From Central to Marginal?

Abstract

Historically, child care, in much of Africa, was a communal responsibility especially through the practice of kinship fosterage. However, as a result of recent socioeconomic changes, there is some evidence to suggest that a shift is taking place in community perceptions about the continuing benefit of kinship fosterage for children in particular. Instead, the roles of parents are being foregrounded in the socialization process. Despite this, there is evidence to suggest that large numbers of parents are retreating from their responsibilities. In this way, traditional safety nets that existed for children are being chipped away, leading many to look after themselves or explore alternative sources of support and care. Therefore, this article aims to explore the extent to which current perceptions of kinship fosterage are changing in Ghana.

Keywords

kinship fosterage social change parenthood children’s well-being Ghana

Introduction

It is widely accepted that historically child care, in much of Africa, was a communal responsibility due to the belief that while parents may bring forth a child, many other people will be, and should be, involved in the socialization process.¹ This was because the training of children was perceived as so crucial that it was imperative for members of the extended family to participate in the socialization process in order for them to grow up into well-trained and disciplined adults.² Among the Ga of southern Ghana, for example, there was a belief that parents tended to pamper their children and did not exercise that “little bit of hardness, if not harshness, that Gas believe to be an essential ingredient of the socialisation process.”³ As a result, they were not perceived as the best people to look after their children and should certainly not keep all of them.

This corporate responsibility of child rearing was largely carried out through kinship fostering—a process whereby children were passed on to people other than their own parents, for training services or companionship without parents losing parental rights.⁴ This practice was seen to cement kinship or friendship bonds, reaffirm family ties or political relationships, and sometimes provide companionship or household help to a childless person or an “empty” nest.⁵ It also helped to redistribute the costs of raising children among the wider family and thus provided a safety valve, a social insurance, if you will, for those who were not able to raise their children.⁶ Thus it can be argued that child fosterage served as a source of social capital, as the social relationships forged from fostering provided useful resources, for both biological and foster parents, as well as for foster children, particularly, but not exclusively, during times of family crisis. The practice was seen to benefit children, in particular, as it enabled them to gain access to resources, receive a good education or learn a trade such as cultivation techniques and animal husbandry, fishing, metal work, sculpture, weaving, Koran teaching, music, among others.⁷ Education was, in fact, a key reason for the purpose of kinship fosterage, but this education was not merely about academic achievement but also about discipline and upbringing, including learning good behavior, politeness, and coping skills.⁸ Also, kinship fosterage was seen as a form of child protection, as within the context of widespread polygamy, mothers looked for ways to save their children from their co-wife/co-wives’ intimidation and threats of witchcraft. As a result, this motivated mothers to send their children to close relatives for foster care rather than keep them in a home where they were possibly in danger of being hurt in some way.⁹

However, since the beginning of the twentieth century the continent of Africa has experienced enormous social and economic transformations that have raised questions about the continuing benefits of kinship fosterage. There is some evidence to suggest that recent years have seen a shift in perceptions of kinship fosterage among communities across the continent, with many pointing to the deprivation and abuse to which foster children are subjected, which abound in the national media of various countries. Instead, biological parents are increasingly being looked upon as the best people to look after their children. However, the extent to which these perceptions are being realized can also be questioned, as at the same time as parents are becoming the focus of child rearing, there is evidence to suggest that large numbers of adults are retreating from the responsibilities that come along with parenthood because of their inability to cope with its increasing responsibilities and demands, leaving behind an increasing number of inadequately parented children.¹⁰

Therefore, this article aims to explore the extent to which current attitudes toward, and perceptions of, the concept of kinship fosterage are changing among adults and children in Ghana and the impact this has had on parental roles and the lived experiences of children within the context of the family. This article is based on literature reviews and data collected from two studies conducted in Ghana. Data for the first study, which explored local perceptions of children’s rights, constructing childhood and the socialization of children and the implications for the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Ghana, were collected during ten months of fieldwork in Ghana between May 2005 and March 2006, primarily through focus group discussions (FGDs) with 291 children and approximately 100 adults as well as the administration of questionnaires with 133 children and interviews with community leaders in mainly two communities in Accra, the capital of Ghana: Ga Mashie and Nima, two major slum areas where unemployment, illiteracy, and overcrowding are extremely high and pose severe challenges for the quality of life of many children in these communities. Data for the second study were collected between August and December 2009 as part of a one-year project on children’s perceptions of physical punishment in Ghana funded by the Nuffield Foundation in the United Kingdom. For this study, data were gathered through interviews with 24 children from four communities—Nima, Bukom, Pokrom Nsaba, and Dodowa (two urban and two rural) as well as through the administration of questionnaires to 158 children from these four communities as well as from private schools in affluent areas of Accra. Ten FGDs were also conducted with adults in the four communities as well as with various groups of professionals in Accra.

Child Rearing as a Communal Responsibility

Children have long been, and continue to be, valued in families in societies across Africa. According to Therborn, “if the African family has a single supreme value, it is probably fertility.”¹¹ Without children, there is a belief that “a person will leave no heirs to survive him or her and to die childless is to die completely.”¹² As a result, individuals spare neither efforts nor resources to establish, restore, or prove fertility.¹³ This high value placed on children, or at least on “the having of” children, influences the child-rearing and parenting styles adopted within communities. Hence, because of this high value placed on having children, child care, in much of Africa, was a collective social enterprise in which parents and kin were active participants.¹⁴ Verhoef puts it well when she claims that as many African communities saw children as “gifts from God” they were meant to be shared.¹⁵ Thus it was expected that members of the wider kinship group would participate in the rearing of children informally and more formally through the system of kinship fosterage. In fact, their involvement was seen as essential to ensure that children grew up into well-trained, disciplined, responsible, and respectful individuals.

In Ghana, for example, the procreation of children was the responsibility of parents, but the training of the children was not exclusively theirs, as within the context of the kinship group the role of parents was shared by others.¹⁶ Therefore, every man and woman in the extended family about the age of the child’s father and mother was recognized by the child as her parent.¹⁷ As a result, children were expected to give these elders the same respect and obedience that they gave to their parents. In turn, these elders were obliged to participate in the socialization of children and treat them as if they were their own. Among the Dagomba of northern Ghana, for example, a number of women were called mother by a child, because although a mother was the main point of contact in the early years, once the child was weaned, other members of the kin group could share a significant role in his rearing.¹⁸ The traditional socialization process is particularly interesting in matrilineal societies such as the Akan who are mainly located in southern Ghana. Due to the fact that lineage was traced through the mother, a child belonged legally to his mother’s family, not to his father. Although a father was obliged to look after, and train, his children, he had no authority over them. Rather, it was their maternal uncle who wielded authority and held the right to “pawn” the children in order to settle any debts he may have incurred and this sometimes involved the removal of children from the father’s custody to the creditor of the uncle where they would stay until the debt had been repaid.¹⁹

Residential pattern also facilitated the involvement of the extended family in the rearing of the child; for example, among the Ga of southern Ghana, men and women, lived in separate compounds. The male house (hiiamli) was the main lineage homestead and accommodated the lineage head and other male members of the family. The women’s house (yieamli) was home for female members of the house by patrilineal descent and those who were daughters or granddaughters of women who were born in the compound or in some other women’s compound of the same house.²⁰ The women’s house included all children of women, except boys over the age of thirteen who moved to the men’s house to live and work alongside their fathers. These domestic arrangements enabled other members of the family other than parents to become intimately involved in the rearing of the children of the house. As Azu argues, “any woman of the yeiamliand, in fact, every older person has the right to send these children on errands and to punish them when they go wrong.”²¹ Boys who move into the paternal hiiamli were also subject to control, not just by their father, but by all the men in the house.

The practice of kinship fosterage was key to the child-rearing process. In fact, in many Ghanaian (and other African) societies kinship fosterage, was not, historically, an ad hoc practice; rather, it was institutionalized. For example, among the Gonja of northern Ghana, it was an obligation of parents to send their children either to the mother’s brother or the father’s sister depending on their sex.²² The exception to the rule was the eldest son who was not required to leave his father’s house. This was not practiced ad hoc, but was an obligation that had to be fulfilled. Therefore, the system developed included some checks and balances to ensure the protection of children who essentially had to be fostered. This meant that male children were sent to their mother’s brother and female children to the father’s sister as it was believed that this would ensure their protection.²³ The rationale behind this system was that if a boy was given to his father’s sister, he would come under her husband’s tutelage, not hers which was seen as problematic; and if a girl was given to her mother’s brother, she would be placed under the immediate control of his wife, not him which could leave her exposed to abuse.²⁴ Goody explains the problem these possibilities presented:

Just as it is recognised that a parent’s sibling is less permissive than the parent himself, so it is accepted that a foster parent related by affinity rather than kinship would be an even harsher master. And this is almost never allowed to happen. Instead if the child to be fostered by the mother’s people is a girl, she will go not to the mother’s brother’s wife, but to a sister, preferably a younger sister of the mother.²⁵

Thus unlike in Western countries, the fosterage of children did not occur only after a crisis such as the death or divorce of parents. It was institutionalized. Even when both parents were alive, fosterage was practiced as it was a widely accepted method of child rearing and checks and balances were introduced into communities to reduce the possibility of maltreatment within this institution.²⁶

Kinship Fosterage under the Lens of Scrutiny

However, in recent years the benefits of kinship fosterage has been questioned. According to Nsamenang, children who have been fostered have experienced some material deprivations, academic underachievement, and emotional distress.²⁷ Writing of Ghana specifically, Appiah and Afranie argue that the increasingly commercialization of child domestic work has weakened the contractual arrangements that accompanied traditional fostering practices, leading to children providing domestic services without receiving any benefits as was the case in the past.²⁸ Goody adds to this by arguing that under the banner of “fostering” children are often abused because fostering may mean little more than food and shelter in exchange for labor with no provision being made for attendance at school.²⁹

Furthermore, Riisoen et al. claim that because of financial difficulties in Ghana, some aunts who foster children proceed to send them to work in Accra, the capital city, as they cannot afford to look after them themselves.³⁰ Related to this, this traditional social welfare system is now being exploited by the global multibillion dollar human trafficking industry, which sees children as commodities or merchandise to be sold into slavery and trafficked from their homes for their labor. As a result of this industry, individuals not related to families are able to gain access to children for abusive and exploitative purposes without the benefits that were attached to traditional fosterage arrangements such as education or skills development.³¹ This is supported by Adepoju who asserts that deepening rural poverty forces poor families to give up their children to traffickers, under the pretext of providing them the opportunity of securing good jobs and better lives. He gives an example of Togo, where he argues, child trafficking begins with a private arrangement between an intermediary and a family member, with promises of education, employment, or apprenticeship, which only turn out to be exploitative jobs as domestic workers.³² Thus poverty and economic stagnation and decline, which have been a feature of the economic context in Ghana as well as much of Africa since the early 1980s, have also had a significant impact on the way the practice of kinship fosterage is now carried out in many instances.

Education has also been pointed to as key factor behind many of the changes that have taken place. As many parents are now seeking ways to ensure that their children receive a formal Western-style education which is in line with current labor market demands, increasing numbers of children are entering the school system and spending longer periods of their waking time in educational environments. According to Nsamenang, this limits and reduces their role as care providers, as well as contributors to the subsistence of the family.³³ In Jette Bukh’s study of Tsito, a village in southeastern Ghana, she claimed that parents, in particular mothers, were now bearing full responsibility to feed, clothe, and educate their children as their (children’s) economic contribution to the family business, farming, was restricted to Saturdays and school holidays.³⁴ As a result, children were now perceived as burdens instead of the assets they once were. While this change may have led some sectors of the population to decrease their family size, it can also be argued that the increasing expenditure associated with the costs of education has led many parents to concentrate on the education and welfare of their own children rather than those of other members of their kin network.

Therefore, the rising costs of education alongside the economic hardships that many families face has meant that some are unable to fulfill their duties toward their relatives in the way previously expected of them and thus many are reluctant to take in the children of their relatives as they now see it as a burden—an additional mouth to feed, clothe, and educate—which they can barely afford. Hence, many prefer to send money to rural areas to support the extended family there rather than bring children of their relatives to live with them.³⁵ These changes are among those that have led Rhoda Howard to argue that “it is no longer possible to talk of the undifferentiated communitarian society as Africans are becoming increasingly motivated by individual, not collective advancement.”³⁶

None of this is to say that the kinship group no longer has a role to play within the socialization process or that their role is solely negative. Their role remains important, critical even, in the context of the aforementioned economic stagnation and decline. Goody explains the continuing importance of extended family in West Africa:

…extended ties of kinship (what some mean by the vague phrase ‘extended families’) are critical aspects of contemporary Africa . . . they are essential to situations in which the community can neither supply nor afford other forms of welfare.³⁷

This is further corroborated by Nsamenang³⁸ and Therborn³⁹ who argue that family and intrafamily support systems remain crucial in Africa due to the absence of effective social services or due to the weakness of institutions and social clusters of the State. Thus as there is no welfare system in much of sub-Saharan Africa, it is the family/kin who provide security, support, and care for its members, including children. Furthermore, it can also be argued that in recent years the HIV/AIDS pandemic has reinforced the importance of kinship networks although this is not without its problems and many children have been left to fend for themselves.

From Marginal to Central: The Increasing Role of Parents in Community Perceptions about Child Rearing

As a result of the questions that are increasingly being raised about the benefits of kinship fosterage for children, there is now some evidence to suggest that while parents were, in the past, not seen as the best people to look after their children, they are now increasingly being seen as the only people who can take care of their children properly. For example, in her study of the southwestern Nigerian town of Itapa, Renne found that younger people, in particular, found the practice of fosterage exploitative and detrimental to the education and moral development of a child. Many claimed that foster children are underfed, overworked, and that their access to education and hence, future success is hindered. Some younger people in the town justified their refusal to send their own children into fosterage by saying that foster parents may either be too harsh with their charges, or in the case of grandparents, too lax. Therefore, they felt that biological parents were best placed to be able to strike the best balance in terms of discipline and affection in child rearing.⁴⁰ In addition, some of the younger people who had had some education claimed that, “barring death or divorce, there is no one who will raise their children better than they can themselves.”⁴¹

This shift in attitudes and perceptions also emerged in my own research studies in Ghana in which both adults and children increasingly talked in terms of parents’ duties to children rather than a broader focus on the duties of other members of the kinship group. Many of the children who participated in both my studies indicated that they now saw their parents as the focal point of these rearing activities. Children in all FGDs for my first study on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Ghana repeatedly pointed to the need for parents⁴² to show love and attention to their children as they felt that this was critical for ensuring that their needs and rights were met. According to one participant in a FGD:

Parents must show love to their children—because love forms the basis of everything. If parents love their children they will provide everything for them. (FGD with Youth Wing of Women’s Orientation Centre, Maamobi, February 4, 2006)

This is because in their minds once a child has parental love and attention all else will follow, including food, shelter, medical attention, clothes, education, and even the opportunity to express views and participate in decision making. The responsibility of caring for children, then, is firmly in the hands of parents. Comments made during FGDs with adults and children in Nima and Ga Mashie included:

Parents should look after the child.

The total upkeep of the child is up to parents.

Children must have basic needs provided for by parents.

Parents provide the necessities of the child.

Children have the right to go to school so you can get a job when you grow up and look after your mother and father.

Parents must take their children to school and provide them with everything they need to stay in school. If a child is sent to school he will grow up to become a responsible person and will take care of his parents.

Children have the right to go to school and when you grow up get money to look after your mother and father.

There is a need for parents to give children education so that when they go abroad they can look after them.

The involvement of other adults appeared to be positive and welcomed, as long as the child’s parents were nearby and remained chiefly responsible for her. It was when parents died or delegated their responsibilities to someone else that, according to child participants in the study, children began to encounter difficulties and hardships in life. Such beliefs were expressed in various ways:

Some children are orphans and their aunties do not want to look after them so they sleep outside get sick, raped and hit by a car.

They [children staying with guardians] are not sent to school so they will not get a better life.

Those who have parents can tell them their needs and if parents can provide them they will, but if you do not have parents you cannot tell anyone of your needs.

If you are staying with people other than your parents they will make you suffer.

When a child loses his/her parents the head of the family may promise to look after the child but he forces the child to do work before giving him food.

When children stay with guardians they send them to go and sell in the market and do hard work.

Some adults mistreat children because they are not their own.

When you give your child out to someone to take care of they do not take care of him as the parents would.

In fact, no positive comments were made about staying with a relative other than parents. A man in Nima summed it up well during a FGD with adults when he stated:

Those children sleeping on the streets are mostly orphaned, that is, they do not have their parents to take care of them even though they have guardians. A parent will not allow his child to sleep outside. (Second FGD with the Islamic Institute Congregation, December 30, 2005)

Therefore, parents are now increasingly being seen as the only people who can take care of their children properly despite the fact that some children did, indeed, live with guardians and other relatives and spoke well of them—at least ostensibly.

This issue also emerged in my more recent study on children’s perceptions of physical punishment in Ghana conducted between 2009 and 2010. In an interview I conducted with Sylvester Kyei-Gyamfi and Florence Quartey of the Ghana National Commission on Children for this study, they emphasized this particular point:

…although middle class parents have relaxed with their children, the other children who live with them are still punished severely e.g. for losing something, stealing. They are the first to be blamed if something goes missing even if they were not at fault. They are the ones who are starved, burnt with irons etc. Their issues are made worse because now we have estate houses and they are now locked in when the master/mistress goes to work so unless a neighbour is nosy no one knows their plight. (Interview with Sylvester Kyei-Gyamfi and Florence Quartey, August 13, 2009)

Thus while social change has had a positive impact on the relationship between parents and children within some sectors of the population, one particular group of children who have been negatively affected by social change are those who are not the biological child of their primary caregiver—that is, children who have been fostered or children who are staying with guardians—as they are more likely to be abused and maltreated than biological children. This is further supported by a number of comments made by children interviewed for this second study. Many of the twenty-four interview respondents pointed out that there were differences in the way children were treated and punished in homes depending on whether they were the biological or nonbiological children of the primary caregiver:

In some homes the parents do not punish their own children but they punish other children that are living with them. There are instances when children who live with other people get punished more severely than the biological children of those people. If some people are living with other children, they sometimes do not punish their own children, but they will be punishing the other children that live with them. Sometimes children who live with other people get punished for the least offence but those people don’t punish their own children that way. Children who do not live with their parents are punished more.

In fact, one of the interview respondents, “Ayele,” who lived with her auntie and only saw her mother occasionally, informed me that:

I wasn’t treated well by my auntie when her children were around but now that they are married, I’m treated well.

But despite the improvement in the way her aunt treats her, she prefers to be punished by her mother because:

My mother physically punishes me in a responsible manner [compared to her aunt with whom she lives] so I prefer her punishing me. But she hardly does anyway.

In another interview a boy, “Ato,” who lives with his grandmother and some other children, two of whom are the biological children of the grandmother, told us that:

Usually, children are treated the same way but when there’s not enough food at home, she gives the available food to her own children and asks the rest of us to wait.

Most adults participating in this research study felt that they treated all children in their care in the same way—biological or nonbiological. However, some acknowledged that some parents do treat children who live with them very differently from their own children:

Some people treat their children like eggs but the foster children they treat them harder and they do not know that that is the child they are really training. (3rd FGD Bukom) Some children do not live with their parents so it is like they do not ever do anything good. If they go and do something good they [the foster parents] refuse to see it as good. (2nd FGD Dodowa) If it is your child you cannot hurt them. But if it your brother’s child those are the ones you can do wicked things to so everyone who gives birth to their child should look after their own child. (2nd FGD Dodowa)

As a result of the data presented above, a correlation between staying with guardians and the maltreatment of children emerges. In fact, because of the differences some identified in the treatment between biological and nonbiological children, some adult participants felt that parents should look after their own children as can be seen from the last quote above. Thus data from both studies I have undertaken in communities in Ghana appear to indicate that increasingly, many adults and children are starting to focus on parents as the best people to look after their children.

However, there is also evidence to suggest that large numbers of adults are retreating from the responsibilities that come along with parenthood because they are not able to cope with its attendant demands. This point emerged in discussions with both adults and children in FGDs in Ga Mashie and Nima for my first study:

Adults do not have time for their children; they are always busy with their business and they don’t make children feel happy. Parents do not take good care of their children. Some children are not treated well. Some have to fend for themselves because their parents do not feed them. Some children are not taken care of by parents so they leave the house to work. Some [children] are not getting love and care—their parents don’t have time for them. Some parents are lazy. They do not want to work to take care of children. They want their relatives to take care of the children.

While there are various reasons for this retreat by parents, including irresponsibility and the belief that the extended family still has obligations to one’s child, endemic poverty in Ghana, which prevents parents from looking after their children as they would like to, is a critical factor for consideration. Adults in the FGDs undertaken in my first study recognized that while children should not work, they also stressed that for this to be possible parents need to be gainfully employed. One comment that was made by a number of adults participating in the study was that while they might be aware that children are entitled to certain rights (notably education and medical care), they could only be expected to provide these if they have the resources. As one group of adults informed me in Ga Mashie, “there is a need to make jobs for the mothers so they can look after the children. If the mother does not work, the child will not go to school” (Second FGD with Adults at Freeman’s Memorial Chapel, February 27, 2006). In another FGD with adults, also in Ga Mashie, one participant expressed this feeling in the following way:

Parents/guardians cannot look after their children so the child has to go and sell ice water or go fishing to get money to eat . . . So it is not how the community wants it, but it is like this because of circumstances. (First FGD with Adults at Freeman’s Memorial Chapel, February 22, 2006)

Thus while parents often know their responsibilities toward their children and the basic rights to which they are entitled, they are also very much aware that their economic situation may not always allow them to take care of their children the way they would ideally like. Therefore, poverty and the lack of resources have an impact on the ability of families to fulfill their responsibilities.⁴³

However, it must be acknowledged that the issue goes beyond the availability of resources. During discussions with children for this same study, it emerged that the problem was not only about the lack of resources within families but also about the way available resources—however small—were allocated. Data collected from child participants highlighted the extent to which many children are not adequately cared for, not just because of poverty but also because of parental irresponsibility and the mixed priorities of parents, which leaves children’s needs and rights not catered for, even when money is available. This is because of the importance placed on adults upholding their status in society through contributing to the funeral expenses of relatives and acquiring cloth. For example, despite the stress placed on education by both adults and children, the latter also pointed out that even when parents have money that can be used to send their children to school, there is no guarantee that they will spend it on the essential needs of their children such as education. They rather use it to buy cloth or new clothes for themselves or spend it on weddings, funerals, and parties, which enhance their status in society:

Some parents say they do not have money for school fees, but then they spend it on funerals, parties and clothes. Some parents—even if they have money they will not send their children to school. They [parents] do not pay school fees. Instead they use the money to buy clothes. When the parents get work they will not send the child school, they use it for their own things.

Hence, although many adults attach a high priority to children’s right to education, they also highly prioritize the need to increase, or maintain, their status and prestige in their communities. Thus these two priorities often clash and result in children’s needs being overlooked or being considered last.

As a result, what we see here is a contradiction between children’s increasing focus on their parents as the best people to look after them, and the reality in the country, which shows increasing numbers of parents abandoning their responsibilities, and this raises questions. For example, why do many children continue to place an emphasis on parents as those who will take care of their interests when the evidence suggests that for a significant number of children in Ghana, parents are abandoning their responsibilities? It is possible that this continuing insistence by children that parents will take care of them is because of the belief that compared to other adults, parents are more likely to look after them properly and consider their best interests—at least to some extent. Therefore, the emphasis placed on parents by children, in particular, may be a recognition that they must focus their attention on parents as their primary carers as the alternative is very often much more unfavorable.

Conclusion

Therefore, despite the questions that have been raised about kinship fosterage and the increasing focus of children on their parents as the best people to take care of them, it appears that many adults are not able, or prepared, to bear this responsibility. The problem this poses for many children is that members of their wider kinship network are also increasingly reluctant to take over their care due to economic hardships. Hence, at the same time as parents are increasingly delegating or abandoning their responsibilities, members of their wider kin group are also retreating from their perceived traditional caring role—apart from on an irregular basis. The resulting outcome, then, is that a gap is created in the child-rearing process that some children proceed to fall through, leaving behind an increasing number of inadequately parented children. Oppong, for example, links the increase in street children in Accra to this retreat by parents:

The emergence of a serious problem of street children in Accra and elsewhere is also a visible and tragic sign of the breakdown of parental care of numbers of older children. Adults are not only retreating from parenthood, they appear in many instances unable (or possibly unwilling) to cope with its responsibilities and demands.⁴⁴

Moreover, in light of this parental retreat, some children are looking elsewhere for care, and very often, this is outside the kinship group. This issue emerged time and time again in Ga Mashie in particular during my first study where a number of children made comments such as the following:

If a girl is not provided for at home she will go out with someone who can give her that and this leads to prostitution. Some parents do not provide for their children’s needs so they engage in sexual activities and get money to look after themselves.

Having found the care they are looking for outside the family context, these children may no longer feel the need to fulfill their duties to their parents, including showing them respect and being obedient, which are perceived as critical values that must be instilled in children during the socialization process. As one child said, “parents do not talk to their children when they do something bad—because if a parent does not take care of their child they cannot advise them” (Second FGD with Out of School Children at Freeman’s Memorial Chapel, February 20, 2006). When such a parent then wants to give advice to his children, they do not want to listen. They would prefer to listen to whoever it is that is taking care of their needs, which is increasingly the role being played by older men as “boyfriends.” As one group of children noted in Bukom Square, Ga Mashie, “when you ask your mother and she does not give you, and you have a boyfriend who does give you, you will do what he says instead of your mother” (First FGD with Out of School Children at Freeman’s Memorial Chapel, February 20, 2006). Thus parental retreat may be leading to a transfer of control over the parent’s traditional rights and services over their child to those who are not even kin—something that even the traditional practice of fosterage did not achieve.

As a result of these developments, any safety valve that existed is being chipped away, as many children are falling through the gap and ending up looking after themselves or forging new relationships outside their kinship networks to ensure their survival. And while this situation leads some to be concerned that some children are growing up without adequate “parental care” as we can see in Oppong’s comment above, we must also not lose sight of the way these developments may lead to a change in family dynamics (especially in a context where reciprocity is so highly valued)⁴⁵ and enable children to explore new family forms on the street or elsewhere that go beyond kin and blood, and thus possibly provide them with new opportunities and freedoms.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Part of the findings presented in this article is based on a research project funded by the Nuffield Foundation, UK.