Jan Brunson – författare

Based on almost a decade of research in the Kathmandu Valley, Planning Families in Nepal offers a compelling account of Hindu Nepali women as they face conflicting global and local ideals regarding family planning.  Promoting a two-child norm, global family planning programs have disseminated the slogan, “A small family is a happy family,” throughout the global South. Jan Brunson examines how two generations of Hindu Nepali women negotiate this global message of a two-child family and a more local need to produce a son. Brunson explains that while women did not prefer sons to daughters, they recognized that in the dominant patrilocal family system, their daughters would eventually marry and be lost to other households. As a result, despite recent increases in educational and career opportunities for daughters, mothers still hoped for a son who would bring a daughter-in-law into the family and care for his aging parents. Mothers worried about whether their modern, rebellious sons would fulfill their filial duties, but ultimately those sons demonstrated an enduring commitment to living with their aging parents. In the context of rapid social change related to national politics as well as globalization-a constant influx of new music, clothes, gadgets, and even governments-the sons viewed the multigenerational family as a refuge.  Throughout Planning Families in Nepal, Brunson raises important questions about the notion of “planning” when applied to family formation, arguing that reproduction is better understood as a set of local and global ideals that involve actors with desires and actions with constraints, wrought with delays, stalling, and improvisation.

Based on almost a decade of research in the Kathmandu Valley, Planning Families in Nepal offers a compelling account of Hindu Nepali women as they face conflicting global and local ideals regarding family planning.  Promoting a two-child norm, global family planning programs have disseminated the slogan, “A small family is a happy family,” throughout the global South. Jan Brunson examines how two generations of Hindu Nepali women negotiate this global message of a two-child family and a more local need to produce a son. Brunson explains that while women did not prefer sons to daughters, they recognized that in the dominant patrilocal family system, their daughters would eventually marry and be lost to other households. As a result, despite recent increases in educational and career opportunities for daughters, mothers still hoped for a son who would bring a daughter-in-law into the family and care for his aging parents. Mothers worried about whether their modern, rebellious sons would fulfill their filial duties, but ultimately those sons demonstrated an enduring commitment to living with their aging parents. In the context of rapid social change related to national politics as well as globalization-a constant influx of new music, clothes, gadgets, and even governments-the sons viewed the multigenerational family as a refuge.  Throughout Planning Families in Nepal, Brunson raises important questions about the notion of “planning” when applied to family formation, arguing that reproduction is better understood as a set of local and global ideals that involve actors with desires and actions with constraints, wrought with delays, stalling, and improvisation.

This handbook presents a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of gender in demography, addressing the many different influences of gender that arise from or influence demographic processes.  It collects in one volume the key issues and perspectives in this area, whereby demography is broadly defined. The purpose in casting a wide net is to cover the range of work being done within demography, but at the same time to open up our perspectives to neighboring fields to encourage better conversations around these issues.The chapters in this handbook carefully document definition and measurement issues, and take up parts of the demographic picture and focus on how gender plays a role in outcomes.  In other cases, gender often plays a cross-cutting role in social processes; rather than having a single or easily distinguishable role, it often combines with other social institutions and even other statuses and inequalities to affect outcomes.  Thus, a key factor in this volume is howgender interacts with race/ethnicity, class, nationality, and sexuality in any demographic setting.While each section contains chapters that are broad overviews of the current state of knowledge and behavior,  the handbook also includes chapters that focus on specific cultures or events in order to examine  how gender operates in a particular circumstance.