brothers after their parents’ death. A woman who does not marry invites speculation that there may be something ‘wrong’ with her or that her family is hiding some dark secret. She is also regarded as providing a lifelong burden to her family, as the reactions of Rubina’s relatives to her decision not to marry illustrate. Case 6: Rubina Rubina was born in 1945. She came to Britain in 1967 when twenty-two years old. She never married and works as a teaching assistant. She lived with her parents until their deaths and now lives in what was her parents’ house with one of her five brothers

214

Alison Shaw

and his second wife and children. In 1967 it was unusual for an unmarried adult woman to come to Britain. Rubina’s father, who arrived in 1959, had originally only intended to bring his wife and sons, leaving Rubina and her sister in the care of their paternal grandmother. ‘My father sent so much money and presents for us in Pakistan,’ Rubina told me, ‘but my sister complained all the time, saying, “My parents have forgotten me, it is as if I am not their daughter.” That upset my father. At that time it was difficult to bring a person over sixteen to England. My father was driving lorries. He went to his boss, who said he would help, and they got the papers so that my sister and I could come to England.’ Rubina’s sister was soon married to a colleague of one of her brothers and moved to the north of England. Rubina, however, had turned down several proposals for marriage while in Pakistan: I’ll tell you the truth. When I was young in my village, I saw what happened to so many women after they got married. Their lives were spoilt. There were two or three women in our village, in fact in our family, whose husbands beat them, hitting them so badly that one had her arm broken. Another woman’s husband had married and divorced three times before he married her. A man can just say, ‘I divorce you,’ and throw the woman out. I told my father, ‘I don’t want to get married.’ He was a quiet man, he always listened to me, and he said, ‘Okay, if that is what you want.’ My parents had many rishte (offers of marriage) for me, but each time when they asked me I said no. In the end, my father told my brothers who were in England that I did not wish to get married. My brothers came back to Pakistan to speak to him. They said, ‘If she is not married that will be a problem for us. If she is not married and you are not there to look after her then she will be our responsibility, and we are married, we have children, we can’t be responsible for her.’ My father said he would look after me. After that they were quiet.

The question was not so simply settled, however. Rubina’s mother was concerned that aspersions would be cast upon the family for having an unmarried daughter, and Rubina has always been acutely aware of her responsibilities to her parents in this respect: My mother was not so happy. She said, ‘If she does not marry she will be a problem for us.’ But I have never given them any trouble. All my life I have been innocent. English women may not get married, but they have boyfriends, they may even have children. I have never done that. Look at me now, I am fifty-five years old,

British Pakistani Elderly

215

and if I want to go out I can. But still I never go out to visit people at night. Because if someone from our community sees me they will say, they will whisper, ‘So and so was out at night.’ Even though I have done nothing bad, the effect will be bad on my family, on my brothers, because people will talk. So I just don’t do it. It is how I am brought up.

The question of Rubina’s financial security was also debated within the family. Some years before his death, Rubina’s father decided that she should inherit the house he owned in Britain. He had a solicitor draw up the will in the presence of his wife, daughter and an interpreter. He did not hide the fact that he had done this, and despite some initial resentment his sons agreed it was a sensible plan. One widowed brother was living in the parental house at the time, and Rubina had taken on the responsibility of looking after his children, being at home for them when they returned from school, supervising their study, washing their clothes, cooking for them and teaching them to read the Qur’an. Each of her brothers owned a house, and two had successful businesses. It was Rubina’s mother rather than her brothers who objected most strongly to the house being left to Rubina. The objections took the form of insinuations that Rubina was abusing her parents by refusing to marry and taking advantage of her father’s affection for her. After several months of continuous complaints from her mother, Rubina destroyed the will. Rubina has always dreamt of being independent, of finding a way of, as she puts it, ‘standing on my own feet’. While her father was alive he always encouraged her, but her steps towards work and financial independence in Britain were continuously interrupted by lengthy stays in Pakistan in fulfilment of obligations to her parents. She feels it was her religious duty to be a good daughter to her parents, and so she accompanied them on haj and cared for them in their old age until they died. When I first came to this country, I started doing GCSEs at the College of Further Education. I wanted to study. But my mother was not happy. She wanted to go back to Pakistan, and she wanted me to go with her just when I was about to take my GCSE exams. Already I had upset her by saying I did not wish to get married. So I thought I should abandon the GCSEs. But my father encouraged me and said, ‘You should let her go now if she wants to, you can do your GCSEs and join her later.’ So as soon as I had sat the exams I went to Pakistan. The trouble with my mother was that she did not ever go back to Pakistan just for a few weeks or even a few months, like other people did, and then return to England. Each

216

Alison Shaw

time she went back she stayed for years, five years the first time, seven years the next time and five years the third time. The first time I did some private teaching of English, and I taught Urdu in the school in our village, but each time I returned to England it was as if I was learning to read and write and speak English for the first time. In the years in between I had forgotten what I knew before. Each time I returned I had to start again trying to get some qualification, and each time it was harder. I was older and even after I obtained qualifications for teaching Urdu and English as a second language, and for working in playgroups, people younger than me and better qualified were the ones who got the jobs. That is why I have never had a full-time career here. I have only been able to work part-time, in temporary jobs or without pay. I worked in my brother’s shop, and I taught Urdu to children as a volunteer on Saturdays. I have also taught Urdu to English people in evening classes and an Asian cookery class. I have worked as a volunteer classroom and playground assistant. The job I have now is the first permanent job I have ever had. It is lucky that I did not give up, I kept on putting in my applications for jobs after my parents died. I had to try to stand on my own feet. When I got the job two of my brothers just could not believe it. It is only part-time, and I would like to work full-time, and I find it hard because of the English. But now at last I have some independence. The second time I came to England my father insisted that I learn to drive. My father was a very good man. I never had lessons from a driving school, he taught me himself. Once I got so upset during a lesson that I started shouting, ‘I can’t do this, I will never do it, I don’t want to drive.’ He sat calmly, then carried on with the lesson, quietly saying, ‘You can do it, and you are going to do it.’ I often think of him when I drive to work, although it is five years since he died.

Especially now that her father is dead, Rubina fears for the future, for she does not want to be a burden on her brothers. She does not have any particularly close relationship with her many nieces and nephews who live nearby. She has English friends and dreams she might one day have a flat of her own and live independently of her brothers. Yet to apply for a council flat when she can live in a brother’s house would shame her brothers. So all she can hope is that her brothers will eventually carry out their father’s wish and transfer his former house to her. Rubina has a degree of financial independence, a number of English friends, and is likely to have a home of her own when she retires from her job. In this respect her situation is more secure than that of Saleema, a woman the same age as her, who worked as a teacher in Pakistan but has never worked in England.

British Pakistani Elderly

217

Case 7: Saleema Saleema is fifty-seven years old and came to Britain eleven years ago in order to care for her brother’s seven sons after their mother died. I was a teacher in Pakistan. I started service as a teacher when I was sixteen, and I worked for twenty-five years. But I did not complete a lifetime service, so I only have a small pension from Pakistan. I got married a few years after I had started to work, and I continued to work after I was married. But, because after three years I still did not have any child, my husband took a second wife. I could not live in the same house as the second wife. Any love that I had felt for my husband went away after that, it turned to hatred. So I went back to my mother’s house. It was cruel of my husband to do this, because it was not my fault that children did not arrive. God decides these things. Sometimes children come after much longer than three years. Then my brother’s wife died. He had seven boys, and the youngest was only three months old. So I came to England to look after them.

In England Saleema’s main duties have been those of a housewife responsible for the care of children:

I teach the boys about Islam, and I have taught them a little Urdu. As you know, I was a teacher in Pakistan. But I don’t usually teach the boys the Qur’an myself at home, because there is too much cooking and washing to do. … I get up at five or five-thirty each morning to get the children ready for school, prepare their clothes, breakfast and books. I have done four hours of work by the time the boys have all set off for school or work. Wherever possible I do namaz ¯ five times daily, and I usually go out on Thursdays and Fridays to khatme Qur’ans held in the houses of my friends and neighbours. But my main responsibility is for my youngest nephew. I have looked after him since he was three months old. Now he usually calls me ammi (Mum), although his brothers call me ‘auntie’. I also have a close relationship with him because he has so many medical problems, and I have been the main person looking after him. When he was very small he had operations on his stomach, eyes and kidneys. He has problems with urinating, wets his clothes and needs to use a catheter. His sight and hearing are poor, and he goes to a special school.

Currently Saleema’s brother – who is sixty-three – is very ill and at home. He has been unable to work for some years. He receives regular visits from two other elderly friends from the

218

Alison Shaw

mosque, who come to enquire about his health and drive him to the mosque for Friday prayer when he is well enough to go out. The family income consists of Saleema’s brother’s income support and his eldest son’s wages from working as a security officer. These sources are barely able to support the eleven people who live in the house. The other boys are all studying, and the eldest son is married and has a small baby. Saleema had hoped that the arrival of a daughter-in-law would significantly reduce her burden of housework and child care, and the new daughter-in-law has indeed taken on the cooking for the household but is now busy with caring for her new baby and with attending English classes. Saleema receives a carer’s benefit towards her work caring for her nephew and learnt through an interview with an Urdu speaking researcher of other services, such as respite care, home help, holiday play schemes and entitlements to grants for driving lessons and English tuition. With a friend’s assistance she arranged an interview with a social worker, who confirmed her eligibility for these provisions, but eighteen months later none had materialised. Despite the different circumstances of their lives, Rubina and Saleema have obtained a degree of independence from their families by choosing not to be or to remain married. Yet their sense of duty to close relatives and their views of themselves as daughters or sisters have constrained their roles outside the family. Neither considers the fact that they have taken care of elderly parents or a brother’s children as necessarily providing them with security in old age, and both regard their futures as somewhat uncertain. Saleema thinks she might return to Pakistan to spend her last days in the family house, in which an older brother is living. Rubina deems it unlikely that her brother’s children will care for her in her old age and imagines herself living alone later. Both women counter their uncertainty with their faith that whatever will happen will be ‘the will of God’. The fact that they have exercised some degree of choice about being childless and about their roles makes their situation rather different from that of Shenaz, a married woman living with her husband who never had children. Case 8: Shenaz Shenaz, born in 1945, is fifty-seven years old. She was married at age twenty-four to a widower seventeen years her senior, who already had one son. She came to England in 1976 to join her husband. Following family disputes over his father’s remarriage, the son immediately moved to the north of England to live near

British Pakistani Elderly

219

his mother’s relatives. Now in his forties and married with children, he has no contact with his father or Shenaz. Shenaz’s husband is now in his seventies, has had a stroke and cannot walk unaided. He is sometimes given a lift to the mosque for Friday prayers, but otherwise he does not go out. Shenaz and her husband did not go to school as children, speak little English and are illiterate in Urdu and English. Not having children has distressed Shenaz for all of her married life: I have no children. This is a big problem for me. In 1973 in Pakistan I had a baby, he was born after nine months, but he was born dead. Then I came to this country and had miscarriages. I had so many tests, but nobody could tell me why, and no doctor had a cure. Some people say it was because my husband was so old. There is just one other woman like me that I know of. She lives in the same house as her husband’s brother and his wife; and they have three children, two girls and a beautiful boy, who is at university now, but she was like me and had no children. It is very hard not having your own. People feel pity, and they look at you as if you have nothing. I know it is the will of God. My sisters are very good, they tell their children to come to see me. But I heard them say that it was boring going to auntie’s house. That upset me very much.

Shenaz maintained close relationships with her sister’s children when they were young, teaching them the Qur’an. She still teaches the younger nieces and nephews: I teach the Qur’an every day to my sister’s girls and her boy. They come here at four-thirty and read for an hour or sometimes two. My other sister’s girls come too. They also come at the weekends. The older ones used to come, but they have finished [their first complete reading of the Qur’an] and are away studying or married.

Shenaz and her husband now have major financial problems. They live alone in the small, carefully decorated two-bedroom terrace house that they bought outright four years ago, when they sold a larger house from which they had derived a regular income by renting out rooms. They moved because of problems communicating with lodgers. The difference between the sale and the new purchase was used to go on haj and later also on umra. They also went to Pakistan to visit Shenaz’s very elderly mother, who lives with the only one of her children who has remained in Pakistan. While in Pakistan, they were made to pay high medical expenses when Shenaz’s husband fell ill. They also brought Shenaz’s mother to England for six months and then visited her

220

Alison Shaw

again in Pakistan. With no savings left, Shenaz’s husband’s small state pension is insufficient for food and bills. Their application for income support was turned down on the grounds that they had deliberately spent their savings on ‘holidays’; an eventual appeal did not go through because Shenaz and her husband were unable to provide sufficient documentary evidence of how they had spent their money. A brother-in-law has been paying their bills and council tax, but is unable to continue doing so. Shenaz now obtains food on credit from the local Pakistani shops. They are ashamed of their dependence and afraid of losing the goodwill of relatives but are, as yet, unwilling to heed their advice to sell their house and move into council accommodation. Many of their problems appear to have arisen because they have neither the skills nor the confidence to deal appropriately with state agencies nor adult children to offer financial advice or negotiate on their behalf.

Conclusion The assumption that South Asian migrants to Britain ‘look after their own’ is based on a stereotypical and idealised understanding of the nature of the South Asian joint- family system. The ideal fails to take account of the reality of family dynamics and socioeconomic circumstances, the constraints of work and housing, patterns of circulatory migration, the possibility of de facto childlessness and the fact that some people have never had children. At the same time, women especially recognise implicitly and sometimes explicitly, that family-based care can place an undue burden (bojh) on relatives. While the ideal of family support continues to shape attitudes towards care for the elderly, in practice there is a range of strategies of involvement and non-involvement by children with their elderly parents which represent variations on the ideal form of care. Thus it is not necessarily the eldest son (and his wife) who takes on the care of elderly parents, but can be a younger son; likewise elderly parents may be cared for by or live with a married daughter rather than a married son. Where elderly are being cared for by their children, the ideal of family-based care can sometimes conceal the fact that they may be rather isolated. The elderly in such circumstances may also be poorly informed about state services or unable to access them as a result of their limited knowledge of English or over-dependence upon relatives. Occasionally the deviations from the ideal form of family-based care are insufficient to provide a secure haven for

British Pakistani Elderly

221

the elderly, rendering them – at least in a minority of cases – de facto childless. Establishing the nature and extent of de facto childlessness is difficult, but the cases described here suggest that widows, unfamiliar with accessing the services of the state, may be particularly vulnerable. The interplay of obligations and affective ties with children and relatives living in Pakistan may also prompt radical reassessments of plans for old age as circumstances change. These insights suggest that it is important for those making decisions about health and social service provisions for the elderly to avoid making prior assumptions about the nature of family or community care and thus about support available to elderly Pakistanis. The existence of a small minority of elderly who have never had children underlines the precariousness of reliance on a system of care that is premised on the expectation that people will have children. Elderly people without children able to negotiate on their behalf, who cannot rely upon support from nephews, nieces, or more distant relatives, may face an uncertain old age, particularly when they are not used to dealing independently with the agencies of the state.

References Askhan, J., L. Henshaw and M. Tarpey, Social and Health Authority Services for Elderly People from Black and Minority Ethnic Communities, London, 1995. Ballard, R., ‘Migration and Kinship: The Differential Effect of Marriage Rules on the Processes of Punjabi Migration to Britain’. In South Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity, ed. C. Clarke, C. Peach, and S. Vertovec, Cambridge, 1990, 219–249. Bhalla, A. and K. Blakemore, Elders of the Minority Ethnic Groups, Birmingham, 1981. Berthoud, R., Family Formation in Multicultural Britain: Three Patterns of Diversity, Working Paper, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, 2000. Blakemore, K. and M. Boneham, Age, Race and Ethnicity: A Comparative Approach, Buckingham, 1994. Gardner, K., Global Migrants, Local Lives: Travel and Transformation in Rural Bangladesh, Oxford, 1995. Kapadia, K., Siva and Her Sisters: Gender, Caste, and Class in Rural South India, Boulder, 1995. Khan, S., ‘Today’s Concerns and Bleak Tomorrows’: A National Study of the Housing and Health Needs of Older People from West Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian Communities, London, 1997.

222

Alison Shaw

Kreager, P. and E. Schröder-Butterfill, Actual and De Facto Childlessness in East Java: A Preliminary Analysis. Oxford Institute of Ageing Working Paper 203, Oxford, 2003. Murray, U. and D. Brown, They Look After Their Own, Don’t They? Inspection of Community Care Services for Black and Ethnic Minority Older People, Department of Health, Social Care Group, 1998. Qureshi, T., Living in Britain, Growing Old in Britain. A Study of Bangladeshi Elders in London, Centre for Policy on Ageing, London, 1998. Shaw, A., Kinship and Continuity: Pakistani Families in Britain, Amsterdam, 2000. –––––, ‘Kinship, Cultural Preference and Immigration: Consanguineous Marriage among British Pakistanis’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7, no. 2 (2001): 315–334. –––––, ‘Immigrant Families in the U.K.’. In Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Families, ed. J. Scott, J. Treas, and M. Richards, Malden, 2004, 270–286. Vatuk, S., Kinship and Urbanisation: White Collar Migrants in North India, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972. Weiss, A.M., Walls Within Walls: Life Histories of Working Women in the Old City of Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan, 2002. Young, M. and P. Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London, London, 1957.

CHAPTER 8

HOME-PLACE, MOVEMENT AND AUTONOMY: RURAL AGED IN EAST ANGLIA AND NOMANDY Judith Okely

A

n overview of the literature in English before my research revealed few, if any, ethnographic studies of the aged in a European rural setting, whether by anthropologists or sociologists. Arensberg’s (1937) classic study of rural life in western Ireland did treat in detail seniority and intergenerational relationships. Townsend (1957) focused on the elderly in London’s Bethnal Green. Tunstall (1966) included Norfolk in his four-region study, but the emphasis was on individuals as isolates, interviewed out of the day-to-day contexts of their lives; rural specificity is either shown to be irrelevant or rendered invisible. Later ethnographies have concentrated on the aged in age-specific institutions, for example, Hazan’s (1980) study of a day centre in north London and Myerhoff’s (1980) work on a retirement community centre in a Californian beach town. Recent studies are Pickard’s (1995) ethnography of institutionalised elderly in South Wales and Percival’s (2000) study of sheltered housing. The aged have been seen as a rich source of oral history in order to reconstruct a community’s past (Zonabend 1984). Social historians have understandably viewed accounts by the aged more as sources of information about the past than as interpretations within the current context of the aged.

224

Judith Okely

In this chapter I shall examine aspects of the aged’s experience of place and their movements both over time and at a given time. In tune with this volume, I examine the familial context of the aged and their offspring or, more significantly, their absence. Only two families, one in East Anglia and one in Normandy, with whom I became acquainted in two field sites lived in a household with an offspring, now adult. In both cases the offspring was an unmarried male in his thirties. Every other aged person or couple in their own residences lived on their own. I draw on fieldwork between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s among the aged in both East Anglia – mainly north Essex – and in Normandy, France. In the French locality I lived for six months, followed by four return visits over several years. During this time I lived in a number of villages and was treated in some as an honorary citizen of the central market town. I used the standard approach in social anthropology of participant observation in private homes, residential institutions and clubs for the elderly (see Okely 1991, 1994). I learned to hand-milk cows on a small farm. As older generations are replaced by younger ones, the shifts may or may not be accompanied by dramatic historical and economic changes. The individual’s life chronology takes place against varying historical chronologies. For example, in the case of the rural aged in Normandy, to retire from farm work in the 1980s had quite different implications compared with those who retired in the 1950s. The changes in agriculture had greater implications for the rural aged in France than in England, where there were large farm holdings with wealthy landowners. In Normandy, by the 1980s the Common Agricultural Policy had all but destroyed the continuity of small farms which had been so carefully sustained in the immediate postwar period. The older small farmers’ relationship with the locality was therefore different. To retire had come to mean leaving the land to be swallowed up by agribusiness and accepting pay-offs that would prevent for ever the land being grazed by the famous Normandy dairy cows: a double redundancy affecting both farmers and livestock. In some instances the elderly had withdrawn themselves or the land prematurely from future labour. Where small farms are no longer deemed viable, this affects more than the former cultivators’ decision to stay or leave. Farms considered unviable by modern commercial standards do not attract the younger generation; the offspring of older farmers were unlikely to carry on their parents’ project. There is therefore less occasion, as in the past, for aged farmers to continue living in semi or real retirement in farmhouses with their working offspring. In

Rural Aged in East Anglia and Normandy

225

the English case, in contrast, farming was mainly geared to crop growing and had been massively industrialised at an earlier stage. The rural working class was able to hold on to fruit picking, and each large enterprise would also employ a few labourers, such as tractor drivers. There remained an identification with village and rural locality but not with the farm as a home.

Micro-movement In both the French and English cases, I was struck by the micromovements over time among the rural aged. In both, the aged benefited from moving nearer services in a more urban setting, if only at the centre of the village. In other instances they had no choice but to move to a residence for the aged, either private or council-owned. Internal migration was necessitated in part by the fact that they were living separate from any shared home support in joint residence with offspring or other adults. I had been a resident of the English parish in East Anglia for seven years and did sustained fieldwork for six months with repeated follow-ups, again over several years. Although in both Normandy and East Anglia there were some individuals who migrated into the community after retirement (e.g. from London or Paris), the vast majority of the aged had lived and worked in the locality before retirement. Thus, the elderly residents had not moved away from the locality where they had brought up their offspring. In many cases, especially those of the ‘working’ or labouring classes, the offspring lived within the region but not in a shared household. Geographical proximity did not ensure regular face-to-face contact. Indeed, in the French case, where the aged moved into official institutions contact was often entirely severed between the parent and offspring. Whereas geographers have tended to examine general migrations between and within regions, here I am concerned with micro-movements. These may have dramatic implications for the aged. A survey by a building society in the late 1980s revealed that the majority of house moves by the elderly with private property in southern England was less than eight miles.

Familiarity of Place While there has been some emphasis by gerontologists on the narrowing of spatial orientation with age, the emphasis that

226

Judith Okely

emerged from my research was more on wider social and geographical space: its significance to the aged’s past history, its potential for reminiscence and its continuing meaning and recreation. In the French case, movements were traced from the surrounding hamlets to the small market town (3,700 inhabitants). In the English case, movements were traced from the outlying parish to the centre of the village (over 2,000 inhabitants) where shops, medical facilities and services were more readily available. In both France and England, the extent of economic resources and sometimes political influence affected the individual’s access to the centre and to residential and general autonomy. The rural aged have sometimes been treated as a homogeneous group, despite major social and economic divisions. Whereas all the elderly are subject by definition to the increasing physical frailty of ageing, not only are there health differences linked to class but also social and economic differences which ensure that some are more protected and privileged than others with equal or even better health. Given that the elderly could not or did not depend on the daily service and practical support of any adult offspring, their immediate spatial access to services was crucial to their quality of life. In the micro-movements from the periphery, those who gain access to the centre are nearer to services. However, those with resources, for example, private pensions, investment income and property, were able to retain relative autonomy regardless of the gravity of physical frailty. They could employ domestic assistants who would do household chores, conduct regular errands and, if necessary, drive them in private cars. Those without financial resources found their loss of autonomy compounded. In so far as they had established some control over their lives in the past, this was increasingly abdicated to external control. Once they might have been exploited as wage labourers, domestic servants or small cultivators, as in Normandy, but now, although freed from the burden of labour, they risked losing control of their ‘free’ time. Pertinent here are the differing degrees to which the elderly lost or maintained control over domestic and general social space, including a meaningful place in their immediate surroundings. The research by geographers in France and England into elderly migration from urban centres to rural outposts reveals how those with property to sell in urban areas can often buy space and ostensibly the peace and chosen isolation of the rural idyll. These moves occur largely through voluntary decisions.

Rural Aged in East Anglia and Normandy

227

Such migration none the less produces its own problems, partly because the aged underestimate the initial cultural and social isolation of their new homes, partly because of their increasing frailty. The micro-movements in my study indicated the minimising or amelioration of such problems for the privileged. The same was not the case for those without financial resources. The ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu 1977) of their past and their sense of being in the world risked being dismantled and replaced by an alien regime which penetrated apparently every trivial aspect of their daily living. A crucial aspect in the French case is mass-produced food and its preparation, which is in stark contrast to what the rural elderly once produced on their own little farms (Okely 1994, 2001). Their immediate spatial disorientation was none the less ameliorated by the knowledge of being in the same region and by continuing contacts with people outside the institution. In contrast, those who were moved to a relatively luxurious private residential institution (for example, the home for retired electricity employees and spouses) could enjoy some personal space but lacked previous geographical or social connections. Although cushioned by some ‘home’ comforts, their disorientation remained. Similarly, in the East Anglia locality, both a private and a council retirement home were especially appreciated by the residents who were ‘local’. When these homes were closed in the late 1980s, the residents did not wish to move to an institution far from their familiar locality. In general, those with economic resources could minimise the social consequences of biological ageing by retaining some autonomous domestic space and residence in a familiar social and geographical locality. Those without the resources were more likely to have to hand themselves over to institutional care or control. Here the residence in a familiar locality or region had its reassurances but was more dependent on the presence of a peer age group and spatial memories of the location than on regular contact with offspring. Although class and economic differences explained the varying quality of life, invariably biological factors were presented as sufficient explanation for the less satisfactory experiences of the relatively poor and underprivileged.

Normandy: Own or Institutional Home In the French, case wealthy farmers or shopkeepers commonly sold their enterprise and acquired small or convenient housing within walking distance of services. They were able to live for as

228

Judith Okely

long as possible independently of residential institutions by employing domestic or nursing care at home and with assistance from neighbours and occasionally offspring. The owners of small farms and village cafés rented or purchased accommodation in the town. A select number obtained rented apartments in special blocks. Others chose to move to ‘the other side of the tracks’, to a village adjacent to the market town and an important railway junction. This was already the residence of retired railway and other workers. Rented or private accommodation was cheaper. However, once a certain frailty reduced their self-catering capacities the poor elderly were moved to the spartan public ‘hospice’, with it’s 300 residents in shared bedrooms or dormitories. This was the last home not only of the bedridden, dying, and demented, but also of the physically able, who, if they had had the resources, could have catered for themselves. Their institutionalisation was due mainly to their inevitable retirement from full-time tenant farming or wage labour. Their small farms – very small by British standards – were occasionally relinquished to kin or other tenants but more often merged into larger enterprises, dismantled and sold. In a significant number of instances, offspring, even if living only a few kilometres from the hospice, ceased to visit their aged parents, especially when any inheritance in the form of property had been transferred. Even in the cases where the adult offspring retained their childhood family home, it seemed that the aged parents could not expect to remain. The local doctor repeatedly bemoaned the fact that offspring abandoned their parents once they had acquired their inheritance. I was informed that in many cases they were obliged to pay for their parents’ residential accommodation in the hospice. The doctor believed that the offspring thus felt that they had done their duty. In contrast, I was frequently given accounts by the aged of how, in earlier decades, they themselves had retained and cared for their elderly mothers or grandmothers in the family farms long after these elderly had handed on the main work duties, tenancies or property rights to their offspring. The bleak and clinical surroundings of the hospice in the market town were hardly conducive to visits. The inmates of shared bedrooms had no space for private conversations, the public rooms were crowded and there were no facilities for hospitality to visitors. The inmates could no longer offer the familiar cup of coffee or other refreshments, something which was the immediate response whenever I visited people of all ages in their own private home.

Rural Aged in East Anglia and Normandy

229

I offer details from my French ethnography of elderly people’s differing experiences of place. Once the elderly person is rehoused at or nearer the centre, however restricted her or his movement has become, there are crucial symbolic meanings as well as practical implications that attach to her or his new spatial location. First I present some examples from the retirement home open to former employees and their spouses of the French Electricity Board (EDF). The small town had competed with other sites for this institution, which accepts individuals from all over France. On the face of it, and in the eyes of the local citizens, this home is seen as an enviable centre of luxury and privilege. It is a traditional beamed Normandy house, although architecturally modified by the addition of an incongruous extra storey. The former splendour is retained only in the entrance hall and the diningroom with its conservatory. Each resident has his or her own room. Some have installed a small fridge for drinks between friends. There are hairdressing facilities and often a visiting animateur or assistant to encourage art work like sewing, raffia design, and collage, and to lead card-games. At least once a month the inmates are treated to a cabaret of music-hall songs. Copious and refined meals are served by the assortment of unharrassed staff. I certainly appreciated the comfort of thickly carpeted and well-heated sitting-rooms as I escaped the bitter cold of my tile-floored cottage in the winters. None the less, my overall impression from the most outspoken residents was of unease, if not despair, among those who had no past connections with the locality. In particular, a Parisienne, who had, until her move a few years previously, lived in Montmartre, insisted on labelling herself as a Parisienne before anything else. She wanted to talk of that place. In one halting conversation with a woman contemptuously identified by everyone as ‘the Bretonne’ (a woman from an area that exported cheap labour and was seen as the ultimate rural backwater), the Parisienne relived a journey by metro and insisted on recalling each station, line and change point. It did not matter that ‘the Bretonne’ had figuratively got lost at Place de Clichy – the speaker had to travel the metro map in word and imagination. I was reminded of Checkov’s three sisters, one of whom wanted to get to Moscow and had forgotten the French word for window. In the Parisienne’s case, she was not dependent on a fantasy of the future but on a re-creation of the past. She reeled off the street names of Montmartre and spoke with affection of her prostitute neighbours – to the incredulity of the other residents. When she heard me asking some general regional

230

Judith Okely

questions of someone brought up in the Normandy locality, she contemptuously interrupted: ‘She doesn’t know the rest of France.’ Like a Racine classical heroine delivering a soliloquy she declared: ‘Hélas! hélas! Trois fois hélas, je me trouve ici!’ (Alas! Alas! Three times alas, I find myself here!) As I was leaving for England the next day, one woman said: ‘Whatever happens you know we’ll be here.’ The home was the last fixed point for its inmates. It seemed crucial that the home had ripples of familiar territory or landmarks beyond the heavy curtained windows. Local visitors, tradesmen, and nursing or domestic staff provided familiar connections for the few who originated from the area. The latter sprang to life when I revealed which surrounding villages I had visited or had lived in. They could place their current residence on their mental maps. One local couple who moved into the institution were able to retain their own bungalow in town which they visited daily and which was still occupied by their cat. The loss of their own home was hard on many women. Madame Maillotte, who originated from the northern Pas de Calais, showed me her box of photographs. The most intense emotions were displayed not when looking at pictures of family and of her now deceased husband but of her former home and her husband’s tombstone, which until her move she could regularly visit. She ignored the still familiar figures of relatives standing at the door to her house but instead looked behind them at the windows, shutters and half-hidden pots of geraniums. Her only equivalent now was a pot of plastic geraniums on her bedroom sill. Simone de Beauvoir has lamented the fact that many a woman’s experience is reduced to a pot of geraniums, but even this is denied to some in old age. At the more forbidding council ‘hospice’ in this town, I watched a new arrival go through a Goffmanesque stripping. She leant out of her newly assigned bedroom window and handed back several potted plants to her waiting granddaughter. There was insufficient space for these few living remnants of her past. My observations about the meaning of Madame Maillotte’s home have prompted the anthropologist Hazan, who has studied the aged in both Israel and England, to recall the same (personal communication, 1988). His informants likewise ignored the living or now deceased in photos if the picture also captured their home. They were fixated on what seemed to be an enduring place from which they were now spatially separated. Another inmate of the hospice, Blanche, recalled her previous life. She failed to mention her sister, her one-time companion,

Rural Aged in East Anglia and Normandy

231

with whom she had quarrelled, but spoke nostalgically of her house and garden. Humans may be fickle or transient, it seems, but place is permanently recalled and idealised. Domestic space – the home – is where the woman had some control and autonomy. Blanche is visited weekly by her niece and lives vicariously through snippets of village news. These details give her food for thought. Institutionalised against her wishes when she was obliged to give up the long-term tenancy of her rented house, she now gets little pleasure from trips to her niece’s home. Past visits caused her extreme distress, and she found it too hard to return to the hospice. She has chosen, in consequence, to limit her actual horizons to her stark shared room. Her imaginative escape is also pursued through rapacious reading of magazines brought by her niece. Blanche’s niece is, in effect, an ‘honorary’ offspring. But even she does not have her own mother living at home, as her mother was also in the hospice. In contrast to the local doctor’s complaints about negligent offspring, the daughter/niece did indeed visit her mother and aunt weekly. This woman, in her fifties, lived with her husband on his family farm in a hamlet some miles from the market town and cycled regularly some ten miles to the market town to carry out her filial duties. This household also contained one unmarried son in his thirties, the only French example in my fieldwork. He worked at a garage, helped with occasional heavy farm work and provided some transport in his car for the frail father. The other son and a daughter had both married and moved beyond the village but were still within the locality. The remaining son had built his own impressive modern house in the adjoining village but never moved in. Teasing relatives said his house was like a cage awaiting a bird. I was flattered that some of the villagers passed around the rumour that I was his fiancée. I have suggested that there is a vicarious continuity in the hospice and in the Electricity Board retirement home for those who have lived in the region for a significant part of their lives (Okely 1994). Information continues to be exchanged about relatives and former neighbours still in place, and a knowing pleasure is derived just from the mention of village names in the area round about. These elderly people, especially in the hospice, retain a personal place on the local map, whereas the majority in the Electricity Board’s home had no sense of current place beyond their past or present walking experience of this supremely provincial market town. They could just as well have been whirling in space. This contrast perhaps explains why the inmates of the Electricity Board’s home were the most respon-

232

Judith Okely

sive to the national hot-air balloons competition which took place in the market town one summer. From the farming people I heard vociferous complaints: the cattle and birds had been terrified. The middle-aged residents of the town detested the noise and intrusion. But the EDF inmates ventured outside, clustering on the pavement, and were moved to tears and excited cries at the sight of the huge coloured shapes floating free in the afternoon sky. The movement in some ethereal space above and beyond the little town was the very opposite to the inmates’ fixed and constricted point. They vicariously identified with the possibility of moving up and away from their restricted institutionalised space. Here and elsewhere I have drawn attention to the increasing narrowing of the elderly’s practical space (Okely 1996). It is varied and dependent not necessarily on physical frailty but on the extent of privilege and power. The elderly show symbolic or fantasy resistance to spatial constraints in various forms. In the hospice, when memory loss increases or, as I was told, ‘they lose their heads’, the inmates take to wandering. The staff informed me that they could always be found somewhere on the route to their original village. That is, memory loss in the present reactivates past sense of place. Some would want to travel further afield in their day-dreams and fantasies. The reception area at the hospice was modernised by the construction of a sliding glass window. When completed, the inmates for days treated it as a railway booking-office and asked for tickets to assorted destinations. I later recounted this to one of the middle-class elderly in my East Anglia study. She did not see this as tragic but described it as the heart’s continuing hope.

East Anglia: Centre and Periphery The English locality consisted mainly of a widely scattered parish containing many facilities: a bank, two groceries, a chemist’s, butcher’s, post office, clothes shop and bookshop. There were two pubs, with restaurants, teashops and a hairdresser. The councilhouse estates and almshouses with elderly working-class residents were away from the centre. On the perimeter, a number of elderly working-class residents occupied their own small bungalows or tiny chalets built cheaply in the 1920s. Through their working lives they had grown their own produce on long strips of land. They are the English equivalent of the French petit cultivateur (small farmer).

Rural Aged in East Anglia and Normandy

233

The parish contained some extensive country houses. During the 1980s further large ‘executive’ houses were erected on the perimeter. These were ideal for commuters using the nearby main-line train station. As elsewhere in southern England, there was a shortage of small cheap accommodation for young or old. This parish had long been designated a conservation area, made famous by the painter Constable, so new red-brick estates were permitted only in villages some miles away. The spread of toytown estates just over the hill was the direct consequence of the preservation of my adjoining research area, which I shall call Whitestock. Over the last few decades, the centre of Whitestock has gradually been appropriated by the more privileged. Residences once privately rented by the working class have been sold and transformed. Formerly the parents of the now aged working class had occupied this central accommodation. By the 1980s the working classes – young or old – no longer resided in the centre. The poorer elderly, left on the perimeter, were therefore more dependent on public or private transport for access to services. This gradual change of residents did not mean the absence of all classes of elderly persons at the centre. There was a practice explicitly recognised among the wealthy middle-class residents of selling their large houses and expansive grounds, usually on the perimeter, and moving to compact housing at the centre. At the centre all essential facilities were within a short walking distance. Luxury new flats and maisonettes were erected to fulfil the demand. In both the French and English localities, the wealthy might prolong their residence in a chateau or mansion and continue to employ their aged and frail ‘retainers’ (themselves in their late seventies) for gardening, housework and their increasingly burdensome nursing. In both French and English localities and especially among the middle classes, support from offspring could not be regarded as reliable. In the English case, especially, it was other elderly who provided important support, whether individual transport for shopping, other errands or basic domestic care. Here there were class differences, in that the wealthy could afford to pay for their often equally aged servants. But communication between the privileged and their servants was possibly more fraught than with any kin. Frequently the wealthy aged failed to understand that their servants had also aged and were less able to fulfil their former tasks. One woman in her seventies, now with arthritis, who had acted as a cleaner for a wealthy couple for twenty-five years complained to me that she was expected to lift the man with Parkinson’s disease from his invalid bed.

234

Judith Okely

Decades of deference made it hard to refuse. She, like others, was picked up for work several times a week by the wife or son in their car. In this one case in the English locality the wealthy elderly couple shared the family residence with their bachelor son in his thirties. He commuted daily to his job in the City. This extensive support system for the wealthy elderly in large houses could not eradicate the increasing feeling of vulnerability to burglary. Privilege also brought its vulnerabilities but of a different kind from those facing the poor. One couple in a huge mansion stuffed with antiques confessed that they could no longer go away for holidays or visits since they were so frightened of losing their possessions. Friends were not always sympathetic, saying that they should sell up and move to the centre. The same response was conveyed to me after a dramatic burglary. A single elderly woman who had lived with her parents, now deceased, was determined not to leave her huge, conspicuously beautiful, eighteenth-century house on the periphery of the large village. It was also packed with antiques. During the miners’ strike in 1984, police took her calls for help whenever she suspected prowlers even less seriously than usual. Eventually she took to sleeping in her Daimler with her cats and portable phone. Paradoxically her clinging to an extensive space with its years of associations resulted in an extremely constricted personal space although still within her own extended grounds. Her phone call to the police describing loud noises from inside the house finally persuaded them to come round. Armed men, who had travelled up from London, were hacking away at the Adam fireplace in the main drawing-room. Subsequently one of her friends said to me: ‘It’s her own fault. She should do like the rest of us and move into a bungalow at the centre.’ For the poor, autonomous residence at the centre is blocked. As in the French case, the alternative is one of two old people’s homes, which, in the English case, were both on the perimeter. As a sign of the Thatcherite times, both were acquired and renovated by individual entrepreneurs – one an executive of the newly privatised British Telecom. The builders removed the individual wash basins of the multiple bedrooms to turn it into a house for just two people. The other home, The Grey House, was purchased by a racing-car celebrity. When it was facing closure, another aged villager recounted how one resident woman in her late eighties, having learned of her imminent departure from the place she had resided in for many years, would wander down the corridors in the night with a candle ‘looking for the Grey House’. This was the measure of her distress at the imminent upheaval.

Rural Aged in East Anglia and Normandy

235

Some of the long-standing almshouses, a considerable distance from the centre, were tenanted by former house owners rather than poorer tenants. Tenancies of the three new almshouses off the High Street, recently built by the Anglican Church authority, depended more on political and social influence, for example, church attendance or powerful networks, than on financial hardship. On the perimeter, the physically active aged offered mutual assistance. Public discourse underestimates the dependence the aged have among themselves rather than on younger generations, who usually have their own alternative obligations, such as child care and external employment. Working-class men rather than women tended to be the car owners. Some offered assistance for trips to those without cars or who could no longer bicycle to the centre. A local bus which moved around the perimeter taking villagers to the centre had been withdrawn in the late 1970s and was still sorely missed in the reminiscences of the carless elderly.

Movement as Travel beyond the Home-place Given the differences and changes in the aged’s access to space, it is important to examine how they move around in that space. What transport options are available to the elderly in the absence of children? In the British case, more than 60 per cent of the 10 million retired people in the late 1980s did not have a car. What is relevant to this volume is the fact that they could not depend on car-owning offspring for regular transport, especially of a leisure kind. The growing proportion of over-sixties, frail or physically active, in the twenty-first century represents a growing interest group with increased but specific demands. The majority make transport movements for non-work purposes. If they do not own or have access to a family car, the alternatives are public transport (chiefly buses) and private transportation (taxis or charity drivers). While the label ‘transport poor’ can be given to many of the rural elderly there are notable exceptions which illuminate relative privilege, issues of equity and extremes of accessibility, just as in the example of residential space outlined above. Whitestock and the nearby and contrasting village of Greystock were part of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project which examined the rural aged as a case-study of the implications of transport planning and practice in the 1980s (Okely 1991). The elderly people’s daily lives were found to be affected by the lack of opportunities to travel small distances at a time when they had come to have greater leisure and were at risk

236

Judith Okely

of social isolation. The poorer aged, in particular, were increasingly dependent on transport, given the lack of housing near the services at the centre of the two communities. Yet the course of the 1980s witnessed a significant deterioration of the transport services available to them. Three main sources of this change were found. One consequence of the 1985 Transport Act was the privatisation of bus services, with the role of local government changing to one of ensuring the provision of appropriate services not offered by the growing private sector. One reason for the failure of provision for the elderly rested on the planners’ assumption that the elderly would benefit from long-distance, county-wide travel rather than smaller trips within a narrower locality. The gradual restrictions in space recognised by gerontologists were unrecognised by transport planners, who perceived the elderly either as physically invulnerable and youthfully active or as persons who were virtually immobilised because disabled. There was no inbetween category. A second source of difficulty arose from the failure to recognise basic differences between local populations. According to the 1981 census, the two villages were approximately of the same population size. As each came under different borough or district councils, their contrasting transport arrangements bring to the fore the interaction of local differences, policies and concessionary fares. Put very briefly, provision in Greystock was less generous than that for Whitestock, which was a third cheaper. Passes in both cases offered county-wide transport at half fare. There were significant differences in accessibility. Greystock, clustered around a major road, had half-hourly buses while Whitestock, a few miles from a major road, had only three to four buses a day. According to the 1981 census. Greystock had fewer pensioner owner-occupiers and Whitestock fewer pensioner council tenants. These differences, however, were not as dramatic as the differences in former occupations of the pensioner heads of household in each village as recorded in the 1981 census. Whitestock had a greater proportion in higher economic categories, including a significant number of former managers; Greystock had a greater proportion of semi-skilled, unskilled and agricultural workers and no managers (Okely 1991). Whitestock was seen by others as privileged. Its wealthier élite fostered their own ideals for the village. Yet, as the census figures and fieldwork confirmed, there was a significant number of underprivileged pensioners, whether tenants or owner-occupiers of once-cheap bungalows. The high profile of the privileged in Whitestock had

Rural Aged in East Anglia and Normandy

237

direct implications for transport provision. For example, an organiser of volunteers for transport financed by a local borough charity, to which Whitestock had rights of use, refused to assist that village. His explanation was that Whitestock had ‘plenty of money’. In contrast, he arranged volunteer transport for Greystock, which did not rightly come within the charity’s locality. Consequently, the ‘transport-poor’ of Whitestock were in this instance and others even poorer than those of Greystock. A third source of problems was planners’ preoccupation with logistics: bus frequency, timetable reliability, design of long-distance routes, mathematics of fare charges, cost-effectiveness of one-person buses, the extra time and operator inconvenience of rising steps, passenger capacity, and total stowage space. Numbers of passengers generally prevailed over issues concerning types of passengers. The elderly might be indifferent to frequency, countywide coverage and subsidised passes if they risked driver impatience, personal injury or permanent disablement in taking a bus. A bus might stop outside their homes, might be free and of the latest design, but it was useless if the step was too high or if it moved off too quickly and brought worry and danger. The elderly potential passengers’ priority was whether a bus was ‘passengerfriendly’ rather than ‘driver-friendly’. Thus, any slight vulnerability which comes with ageing is turned into a comprehensive disability for the potential elderly passenger, although passengerfriendly adjustments could compensate for relative frailty.

Transport and Movement in Practice Collection of life histories revealed the changing use of transport by individuals as they grew older. These changes reflected not only the effects of ageing – physical frailty, relative retirement poverty and increased leisure – but the decline in public transport and greater dependence on the private motor car. Buses had in fact become the least important mode of transport. At the outset of fieldwork, the researchers found themselves boarding the near empty rural buses in search of informants. This did not mean that the elderly preferred to remain immobile. Although there were clusters of elderly residents on the edges of villages some distance from bus-stops, there were many others more conveniently placed who expressed a strong desire to use public transport. Instead, these people established patterns of lifts for shopping and medical or social visits with neighbours, friends and available relatives – usually siblings or affines – rather than with offspring. In

238

Judith Okely

another locality, briefly examined for contrast, a successful ‘dial-aride’ system was in operation, but this was not available in the main research localities. On occasion, elderly resorted to taxis. Some used trains for their annual holiday. A major feature of transport poverty among the rural elderly remains the difficulty of travelling short distances, especially within the village. Those elderly with cars clung to this privileged form of mobility for as long as possible, resorting to every means at their disposal to retain their driving-licence. They calculated the best times when they could nip into a parking space near shops. They chose deserted lanes where they were least likely to be challenged by the police for incompetent driving. In one case, a relatively wealthy octagenarian involved in a collision with another car wrote out a cheque on the spot to avoid scrutiny. She was able to replace her damaged car instantly with a new one. Sadly, during fieldwork, an elderly man was killed outright and his wife seriously injured by a speeding police car which failed to give way, as required, at an isolated crossing. The innocent couple had been proceeding cautiously down a road they perceived as free of official surveillance. Given the priority of the private motor car, one alternative strategy is a system of volunteer drivers. Some transport research has suggested that the success of the voluntary system in rural areas depends on the availability of key elderly volunteers, especially those from socio-economic groups I and II. They are most likely to be found in larger parishes with an active middle class and high car ownership. Such conditions existed in Whitestock and, to some extent, in Greystock. However, the transport needs of many working-class elderly were not being met. The availability of volunteers in the village localities was not the problem. Instead, their underuse was explained by the social relations between volunteers and potential passengers. The working-class elderly felt beholden to the middle-class drivers. They were reluctant to ask for help because they could not repay the favour, especially to someone they did not know well and certainly not as an equal. The aged who could not depend on the support of available offspring or kin for transport were at an obvious disadvantage. There was a contrast between those residents who lived by a tradition of sharing resources and those who saw themselves as offering a service to the underprivileged. These differences permeated daily life and were highlighted in older people’s transport concerns. Williams (1958) makes the distinction between ideas of service and solidarity. For the working class the main way of solving transport poverty was through a system of sharing among relatives and friends rather than receiving a service for which the

Rural Aged in East Anglia and Normandy

239

carless elderly are beholden or cannot pay. This was not an imaginary debt. Middle-class volunteers complained that their passengers did not express gratitude. As Williams put it, ‘those who are ruled by the idea of service are genuinely dismayed when the workers do not fully respond’ (Williams 1958: 316).

Examples In the minutiae of field notes there are stark statements, key phrases and declarations by individuals. I do not want to homogenise them into too many generalities. The individuals speak to me. Each individual represents a predicament beyond herself, but the meaning is conveyed through her or his very specificity. I present two examples from England and two from France. All are widows. There are contrasts in wealth. Jean is an example of a wealthy middle-class person in the English locality who was able to stay in her own home space right through to her death in her nineties. She sold her large house when widowed and was able to employ a regular cleaner and housekeeper and occasional gardener and handyman. She continued to drive a car well into her nineties. On her ninetieth birthday at a huge celebratory party, one of the retired local residents and a friend composed a special song – a pastiche of W.S. Gilbert – part of which I reproduce: She delights in foreign travel and is expert in topography. She even has a view on Frederick Ashton’s choreography. When organizing readings spanning Bernard Shaw and Rattigan She wouldn’t blanche if asked to give a lecture on the Vatican. Her reading is exemplary from Rupert Bear to Thackeray With just a passing glance at homeopathy and quackery. She has covered all the topics from the aardvark to zoology And sorted out the pharaohs and their troublesome chronology. With her agricultural knowledge she has all the knacks of harrowing And even knows the moment when the sows are due for farrowing. The midden and the muck heap she can always view with levity For to keep your head above it can contribute to longevity. She drives a brand new vehicle which she praises quite ecstatically Not least the splendid gear-box which engages automatically. She has always thoughts for others as a true humanitarian She is the very model of a young nonagenarian.

Jean also reveals insights as an aged widow whose children moved to other parts of the country upon marriage. They visited

240

Judith Okely

on special occasions and emergencies when she was hospitalised a few times. We became very close friends. She would often remark how her offspring knew nothing about her social life and personality. They seemed to fix her in a time warp. She was very upset in recounting to me how it had been suggested that the offspring take charge of the family trust she had inherited from her husband. In her late eighties she read the Financial Times daily and watched for the suitable stocks and shares. When she developed shingles after the shock of her son’s death in his seventies, she was hospitalised. I rang the hospital about visiting hours and was warmly encouraged by the nurse to visit. But I double-checked by ringing the daughter to avoid overlap. Instead, I was informed that her mother should have no visitors. I later learned that Jean’s daily cleaner, who had worked for her for over forty years, was similarly forbidden any visit. Jean never left the hospital alive and her funeral took place without announcement. Only her offspring and descendants attended the secret event. The house was cleared within weeks and soon sold and demolished. Here I suggest is an example of an elderly person who, while maintaining crucial emotional ties, became domestically independent of her offspring – and without any regret. The death of her eldest offspring exposed the dominant emotional bond by precipitating her death. But at the same time the manner of her dying revealed the denial of decades of her autonomous social life at the last. The surviving offspring denied her all non-familial contact, which surely would have alleviated her isolation in the hospital. The children returned to reclaim her as a maternal body. Those many loving friends who attended her ninetieth party were excluded from celebrating her life. Shared memories among non-kin were erased. Another widow, Rose, a resident of the same locality, survived on the perimeter of the village despite increasing frailty. She had been a maid and domestic cleaner. Her brother, some ten mile away, visited weekly. A neighbour would offer car trips. Being without children, she had fostered a niece from childhood. The married niece visited regularly. When Rose was diagnosed with a terminal illness, she was hospitalised and then enjoyed two weeks in a special charity hospice. But this could not be extended. Rose survived at home with regular kin and neighbourly assistance. She was again hospitalised. It became clear she had only a few weeks to live. Here the new restrictions on so called ‘bed blocking’ by the elderly was brought into play. The authorities put Rose through various trivial competency tests such as her ability to walk to the toilet unassisted. It was thus deemed that she could look after herself at home.

Rural Aged in East Anglia and Normandy

241

My arguments about the aged person’s preference for staying at home are not contradicted by a final crisis and imminent death. Rose felt better in a hospital bed or in the hospice rather than being left to risk dying alone. Neither her brother nor her niece could drop their other commitments and move in. Rose was forcibly returned to her cottage by ambulance. But this normally deferential woman, who before her terminal illness had never made use of – let alone ‘blocked’ – a hospital bed, showed a healthy defiance by refusing to enter her house. The ambulance men, moved by her extreme distress, returned her to the hospital, where she was to die in comfort a week later. Her relatives were with her at the final moments. This example points to the ‘inconvenience’ for the health and social services of the aged who cannot rely on live-in carers, such as unmarried daughters of the past. The same local authorities have closed residential homes and have not prioritised home visits (see also Okely 2000). Finally, I present two examples of women in their eighties in the French market town. Madame C. was the widow of one of the richest men in the locality. She wore expensive and elegant clothes. Although frail on tottering legs and suffering from arthritis, she grew her own vegetables, ably helped by a gardener. She had sold her large mansion and lived in a modern, conveniently designed home with a basement garage, just ten minutes’ walk from the centre of town. I sensed the deference in the behaviour of her maid, who shopped, cleaned and cooked for her. She made summer visits to spa towns in the Pyrenees. Some winters she passed on the Mediterranean coast. When I asked why she did not move permanently down south, since she hated the mists and fogs of Normandy, she said: ‘C’est mon pays’ (this is my country). Like all the other aged in this study, she recognised the advantages of a continuous past and identity in one place. She only rarely spoke of a son, whom I never encountered. Her contemptuous description of retirement homes in one sentence captures the ultimate sense of immobility, sedentarisation and restricted space: ‘I don’t just want to sit in an armchair.’ Long after my main fieldwork, I learned that she had eventually become bedridden, but she had the financial means to ensure full-time care in her own home. Next a poignant contrasting example, Madame M. Despite having five offspring, Madame M. realised that none of them would have her in their own home if she became too frail to continue living alone. She did not have the same financial resources as Madame C. My field notes record the following:

242

Judith Okely

Madame M. has lived in the locality all her life and has occupied the same house since the Second World War. She moved there after the ‘liberation’ bombing of Normandy. Her husband eventually died in the house. All her children left to get married from there. She was a couturiere (dress maker) and shows me the adjoining room where she worked. It is full of mementos. She has gradually retreated to a limited space in the house. She recalls how the attic once housed a young English woman lodger who would practice her trumpet there. The cat sits on the table. The dog is friendly and gentle. The interior has a harmonic perfection. But the clock ticking is an ominous reminder. Tears come to her eyes at the realization that none of her five children will offer to have her if frailty overcomes her. Her nearby daughter is powerless because her husband will not have his mother-in-law. The daughter visits her daily and nervously instructs her to take each step with care. Both know that an accident will mean the dreaded hospice. Both have privately confided in me their hope that she will die at home.

To Conclude I have explored the aged’s experience of home and place. There is movement over time from one home to another, more central as frailty threatened. With only a few exceptions the aged lived without offspring and could not depend on them for basic assistance. So movement was in part determined by the need for greater external support, ideally through services nearby and paid assistance, if affordable. In the least favoured options, the aged had to submit to institutionalisation in other kinds of homes, of varying quality. I examined the options for daily movement within the broad locality of the English field site. For those able to own and use cars, there was greater autonomy. But they were only the minority. It cannot be presumed that residence with carowning offspring would have guaranteed autonomy of movement. But the poor provision of public transport revealed the ignorance of public planners when movement could have been so easily facilitated. Anthropologists have in the past been criticised for concentrating on or constructing bounded communities. But, regardless of whether this is so, the aged point to the shifts in any community through ageing and time. Among the category of aged there are great differences. Some can retain greater control of their lives for a longer period than others. In the cases of both rural France and England, the differences in autonomy cannot be explained solely by physiological changes.

Rural Aged in East Anglia and Normandy

243

Note The research among the elderly in East Anglia and Normandy between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s was funded by the ESRC (see Okely 1986). The research in ‘Whitestock’ and ‘Greystock’ was part of a project funded by the ESRC on transport planning and practice in the 1980s (see Okely 1991). I would like to thank Maggie French who carried out the ethnographic study of Greystock, and Amy Porter, for comments on the later draft of this chapter.

References Arensberg, C.M., The Irish Countryman: An Anthropological Study, New York, 1937. Bourdieu, P., Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge, 1977. Hazan, H., The Limbo People: A Study of the Constitution of the Time Universe Among the Aged, London and Boston, 1980. Myerhoff, B., Number Our Days, New York, 1980. Okely, J., The Conditions and Experience of Ageing Compared in Rural England and France, Report to the Economic and Social Research Council, 1986. –––––, The Ethnographic Method Applied to Rural Transport, Planning and the Elderly, Report to the Economic and Social Research Council, 1991, pp. 45–64. –––––, ‘Vicarious and Sensory Knowledge of Chronology and Change: Ageing in Rural France’. In Social Experience and Anthropological Knowledge, ed. K. Hastrup and P. Hervik, London, 1994. –––––, ‘Picturing and placing Constable Country’. In Siting Culture: the Shifting Anthropological Object, ed. K. Fog Olwig and K. Hastrup, London, 1996, pp. 193–200. –––––, ‘Love, Care and Diagnosis’. In Extending the Boundaries of Care: Medical Ethics and Caring Practices, ed. T. Kohn and R. McKechnie, Oxford, 2000, pp. 19–48. –––––, ‘Visualism and Landscape: Looking and Seeing in Normandy’, Ethnos 66, no. 1 (2001): 99–120. Percival, J., ‘Gossip in Sheltered Housing: Its Cultural Importance and Social Implications’. Ageing and Society 20, no. 3 (2000): 303–25. Pickard, S., Living on the Front Line: A Social Anthropological Study of Old Age and Ageing. Aldershot, 1995. Townsend, P., The Family Life of Old People. London, 1957. Tunstall, J., Old and Alone: A Sociological Study of Old People. London, 1966. Willliams, R., Culture and Society, 1780–1950. London, 1958. Zonabend, F., The Enduring Memory: Time and History in a French Village. Manchester, 1984.

CHAPTER 9

THE POSITION OF THE ELDERLY IN GREECE PRIOR TO THE SECOND WORLD WAR: EVIDENCE FROM THREE ISLAND POPULATIONS Violetta Hionidou

Introduction

H

istorical studies on older people that have flourished in the past two decades focus mainly on the Western world (Hareven and Adams 1982; Pelling and Smith 1991). These reveal that there remains little convergence on the mechanisms adopted by the elderly in preparation for and in coping with old age (see, for example, Stavenuiter 1996: 217–241; Ottaway 1998: 391–418; Klassen 1999: 35–52). For north-western Europe a multitude of strategies were utilised across space and cultures, ranging from carefully formulated retirement contracts to welfare systems that ensured the availability of basic subsistence for the helpless elderly. In early modern north-eastern Spain and in nineteenth-century north-western Portugal, provision for the elderly was interwoven with property transmission, which was, in turn, closely secured by elaborate contracts (Brettell 1991; Poska 2000). For central and southern Spain Reher has described a situation where nuclear families dominated, along with partible inheritance, and, while children did largely assume responsibility for

The Elderly in Three Greek Island Populations

245

the care of the elderly, this was done in the absence of any specific contracts (Reher 1997: 48–56, 113–116). Thus, household formation and inheritance were closely linked to the position of the elderly. The status of the elderly in Greece has been rarely studied, either by historians of the family or by anthropologists. If anything the situation has been assumed to have been one of oldage authority over younger generations. Issues of how the elderly coped in the complete absence of social welfare, including pensions, have not even begun to be addressed. In this chapter I shall discuss the issue of old-age security and insecurity using evidence from three Greek islands: the two Cycladic islands of Mykonos and Syros and the Aegean island of Hios. I shall argue that old-age security needs to be examined in the light of patterns of household formation, property transmission and kinship relations. Households in all three islands were overwhelmingly nuclear and dowry was a prerequisite of marriage and usually included a house. Property transmission was a very complicated matter, with a multitude of approaches all of which aimed to ensure provision for the elderly and to help the younger generation to establish their own household. At the same time, the balancing of relationships with immediate kin and the keeping up of social appearances had to be achieved. A further question that will be addressed is the coping mechanisms of the elderly without children. These were mostly childless couples through either infertility or premature death of children. We shall see that alternative mechanisms were employed by this group but also that this group was much more cautious in comparison with parents in its approach to ensuring old-age security.

Background of the Island Populations and Data Sources Taking the Cycladic islands first, Mykonos’s population in 1861 amounted to 4,782 persons, almost equally divided between a small-scale urban settlement – the town of Mykonos – and scattered rural farmsteads (see Figure 9.1). Syros was dominated by Hermoupolis, a major Greek town with a population of 18,511 in 1861 which had been created in the 1820s by Greek refugee populations, many of whom came from Hios. Ano Syros, a small urban settlement on the island of Syros, had a population of 4,567 in 1861. All the inhabitants of Ano Syros were Catholics. The rest of the Catholic islanders were

246

Violetta Hionidou

Figure 9.1. Map of Greece

predominantly rural dwellers. In contrast, the Hermoupolis inhabitants were virtually all Greek Orthodox. Hios is one of the largest Greek islands, situated very close to the Turkish coast (see Figure 9.1). It became part of the Greek state in 1913. The single most important event that affected population change before the Second World War was the arrival of Greek refugees in 1922. By 1928 the refugees comprised a third of the Hios Town population. The main urban settlements of the island were the towns of Hios and Vrontados, with populations in 1940 of 26,617 and 5,711, respectively, although three other urban settlements existed. The remainder of the population resided in fifty-five villages in 1940. From the mid-1920s on, various industries flourished. The main sources of employment and cash revenue in the twentieth century were the factories in Hios Town, sailing and migration. A variety of qualitative and quantitative data sources are employed in this study. The first is computerised nominal manu-

The Elderly in Three Greek Island Populations

247

script census books, specifically, the 1861 census of Mykonos and Hermoupolis and the 1870 and 1879 censuses of Hermoupolis. While the Mykonos returns cover the whole population, those of Hermoupolis cover a variable percentage of the population (60, 8 and 29 per cent of the population, respectively).1 The second source is civil registration data, i.e. birth, death and marriage certificates for all three islands. These have been continuously available since 1859 for Mykonos and Hermoupolis and since 1915 for Hios. For Mykonos a family reconstitution was undertaken, including those couples who were married on the island between 1879 and 1959 (Hionidou 1993: 97–120). The third source of information comprises interviews conducted on all three islands at various points in time between 1994 and 2000. The number of interviews conducted on Mykonos was twenty-eight, and twenty-two interviews each were done on Hios and Syros. I should indicate that the original purpose of conducting the interviews in the various islands differed and consequently so does the information gathered from them. For Mykonos I wanted to supplement my family-reconstitution findings, and thus I focused on the life histories of individuals to examine issues of migration, family formation, inheritance, and, very importantly, family limitation (Hionidou 1998: 52, 75). Because of this last aspect interviews were mainly focused on married or ever-married women. The Syros and Hios interviews were conducted as part of a project examining the 1941–1942 famine, in which questions on household formation and inheritance were also asked. The data I have for Mykonos are much richer than those for Syros and Hermoupolis, but interestingly they all point in the same direction.

Household Structure in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries In order to examine the various options that existed for providing for the elderly in a society, we need to know the dominant forms of household structure, as well as the rules of household formation and dissolution, in the population. Multiple family households were a rarity in nineteenth-century Mykonos and Hermoupolis. Although nuclear households dominated, there were some extended households and a more significant presence of solitaries (Hionidou, 1995: 71–73; 1999: 405–409). The undesirability and rarity of incorporating relatives – that is, immediate kin – persisted well into the twentieth century:

248

Violetta Hionidou

Q. In your parental home, did anyone else live with you? A grandmother, a grandfather? A. No, no. Q. Never? A. No, we did not have problems. (No. 10, Mykonos)

Although co-residence of a relative with a nuclear family unit did sometimes occur this was either short-term or concerned incorporation into the household of a widowed parent (nos. 7, 18, 21, 22, Mykonos). The situation on Syros and Hios, with their significant working-class urban populations, was similar. Four out of fourteen informants and five out of sixteen, respectively, stated that a relative, that is, someone outside the immediate nuclear family, had been part of their own or their parental household.2 Co-residence with an elderly parent, usually a widowed grandmother, was more common. Rarely was this an early or longterm arrangement, as is the case when newly-weds move into the parental household to live with the surviving parent until his or her death. Instead, an independent household would usually be set up by the couple upon marriage, while the parent resided either with single children, with a surviving spouse or alone. A rearrangement of the situation would occur when all single children were married or when the spouse died (see, for example, interview no. 7 from Mykonos, below). Even then, if the widow or – less often – the widower was capable of taking care of herself or himself independently, then that would be the case: Q. When your mother died… A. When she died. Then my father came with me. Q. So that he would not be on his own? A. He could not stay [on his own] … However much I tried to leave him [on his own], not to come with me … since I was engaged with work … since I had, pardon me, cows, about ten animals … I was working very hard. (no. 13, Hios)

An interesting mechanism of caring for an elderly parent was found on Syros and Hios (see also Reher 1998: 209). It involved the ‘circulation’ of the incapacitated widowed parent between the households of his or her children for an equal number of months every year. Even then, whenever possible, the parent would be allocated an autonomous room where food would be brought on a daily basis. This room could be adjacent to the main household but would have an independent entrance, thereby securing some sort of independence for both ‘households’.

The Elderly in Three Greek Island Populations

249

Special mention needs to be made of distressed households, for example, households with young children where the mother had perished. Special arrangements would then take place depending on the availability of kin and the financial background of the household. Thus, in Hermoupolis when the daughter of an upperclass informant died in childbirth, the mother incorporated the grandchild as well as her son-in-law into her own household until the latter’s remarriage three years later (no. 1). In other cases a grandmother would move into the distressed household until another solution could be found (no. 13, Mykonos; no. 15, Syros). Alternatively, a domestic servant would be employed (no. 19, Syros). Thus, special arrangements would be made in order to cope with unusual circumstances and with the severe lack of a welfare system. These arrangements could lead to the creation of extended and multiple family households. A very clear distinction emerges between the social classes. Without entering into a detailed description of differentiations between the social classes in Greece – as yet there has been no comprehensive study of the matter – I shall distinguish three classes: the working class comprising landless agricultural workers, those who possessed very small pieces of land and those engaged in fishing and paid factory employment; the elite or upper class including factory owners and large-scale merchants; and the middle class comprising professionals, civil servants and small-scale merchants, but also long-term sailors, long-term migrants and medium to large landowners. The overwhelming majority of co-residence – including all long-term cases – involved upper- and middle-class households. Co-residence was very rare among working-class households, and when it did occur it clearly involved short-term arrangements, that is, either the brief incorporation of an elderly person before his or her death, or the temporary ‘sharing’ of responsibilities for a person among households. This differentiation by social class can also be detected for the nineteenth century. In the wealthy districts of Hermoupolis, Agios Nikolaos, and Vaporia the prevalence of complex family households was 16 per cent for extended and 3.2 per cent for multiple family households. This was considerably higher than the overall figures of 10.3 per cent and 1 per cent, respectively. For all three census years, the upper class demonstrated a lower presence of single family households compared with the other classes, a higher or similar presence of extended households and a higher presence of no-family households. Thus, complex households were mostly and consistently an upper-class attribute of nine-

250

Violetta Hionidou

teenth-century Hermoupolis. For Mykonos higher prevalence of multiple households was observed among the merchants as opposed to the farmers, with 4.3 and 0.7 per cent, respectively, although the percentages of the extended households were rather similar in both groups (10.6 and 11.6 per cent, respectively).3 The apparently higher presence of nuclear households shown by the census data in comparison with the interview data needs some comment. The reason is that the former set of data describe a ‘snapshot’ of the society whereas the latter refer to the lifetime experience of the individual. Therefore, an apparently higher incidence of complex households in the latter case is to be expected. But as we have seen, in most cases these were short-lived arrangements. Thus, in general, nuclear households were by far the most common experience of people, especially of the working class. For many of the elderly this meant that they spent part of their life in solitary residence heading their own household. None the less, the short-term incorporation of an incapacitated grandparent into the household of a younger relative was not unthinkable. Yet this raises the question of who in such cases was the head of the household and thus the most authoritative person in the household. An answer to this question is offered in the next section.

Household Headship An important characteristic of nineteenth-century households on Mykonos and Hermoupolis was the significant number that were headed by women, namely, 23 per cent on Mykonos. Most male household heads (89 per cent) were married, while the majority of female heads (87 per cent) were widowed (Hionidou 1995: 73). For Hermoupolis, marriage seems to have been almost synonymous with household headship for men. More than 90 per cent of married men – in many cases almost all married men – were household heads, with very young grooms (younger than age twenty-five) being the only exception (Hionidou 1999: 412). This close link between marriage and headship for males suggests that upon marriage most couples would establish their own household under the groom’s headship. By the age of fifty more than 90 per cent of all men were heads of their own household. Therefore headship was strongly associated with age, sex and marital status in a setting where married men and widowed women represented the majority of all household heads. Thus, the situation was one where the married elderly couple remained living independently after the marriage of their off-

The Elderly in Three Greek Island Populations

251

spring, with the household being headed by the husband. Upon his death the headship would pass to the widowed spouse, regardless of the presence of single adult offspring. Nevertheless, at older ages – age sixty and above – some of the widowed parents would lose the headship of the household either because they were incorporated into their married children’s households or because a married child moved into their household and the married man then assumed headship (Hionidou 1995: 74; 1999: 411). As the virtual absence of multiple households indicates, when both parents were alive they retained their independent household and the father continued being head.

Living Arrangements of the Elderly: Stem Family or Neolocality? The rarity of multiple family households and the fact that virtually every married man was head of a household suggest either neolocality or the existence of a stem-family system. A stem-family system is one where, following the marriage of one child, coresidence of that child with the parental couple is immediately established. In such a system a significant percentage of multiple households should be observed. However, if mortality is high, then we would expect to detect only a small number of multiple family households and a significant percentage of extended ones where only one of the parents has survived. Both nineteenthand twentieth-century evidence suggests that there was not a stem-family system in place (Hionidou 1999: 415–418): Q. Apart from your mother, your father and the children did anyone else live with you in that house? A. No. Q. A grandmother? A. No, no. The grandmother had her own house. … Q. So the grandmother had her own house and she lived on her own? A. Yes, every grandmother had her own house here on Mykonos. Everybody had a house. Q. When the grandfather died, didn’t she move in with you? A. No, no. Q. Was she staying with any of her other children? A. While they were single, whoever was single was staying with her. When the children got married, grandmothers would stay in

252

Violetta Hionidou

their own house. (No. 25, urban middle-class household, Mykonos)

Neolocality was observed among all informants on Mykonos, with very few exceptions.4 Marriage was synonymous with a move out of the parental house. The establishment of an independent household upon marriage was made possible by the combined resources of the bride and the groom. The bride would receive a dowry upon marriage which invariably included a house with all the necessary amenities (see also Hionidou 1995: 77–79 for Mykonos; Visvize 1948: 16–20 for Hios). By the time of his marriage the groom would have been in employment for at least a decade and must have accumulated some savings. The combination of these resources enabled young couples to follow the rule of neolocality. Moreover, for farmers an additional custom existed: that of providing sons with a ‘gift’ – that is, fields – upon marriage (Mykoniati called this dowry). The gift would only be given to those sons who had not migrated or had migrated and returned and who intended to become farmers themselves. The situation is clearly described by one of the informants: Q. Did your father help your brothers? Did he give a dowry to the girls? A. Yes. Q. Did your father help the boys when they got married? A. They migrated. Later he gave them something. Not to those who migrated. Q. Those who migrated did not get anything? A. Well, they did when the father died. Q. Those of the boys who stayed here [on Mykonos] and became farmers, did they get anything? A. Well, one, the middle one. [The father] gave him, for example, a field, a cow and some sheep. Q. At the time he got married? A. Yes, yes. Q. To make a start? A. Yes, because he was here. To the others, who migrated, no. When [the father] died, they got something as well. Q. Did the migrants get less than the one who was here eventually? A. No, everyone got the same. Q. Only that [the migrants] got them when [the father] died? A. Yes, yes. … [The stayer] got a field from his wife [as part of her dowry], his father gave him one, he allowed him to use one (tou parahorise), and thus he became a farmer. While the rest migrated. Q. When you say that your father gave a field to your brother, do

The Elderly in Three Greek Island Populations

253

you mean a transaction was made? A. No, even if they did not sign a transaction at the time, he allowed him to use it. Q. So, he allowed him to use the field orally …? A. Yes, yes. It was left to [the son] eventually. He got it officially at the end. Q. Was the official transaction drawn after your father’s death? A. Yes, when the official transaction was drawn for all the rest [of the sons] as well. Q. I want to ask you about the fields that your father left [i.e. after his death] to the rest of the children. Did your father own them and obtain the revenue until he died? A. Yes, yes, in order to support himself. Because there were more children who were single. They needed those fields because they had the animals. (No. 15, Mykonos)

If the parents resided outside the town and were involved in farming, a son, usually but not necessarily the youngest, would be chosen. Occasionally he would receive a larger share of the parental farm compared with his brothers: A. They [married sons, widowed sister in need] would help the father. During the day they would go and help him. They would not stay there [during the night]. Each one would go to his or her own home. One would help the other. Except for the last one who was to get married and remain a farmer. They would stay in the house, together, the mother-in-law, the father-in-law… Q. The last child? A. Yes, the last child with his bride. Q. And they would stay all together in the one-room house? A. No. Q. What did they do? A. They built something [i.e. another house] nearby so that when the [old] couple died, when the father [died], the houses would be nearby and [the son] could continue with the [farming] work. Q. For example, you are the last son, are you not? A. Well, that is how I did it. Q. You stayed where your father was, but you built [a house] nearby? A. No, I built [a house] somewhere further. Q. How far away? A. Two hundred metres. Q. Within the same field? A. In a neighbouring one. He had many fields. He told me to go in a neighbouring one and I went and built a one-room house temporarily. And I stayed there for three to four years I think. Then my father died and I moved [to my father’s home]. He had

254

Violetta Hionidou

drawn a will leaving those fields and those houses to me. Thereafter I was staying with my mother. Well, she was staying with me instead of me staying with her … that’s how [the father] wanted it. (No. 7, Mykonos)

Alternatively parents could request an annual cash revenue from their sons that would enable them to sustain their own household. In such cases the sons would gain ownership of the fields when their parents died. The arrangement ensured not only the old-age support of the parents but also – to some degree at least – the future ‘good’ behaviour of their children. Q. Did you receive dowry from your father? A. A lot. Q. Did you get it when you got married or later? A. I got some later and some when I got married. And later I got some through the will. Q. And did your father [make an official contract with you] at the time of your wedding? A. No, he made the contract many years later [20 years later]. Q. But were you working on [those fields], were they yours? A. Yes. Q. Did you give anything to your father? A. Oh yes, we did. From my fields he would take 1,500 drachmas. That [old] type of currency. Q. How much was that? Was it a good share? Was it half your revenue? A. No, not even a third. He did not charge us a lot. Q. So, when you say that he gave them, did he sell them? Does the contract say that he sold them to you? A. He wrote it in the will. And when he died, the will was opened. But he had told us in advance (no. 11, Mykonos).

An alternative arrangement was for a contract to be signed whereby the sons were given the ownership of land while the parents retained the usufruct of the fields, thus ensuring that even if disagreements occurred between the old and young generation the elderly parents could still have a revenue from the fields they once owned. Occasionally the former arrangement would be in place for some time after which it was replaced by the latter. Widespread evidence from both Mykonos and Hios and from other Aegean islands shows that even when parents saw all their children getting married and moving into their own household, they still retained part of the estate.5 A variety of local terms were used to name this part of the estate, all signifying that it was an

The Elderly in Three Greek Island Populations

255

‘old-age share or provision’ (gerontomoiri; gerontotrofia). The last parental home was not necessarily the house where the couple resided when they were younger with children. It seems that in many cases they would give the latter to one of the daughters as dowry and they themselves would move to a much smaller dwelling. This property that the old couple would retain for their old age is the equivalent of what Kasdagli found being referred to as gerontomoiri in seventeenth century transactions on the island of Naxos (Kasdagli n.d.). (I did not come across the term on Mykonos.) The elderly parents utilised their remaining part of the estate to earn enough revenue for their upkeep when they were unable to work. Q. So you gave something to your sons as well, but only later? A. Yes, that’s how they do it here. They help the girl by giving them something [i.e. a dowry]. The boy [receives something] only when the parents die. Because, you see, there are more children behind [i.e. single children]. And the old couple has needs as well. It was not as it is today, having a pension. Then, if the old man or woman was left [alone], he or she could not work. He or she needed to have fields in order to… Q. To live? A. To live, yes. There might have been more children behind that needed to be sorted (na ta volepsei) [i.e., married, given a dowry]. That’s why they did not help male children. Then again, whatever they had spare they would give it to them. (No. 15, Mykonos)

Gerontomoiri was the last ‘trump card’ in the hand of the elderly. This would be given to whichever child – usually a daughter or occasionally a daughter-in-law for town residents – that looked after them, although this did not necessarily imply co-residence. A. Her house where [she] lived, [she] left it to [her daughter] who looked after her. And [that daughter] had received dowry as well but in order to look after [the mother] in her old age, [the mother] gave her the house where she lived. Q. When you say that she looked after her, did your mother live with her? A. They looked after her. When she became ill, they lived in the same house. Q. And until she became ill? A. They looked after her, they cooked for her, they washed her clothes. Q. From a distance?

256

Violetta Hionidou

A. No, their houses were nearby. Q. Didn’t they live in the same house? A. No, no. When [the mother] got ill, when she was very old – ninety-three years – they took her in and they lived in the same house. (No. 8, Mykonos)

All these arrangements had the sole purpose of ensuring the financial and emotional support of the older generation in the absence of a welfare system. Moreover, the rather restrictive social environment of those islands, especially of small islands such as Mykonos, ensured that moral obligations towards one’s parents were largely fulfilled. These moral obligations concerned only the specific child that had come to some arrangement with his or her parents about their old-age provisions and the receipt of the gerontomoiri. I suspect that for the rest of the children societal moral responsibility was not an issue. To sum up the changes in household arrangements throughout the life course, it is clear that men retained the headship of their own independent households while married, either in the presence or in the absence of single children (see Table 9.1). Upon widowerhood, and if there were no single children present, some elderly remained on their own as solitaries while a small percentage would join the household of a married child (see Table 9.1). Women would also follow a similar trajectory: co-residence with a husband in an ‘empty-nest’ household, followed by widowhood and either solitary residence or co-residence with a married child. An alternative pathway for elderly women was the assumption of headship upon widowhood in a household where single children were present. A large percentage of all elderly women went through this stage (see Table 9.1). What followed upon the marriage of the last child, for both women and men, was that either the widow or widower lived on her or his own and possibly joined the household of a married child at a later stage, or she or he remained in the original household and upon the marriage of the last child the new couple would also reside there. Nevertheless, even in the latter case, the groom would assume the headship of the household. The not insignificant presence of solitary widows suggests that many went through the stage of solitary residence. Of crucial importance is the point that the solitary residence of elderly men or women should not be mistaken as lack of support from the children. To demonstrate this, a small-scale nominal record linkage was performed for Hermoupolis in 1870 linking fathers to their married daughters. It revealed that, where there was no co-residence, the paternal liv-

The Elderly in Three Greek Island Populations

257

Table 9.1. Percentages of Elderly Persons (Aged Fifty Years and Over) by Marital Status, Sex, and Type of Household, Hermoupolis 1861, 1870 and 1879 1861

1870

Women Men

1879

Women Men

Women Men

Married couple only Widowed – solitary Widowed with single children Widowed with married child

15 17 40 28 17D 11S

47 18 29 6 4D 2S

8 8 53 32 19D 13S

54 12 27 8 8D

18 22 42 18 10D 8S

52 17 27 3 3S

Total (N)

430

196

53

26

184

86

Notes: Age fifty was chosen to indicate movement into the stage of being ‘elderly’. Had a higher age been chosen, then the number of eligible elderly in the data set would have been too small for analysis, especially for the group of married couples. Moreover, there was no official or even expected age of retirement. It was usually from parental age fifty onwards that children would start getting married and the family fortune gradually be handed down. For married couples only the age of the husband was taken into account. ‘D’ signifies co-residence with a daughter, ‘S’ with a son. Source: Manuscript census enumerators’ books of Hermoupolis.

ing quarters were in close proximity to those of at least one of the married daughters. This applied even if the widowed father was co-residing with single children. The twentieth-century evidence from interviews is also very clear: support was offered to the elderly residing alone. A daughter or daughter-in-law would provide food, clothes would be washed if necessary, and young granddaughters would also offer help to their grandmothers (no. 23, Mykonos), occasionally or even regularly spending the night at the grandmother’s house (nos. 17 and 20, Mykonos; no. 22, Hios). Thus, familial old-age support was provided across households rather than exclusively within them, thereby allowing solitary residence of the elderly, neolocality of the young and the extensive presence of nuclear households. If and when necessary, the elderly parent would move in with a married child, thus creating an extended household. This represented a Mediterranean alternative to a welfare system for elderly widowed parents. In this last case it has to be emphasised that some kind of extra revenue in the form of real property was always arranged for the child who took up the responsibility for the aged parent, this being called gerontomoiri.

258

Violetta Hionidou

Thus, a number of approaches could be followed by parents who sought to secure their old age. These, of course, depended on the number and sex of children, their own financial background and whether they resided in town or in a rural area, as well as on personal security or insecurity. The unchanging dimensions of the system were neolocality, dowry provision for the daughters and retaining part of the estate for old-age provision.

Elderly without Children The above situation refers almost exclusively to couples with children of their own. Those who never married were clearly a minority: 4 per cent of men and women in 1861 Mykonos; 4 to 6 per cent of women and 8 to 11 per cent of men in nineteenth-century (1861 to 1879) Hermoupolis (Hionidou 1995: 83–84; 1999: 415). The rates of celibacy in the first half of the twentieth century on Mykonos were very similar to those of the mid-nineteenth century.6 Fertility was not regulated in the nineteenth century, although it was on Mykonos by the 1920s (Hionidou 1998: 68–71). The timing of the introduction of family limitation was probably similar for Syros and Hios. Marriage in Greece is closely linked to procreation, so that childlessness was not – and most probably is not even today – a deliberate action among Greek couples. Nevertheless, a number of couples or single individuals would be childless by the time they reached old age. These would be couples who did not have children due to sterility or couples who experienced repeated miscarriages. While some couples with children would have lost all children either in infancy or in adulthood, these cases were few and far between, especially on Mykonos, where overall and infant mortality was low and levels of fertility were moderate (Hionidou 1997: 155–172; 1998: 68–71). The situation was somewhat different on Syros, where infant mortality was high.7 In cases where a married child had died leaving behind children, these grandchildren could be taken in by the surviving grandparents as substitute for the deceased child. Anyone who remained single was also childless, as extramarital procreation was very rare, and in most cases illegitimate children were abandoned so that the identity of the mother would not be revealed. (The illegitimacy rate on Syros in 1939 was six per 1000 live births and sixteen per 1000 on Mykonos in 1935–1939, although considerably lower in the nineteenth century.) Even in cases where children exist, divorce, remarriage and out-migration can alienate them from one or both their parents.

The Elderly in Three Greek Island Populations

259

Divorce was permitted in pre-Second World War Greece, but rates were extremely low. On Mykonos, for example, there were virtually no divorces prior to 1940. This does not preclude cases of unofficial separation, but I would speculate that in such cases the husband would leave the island altogether under the excuse of migration. Remarriage was not rare, especially among men, and even when the husband was rather old the wife would be young and usually children would be born of the second marriage (Hionidou 1995: 88–90). Out-migration of all children must have been an extremely rare situation. Migration out of Mykonos and Hios was very common, much less so out of Syros (Hionidou 2002a). But the migration of children, especially daughters, was closely regulated by the parents. Mothers would take decisions as to which daughter, if any, would go into domestic service in Athens or elsewhere, when she would go and when she would be recalled. Recalling a daughter back to the island meant that it was time for her to get married. Naturally, in some cases, daughters would find their future husband themselves in Athens but that was unusual. More importantly, if the number of daughters was small the risk of ‘losing’ a daughter would be minimised by a number of tactical movements by the mother or both parents. They might provide a good dowry near to their own residence and choose a son-in-law with ties on the island rather than in Athens. For example, one of my respondents, Marina, was one of five children who survived into adulthood. All her siblings migrated to the USA with parental encouragement, while she remained on Mykonos all her life and eventually inherited her parents’ fortune. She got married at the age of forty and, although her husband was working in Athens, she remained on Mykonos with her mother. Her husband would visit occasionally and would stay continuously on Mykonos from December to April (no. 18). What, then, were the options that childless couples and nevermarried individuals had to secure their old age in a situation of a complete absence of welfare provisions by the state? The interviews suggest that common solutions were adoption, either formal or informal, and domestic service, occasionally by a female relative.8 In a situation where marriage was relatively early and childbearing followed immediately after marriage, those who remained childless would be aware of their situation from a relatively young age, say, thirty-five to forty years for women and probably somewhat later for men. This gave them ample time to devise a strategy. The main parameters of the strategy were, first, that whoever looked after them would inherit the property of the

260

Violetta Hionidou

childless person or couple and, secondly, that the person should ideally be a blood relation. In addition, the carer was invariably female, except in farming households. Thus, couples with few material possessions were surely disadvantaged in their search for potential old-age care. In one such case, a Mykoniati widowed woman resorted to adoption – probably formal – of a girl aged five from the Athens Orphanage. (I suspect such an adoption was rather easy to arrange in pre-Second World War Greece.) The woman who raised the child on Mykonos did not own a house and thus did not even provide the girl with one at the time of her marriage (no. 1, Mykonos). However, in most cases the child to be adopted was sought among either blood relatives, for example, nieces, or godchildren. The potential adoption would be initiated while the adoptee was still a child, although not usually very young. The symbiosis between the adopting parents and the potential adoptee would be tried out before any final arrangements were made, thereby leaving the younger generation in a relatively weak and subservient position: Q. Who baptised you? Do you remember? A. My godmother. … I was raised with her. Q. What do you mean? A. She took me in as her child and I was brought up by her. Q. Did they not have any children? A. They did not have any children. They were siblings. Three siblings and they did not have children. How could they? Q. Didn’t they get married? A. No, they did not get married. Q. How old were you when they took you in? A. Nine years old. Q. Did you help them with the housework? A. Yes, I did. In the house. Q. Did you use to go to your mother’s? A. Yes, of course. Q. And did you stay with your godmother up to the age of nineteen years? A. Up to eighteen. Then one of the sisters died and the other was very old. [The informant subsequently went to Athens as a domestic servant at the age of nineteen.] (No. 9, Mykonos)

Formal arrangements, usually in the form of a will signed by the Notary Public, were absolutely necessary if the carer was to be secured, as Greek law entitles the siblings and parents of a childless person to inherit their property.9 There were a variety of important reasons for selecting a blood relative or a godchild

The Elderly in Three Greek Island Populations

261

rather than a stranger as an adoptee. First, in both cases the childless person would have had access to the household of the child from an early age and thus would have been aware of the child’s personality and character. Secondly, in the case of a blood relation, the inheritance would not eventually ‘leave’ the broad kinship group to which – in principle – it belonged anyway. Also the child was usually chosen from among poor relatives with numerous children, so that the potential inheritance would be attractive to the child’s family: [W]e had as koumbara [i.e. a child’s godparent] a teacher. … [My daughter] Maria used to go down to the school twice a day. … My koumbara asked me for [Maria] to stay with them. ‘I don’t want her to do housework for me, only to sleep with me, not to be alone.’ Her husband had baptised my child. She liked [Maria], [and Maria] did not want to leave the teacher. She also adopted her, she got her married, she educated her. I could not, we did not have the [economic] strength to take [the child] any further. (No. 27, Mykonos)

Adoption was the preferred avenue of action for couples and single or widowed females without children. For single men, adoption was not an option because they were considered unable to look after a child, because of the ‘ethics’ involved in the co-residence of a single man with a child or simply because of the different lifestyles of men and women. For single men, especially those with a regular cash income (e.g. civil servants), a domestic servant – usually a relative – would take on the role of carer: ‘My uncle [who was a schoolteacher] later took my sister and she served him, then he took another niece’. (No. 3, Hios) A different approach seems to have been followed in agricultural areas. Single women with no obvious prospects of marriage were incorporated into a relative’s household along with their share of the parental inheritance: ‘We also had an auntie [paternal sister] whose property we inherited. My father had her [coresiding with us], well, my mother, my father was dead by then. By the time the auntie signed the fields over to us my father was already dead, and we had her in our house.’ (no. 3, Hios) In some cases an elderly couple or a widowed woman would seek to take a child into the household for company. For example, an elderly Mykoniati couple took in their eldest granddaughter, who also bore the grandmother’s name, in Mykonos Town, where the young girl could also attend school. The same girl later moved in with one of the female single teachers, again for company and until she finished school, as there were no schools where her parents resided (no. 8, Mykonos).

262

Violetta Hionidou

Of course the question remains of what happened to those childless elderly who had neither real estate, nor an income, nor any relative willing to care for them. Evidence for such individuals is very scant indeed. As already mentioned, there was no state welfare system of any sort in operation that could have provided for such individuals. Monasteries and nunneries, at least on Mykonos, seem to have provided accommodation for those without any alternatives (Nea Mykonos, July 1948). Thus, in the 1861 census manuscript, ten widowed women – mainly elderly – were listed as co-residing but without any indication of them being nuns. They presumably resided in the nunnery of Palaiokastro. In pre-Second World War Hios, a charitable old people’s home was in operation within the Municipal Hospital which catered for both men and women and was financed at least initially by the Hios élite residing in London. In September 1938 there were forty-five inmates (Theotokas archive, File 11, doc. no. 90). Some similar charitable homes were also present in Hermoupolis, for example, the ‘poor people’s home’ created in 1872, run by the town charities with contributions from the local authority (Traulos and Kokkou 1980: 33). Thus, it seems that the very limited resources available for such individuals were funded by local charities and that the institutions catered mainly for urban populations. Old people’s homes were, and still are today, considered both by the elderly and by younger Greeks to be a very undesirable and undignified option.

Conclusions Nuclear households were prevalent on Mykonos and Syros from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and on Hios in the early twentieth century. The establishment of an independent household upon marriage was the rule and was especially important in the rural areas and among the working classes. It was the inheritance pattern and the inter vivos transfer of resources that made neolocality feasible. The belief that households and household heads should be independent was the crucial factor shaping the inheritance system. Apart from some essential rules, such as the provision of a dowry and the existence of an ‘old-age share’ (gerontomoiri), this system remained rather flexible.10 As to arrangements for old-age provision similar patterns seem to have prevailed among the three island populations, patterns that showed clear continuities over time. Couples had to make their own arrangements for old age, and some sort of real estate

The Elderly in Three Greek Island Populations

263

had to be available for the carer. Such care did not necessarily mean co-residence, although this would also occur if necessary. A distinction between urban and rural areas emerged, with residents of the former somewhat favouring daughters and inhabitants of the latter favouring sons as their carers. Adoption seems to have filled the gap for childless couples and single or widowed women. Here again, old-age care would be ‘exchanged’ for inheritance. Godchildren or other kin chosen from among the poorest households were usually those adopted. These old-age care arrangements are quite distinct from those found in north-western Europe and in northern parts of the Iberian peninsula, especially in regard to the use of contracts. While the inheritance system on the islands discussed was utilised and manipulated so that the elderly had some means of support, detailed contracts dictating the terms of the relationship between parents and children were not employed. Many more similarities can be traced between the situation as described for the three Greek islands and that outlined by Reher for central and southern Spain (Reher 1997: 48–56, 113–116; 1998: 207–212). Overall I would expect that the patterns of old-age provision established in this chapter could be termed ‘southern European’, although different forms of old-age provision may well be found in other parts of Greece (for different household arrangements, for example, see Campbell 1964; Couroucli 1981: 304–305; Caftanzoglou 1994: 79–98; 1997: 403–424). A final question arising from the foregoing analysis is as follows: if the arrangements described above sufficed in normal times, did they fare equally well in crisis situations, such as the 1941–1942 famine? In short, the answer must clearly be no. Although this topic awaits detailed analysis, a first impression is that the elderly were left – to a large extent – to their own devices, not only by relatives but also by governing bodies. During the famine itself, children were given first priority in any relief efforts (e.g. Helger 1949: 416–423). Their mortality levels were as a consequence low relative to those of the elderly and adults (Hionidou 2002b). For the populations of Hios Town and the town of Vrontados, for example, the ratio of famine to pre-famine deaths was around five to one for those aged fifty and over. The same ratio was considerably smaller for the younger cohorts (Hionidou 2000). The elderly suffered such extensive losses in part because large numbers of younger adults and children escaped from Hios and the famine through migration, while most of the elderly were left behind.

264

Violetta Hionidou

Notes The generous financial help of the Wellcome Trust through a Fellowship Grant (056211), the Nuffield Foundation (SOC/100[1479]) and the European Union (Human Capital and Mobility Fellowship) is gratefully acknowledged. I would also like to thank Philip Kreager for his support at the various stages of the preparation of this chapter. 1. For a more detailed presentation of these data sources, see Hionidou 1995: 70–71 and 1999: 405–406. 2. Here I did not include the households of Asia Minor refugees present on Hios. Both refugee informants that I interviewed moved to the household of their in-laws, one being an elderly couple, the other a widowed mother. The extreme conditions of poverty and the lack of housing among the refugees make them unsuitable for studying long-term patterns of household formation. Moreover, one of the informants stated that co-residence with the inlaws was a common situation among the refugees, possibly indicating a different cultural pattern. 3. Nuptiality could not have been the cause for the observed differences between the classes. Among the occupational group of professionals ages at marriage of both men and women were higher than among farmers (23.9 versus 21.2 for women and 31.9 versus 26.3 for men in 1899–1908; Hionidou 1995: 84–85). Sailors also had high proportions of extended and multiple family households, and yet no fisherman was head of an extended or multiple household. Of the sixty-two extended households headed by a sailor, 56 per cent were extended upwards, that is, including a member of an older generation. In the overwhelming majority, the elderly person present was the wife’s mother. If we assume that sailors were only occasionally present on Mykonos, then, among the thirty-five upwardly extended households headed by a sailor, only three had a third adult person continuously present. Among the laterally and downwards extended households, exactly two-thirds of the cases involved either situations where the person or persons added to the nuclear family were sailors themselves and thus absent most of the time or situations where there were no children present in the household. In such cases the wife would have been on her own during the long absences of her sailor husband had the household not been extended. 4. In one case a newly-wed couple resided with the parental couple for less than a year. In two further cases the widowed mother dowered the daughter with the house in which they both resided prior to the daughter’s marriage. After the marriage the mother remained as a member of the newly created household (nos. 18 and 22, Mykonos). In a third case a single brother of the groom resided with the newly-wed couple because the two brothers had been jointly working on land under a lease. The single brother transferred his share to his married brother after two or three years of co-residence ‘because we were staying together and I did not like it. One being married and the other being single. … I could see … that the end of that … would be not to get along. Because one being married and the other being single while living together – I did not want it, I did not like it. So I took the decision and left Dheles [i.e. both the partnership and the brother’s household]’ (no. 28, Mykonos). Interestingly enough, he went into another short-term partnership with another of his brothers while staying in his parents’ household on Mykonos.

The Elderly in Three Greek Island Populations

265

5. For Hios the evidence here comes from legal contracts of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries (Visvize 1948: 27–30). For Mykonos I rely on evidence from interviews. 6. Here the family histories of interviewees were utilised along with the familyreconstitution data. The fate of seventy-three sisters and sixty-five brothers was established for twenty-four informants. Among these there were three sisters and two brothers who remained celibate throughout their lives, thus providing a celibacy rate of 4.1 for women and 3.1 for men. For three sisters and three brothers it was impossible to trace their marital status. But, even in the unlikely event of all these untraced siblings remaining single throughout their lives, the permanent celibacy rates would only be raised to 8.2 and 7.7 per cent for women and men, respectively. 7. The infant mortality rate in Hios Town was 124 per thousand births in 1928–1930, declining to 86 in 1938–1939; it was 174 in 1928–1929 in Hermoupolis, declining only to 168 in 1938–1939. Life expectancy at birth for both sexes in 1928–1929 was 48.3 years for Hermoupolis, 54.1 years for Hios Town, above fifty-two years for Mykonos and around forty-nine years for Greece as a whole. These life expectancies were calculated using the published age structures from the 1928 population census. The average number of births for the years 1928 and 1929 was used to calculate the infant mortality rate, while for the remaining age groups published mortality data for 1928 and 1929 were utilised. The life expectancy for Greece is derived from Preston, et al. (1972: 324, 326); for Mykonos, see Hionidou (1993: Table 6.8). 8. Sant Cassia and Bada devote a whole chapter in their book to adoption and fosterage in early nineteenth-century Athens (1992: 145–163). Their findings are generally in close agreement with those presented here, despite the fact that they utilised very different data sources. 9. Sant Cassia and Bada, who studied a number of Athenian marriage contracts, found among their records a significant percentage of adopted brides who had received a dowry from their adoptive parents (1992: 149). 10. On Karpathos, for example, a primogeniture system was in operation, which was coupled with neolocality and the customs of dowry and gerontomoiri (Vervier 1984: 28–76).

References Brettell, C.B., ‘Kinship and contract: Property Transmission and Family Relations in Northwestern Portugal’. Comparative Studies in Society and History 33, no. 3 (1991): 443–465. Campbell, J.K., Honour, Family and Patronage: A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Village. Oxford, 1964. Caftanzoglou, R., ‘The Household Formation Pattern of a Vlach Mountain Community of Greece: Syrrako 1898–1929’. Journal of Family History 19, no. 1 (1994): 79–98. –––––, ‘Shepherds, Innkeepers, and Census-Takers: the 1905 Census in Two Villages in Epirus’. Continuity and Change 12, no. 3 (1997): 403–424. Couroucli, M., ‘Structures économiques et sociales du village Episkepsi a Corfu de 1800 a nos jours’. (Unpublished thesis, EHESS, Paris, 1981).

266

Violetta Hionidou

Hareven, T.K. and K.J. Adams, Ageing and Life Course Transitions: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. London and New York, 1982. Helger, B. ed., Ravitaillement de la Grèce pendant l’occupation 1941–1944 et pendant les cinq mois après la libération. Athens, 1949. Hionidou, V., ‘The Demography of a Greek island, Mykonos 1859–1959: A Family Reconstitution Study’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Liverpool, 1993). –––––, ‘Nuptiality Patterns and Household Structure on the Greek Island of Mykonos, 1849–1959’. Journal of Family History 20, no. 1 (1995): 67–102. –––––, ‘Infant Mortality in Greece, 1859–1959: Problems and Research Perspectives’. In The Decline of Infant and Child Mortality. The European Experience: 1750–1990. ed. C.A. Corsini and P.P. Viazzo, The Netherlands, 1997, 155–172. –––––, ‘The Adoption of Fertility Control on Mykonos 1879–1959: Stopping, Spacing or Both?’. Population Studies 52, (1998): 67–83. –––––, ‘Nineteenth-century Urban Greek Households: The Case of Hermoupolis, 1861–1879’. Continuity and Change 14, no. 3 (1999): 403–427. –––––, ‘“There are Two Routes Remaining: One to Asia Minor, the Other to the Cemetery.” The 1941–43 Famine on the Greek Island of Hios’. Paper presented at the Second Medical History Meeting, Southampton, April 2000. –––––, ‘“They Used to Go and Come.” A Century of Circular Migration from a Greek Island, Mykonos 1850 to 1950’. Annales de Démographie Historique no. 2 (2002a): 51–77. –––––, ‘“Send Us Either Food or Coffins”: The 1941–43 Famine on the Aegean Island of Syros’. In Famine Demography. Perspectives from the Past and Present, ed. C. Ó Grada and T. Dyson. Oxford, 2002b, 181–203. Kasdagli, A., ‘Marriage and Family in Early Modern Naxos’, University of Birmingham, School of History, Unpublished manuscript, n.d. Klassen, S., ‘Old and Cared For: Place of Residence for Elderly Women in Eighteenth-century Toulouse’. Journal of Family History 24, no. 1 (1999): 35–52. Ottaway, S.R., ‘Providing for the Elderly in Eighteenth-century England’, Continuity and Change 13. no. 3 (1998): 391–418. Pelling, M. and R.M. Smith, ed. Life, Death and the Elderly. Historical Perspectives. London and New York, 1991. Poska, A.M., ‘Gender, Property, and Retirement Strategies in Early Modern Northwestern Spain’. Journal of Family History 25, no. 3 (2000): 313–325. Preston, S., N. Keyfitz and R. Schoen. Causes of Death. Life Tables for National Populations. New York and London, 1972. Reher, D.S., Perspectives on the Family in Spain, Past and Present. Oxford, 1997. –––––, ‘Family Ties in Western Europe: Persistent Contrasts’, Population and Development Review 24, no. 2 (1998): 203–234.

The Elderly in Three Greek Island Populations

267

Sant Cassia, P. and C. Bada, The Making of the Modern Greek Family. Marriage and Exchange in Nineteenth-century Athens. Cambridge, 1992. Stavenuiter, M., ‘Last Years of Life: Changes in the Living and Working Arrangements of Elderly People in Amsterdam in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century’. Continuity and Change 11, no. 2 (1996): 217–241. Theotokas, M.G., archive, Koraes Library, Hios, Greece. Traulos, I. and A. Kokkou, Ermoupolis. H dimiourgia mias neas polis sti Suro stis arhes tou 19ou aiona (Hermoupolis. The Creation of a New City on Suros at the Beginning of the 19th century). Athens, 1980. Vervier, B., ‘Putting Kin and Kinship to Good Use: the Circulation of Goods, Labour, and Names on Karpathos (Greece)’. In Interest and Emotion. Essays on the Study of Family and Kinship, ed. H. Medick and D.W. Sabean, Cambridge, 1984, 28–76. Visvize, I.T., ‘Ai metaksu ton suzugon periousiakai sheseis eis ten Hion kata ten Tourkokratian (The Property Relationship Between Husband and Wife on Hios during the Ottoman Period)’, Epeteris tou Arheiou tes Istorias tou Ellenikou Dikaiou 1, (1948): 14–42.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Maria Evandrou is Senior Lecturer in Gerontology at the Institute of Gerontology, King’s College, London. She is interested in social policy issues concerning older people, for example, retirement prospects; health, disability and access to services; and ethnic minority elderly. Jane Falkingham is Professor of Demography and International Social Policy at the Department of Social Statistics, Southampton University. She is interested in ageing and its effects on the distribution of social and economic welfare. She is also doing research on economic transition and living standards in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Violetta Hionidou is a historical demographer of nineteenthand twentieth-century Greece at the Department of Sociology, University of Crete. Aside from using historical sources for family reconstitution, she conducted oral-history interviews on Mykonos in 1994, on Hios in 1999 and on Syros in 2000. She is interested in family formation, family limitation, inheritance and migration, and she has most recently undertaken research on the 1941–1942 famine in Greece. Edi Indrizal is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Andalas University, Padang, Indonesia, and Executive Director of the Institute for Social and Development Analysis (LASP) in Padang. Since 1999 he has been involved in a comparative research project on ageing in Indonesia, funded by the Wellcome Trust. His fieldwork experiences between 1990 and 2003 include research on kinship, gender, ageing and the environment in Minangkabau villages in West Sumatra.

270

Notes on Contributors

Philip Kreager is Lecturer in Human Sciences at Somerville College, Oxford University, and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Ageing. He directs ‘Ageing in Indonesia’, a longitudinal study of ageing in three rural Indonesian communities, funded by the Wellcome Trust. Ruly Marianti obtained her Ph.D. at Amsterdam University. She conducted fieldwork on widows in urban Malang, East Java, Indonesia, between 1997 and 1999. She is now affiliated to the Belle van Zuylen Institute, University of Amsterdam, and the Law Faculty, Brawijaya University, Malang, Indonesia. She also works as a journalist at the Dutch World Service Radio (Indonesian Section). Her research interests include social security, ageing, gender and poverty. Judith Okely is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Hull and Honorary Research Associate, Oxford Brookes University. She has also taught at the Universities of Essex, Durham and Edinburgh. Her main fieldwork has been conducted in Europe, mainly Britain and France, with a recent research project on musical performance among Magyar Gypsies in Hungary. She is author of The Traveller-Gypsies and Simone de Beauvoir. Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill conducted ethnographic and demographic fieldwork on intergenerational relations and elderly people’s support networks in a village in East Java, Indonesia, in 1999 to 2000. Since 1998 she has been involved in a comparative project on ageing in Indonesia funded by the Wellcome Trust. She is a British Academy Post-doctoral Research Fellow at St Antony’s College and the Institute of Human Sciences, Oxford University, and a Research Associate at the Oxford Institute of Ageing. Alison Shaw is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Brunel University. Her first fieldwork with Pakistanis in Britain and in Pakistan was conducted between 1980 and 1984 and was funded by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Most recently (since 2001) she has been undertaking fieldwork on Pakistani families in Britain for a project on genetic risk and genetic counselling, funded by the Wellcome Trust. Penny Vera-Sanso is an anthropologist teaching Development Studies at Birkbeck College, London. She has taught anthropology at the University of Kent and at Goldsmiths College. She is

Notes on Contributors

271

interested in ageing, gender and household relations, masculinity, risk and urban and rural livelihoods. Penny has conducted two extended periods of fieldwork in Tamil Nadu, one lasting sixteen months (1990–1992) in Chennai, the other twelve months (1999–2000) in Chennai and western Tamil Nadu.

INDEX

A Adoption 14, 26, 28, 30, 32, 33–35, 36, 74, 79, 107, 108, 110, 114–23, 128, 137–38, 139n, 140n, 161, 162, 163, 165, 169, 213, 259–61, 263, 265n Ageing, as social category 1–2, 4–5, 27, 39n, 80–84, 89–92 B Begging 39, 64, 89, 103n C Caste 72, 81, 84, 87, 88, 92, 97–100, 103n Charity 8, 28, 31, 33, 34, 63, 64, 73, 79, 101, 107, 108, 118, 123–24, 128, 129, 131, 132–36, 137, 167, 262 Children designated carer 30, 32, 109, 254–57 ever born 3, 8, 55, 56, 110–12 reliability 11, 17–19, 31–32, 68, 83, 119–213, 137, 160, 211, 233, 237, 238, 239–40 support of elderly 30, 31, 52, 60, 68, 69, 70–74, 77–79, 84–85, 92, 96–97, 101–102, 107, 109, 116, 121, 127, 147–48, 154–56, 159, 162,

163, 167, 198–204, 205–12 Childlessness actual xi, 114, 199, 212–20 in Africa 3, 7, 23–27 in America 3, 12, 19–23 de facto xi, 3, 8, 9, 10, 17–18, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33–34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39n, 65–72, 74, 78, 86, 93, 97, 101, 102, 112–14, 119, 134, 138, 139n, 198, 199, 208–12, 221 declining fertility, and 12, 20–23, 28, 15–16, 181–82 demographic transition, and 12, 20–23, 27–28, 111 effective 8, 31, 78, 86, 93, 97, 101, 102 in England 3, 12–19, 182–83 family conflict, and xi, 4, 10, 28, 113, 117–18 incidence 13, 14, 22–23, 24, 27, 37, 56, 106, 110–12, 113–14, 125, 133, 161, 182, 193, 209, 258, 265n infertility, and xi, 11, 13–14, 19, 23–27, 28, 29, 40n, 55–56, 59, 62, 112, 115, 139, 161, 213, 245, 258 social adaptation, and 3, 6, 14–19, 20–23, 26–27, 36 social exclusion, and 3, 6, 11,

274

31–32, 34, 35, 52, 60, 73, 108, 113, 134, 150–52, 164, 166–67, 169, 209–10, 213, 218, 220–21, 228–34, 235–40 Circulation, of parents between children’s households 92, 248–49 Contracts, retirement 17, 244–45, 254–56, 263, 264n D Daughters 30, 56, 61, 63, 70, 71, 72, 74, 77–102, 159, 162, 163, 166, 199–220, 231, 249, 255, 259, 261 preference for 30, 52, 56, 66–68, 72 Disability free life expectation 178–80 Disability, in old age xi, 3, 4, 63, 68, 80–81, 83, 86, 88, 91, 92, 96, 119, 134–36, 161, 205–207, 208, 217, 219, 237 Divorce xi, 3, 4, 10, 11, 28, 33, 37, 39n, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 69, 70–2, 109, 110, 112–13, 115, 122, 127, 128, 139n, 150, 158, 175, 187–88, 193–94, 201, 212, 213, 214, 258–59 Domestic cycles 9, 19, 85–89 E Education 2, 32, 97, 98, 99, 102, 119, 153, 170n, 183, 195 F Famine 36, 247, 263 Family conflict xi, 4, 10, 28, 61, 70, 71, 87, 113, 117–18, 148, 154, 163, 201, 202, 204, 206, 211 conjugal/nuclear xii, 19, 32, 33, 34, 65, 68, 78, 85, 95, 97, 98, 100, 102, 109, 120, 125, 129, 203

Index

extended xii, 11, 12, 19, 28, 31, 34, 57–59, 65, 67, 110, 193, 201–202, 212, 249 joint xii, 7–9, 23, 30, 77–106, 200–221 see also Family Fertility x, xi, 1, 3, 5, 13–19, 20–23, 53, 82, 106, 107, 109, 110–12, 176–77, 180–83, 199–200, 258 control 13–19, 20–23, 28, 37, 50–52, 111, 247, 258 G Gender 8, 52, 56, 58, 69, 82, 83, 91, 109, 150–52 Grandchildren 67, 19, 101, 109, 115, 120–21, 129, 157, 194, 202, 207, 210, 258, 261 H Healthcare 35, 50, 90, 102, 107, 110, 129, 130–31, 136, 161–66, 190–93 Hierarchy, social x–xi, 57, 124–132, 135, 136–37 see also social status Households adjacent 82, 93–94, 96, 103n, 201–202, 248–49 extended 247, 249–51, 264n formation 12–17, 40n, 58, 59, 68–69, 86, 93–94, 109, 245 joint 86, 89, 93, 94, 101, 103n nuclear xii, 19, 32, 33, 34, 65, 68, 78, 85, 86–89, 95, 97, 98, 100, 102, 109, 120, 125, 129, 203, 245, 247, 250, 262, 263 problems of definition 9–11, 80–82, 85–86 residence 8–11, 18–19, 37–38, 39n, 40n, 58, 79–84, 93–96, 100–101, 103n, 109, 125, 154, 161, 188–91, 195, 201, 224, 242, 247–50, 251–58 I Infertility xi, 3, 5, 11, 13–14, 19,

Index

23–27, 28, 29, 40n, 55–56, 59, 62, 109, 112, 115, 139, 161, 213, 245, 258 Inheritance 30, 32, 34, 63, 65, 66–67, 69, 72, 88, 95, 97, 102–103n, 109, 116, 117–18, 120–22, 127, 128, 134, 140n, 152, 167, 205, 215, 228, 244–45, 24, 252–54, 259–61, 262, 263 Institutional care 32, 35, 79, 107, 166, 170n, 194, 212, 225, 227–32, 234, 241, 242, 262 Intergenerational support from elder to younger 31, 32, 33, 51, 77–78, 79–82, 86, 101–102, 119, 121, 159, 167, 194, 200, 213–18, 219 from younger to elder 30, 31, 52, 60, 68, 69, 70–74, 77–79, 84–85, 92, 96–97, 101–102, 107, 116, 121, 127, 147–48, 154–56, 159, 162, 163, 167, 198–204, 205–212 negotiated 29, 38, 77–78, 85–88, 94–96, 97, 109, 117, 121–22, 129, 157, 167 K Kinship bilateral xii, 29, 109–115, 156–57 matrilineal 30, 40n, 49–76, 113 patrilineal 30, 113 L Life expectation xi, 1, 4, 9, 51, 54, 96–97, 100–101, 102, 103n, 177–80, 265n Life histories 10, 31–32, 36–37, 80, 110, 237, 247, 250 see also Research, case histories M Marriage age at 13–17, 21–23, 96, 184–85, 264n

275

delayed 11, 13–17, 28, 37, 40n, 59, 140n, 185 instability of 3, 26, 39n, 59, 61–64, 193 see also Divorce; Spouses, separation of non- 13–17, 21–23, 25, 28, 33, 40n, 59, 60, 201, 213 Masculinity 25, 78, 85–89, 95, 103n Men, childless 26, 52, 64–65, 127, 128, Migration xi, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 26, 27, 28, 30, 34, 37, 50, 56, 58, 61–63, 70–71, 74, 113, 122, 153, 170n, 195, 198, 199, 201, 210–212, 213, 215–16, 217–18, 220, 225–27, 235–42, 246, 252, 258–59, 263 Mortality adult 14,18, 40n, 53, 56, 78, 82–83, 148, 176–80, 251, 263 infant and child 14, 18, 28, 40n, 55, 56, 110, 112, 134, 139, 161, 176–80, 201, 245, 258, 263, 265n N Neighbours, elderly support by 65, 67, 68–69, 133, 134–36, 147–48, 154–56, 168, 240 Nephews 33, 58, 60–61, 63, 66, 69, 101, 103n, 109, 115, 121, 127–28, 129, 134–36, 157, 162, 163, 164, 194, 200, 213, 216, 217–18, 221 Networks x–xi, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 18, 31, 37, 67, 71, 87, 103n, 107, 109, 127, 152, 157–69, 194, 195, 201, 235 Nieces 30, 33, 60–61, 63, 66, 69, 71, 101, 109, 115, 121, 129, 157, 162, 163, 165, 194, 200, 213, 216, 221, 231, 240, 260, 261 Nutrition 78, 80, 82, 83

276

P Patronage 33, 34, 103n, 107, 108, 123–32, 137, 138, 140n Pensions x, 6, 7, 35, 77, 79, 91, 95, 107, 125, 132, 152, 162, 163, 164, 170n, 185, 204, 220, 225, 236 Pity 60, 65, 127, 134, 219 Place, home 223, 227–37, 241 Polygyny 25–7, 61–62, 66, 212–23, 217 Privacy 9, 30, 78, 85, 90, 92–95 R Research, methods case histories 62–63, 64–65, 66–67, 69–72, 117, 119–20, 127, 128–29, 130, 134–35, 162–64, 203–208, 210, 213–220 combined qualitative and quantitative 11–12, 36–38, 50, 56, 109–10, 247 ethnography, role of 31, 38, 84–85, 223–24 life history 10, 31–32, 36–37, 80, 110, 237, 247, 250 sub-populations xi, 3, 6–11, 16–17, 27–29 surveys xi, 8–9, 10, 11, 26, 37–38, 50, 56, 66, 79–83, 85, 103n, 110, 113–14, 153, 182, 186, 188, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 209

Index

S Sex ratio 17, 83 Sisters 30, 64, 66, 69, 70, 74, 201 Sons 30–31, 35, 61, 66, 71, 72, 77–102, 162, 198–220, 231, 234–35, 241 Space, local 225–27, 232–42 residential 227–32 Spouse 33, 40n, 123, 149–50, 181, 190, 193, 248, 251 separation of 59, 61, 62–63, 71–72, 187, 259 Status, socio-economic 83, 87, 90–91, 94–99, 103n, 108, 118, 122, 123–32, 133, 135–36, 137–38, 226, 227, 233, 236, 238–39, 248, 249 V Vulnerability, at older ages xi, 1, 9, 11, 15, 19, 27, 33, 34, 38, 39n, 52, 64–65, 69–73, 74, 83, 87, 96, 101, 106, 108, 113, 118, 133, 134–36, 137, 147, 149, 167, 205, 234 W Widow-, widowerhood 11, 33, 35, 69, 71, 92, 115, 117, 120, 134, 147–69, 201, 205, 206, 207, 210, 211, 218, 242, 248, 250–51, 256, 260, 262, 263, 264n