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Family Secrets
Risking Reproduction in Central Mozambique
Behind a thatched hut, a birthing woman bleeds to death only minutes from "life-saving" maternity care. Author Rachel Chapman begins Family Secrets with the deceptively simple question, "Why don't women in Mozambique use existing prenatal and maternity services?" then widens her analysis to include a whole universe of cultural, political, and economic forces. Fusing cultural anthropology with political economy, Chapman vividly demonstrates how neoliberalism and the increasing importance of the market have led to changing sexual and reproductive strategies for women.
Pregnant herself during her research, Chapman interviewed 83 women during pregnancy and postpartum. She discovered that the social relations surrounding traditional Shona practices, Christian faith healing, and Western biomedical treatments are as important to women's choices as the efficacy of the therapies.
Pregnant herself during her research, Chapman interviewed 83 women during pregnancy and postpartum. She discovered that the social relations surrounding traditional Shona practices, Christian faith healing, and Western biomedical treatments are as important to women's choices as the efficacy of the therapies.
Rachel Chapman is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington. Besides conducting her ethnographic research in Mozambique, she has also participated in the policy arena, serving as Assistant to the Director of Health Education in Manica Province from 1993 to 1995, and even naming the national brand of condoms in a nationwide contest ("Jeito," which means "knack," as in fixing cars or being a good lover).
"Ultimately, Family Secrets provides a rich and sympathetic picture of urban Mozambican women, the reproductive choices they actually make, and the creativity with which they face extremely difficulty conditions."
—H-Net's H-Africa
"Why are pregnant women facing the most desperate medical risks among the most erratic users of health services in Africa? Focusing on pregnant women's widely misunderstood efforts to sidestep biomedical health care, Rachel Chapman's evocative account of the aftershocks of Mozambique's brutal war lays bare the material and spiritual threats that continue to reverberate through this post-war African country. In this world, she shows, the fact that ties of mutual dependence offer individuals the greatest security also implies that one individual's successful escape from poverty can deepen the poverty of others. Focusing on childbearing, a woman's greatest hope for future security but also her most vulnerable moment, Chapman's compelling ethnography points to a bitter irony: the closer one's ties of mutual support, the greater their potential for destruction."
—Caroline Bledsoe, Northwestern University
"This magical book takes us deep inside the secrets held by the mothers of Mozambique, revealing their darkest fears about pregnancy and birth. These fears, as Chapman tellingly shows, involve their relationships with other women, their profound concerns about the perceived physical effects of gossip, and their highly troubled and problematic relationships with biomedicine and with their own indigenous healing systems. Based on outstanding ethnography, Chapman's work takes the outsider inside, giving her readers both insight into these women's lives and relationships, and a deep structural understanding of the cultural and global factors that influence their most intimate reproductive experiences. A must-read for anyone interested in how the politics of reproduction affect the women who reproduce!"
—Robbie Davis-Floyd, PhD, author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage and co-editor of Birth Models That Work
"Informed by radical hope and an impressive array of experiential narratives and facts, Rachel Chapman shows us what it means to become and to be pregnant in '90s and '00s Mozambique: the macro-, the meso- and the micro forces underlying it. Her heartrending and meticulous accounts of the choices women make in exceedingly difficult circumstances carries consequences for medical anthropology, governments, and NGOs in the field of maternal health."
—Gloria Wekker, University of Utrecht
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