Changing Attitudes to Family Planning in Bougainville
Patrick Nomos | 30/7/2021
(Photo Credit: Bougainville Kids, 2004 by Jan Gammage - courtesy of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau).
Following the referendum on Bougainville's independence from Papua New Guinea (PNG) held from 23/11 - 7/12/2019 there have been three meetings of the Joint Supervisory Body (JSB), to facilitate consultations between PNG and the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) on the implementation of autonomy for Bougainville. An important outcome of the most recent JSB meeting held at Wabag, Enga Province, PNG on 6/7/2021 is that a decision on Bougainville's autonomy will be finalised no earlier than 2025 and no later than 2027.
Fundamental to Bougainville's future, whatever its eventual degree of autonomy, is its ability to sustain its rapidly growing population. With almost 50 per cent of its population under 20 years of age, this will continue to increase the burden on social services such as health and education, placing further strain on an already fragile economy.
According to the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG), the population of Bougainville was recorded as 249,358 in the 2011 PNG National Population and Housing Census (PNG Census). With an estimated annual increase of greater than three per cent, Bougainville's population is now estimated to be approximately 300,000, ten per cent of whom (30,000) live on Buka Island. More accurate population estimates may not be known until at least 2024 because the PNG Census scheduled for 2020 has recently been deferred until 2024 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
One of the negative outcomes of Bougainville's rapid population growth is social pressure on the land available for food gardens and cash crops, resulting in social unrest and conflict within extended families. In the matrilineal Solos region of Buka Island, the right to use clan land for food gardens and plantations is inherited by women. Under this arrangement, females born to a land custodian inherit the right to use that land. Should they marry, their husbands may live with them on that land and help them to develop it. Males born to a land custodian don't inherit the right to use that land. If they marry, they are expected to live on their wife's inherited land. Since the area of customary land available for use on Buka Island is finite, the birth of too many children by a land custodian creates a situation where there may not be enough land to support them all as they, in turn, have families of their own.
Prior to the arrival of French Catholic missionaries in Buka in the early 1900s, traditional family planning practices and attitudes kept a check on the population's fertility rate. Village households were arranged so that men occupied the front section of a house while women occupied the rear section, which effectively limited the number of children born per couple. Herbal contraceptive "Bush Medicines" were also selectively used to limit family size. My great-grandmothers, who raised their families in central Buka in the early years of the last century, conceived six children and five children respectively.
With the gradual erosion of traditional family planning practices and attitudes following the arrival of missionaries in Buka, family sizes have increased substantially, so that families of nine or ten children per couple are common. In an extreme case, a woman in my village gave birth to over twenty children, several of whom died in infancy. When warned by local nurses about the possible risk to her health by her continued pregnancies, she boasted that she would continue having children until God told her to stop.
To assist women who want to stop childbearing or space their next child, the PNG government has partnered with organisations such as Marie Stopes PNG to ensure that all women, and men and girls, have access to family planning methods, through the availability of modern contraceptive methods. Marie Stopes PNG opened an outreach office at Arawa, AROB in 2015, but after its staff members were threatened by "hardliners", it relocated to Buka in early 2016. One of hardliners' objections to Marie Stopes PNG's operations in Arawa was that, in their minds, family planning will hamper the repopulation of Bougainville after the 1988-1997 'crisis' in which many Bougainvilleans were killed. This "populate or perish" attitude is similar to that of the Hahalis Welfare Society (HWS) that was active in Buka from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. The HWS, regarded by many as a cult, stressed the need for unrestrained reproduction to ensure a strong Buka and established a "Baby Garden" at Hahalis Village, Buka to achieve this outcome.
Despite some lingering negativity towards family planning in Buka, women who want to postpone their next birth for two or more years and those who want to stop childbearing altogether are taking advantage of the available contraceptive services. Although statistics on the uptake of family planning services in Buka are scarce, one of my female cousins, the eldest from a family of nine girls, opted for a tubal ligation procedure following the birth of her fifth child, and one of her nieces recently underwent the same procedure after the birth of her fourth child.
Image: Logo for Marie Stopes (PNG)