Developmental Idealism and Cultural Models of the Family in Malawi

Arland Thornton (), Rachael Pierotti, Linda Young-DeMarco and Susan Watkins

Population Research and Policy Review, 2014, vol. 33, issue 5, 693-716

Abstract: This paper examines the extent to which developmental idealism has been disseminated in Malawi. Developmental idealism is a set of beliefs and values about development and the relationships between development and family structures and behavior. Developmental idealism states that attributes of societies and families defined as modern are better than attributes defined as traditional, that modern societies help produce modern families, that modern families facilitate the achievement of modern societies, and that the future will bring family change in the direction of modernity. Previous research has demonstrated that knowledge of developmental idealism is widespread in many places around the world, but provides little systematic data about it in sub-Saharan Africa or how knowledge of it is associated with certain demographic characteristics in that region. In this paper, we address this issue by examining whether ordinary people in two settings in Malawi, a sub-Saharan African country, have received and understood messages that are intended to associate development with certain types of family forms and family behaviors. We then examine associations between demographic characteristics and developmental idealism to investigate possible mechanisms linking global discourse about development to the grassroots. We analyze data collected in face-to-face surveys from two samples of Malawian men in 2009 and 2010, one rural, the other in a low-to-medium income neighborhood of a city. Our analysis of these survey data shows considerable evidence that many developmental idealism beliefs have been spread in that country and that education has positive effects on beliefs in the association between development and family attributes. We also find higher levels of developmental idealism awareness in the urban sample than we do in the rural sample, but once dissimilarities in education and wealth between the two samples are controlled, awareness levels no longer differed between urban and rural respondents. We explore how these beliefs intersect with longstanding local values and beliefs in Malawi. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Developmental idealism; Globalization; Africa; Family; Gender; Fertility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11113-014-9322-0 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:poprpr:v:33:y:2014:i:5:p:693-716

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... es/journal/11113/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11113-014-9322-0

Access Statistics for this article

Population Research and Policy Review is currently edited by D.A. Swanson

More articles in Population Research and Policy Review from Springer, Southern Demographic Association (SDA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().