Maya Children: Helpers at the Farm

Karen L. Kramer

Among the Maya of Xculoc, an isolated farming village in the lowland forests of the Yucatán peninsula, children contribute to household production in considerable ways. Thus this village, the subject of anthropologist Karen Kramer's study, affords a remarkable opportunity for understanding the econmics of childhood in a pre-modern agricultural setting.

"This is an original and important contribution to the cultural anthropological field of sociodemography and family studies. Overall it gives us a critical addition to demographic transition studies by providing an explanatory framework for the maintenance of high fertility in a subsistence agricultural context. In Karen Kramer's hands life history theory provides a powerful critique of standard wealth flow theory. Just as important, her methods of measuring child productivity set a new standard and probably invalidate or at least call into quesion traditional measures of net child productivity."
‹Raymond Hames, University of Nebraska-Lincoln


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