Most women in the West use contraceptives in order to avoid having children. But in rural Gambia and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, many women use contraceptives for the opposite reason - to have as many children as possible. Using ethnographic and demographic data from a three-year study in rural Gambia, 'Contingent Lives' explains this seemingly counterintuitive fact by juxtaposing two very different understandings of the life course: one is a linear, Western model that equates ageing and the ability to reproduce with the passage of time, the other a Gambian model that views ageing as contingent on the cumulative physical, social, and spiritual hardships of personal history, especially obstetric trauma.