This paper examines the diminished importance of marriage as a setting for
childbearing in Botswana. It uses qualitative data gathered in Thamaga Village
during 1995 to explore the cultural basis of this development. Marriage practices
and traditional attitudes to marriage, childbearing and sexual relations
are reviewed, and factors identified as having undermined them are discussed.
Rational adaptation theory and social disorganization theory then provide
a framework within which forces encouraging premarital childbearing in
Thamaga are investigated. Both theories are found to be useful. Especially
where women are older, premarital childbearing is often strategic and goaldirected,
providing a sense of self-worth, labour and old-age security. In many
other cases, however, it reflects spontaneous sexual activity generated by the
undermining of social controls and inauspicious economic circumstances.
Societal attitudes to premarital motherhood become less condemnatory after
about age 25, as women are judged to have waited long enough for marriage.