Motherhood in Malagasy Society: Tradition vs Modernity Conflict

[Im The Truth]

MOTHERHOOD IN MALAGASY SOCEITY: A MAJOR COMPONENT IN THE TRADITION VS. MODERNITY CONFLICT
Mireille Rabenoro
http://www.jendajournal.com/issue4/rabenoro.html

Introduction

It has emerged on many different occasions that many Malagasy women, particularly the educated ones, believe that modernity is synonymous with emancipation of women. This would imply that in traditional Malagasy society, women were not emancipated. The assumption would fall in with the views of feminists in Europe and the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, when the theory was that though matriarchy had existed at the dawn of humanity, it was very soon superseded by patriarchal systems which were still more or less ruthlessly enforced at the expense of women, depending on the degree of 'civilization' (in European terms) of any given society. The idea that the less 'civilized' a nation (i.e. non- Christian), the lower women's status in it, was also shared by some Christian missionaries. And at Independence, the Malagasy, Western-educated men who had just taken over from the French colonial administration thought it their sacred duty to bring 'modernity', that is Western ways and values, into their country.

Taking aside such wholesale ideologies, however, it has been proved that in the early 1960s, Malagasy women were, from a legal point of view, far more emancipated than their French counterparts1. And their status was largely dependent on their social function as mothers.
Motherhood in Traditional Society
1. Motherhood as an essential condition for women's lofty status

In the mythic 'vazimba'2 society of Madagascar's central Highlands, women were put 'on a pedestal: in them the world took its origin, they were princesses who had come down from the heavens (Andriambavilanitra) and come out from the water (Andriambavirano); they were the source of sovereigns (Andriambahoaka)'3. From the legends emerges an image of women as existing among the elements (the air, the water), long before the appearance of men, of whom they are the source, the spring – the Mother. This precedence in time of the mythic 'vazimba' woman as compared to men, justifies the social precedence of her female successors over men in subsequent human societies.

Not all women, however, enjoy such lofty status. Closely linked to the concept of woman as elemental, as a source of life, is her social function as a mother. As in many early human societies, where life was precarious and child mortality rates were high, in traditional Malagasy society life was precious, and mothers, being a source of life, were venerated as an essential factor in the perpetuation of the family, and hence of the very social group4.

In contrast, childless women were, if not despised, at least neglected, not only by their husbands and in-laws, but also by the social group as a whole. In traditional law, women who have not given birth had practically no rights, at least in their husband's family, as opposed to mothers, who had the law on their side to defend their rights in all kinds of respects. Significantly, there are specific words used in traditional legal language to distinguish between childless wives (fotsinantsy) and mothers (renianaka, literally : mother of children). These words are different from those used in a purely biological context to distinguish between sterile (momba) and fertile (no specific word here, presumably because fertility is taken for granted, in contrast with sterility, which is an exceptional condition) women.

This is probably the reason why adoption has become so widespread in traditional society: so that women with no children born of themselves may benefit from the same status as 'natural' mothers. Even nowadays, it is quite usual for a sister to offer to have a child, or even several children, that she will give to her childless sister – once she has had enough children of her own, of course, otherwise she could not enlist her husband's agreement. Adoptive mothers have the same status as biological mothers, just as adopted children have the same rights as natural children.

This shows that the traditional concept was concerned not so much with biological facts as with the social implications of motherhood – and for that matter, of fatherhood. A woman was not recognized as a full member of the adult community until she had given birth, or at least was bringing up children; nor was a man, until he had become a father – again, either biologically or by adoption. As a result, the birth of a child being a value per se, little attention was paid to the identity of the biological father, and such notions as 'legitimate' or 'illegitimate' children were quite foreign to the traditional thinking. On the contrary, the existence of a verb like 'mananty zaza' (for a man, to adopt the child to be born of his pregnant prospective bride) shows how eager men often were to become fathers, whether the child was biologically their own or not. It is revealing of how things have changed, that the word has disappeared from contemporary vocabulary, and is only to be found in dictionaries published in the 19th century. Likewise, the traditional practice in which a woman who has given birth had more opportunities for a good match (because she has proved her fertility) has disappeared from contemporary society.

This conception of motherhood as prevailing over fatherhood, in which biological facts - and biological fathers - were neglected, applied even in dynastic matters, in the monarchies of pre- colonial Madagascar. A famous example is provided by queen Ranavalona I, who as recently as the 19th century proclaimed that her son Radama had been begotten by the late king, her husband, though he had died more than a year before. In fact it was considered that legitimacy could be guaranteed only by the mother, whose motherhood could not be questioned, being visible during her pregnancy and delivery, while there was always a risk of even a king's wife smuggling some lover's child into her husband's family - in king Radama's case, a fact that was fully accepted by the people, the moment his mother had conferred legitimacy on him.
2. Aspects of motherhood as reflected in the national language

Such a conception of the Mother as mighty, being the only unquestionable source of an individual's life, is also to be traced in the formation of certain compound words in the Malagasy language. Whereas 'rai-' (father) is root only to 13 compound words (that mostly refer to fatherhood in a biological or social sense), 29 words are derived from the root 'reni-' (mother)5. The latter, beyond referring to the biological and social roles of the mother, can be classified into at least three categories, in which:

'reni' means either a trunk, from which ramifications branch out; a foundation to build on; or capital that begets interest.

Examples: reniben-dalana (literally: the grandmother of streets): a main street renivola (literally: the mother money): the capital, invested money

the meaning of 'reni' is not that of a mother that produces offspring, but of the agglomeration of smaller elements that contribute to create an eminent whole.

Examples: renirano (literally: the mother water): a river renivohitra (literally: the mother town): the capital, the main city firenena: a nation.

'reni' expresses continuity, lengthiness

Examples: iray reny (literally: of one and the same mother): from beginning to end koha-davareny (literally: a long cough): the whooping cough disease.

Another feature I have chosen to illustrate the importance of motherhood in traditional Malagasy society as reflected in the language is the following: of all the 20 or so different dialects spoken in Madagascar, only those spoken in the North-Northwest (Sakalava and Tsimihety) have a distinct word for 'grandmother' – dady. In official Malagasy as well as in other dialects, the word for grandmother is simply 'renibe'6, literally: grandmother, and the word for grandfather is 'raibe', literally: grandfather. In Sakalava and Tsimihety, however, there is no specific word for 'grandfather': the word is 'dadilahy', literally, male grandmother. Incidentally, the relics of noble ancestors, that are periodically bathed in the mouth of the river Tsiribihina before they are taken back to their sacred abode, are also named the 'dady', although these deceased rulers of the tribe were male as well as female. The fact may be interpreted as pointing to grandmothers, that category of women whose status is still superior to that of mothers because of their age, as the link between the living community and their deceased rulers, or even beyond, as the very source of both life and power.

My great-grandfathers all had names beginning with 'Raini-' (Father of). Before the beginning of the 20th century, when the colonial administration insisted on everybody being registered at birth under a given name and not changing it in their lifetime – particularly men, who were taxpayers – the custom among the ethnic groups of the Central Highlands of the country was for men to get a final name and identity only after the birth of their first child. That final name was built on 'Raini' (Father-of) followed by the name of the man's first child, whether a son or a daughter. The daughter usually kept her initial name for her lifetime7, but the son will lose his at the birth of his own first child. A possible interpretation for this is that, whereas a woman, by the very act of giving birth, does not need to assert her belonging to the community any further, a man is not recognized as an individual with a specific identity until he has given birth. The verb 'miteraka' (to give birth, to be delivered of a child) applies both to men and women8, but presumably the status of a father, unlike that of a mother (which is visible enough) needs to be permanently recalled to the minds of the present and the future generations.

Even nowadays, only the very Westernised will use the word 'vady' (which is considered to have a rather rude sexual connotation) to refer to his/her spouse. The common people will refer to 'the mother/father-of' followed by the name of the person's eldest child. This shows that the stress is not so much on the link in the couple as husband and wife as on their position as parents. In the Southwest of Madagascar, every adult man is known as 'Iabani-' (father-of) followed by the name of his first child, whatever the name given to him in the administration's official records, not only in everyday life but also in the traditional rites and ceremonies.
Onslaughts on the Status of Mothers: The Rise of the State, Evangelisation, Colonization

According to Jack Goody, every human society has been affected by what he calls 'the shocks of modernity', the main ones being 'the development of writing, the rise of the State, the expansion of industrial capitalism, colonization and urbanization'9. Most prominent among the shocks of modernity that affected the status of mothers in Malagasy society are the rise of the State, evangelisation and colonization.
Soldiers' service to the State as a pretext to degrade women's status

The first attempt to unify the whole of the country under a single government came from king Andrianampoinimerina in the late 18 th century. He set up an army with which, starting from the central highlands, his ambition was to conquer the peripheral provinces. He achieved a measure of success in the enterprise, but at the expense of the traditional relative balance between women and men's status: he ruled that in the event of a divorce, the man should get two-thirds of the household property, whereas the wife, who had sat peacefully at home while her husband was soldiering, would get only one third. In the public speech in which the new rule was promulgated, he stated quite explicitly that this was a way of rewarding – if not of paying – the men who were contributing to the extension of his kingdom10. This was only the first instance in the political history of Madagascar when public matters such as services rendered to the State had direct consequences on the private sphere. Many other instances will be found during the colonial period.
Motherhood vs. wifehood in the Christian household

As stated above, motherhood far prevailed over wifehood among the traditional social roles of women in pre-evangelisation Malagasy society. A sign of this is that the Christian missionaries, who first came in the 1820s, deplored (and were still deploring a century later) the weakness of marriage bonds, which are significantly described in a Malagasy proverb as 'a loosely knotted belt', easily to be unfastened, unlike motherhood, which no human force can undo. In fact in traditional society the duty owed first and foremost by a wife to her husband's family was to bear him children. Marriage in traditional Malagasy society has often been described as a loan of a woman to her husband's family, a loan that comes to an end when the marriage is ended either by divorce or by death of one of the spouses. The divorced or widowed woman goes back to her own family – unless she has had children, in which case she can choose to stay in her in-laws' village with her children.

The Christian teaching tried to place the duties of a wife to her husband, if not above her duties as a mother, at least on the same level. Family life education manuals used in the 1950s in Christian associations all show an attempt to give Christian women the necessary qualities to become good wives and good housewives by 'modern', that is Western standards. And the short stories published in the Christian journals and magazines for young people in the same period usually tried to prove the necessity for girls to be educated, though not for their own sake, nor to be a competent nurse for her family, as was the claim of the early English feminists, but rather 'to achieve minimum cultural harmony between the couple in an educated man's household'11.

Another significant example of the stress laid in Christian teaching on women's role as wives, rather than as mothers, is provided by this description of the curriculum developed for girls about to get married. They stayed for three days in a Catholic monastery to prepare for married life. The curriculum included the teaching of household tasks, hygiene and childcare, but also 'Christian principles of life'. In the teaching of the latter 'particular emphasis must be laid on wives constantly living with their husband'. The reason for this concern on the part of the missionaries was that 'there are traditions of lengthy separations. Women go back to their parents' home for 2 or 3 months when they have just had a child, hence the risk of serious temptation for either spouse, and sometimes even divorce'12. To preserve the sacred bonds of matrimony and faithfulness between the spouses was obviously more important in the 'Christian principles of life' than what the Malagasy tradition considered most sacred: the life of a new-born child and of its mother, who was nursed by her own mother for weeks or months after the delivery, with every responsibility temporarily removed from her except that of breastfeeding and generally dispensing welfare to the baby.
The pre-eminence given to male taxpayers by the colonial administration

In pre-colonial Madagascar, taxes were paid by a community, not by individuals, to their sovereign, which implied contribution from men and women alike. For example, in some villages of the central highlands region, the community had to offer the queen, apart from cash and other items paid in kind, an amount of silk cloth which was woven by the women of the village; or a given quantity of rice, the product of the labour of both men and women.

In contrast, the colonial administration brought with it the customs of the colonizing country, in which only men paid taxes and were required to fulfil such duties as building roads or railways. As a result, not being considered useful to the development of the colony, women were marginalized, from salaried jobs in the formal sector, particularly in the administration, but also from education: at the end of primary school, a number of vocational, including agricultural schools, were open for boys, whereas girls could go only to two kinds of training schools – sewing and embroidery, and housekeeping. And up to the 1950s, in the last decade before Independence, when higher education was opened to the 'natives', there were quotas barring too many women from access to it, with a maximum of 2 women for every 30-student class.

The inequality of opportunities created by this situation in turn created economic inequality, and in the household, as the 'modern', Western notion of the male breadwinner spread, particularly in urban environments, men got more power than they had ever had, while women, slipping from the pedestal of the mother down to the status of a dependent member of the family, lost much of theirs.
The survival of tradition in modern society

Shortly after Independence (1960) a nationwide survey was conducted on legal customs, with a view to writing the newly independent country's Civil Code. Among other things, the survey found that 'traditional Malagasy society does not give as much importance to the legal problems of legitimacy as modern lawyers do: whatever his/her origin, a child means new strength come into the family, and his/her arrival is unfailingly welcomed with joy'13. The writers obviously counted themselves, who had been steeped in Western values through their Western education, among those 'modern' lawyers.

However, the very purpose of the survey was to develop a Civil Code that would be in keeping with the people's customs and practices. The resulting set of laws and rules, though partly influenced by the writers' ideology, was still very similar in spirit to those issued by pre-colonial regimes, which had been very much inspired themselves by the oral traditional law. Thus it is that the Civil Code enforced nowadays still strongly reflects the relative balance in gender relations that characterized traditional society before the rise of the State, before evangelisation and before colonization.

That balance is justified largely by women's maternal functions, as reflected for example by the fact that a child's nationality is automatically the same as his/her mother's, not his father's, if they are different. Another illustration is provided by a 1962 ruling issued by the Court of Appeal of Antananarivo, setting a legal precedent: an ex- husband claimed for the gift he had made to his wife at the time of their engagement to be given back to him. As the wife had left her husband's house for good, the custom was that she should do so, but only if she had not had any children with her husband. As she had, the Court of Appeal, which scrupulously conformed to tradition in such matters, ruled that she did not have to give anything back14.

Besides the legal aspect, however, the survival of tradition, specifically as concerns the attitude to motherhood, is also to be traced in people's everyday practices.
To Be or Not to Be a Mother in 'Modern' Society
Girls' pregnancy perceived as a threat by young people and their parents

From a number of surveys conducted in various parts of Madagascar, it has emerged that everywhere, whether in urban or rural contexts, girls' primary concern in relation to sex is unwanted pregnancy. For example, in the town of Toamasina, the main port on the East coast, girls of different age groups (15-17, 18-20) discussing in focus groups, said unanimously that 'If you get pregnant, your boyfriend will give you money to have an abortion, if he has any; if he hasn't, he will just let you down and you never hear from him again.'

According to boys, girls should know when it is 'safe' for them to have sex, so if they get pregnant, it is on purpose to 'trap' their boyfriend. But a desire to get married and have a family was expressed only in focus groups of men aged 25 and more. In contrast girls, even aged 15, would not mind getting married, particularly when they are pregnant. This discrepancy, between early sexual intercourse and late marriage15, seems to be one major reason for the high rates of both abortion – though it is illegal – and unmarried adolescent mothers16. Modern contraception is still all but marginal, though the prevalence has risen from 9.5% in 1997 to 13% in 1999.

Given such circumstances, pregnancy is understandably perceived as a threat by girls; but also by their parents. When asked about what sexual education parents give to their daughters, both girls and parents reply that mothers 'warn their daughters against pregnancy'. Sometimes, fathers too 'warn their sons against getting other people's daughters pregnant', though boys' and men's main concern is rather to avoid sexually transmitted infections.

This negative view of pregnancy is justified on economic grounds – because the fatherless child of an adolescent girl will be one more mouth to feed for the grandparents – but also for social reasons: though there is no real stigma attached to unmarried mothers, they will find it difficult to find a man willing to marry them. Quite the opposite from the old days, when a woman who has given birth was considered an excellent match, an adolescent mother is now likely to remain single for the rest of her life.

As for the biological fathers, either they are adult men with a family already, or they are young men or even boys who have none of the economic support provided in the old days by the community, when it was all too grateful for the arrival of a new member. If a young man is unemployed, or works but for very low wages, his own family will refuse to support his wife and children in addition to himself.

Alongside this rejection of unwanted children, however, in focus groups of adult men and women conducted across the country, a view has been spontaneously and unanimously expressed, that pregnancy is the 'profit' that a woman gets from any sexual relation, whether she is a wife or an occasional sexual partner17. This may be interpreted as a survival of the basic cultural value in which maternity is seen as women's special 'profit' and privilege, despite the changes about the economic and social organization that make it undesirable in specific circumstances.
Paradoxical or logical? 'Girls who have never had a child should not use contraception'

This statement was heard recurrently in interviews and focus groups conducted in surveys on the knowledge, attitudes and practices related to family planning. The belief that 'girls who have not given birth should not use contraception' was expressed by mothers and most adult women, including midwives and other reproductive health workers, who know quite well how many girls die as a result of abortion being illegal, and hence performed in disastrous conditions. And girls, however tormenting the fear of pregnancy, join in this widespread attitude, firmly believing that family planning centres and other reproductive health services are meant exclusively for women who are mothers already.

This may seem paradoxical, but is understandable if seen as a sign of the distrust for modern contraception, particularly pills: unlike condoms, whose barrier function is visible enough, the action of contraceptive pills seems rather mysterious, and the doubt recurrently expressed is: 'Once the pill has started stopping a girl from getting pregnant, how do you know it will not go on doing that for ever?' This concern with the reversibility of contraceptive action can be interpreted as the will to protect girls and their fertility, which is considered an essential asset.
The small family vs. the large family as a reflection of the modern vs. traditional way of life

The total fertility rate in Madagascar is 6.0 children per woman. The actual number of children in a family widely differs depending on various factors, mainly whether the family lives in an urban or a rural environment, and the mother's educational level. But more revealing of people's attitudes to family size is the difference between what they consider an ideal number of children: for urban women, the ideal number is 4.2 children, as against 5.8 for rural women. This difference of course can be accounted for by objective facts: health services are much easier to access in towns than in villages, making both curative and preventive action possible, resulting in very low child mortality rates, so that urban people can 'afford' to have few children. In rural contexts, on the contrary, health infrastructures and services are so poor that parents always prefer to have many children, with the hope that a few will remain after some have died in infancy or childhood – not to mention the fact that family planning information and services are scarce in rural areas.

Despite those objective differences, a series of focus groups conducted all over the country18 have shown that the deeper aspirations of urban people are the same as those of their rural counterparts: even in Antananarivo, the capital, a proverb according to which 'Even the dead in their family vaults enjoy being in large company'19 was repeatedly quoted, to illustrate the statement: 'Who would choose to have a small family, if only we could afford to have a large one?' And in all focus groups discussions with participants belonging to the 'poor' and 'medium' social and economic categories (the vast majority of the urban populations), the question was unfailingly asked: 'Why don't the rich have more children?' While the urban poor and medium categories have different practices from their rural counterparts, their ideology in relation to family size has remained the same. Only the rich – and then not all of them – and the very Westernised, with very Western needs and way of life, will have small families, with women deriving power from other sources than motherhood (a high- profile job or other activities, financial independence, etc.).
Conclusion

French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir is quoted as writing in 1947 that a woman's 'enslavement is expressed most clearly and inescapably in her capacity for procreation'20. In that logic of motherhood as a form of enslavement, it took a revolutionary law, developed by another Simone, Ms Weil, then Minister of Health, to liberate women from their 'enslavement': in the late 1970s, the law on the legalisation of abortion was passed at the National Assembly, integrating it into the French welfare system and thus making it accessible to all French women and girls.

In Malagasy society, on the contrary, as in many African societies, women's 'capacity for procreation' (don't men also have it?), far from being an expression of enslavement, is their primary source of power. Motherhood as a very high- ranking value is deeply inlaid in Malagasy culture, to the point that men in traditional society envied women the greater visibility and unquestionable quality of their capacity for procreation. This has been eroded by the successive shocks of modernity – the rise of the State, evangelisation, colonization, urbanization – but is still very much present in people's minds (if not always in their practices) as well as in the law. The question now is how to adjust it to the new circumstances, such as the present economic conditions, the control of HIV/AIDS, and other issues crucially linked to the status of women.
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