西ジャワ・プリアンガン地方のスンダ人農民社会における早婚・多産の文化・社会的背景(<特集>西ジャワ・プリアンガン地方の健康・生態・人口)

Abstract

This report aims to establish the socialcultural contexts of fertility behavior common to ethnic Sundanese, who predominate in the Priangan Highlands, West Java, and have long been well-known for their very young marital age and high fertility, in the hope that an understanding of fertility-related social perceptions and cultural practices of a particular ethnic group will provide a basis for explaining regional and ethnic differences in levels and patterns of fertility in Indonesia. Here I will simply describe a number of institutions and practices involving the early stage of the reproductive period in women, i. e., from the attainment of adulthood to the consummation of the first marriage, which I observed during fieldwork in a Priangan Sundanese village. To compare social-cultural contexts of fertility, I also present a brief review of data on the fertility behavior of other Indonesian ethnic groups, particularly of ethnic Javanese, of which rather reliable data is available. Fertility-related practices in Sundanese society are distinct from those in Javanese society in many ways. For example : 1. A considerable proportion of rural Sundanese girls get married before menarche, indicating that marriageability for rural Sundanese girls predates menarche, even though rural Sundanese residents state that menarche signals the attainment of marriageable age. 2. Most marriages, including those of premenarcheal girls, take place at the girl's own wish, and are not arranged by parents or relatives. Almost all women interviewed showed a strong dislike for arranged marriage including "child marriage." 3. A younger sister is strictly forbidden to marry before an elder sister. This practice naturally leads to the virtual universality of marriage at an early age. 4. Consummation of marriage, even "premenarcheal marriage, " takes place at a very early stage. This means that divorce without consummation has rarely occurred, even though many first marriages have ended in divorce.