“The wife is the mother of the husband” - Marriage, Crisis, and (Re)Generation in Botswana’s Pandemic Times

Aug 22, 2026

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Forty years into Botswana’s AIDS epidemic, amid persistently low marriage rates across southern Africa, weddings rise in visibility as young people orphaned in the worst years craft creative routes to marriage. Guided by a pastor’s claim that “the wife is the mother of the husband,” the study frames marriage as an intergenerational relationship and an act of ethical (re)imagination. These conjugal experiments can generate unpredictable outcomes—innovation and life alongside failure and violence—while also regenerating persons and relations in response to AIDS-era crises and loss.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Research Article Context

Marriage, Crisis, and (Re)Generation

Intergenerational Ethics and Personhood

Empirical Setting: Wedding Practices in Botswana

Comparative Studies in Society and History (2025), 67: 3, 524–546 doi:10.1017/S0010417525000040 RESEARCH ARTICLE “The wife is themother ofthe husband”: Marriage, Crisis, and (Re)Generation in Botswana’s Pandemic Times Koreen M. Reece University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, DE [Email:](Email: Koreen.Reece@uni-bayreuth.de)[ Koreen.Reece@uni-bayreuth.de](Email: Koreen.Reece@uni-bayreuth.de) Abstract Forty years into Botswana’s AIDS epidemic, amidst persistently low rates of marriage across southern Africa, an unexpected uptick in weddings appears to be afoot. Young people orphaned in the worst years of the epidemic are crafting creative paths to marriage where—and perhaps because—their parents could not. Taking the lead ofa pastor’s assertion that the wife is mother of her husband, I suggest these conjugal creativities turn on an understanding ofmarriage asan intergenerational relationship. Casting marriage in intergenerational terms is an act of ethical (re)imagination that creates experimental possibilities for reworking personhood, pasts, and futures in ways that respond closely to the specific crises and loss the AIDS epidemic brought to Botswana. This experimentation is highly unpredictable and may reproduce the crisis and loss to which it responds; the multivalences of marriage-asmotherhood can be sources of failure and violence, as well as innovation and life. But it also recuperates and reorients intergenerational relationships, retrospectively and prospectively, regenerating persons and relations, in time. While different crises might invite different sorts of ethical re-imagination, marriage gives us a novel perspective on how people live with, and through, times of crisis. And marriage emerges as a crucial if often overlooked practice by which social change is not only managed but sought and produced. Keywords: regeneration; marriage; kinship; generations; crisis; HIV and AIDS; pandemics; Botswana; ethics; personhood; social change “When aman comes home, what does he expect to find?” The pastor paced in front of the assembled wedding guests with long strides, looking round at them expectantly. They waited, silent in anticipation. He stopped and faced them, sweating into a button-lined double collar that was starting to go out of fashion, his suit a lavish blue, the long tips of his shoes polished and pert.“A mother,” he answered himself, firmly, searching the crowd’s faces. We were gathered in straight rows of plastic chairs in the yellow twilight of an enormous, dusty tent, which had been pitched ina cleared lot atthe edge ofa village in © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence([http://](http://)[ ](http://)[creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0](creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. [https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417525000040](https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417525000040) Published online by Cambridge University Press Comparative Studies in Society and History 525 southeastern Botswana. The pastor resumed pacing past his lectern, an assistant manning the audio equipment behind him and occasionally leaning into a microphone to shout exhortations of his own. Two couples sat at the front, on either side of a tent pole, their families arrayed in the chairs behind them. Aside from a few older men in collared shirts and good vests, carrying their hats, the tent was full of women—most in blue patterned skirts, wearing the blue checked wool blankets and blue headscarves that signified they were married. Out by the roadside, a white, pockmarked sign announced the name of the ministry in black block letters: “CITY OF SIGNS AND WONDERS, also known as Revelation City.” A dust devil whirled through the spr

FAQs

What core argument does the article make about marriage during Botswana’s pandemic-era crises?

It argues that marriage functions as an intergenerational relationship shaped by ethical (re)imagination, enabling people to rework personhood, pasts, and futures under conditions of AIDS-related loss and crisis.

How does the study use the pastor’s assertion “the wife is the mother of the husband”?

It uses the assertion as a guiding lead to interpret marriage as a mother–wife–kinship conflation that reveals both risks (failure and violence) and possibilities for innovation and life.

What does the article say about the outcomes of these “conjugal creativities”?

It emphasizes that they are highly unpredictable: experiments in marriage may reproduce the very crisis and loss they respond to, while also recuperating and reorienting intergenerational relations retrospectively and prospectively.

Aug 22, 2026

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