La Mediación Penal Juvenil.

From the literature reviewed above and the objectives just stated, the following propositions should be examined.

(1) Ages at first marriage and at first birth will be higher for women with higher levels of education than for women with a lower

level or no education

(2) Age at first marriage and age at first birth will be higher

for women with higher levels of occupational resources than for women with lower levels of occupational resources. Specifically, women in professional, technical and-high level

administrative employment will marry later and have their first birth later than women in lower levels of employment.

(3) Women exposed to modernity and social change, through childhood residence in a large urban area, will marry later

and have their first child later than women who grew up in a rural area.

(4) The duration of the first birth interval will be positively related to level of educational attainment, occupational ranking, and exposure to social change and modernization.

(5) The occurrence of negative birth intervals and premarital conceptions will be negatively related to education,

occupational ranking and exposure to social change and modernisation.

4.2.2 Methodological considerations

In societies w here childbearing is confined w ithin m arriage, the age when w om en m arry is very im portant in m arking the initiation of the process of fam ily form ation. In G hana on the other hand, w here prem arital sexual intercourse is com m on and fertility is not confined w ithin m arriage, the prim acy and exclusiveness of m arriage to family form ation and hence of any assum ed relatio n sh ip betw een age at first m arriage and fertility is w eak en ed . F u rth e r, becau se of the flu id d e fin itio n of m arriag e, relationships that w ould not strictly fall u n d e r the legal and custom ary definition of m arriage have been subsum ed in the Ghana Fertility Survey u n d e r the general definition of 'union' or m arriage. U nder the Ghana Fertility Survey definition, a self-declared state of being m arried or living in any sexual u n ion of a p erm an en t nature is accepted for the purpose of defining a respondent as m arried. W hat constitutes a perm anent union is generally determ ined by the respondent.

The tem ptation would be to ignore the first birth interval either because of the existence of negative first birth intervals or because formal m arriage does not m ark the beginning of exposure to sexual intercourse. The fluid definition of m arriage can also be a great im pedim ent to any analysis involving m arital status or the timing of entry into marriage.

H ow ever, no m atter how defined, m arriage has rem ained the m ost im p o rtan t social institution w ithin w hich procreation and socialization largely take place, and this has rem ained alm ost unchanged over m any decades. Secondly, and m ore im portantly, although there has been research into inter-birth intervals and the p ostpartum variables in G hana, there is little research into the tim ing of early family form ation, especially on the first birth interval and on negative birth intervals4. The paucity of research

on the latter is probably a resu lt of som e of the conceptual problem s outlined above. Fortes (1976) has also expressed strongly, his concerns about the alm ost total lack of scientific data on sexual and reproductive activity

am ong adolescents and young a d u lts in W est Africa. The decision to

proceed w ith the stu d y of the first birth interval necessarily involves a risk that will not be entirely dem onstrated until the attem pt is completed; a risk that the problem s of data handling and conceptual considerations m ight outw eigh w hatever the gains from the exercise m ight be. H ow ever w ith p ro p er caution and circum spection, considerable useful insight could be shed on the starting pattern of family form ation in Ghana.

A lthough it is p o p u lar w isdom that prem arital sex and prem arital births are com m on in G hana, actual estim ates of their prevalence are lacking. Indeed, apart from anecdotal evidence suggesting an increase in prem arital sex and prem arital births- and conceptions, and the collapse of sexual

m orality in recent years am ong the youth, rigorous dem ographic and

anthropological research on the subject has not been carried out, and it is impossible to say w hether or not their levels are higher now than they were say 10, 20 or 30 years ago5. A stu d y of the first birth interval and of age at entry into m arriage is of crucial im portance, not only because the majority of w om en do m arry and have children w ithin m arriage, but also because d ev ian ts from this p attern , th at is, w om en w ith prem arital b irth s and conceptions, may be selective of w om en w ith special socioeconomic and dem ographic characteristics which are w orth investigating. A study of both n e g ativ e and p o sitiv e first b irth in te rv als w ill also e n h an c e ou r

u n d e rsta n d in g of early fam ily form ation in G hana. Thus, instead of

5 See Fortes, 1976:47. Among other things, Fortes is also concerned with the singular lack of data on the m anagem ent of sexual relations in West African societies. He w onders whether coital frequency, for instance, is higher in family system s which have unified residential arrangem ents w here husbands and wives live under the same roof, than in m atrilineal or other system s in which residence is divided for some period of the m arriage. He observes that prejudices and opinions abound about the sexual habits and values of adolescents and young adults in both traditional, rural and urban environm ents, but reliable data are woefully lacking.

dim inishing the im portance and relevance of a study of first birth intervals, the existence of prem arital births is of fundam ental interest, not only in its ow n right, b u t also in helping to identify some of the correlates of the tim ing of early fam ily form ation w hich m ay have im plications for later fertility behaviour.

4.2.3

Data and methods

Life table techniques are used to estim ate all m easures of the first birth interval. First, central ages at first m arriage and first birth for w om en of

v ario u s socioeconomic characteristics are estim ated. The characteristics

selected are region of residence, ethnicity, religion, education, age cohort, place of childhood residence, place of c u rren t residence, ever-use of contraceptives, and p rem arital em p lo y m en t (restricted to ever-m arried w om en). In the estim ation of a central age at first marriage, two indicators w hich have generally been used are the m ean and m edian ages at first m arriage. Estim ation of a m ean age at first m arriage is ham pered by a fu n d am en tal problem of the truncation of the exposure of younger age cohorts to the risk of m arriage. Past dem ographic enquiries have show n that average age at first m arriage in Ghana is about 18 years, and this has rem ained unchanged over the years. In 1971, only 31.8 per cent of wom en aged 15-19 years had ever been m arried, as against about 84 per cent in the next higher age group (20-24 years), and close to 95 per cent in subsequent age groups. W ith just over 30 per cent of wom en aged 15-19 years having ever been m arried, the m arital experience of this cohort is therefore severely truncated by the survey which will bias any estimation of an overall average age at first marriage inclusive of this age group.

Casterline and Trussed (1980:11) have given consideration to this problem in the estimation of an average age at first birth for various countries using World Fertility Survey data sets, and have suggested measures that are resistant to biases inherent in truncated data. The median age at first marriage (or first birth) is such a measure when calculated using all women as a base rather than the smaller group of women who will eventually marry (or have a first birth) (Smith, 1980a; Smith, 1980b:2-6; McCarthy, 1982:7)6. Since by age 20-24 over 80 per cent of women would have been married, the median is a useful measure and will not be altered by further cohort marital experience. For cohort analysis, where less than 50 per cent of women in any particular age group are married, the median age cannot be calculated. Chapter 1 discusses the life table methodology which is used in the analysis in this chapter.