Since the oil boom and the nation-building process under Sultan Qaboos in 1970 Oman has undergone a rapid demographic, social and economic transformation. In the 1980s, Omani birth rates were among the highest in the world and pregnancies not regulated. However, since the mid-1990s after the implementation of a national ‘birth spacing campaign’ fertility levels have fallen remarkably throughout the oil-rich Gulf state. Recent demographic publications even speak of a ‘fertility revolution’ in light of its speed and scale. However, the underlying processes of this change as well as its consequences and meanings on the local level remain largely unexplored.
This paper examines Oman’s socio-demographic change through the prism of women’s re-productive histories across three generations. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic field-work in a northern Omani town, I discuss how cultural values of reproduction and practices of family planning have changed over the past 50 years. Building on theoretical work within the interdisciplinary field of anthropological demography, I challenge the common assumption that reduced fertility results from a desire for smaller families and changed values of children. In-stead newly introduced bio-medical discourses seem to motivate women to regulate their births in order to avert the manifold risks that have become associated with frequent pregnancies and births.