This section describes what happened to four women who entered polygynous marriages, with existing wives and children, as second or third wives, and subsequently had fertility problems (though three went on to have children).
Table 15 Summary of women who entered polygynous marriages with subsequent infertility Infertility status at interview Description of polygynous marriage F21 Previous primary: fourteen years in first
marriage before first child born, now has two children.
Started as second wife, first wife died leaving two children, husband then married third wife and had two more children
F27 Previous secondary: had one child after first marriage; took three years to have child in second marriage.
Started as second wife, first wife had four children
F31 Previous secondary: had one child before marriage, then took two years for first child to be born in second marriage.
Started as second wife, first wife had four children
F44 Primary: 7 years in first marriage without becoming pregnant
Started as third wife, first and second wives had six children each
F21’s story, along with observations made during the interview, helped to build a picture of why infertility might not destabilise a marriage in a polygynous household:
F21. Forty-five years old,55 two children, infertile for the first nine years of marriage.
F21 married at 15 years old. Her husband already had a child from a previous marriage (this wife had left him while he was away in Zambia working), and a second wife with two children. He asked F21 to marry
him so that she could care for his first, now motherless, child. All three wives were related to each other (cousins) in an arrangement called mbilya (her husband ‘loved women from her village’, and wanted to marry her as she would care for a relative’s child better than an outsider would).
After two years of marriage, F21 and her husband started visiting numerous traditional healers for her infertility. After no success, she went to the local hospital. They referred her to the district hospital for a full examination. When asked how the situation affected her marriage, she said:
‘I wasn’t annoyed…because my husband was giving me advice. He was already old [grown up]. He was saying, ‘Everything is up to God. It is not up to you, or me; all of us should pray to God. I have taken a young girl, perhaps her blood, or her eggs, were not ready’. As for myself, my heart was not annoyed. There wasn’t a day that he insulted me because I wasn’t having children…Most people were not insulting me. But I was insulted once…but not to my face. My husband’s elder sister was saying, ‘Why are you troubling my brother? You are just finishing off his blood for nothing. You got married long ago, but nothing is happening’. Then I said, ‘How am I troubling him?’... I told my husband. He asked her, ‘Is having a child like buying fish at the market? How can you know about things in our house? Maybe my blood and her blood are not compatible? Maybe there is a disease? Can you know? From today onwards I don’t want to hear you talking about my wife again!’…she said, ‘I was just joking’, but is joking like that?’ Over the course of their marriage, her husband’s second wife died, leaving two children. He then married a fourth wife (his deceased wife’s sister) to look after them, and to keep F21 company (as she was not used to living without a co-wife). In addition, seven orphaned nieces and nephews lived with them for many years. Following hospital examinations and traditional treatments (see section 6.4.4) F21 eventually had two children.
F21’s marriage lasted for more than fourteen years before she eventually gave birth, and her husband remained supportive throughout, accompanying her to various places for treatment, and defending her in front of his relatives. Although her subsequent success in having two children might have allowed her to reflect on the past more positively, the fact that her marriage endured was indisputable. F21’s household was in many ways the model of a busy, bustling, productive rural household: it was full of children (and women looking after them), reportedly harmonious, and relatively prosperous. The local interviewer admired their ‘beautiful’ large brick house with attractive yard. The wives got on well together, and were related to each other, so did not resent living together as some co-wives did. They owned numerous animals, and farmed tobacco. The relatively large scale of economic operations underway made plain the importance of the agrarian household as the primary unit of economic production. The bigger the household, the greater its economic potential. For polygynous men, ‘developing’ their name, or
patriline, was synonymous with peopling their household with wives, children, and other relatives, all of whom might contribute to the household. F21 also expected future returns from their investment in a large household. Her husband had paid school fees for the orphans who lived with them, one of whom now lived in the capital city and had a good job. F21’s productivity in this context was not limited to childbearing. Even as a childless woman, she was active with childcare and farming. The initial rationale for her marriage was that she would look after her cousin’s child, a role undiminished by her failure to have children.
F44 was in a similar position to that which F21 had been in during the early years of her marriage. She lived with two other wives and their children, but was less positive about her situation and was very anxious to have children:
F44. Twenty-eight years old, first married as her husband’s third wife, never pregnant in seven years of marriage.
When F44 married at age 21 she was her husband’s third wife. Her co-wives lived in neighbouring houses, each with six children. Over the previous seven years she had visited different traditional healers every few months to treat her infertility. When asked what her husband thought about her not having children, she replied,
‘We just live like that. He said ‘had it been that it was your will [not to have children], I would have left you, but because it’s God’s will, and that’s how you were born, we should live like that’
She reported getting on well with her co-wives: their children helped her with household chores like fetching water, and in turn she cooked for her co-wives after they had given birth. Her mother in-law never said anything bad about her, and advised her about looking for traditional medicine. She never quarrelled with her husband, in fact, he spent every night sleeping at her house, because ‘he loves this house’, and only stayed with his other wives if F44 was away. Although her marriage seemed stable, F44 was sorrowful about not having children, and felt her parents would worry about not having grandchildren:
‘What is bad about not having children is that all your friends have children. I myself have two younger sisters. One of them has three children, the other one is pregnant… so I am just growing older, I’m just staying, doing nothing… this worries me every day.’
Three years after marrying, her husband had wanted to finish paying bride price. However, F44’s family told him he should wait, as she had not given birth, so he remained with the balance outstanding.
F44 explained her family’s reluctance to accept the balance of bride price by saying that ‘you expect children with marriage’. Perhaps her family sincerely felt that it would be wrong to accept bride price because F44 had not delivered the expected children. Alternatively, her family may not have wanted bride price because they suspected the marriage would not last without children, and they would have to pay back bride price to her husband anyway.
F44’s husband’s preference for sleeping at his childless wife’s house could have reflected several factors: sexual favouritism towards his most recent wife, his other wives being sexually unavailable during post-partum abstinence, or the fact that his other wives’ small houses were filled with young children, making it hard to get a good night’s sleep. The fact that he spent most nights with F44 did not necessarily mean that she was the preferred wife in all respects. Other aspects of married life, such as economic provisioning and social status within the extended family, were also important, though F44 did not complain of differential treatment.
Two other infertile women reported being the preferred wife in certain respects when they married into polygynous marriages and later found themselves with fertility problems:
F31. Twenty-five years old. Two years of secondary infertility in her first marriage.
F31 got pregnant at school but did not get married (see section 5.1.4). She met her husband while working at the market. He wanted to marry her because he was having problems with his first wife. F31 left her child behind with her parents and moved to her husband’s home, where he lived with his first wife, their four children, and his parents and brothers. When, after a year, F31 had not become pregnant, she started to visit traditional healers with her husband. Her husband was told that he lacked strength, and F31 heard that her fertility was closed. People accused her of lying about ever having had a child:
‘My husband’s father was saying ‘Aah! You have married a wife who is barren. You say that woman has a child, but maybe she doesn’t have a child and she is telling lies. If she had a child, would she fail to give birth here? And at the moment, what are you doing? Years and months have passed, and you are just staying without getting pregnant, when will your blood meet together?’’ Her co-wife called her a prostitute, and her father in-law constantly insulted her when he was drunk, which caused her heartache. She complained, ‘Sometimes you love each other yourselves, but the problem is that the parents talk a lot’. She worried that her husband would return his attentions to his first wife after her co-wife’s period of post-partum abstinence was over (she had recently had a baby): ‘Because she has children, he’s just passing the time with me [laughs]’. She suggested to her husband that
she should leave him; but he said that as he had married her, she had to listen to him, and he did not want her to leave. When asked whether her husband gave her fewer things because she did not have children she replied,
‘There I can’t tell lies. Although I didn’t have children, my husband was buying me more things than his wife who had children, because it seemed that he really loved me. So his parents were saying that maybe he could divorce me, but his heart was where? [with me]… I know it’s because of the love he had for me. Back then, we did not like my friend [co-wife]. All the time she was saying lots of things to her friends, telling lies to my mother in-law: she was saying that he was not providing for me. This [accusation] was paining him’
Two years after marrying she became pregnant and had a son. Relations had since improved with her co- wife, who cooked for her after she gave birth.
Like most women in her situation, F31 left her first child behind when she married, so when she suffered from infertility in her second marriage, she was under similar pressures to women with primary infertility from her husband’s family, though not from her husband himself, who supported her. After all, he knew that she really did have a child, and he had been partially blamed for their infertility, and he already had four young children. She credited her husband’s love for the favour she was held in, which was reflected in the material advantages she received, and her husband refusing to let his parents’ disapproval affect him. However, even though her husband loved her, F31 worried that he just wanted to ‘pass the time’ with her, and that they would be thought of as kukhuluzganenge waka nthena (just marrying to have sex for fun, not to have children). Before her child was born she had been concerned about the future, and how his family and the wider community viewed her.
F31’s account also describes what happened after the break down of her co-wife’s relationship with her husband. Even though they had been arguing, and her husband had married F31 and started a new and favoured marriage, F31’s co-wife remained living at the conjugal home, with her husband’s financial support and his family on her side. Yet several childless women said that they feared that if love died in their marriages, they would have to leave. Women with children were much less likely to leave, and it was usually a decision that they took themselves (even if they were effectively forced into it through mistreatment), because it was considered unfair, and could be referred to a traditional court, for a man to eject his wife from her conjugal home, and hence her farmland and children, without very good reason. Women with children thus had a
stronger claim, which they could invoke above the level of the marital relationship, to secure support at their husband’s household even if their marriage was effectively over.
F27 also had trouble with her in-laws when she re-married, and her fertility (or lack of it) was at the centre of a wider family dispute, even though the difficulties began even before she considered herself to have a fertility problem:
F27. Twenty-eight years old, three years of secondary infertility in her second marriage.
F27 became pregnant at 14 years old whilst still at school. She married the child’s father, but he failed to pay bride price and impregnated another girl, so her father brought her home before she gave birth. She gave birth at a clinic, where they said the baby was too big and had broken her womb. She stayed there for a month and was treated with tablets and injections. Some years later, she met her current husband. Her son remained living with her parents, as her ex-husband had not paid anything. Her husband was already married with four children, but he no longer got on well with his wife. For two years, he visited F27 as a girlfriend (did chikamwini) and she secretly used contraception, because she did not want to get pregnant again with a man who might not marry her. In 2001 he declared that he was tired of doing
chikamwini and took her to his house.
Soon after F27 arrived, his first wife left the marriage in disapproval, and went back to her parents, leaving three of her four children in the care of F27 and her husband. The first wife wrongly believed that if she left him, her husband would beg her to come back, and would divorce F27 because of her infertility. The first wife thought F27 was infertile because she knew she had been going out with her husband for two years without becoming pregnant. F27’s mother in-law was furious that her son had married a woman as old as F27 (though she was only 24). F27 tried to explain why:
Interviewer: ‘Why do they say you are old?’
‘Because of my first child who was born eleven years ago. They like insulting me because they don’t want me. The only problem is that they liked his first wife, and his first wife and my husband do not get on with each other... My husband and I loved each other… but they thought I was too old’
Because F27 had only one child, many years previously, F27’s mother in law thought she was too old to have more56. When F27 did not become pregnant after a year, the family started insulting her, saying she was ‘filling up the toilet for nothing’. F27 described how her husband comforted her by saying their situation was God’s will, and that they should carry on living together in spite of everything. Eventually the feud that had started because of disagreements over F27 led to a family split: F27’s husband left the
56 Some women, in particular older women, might expect women to produce children regularly throughout their childbearing years until their eggs ran out or they were worn out. That there had been nine years between F27’s first birth and her second marriage might have suggested to her mother in-law that F27 had already finished her childbearing career.
household and moved to a new area.
After three years of seeking treatment from traditional healers F27 became pregnant. Immediately she heard that F27 was pregnant, her husband’s first wife returned, because sherealised that her husband was now unlikely to divorce F27, and was not going to try to persuade her to return. In effect, she counted her losses and swallowed her pride in order to be with her children. F27 suffered great pain during the pregnancy, and went to a private clinic, where she was told that her pregnancy was ‘close’ and she should not work. Throughout the pregnancy, the abuse from her in-laws and co-wife continued:
‘On the issue of my pregnancy they said many things: that my pregnancy was just pieces of cloth stuffed under my clothes [a false pregnancy]. They said, ‘We will see if she will give birth’. They said, ‘She is going die’. So, for the delivery, I ran away from here and gave birth in Rumphi … so they couldn’t know when I was in labour. They were challenging me, saying that I wouldn’t give birth’
F27 was so afraid of her co-wife killing her and her baby through jealousy that she travelled 100km away to avoid their magic. F27’s husband no longer slept with his first wife, but they were still married and he continued to support her and her children. The family were still divided over their opinions of F27, and her husband’s brothers had recently beaten him up.
F27’s reproductive life started with a schoolgirl pregnancy, a brief marriage, and what appears to have been serious childbirth-related morbidity, considering her lengthy stay in hospital. At only 14 years old she would have been at high risk of obstetric complications and adverse future outcomes, including infertility.
The arrival of F27 in her second marriage caused immense upheaval to her husband’s first wife and extended family, partly because there was outrage that an old ‘infertile’ woman was now his preferred wife. The first wife was displeased that he had taken a new wife ‘for love’. F27’s fertility had come under public scrutiny and surveillance from her husband’s wife and family even before her marriage, when they had thought she was infertile while she was using contraceptives. F27’s potential fecundity was of great concern to her mother in-law, though this did not seem to be the case for her husband. He had been regularly sleeping with her for two years before they married,