This paper is concerned with aspects of reproduction and fertility among the Kwahu of southern Ghana, an Akan sub-group, and more particularly among the members of a lineage in one rural town characterised by profound socio-economic change and differentiation. Fragments of the field data presented are taken from a larger corpus of materials focusing on family life, sexuality and birth control collected during the early 1970s.
The data discussed here pertain to people's decisions whether or not to practise contraception, to have abortions, to carry pregnancies to full term – in short, whether or not to regulate their fertility by traditional and modern chemical and mechanical methods. We note as we proceed why some individuals will terminate a pregnancy at all costs, even risking life and health to do so, and why others have a fatalistic or casual approach to the results of their activities and the outcome of their pregnancy. These materials are presented within the context of a brief account of some current problems encountered in micro-economic demographic modelling exercises based on rational decision-making premisses, and of recent attempts to build bridges between ethnographers and economists.