Relation Of Childbirth To Maternal Age And The Interval Between Births Among The Pueblo Indians

Birth records for the last 28 years were collected for a typical Indian village, the pueblo of San Juan in New Mexico. From a list of 1076 births secured from the books of the adjacent parish, only 282 could be verified by families living in the community, and these form the basis of this study. Children are always christened, usually within the first ten days of life. Twenty-seven years was the modal age at which women gave birth to viable children and included about half of the mothers; the range was from 13 to 45 and the distribution approximately normal. For the same mother the modal interval between successive births of children who lived to be christened was 23 months and the range 8 to 78. The graphic representation of the data results in the curve being skewed to the right but 90% of the cases are normally distributed about the mode between 8 and 42 months. Since 1924, when record taking was started by the Red Cross Nurses, 8% of the children have died without being christened. If typical of the preceding period, this percent would not seriously affect the above results. The shape of the curve corresponds exactly with that compiled by March and Davenport for colonial women. It is significant that in two distinct races living under very different social and climatic conditions the characteristic interval between births should be identical. This abstract comprises the entire "article," and was copied verbatim. See refno #8136 for similar information.