Kinship ‘matters’: Continuity and change in children’s family relations across three generations in Rwanda

Abstract

Studies of children and youth in Africa increasingly document fundamental changes in young people’s lived experience. However, most studies neglect to locate children’s experiences and actions within their broader historical, social and institutional context. Drawing from 10 consecutive months of historical and ethnographic fieldwork in Rwanda, this article examines how young people have reproduced and changed their kinship relationships across three generations as they live at the interface of multiple rule systems, ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’.

Keywords

Agency children family generations kinship Rwanda social change youth

Systems of kinship have historically structured young people’s social relations in Africa. However, since the early 1990s, new social studies of African childhood and youth have primarily been concerned with individual experience and actions, especially those of exceptionally vulnerable young people (Ofosu-Kusi and Abebe, 2016). While this focus on individual lives has demonstrated that even the most marginal children have agency, it has come at the cost of understanding continuity and change in children’s kinship relationships and how families navigate their rapidly changing institutional environment (Punch, 2015).

In the case of Rwanda, this pattern is particularly acute. The devastation wrought by The 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, Genocide legacies, and two decades of rapid reconstruction and development have contributed to a child and youth research agenda that is focused on crisis and risk (see, for example, Sommers, 2012; Williams et al., 2012) and development priorities, such as children’s rights and schooling (see, for example, Pells et al., 2014; Williams, 2017). This agenda largely regards young people’s lives as sites for technocratic interventions aimed at advancing individual and national development. But childhood is fundamentally a relational institution: young people’s lived experiences are embedded within generational and broader local, national and global relationships of power and affection (Huijsmans, 2016a). As Williams (2016) demonstrates in relation to students’ experiences of schooling in Rwanda, these relationships not only influence and inform young people’s subjectivity, awareness of possibility and sense of meaning, but also the constraints and opportunities that shape their lives. Thus, it is critical to locate and examine their experiences and actions within a relational framework.

During colonialism and early independence in Africa, anthropologists and clergy recognised the importance of documenting a subject’s experience ‘always in its immediate setting of the household and family’ where the individual is the focus of ‘wider relationships’ (Mair, 1934: 31; for Rwanda, see, for example, Erny, 2005; Maquet, 1954; Pauwels, 1974). Although these studies tend to present structural-functionalist perspectives on kin groups that rarely foreground children’s experience (cf. Codere, 1973), they clearly demonstrate that children’s lives were the focal site for broader processes of production and social reproduction, which occurred through the mechanisms of children’s informal education and marriage (Fortes, 1969; Goody, 1982; Levine et al., 1994; Mair, 1969; Reynolds, 1991). Accordingly, anthropologists understood that any change in children’s education and marriage patterns would alter the kinship system and create fundamental social change (see Mair, 1969; Parkin and Nyamwaya, 1987; Reynolds, 1991).With this understanding, mid-20th-century African ethnographies traced how ‘Western’ institutions (e.g. the Church, state, market economy) were influencing kinship in Africa (see, for example, Goody, 1982; Kilbride and Kilbride, 1990). Scholars, who largely portrayed Africans as being acted upon, boldly predicted how these changes would reshape the African family: with the rise of capitalist modes of production, Marxist anthropologists predicted a rise in gender and intergenerational conflict, while modernisation theorists predicted that the ‘traditional’ African kinship system would gradually transform into a ‘modern’ family system, epitomised by the nuclear family (Burnham, 1987; McKinnon and Cannell, 2013). Radcliffe-Brown (1950: 45–46) questioned these assumptions early on, but they have largely persisted in normative discourse. Moreover, they have contributed to a shift away from studying kinship in Africa and elsewhere (Carsten, 2004).

These trends solidified in the late 20th century with the call for new social studies of childhood to foreground children and accord them ‘the status of participants and constructors in the very processes that make their – and our – world’ (Alanen, 1988: 64). While important exceptions exist (see, for example, Abebe, 2013; André and Godin, 2014; Berckmoes and White, 2016), subsequent studies have responded by focusing on young Africans’ individual experience, agency, and rights with limited reference to kin. In cultures where interdependence - not independence - has been the goal of childrearing practices (Levine et al., 1994; Nsamenang, 2006; Rogoff, 2003; Serpell, 1993; Shweder and Bourne, 1984), this approach risks overstating young people’s individualism and motivation to resist elders and ‘tradition’ (Cole, 2011; Durham, 2008) and understating the resources they have in family (see, for example, Abebe, 2013; Punch, 2014). As a consequence of this approach, we lack the relational evidence needed to theorise how and why children’s lived experience has been changing and how these changes are transforming the way African societies are reproduced.

Studies of children, youth and social change must account for family relationships because humans have interdependent, ‘linked lives’ with kin that span the life course; furthermore, macro-historical change is experienced within this relational context (Elder, 1994: 6; also Berckmoes and White, 2016). Studies that provide this relational view suggest that while kinship is changing in Africa, young people’s relationships with kin remain predominant (see, for example, Abebe, 2013; Alber et al., 2010; Tafere, 2015). In part, this is because the interdependence and mutual reciprocity that characterise these relationships can help family members access opportunities and mitigate uncertainty (Alber et al., 2010; Hashim and Thorsen, 2011; Punch, 2014). Thus, we often see young Africans navigate their rapidly changing environment by subjecting themselves to, and (re)positioning themselves within, existing relational structures that provide economic and social opportunities (Christiansen et al., 2006; Cole, 2011; Hardgrove, 2017; Vigh, 2009).

In the case of Rwanda, we know that the 1994 Genocide and rapid development have reconfigured family relationships (Human Rights Watch, 2003; Pells et al., 2014). But how and why and to what effect? And how do these changes fit within on-going processes of continuity and change? These questions demand that we (re)theorise childhood as a relational concept and locate children’s experiences and actions within the institutional and generational relationships that shape their lives (Huijsmans, 2016b). To this end, I use the term ‘child/ren’ as a social age category to emphasise young people’s relationships with those who have achieved the generational status of adulthood (see Berckmoes and White, 2016: 292).

In the work that follows, I address these questions by examining children’s kinship relationships across three generations in Rwanda, from Belgian colonialism (1923–1962) to the post-Genocide period (1994–2014). To begin, I explain my methodology and methods and introduce the study population. In the main body of the article, I present and discuss my findings. I conclude by summarising these findings and main arguments, and identifying implications for theory and practice.

Research methodology and setting

The research I present here is from a doctoral study I conducted in central Rwanda for 10 consecutive months between 2012 and 2013 and three weeks in 2014. In this study, I explored how three generational cohorts experienced and navigated childhood and coming of age amidst political and structural violence and rapid change. Rather than focus narrowly on ‘crisis’ childhoods, individual agency or exogenous forces, I examined and traced how ‘ordinary’ young people reproduce and change the institutions that shape their lives.

Methodologically, I approached this task from a historical institutional and relational perspective: that is, I examined how children and their families experienced and engaged with the primary institution that has shaped childhood and children’s transitions to adulthood over time: marriage. In Rwanda’s kinship-based culture, this approach allowed me to identify how and why institutions and institutional actors – from the family to the church and state – influence children’s lives differently and also how young people influence processes of institutional reproduction and change as they transition to adulthood.

This approach required historical and ethnographic methods capable of engaging multiple generations in reflective discussions about their memories of childhood and coming of age. To this end, I developed a small urban study in Kigali and a rural community ethnography in Rwagati village and the surrounding Inkombe sector.¹ Five in-depth, multigenerational family studies comprised the heart of the project (see Table 1). I primarily used purposive sampling to achieve a cross-generational, gender-balanced sample with social, economic and ethnic backgrounds similar to the local population. In total, over 100 young people and 70 adults aged 12103 actively participated in the research.

Table 1.

Multigenerational family studies.

Generational cohort	Childhood and marriage during:	Family study	No. of males	No. of females
	Childhood and marriage during:	Family 1	Family 2	Family 3	Family 4	Family 5 (urban)
	Ethnicity:	Hutu	Tutsi/Hutu	Hutu	Tutsi	Hutu
Grandparents’ generation (b. 1923–1947)	Belgian colonialism (1916-1961)	Celestin and Concilie	Alexis and Aurora	Francine	Janviere and wife	Pacifique	3	5
Grandparents’ generation (b. 1923–1947)	Belgian colonialism (1916-1961)	Celestin and Concilie	Alexis and Aurora	Rosa	Janviere and wife	Pacifique	3	5
Parents’ generation (b. 1946–1977)	Two Republics (1962-1994)	Clement and wife	Adrien and Aida	Francois	Chief and Josie	Pascale	6	8
		Camille		Renee	Jacques and Janine
		Chantal^a		Fidel and Redempta
Children’s generation(b. 1984–2001)	Post-Genocide(1994-present)	Christophe and Claire	Augustin, Anne, Aimee and Aimable	Rachelle	Julien, Jeanne, Justin and Jean Baptiste	Patrick and Patricie	7	6
Total		7	8	7	9	4	16	19

Chantal and four of her children live in her parents’ compound.

My research assistant (RA)/translator and I used mixed-methods, some of which included participant observation; 15 focus groups with students, out-of-school youth, and mothers; informal and semi-structured interviews; a journal project with 23 students; three mock radio talk shows with youth; and time-use charts. For the family studies, we also conducted life history, caregiver, and genogram interviews with 35 core participants aged 15-90. It was essential to use a wide range of methods with young people because many could not draw or write legibly.

In addition, I consulted historical archives and conducted 58 key informant interviews. This research helped me contextualise and interpret participants’ memories and understand the broader political economy of childhood in Rwanda.

Conducting research with marginal and war-affected children and families meant that we had to communicate, guard trust and manage expectations very carefully (see Boyden, 2000, 2004; Hart and Tyrer, 2006; Morrow, 2009). This process – which was on-going – began when we carefully explained the research project and consent at first meeting. To participate, individuals provided written informed consent. Young people under age 21 provided written assent and a guardian’s written permission to participate. Participants could opt-in to subsequent activities with oral consent.

Because this study is predominantly rural-focused, it offers a limited understanding of how kinship has been changing in Rwanda’s urban centres. Further, to achieve ethnographic depth in my family and community research, I had to limit my sample size. Thus, the empirical record and theory would benefit from research that replicates this study in other regions. It would also be valuable to use this methodology in other kinship-based, post-colonial contexts to see whether it yields similar findings.

The study population

The lives I explore here are not representative of all Rwandans, but they do fit broader patterns evident in in-depth studies by Codere (1973) and De Lame (2005), among others. The three generational cohorts studied primarily grew up in the Buganza region of central Rwanda, a rural highlands region of countless hills covered in a patchwork of farm plots. In 2013, basic infrastructure was expanding quickly in Inkombe sector. Electricity arrived along the main road in late 2013, and in 2014, free Wi-Fi became available at the sector office. However, the main dirt road to the highway was often impassable and water was scarce. As in the past, households continue to rely on children to cook, fetch water, collect firewood, care for younger siblings and livestock, and help with cultivation.

Within the families studied, very few individuals had access to wage employment or political influence. Most children grew up in peasant households that subsist on small land plots and some animal husbandry. Five grew up with fathers who were Tutsi colonial sub-chiefs and/or church-educated leaders. In any given cohort, two-thirds attended some primary schooling; less than a quarter attended secondary school (see also King, 2014, Ministry of Education, 2015). The majority identify as Catholic or Protestant. About a quarter are Tutsi, one is Twa and the remainder are Hutu or of mixed background.² Only two are Rwandan refugee ‘returnees’. Overall, each successive generational cohort has been poorer than the last due to rising land scarcity and political and structural violence (see also André and Platteau, 1998; Ansoms and Rostagno, 2012; Uvin, 1998).

Remarkably, each cohort’s childhood and coming of age coincided with a distinct period in Rwanda’s history. The ‘grandparents’ generation’ were children during Belgian colonialism. They married in the turbulent years leading up to the 1959 Revolution and independence in 1962. Their children, the ‘parents’ generation’, were raised during the Two Republics (1962–1994). The majority married and had children just prior to the 1990–1994 civil war and 1994 Genocide. Most of their children, the ‘children’s generation’, were born since the Genocide, but a third remember childhood prior. A third are married (in/formally) with children.

Findings

Kinship and agency: Historical ideals and practice

When I asked grandparents to relate their early memories of childhood and coming of age, their stories shared similarities. These elders were born into a patrilineal and patrilocal kinship-based lineage system. Within lineages, customary marriage determined the boundaries of membership: if their parents’ marriage was sanctioned by the family and bridewealth was given, children belonged to their paternal lineage; if not, children belonged to their maternal lineage (see also Bushayija, 1966; Ntampaka, 1997). This remains the case in practice, but since 1978, only civil marriage determines a child’s legal status.³

Children’s lineage membership determined their place of residence, their social status and their access to resources. In this resource-scarce environment, membership also defined which elders and which children held reciprocal obligations to each other within what was understood to be an implicit intergenerational contract (see also Byanafashe, 1997; Erny, 2005; Ntampaka, 1997). Within this contract, adult kin were responsible to provide for, educate and marry the children within their lineage. They were also responsible to sponsor legitimate sons into social adulthood by providing bridewealth and a marriage land inheritance, if available. Children were educated to respect and obey every elder and labour on behalf of their lineage until they married.

Elderly Janviere explained these reciprocal obligations saying, ‘We had to respect our parents, we obeyed whatever a parent asked of us […] Parents had to build a house for you and help you get married’. Similarly, Celestin recounted, ‘In your father’s eyes, you were always his child, so you were supposed to take care of your father’s cows because from his cows came your bridewealth, and he made you a man’. Sons who showed absolute obedience and respect to their elders were deemed to be ‘well-educated’; they could represent their fathers and expect more resources than less-compliant siblings. Similarly, a well-educated daughter was idealised as ni nyampinga, ‘the bride who unites [the wealth of] two hills’. Her reputation ensured she would be married well.

Through the social process of customary marriage, children transitioned to the generational status of adulthood and assumed their gendered adult roles within their lineages (Bushayija, 1966; Erny, 2005). Being socialised within this intensely relational, interdependent and intergenerational context made young people and their elders acutely aware of their reciprocal roles and responsibilities as well as their social position within Rwanda’s gendered, gerontocratic and status-based hierarchy.

Elders often shared memories, like these, of a more ordered past in which kinship ideals were clearly understood. However, their own childhood experiences both support and complicate this simple narrative. On the one hand, the highly structured, reciprocal nature of lineage membership allowed children and elders to draw heavily on their relational resources: they not only understood their obligations, but also what they could expect from others. This interdependence made household composition fluid. For example, children like Josie were moved between households in response to broader lineage needs, such as elder care (see also Byanafashe, 1997; Codere, 1973). However, it was also common for children, like Francine, to leave home to live with (and work for) a relative to escape maltreatment or poverty. On the other hand, participants’ early life histories demonstrated that kinship was not only a network of belonging and care but also a distributive mechanism that placed the interests of the group over the individual while reinforcing the status of the lineage’s strongest, most favoured members (see also De Lame, 2005). In this lineage hierarchy, which resembled the unequal social hierarchy in Rwanda, members were not equal (see also Erny, 2005; Maquet, 1954). Children who did not show absolute respect and obedience to their elders, or did not act in the interests of the group, lost favour and often faced harsh punitive discipline, such as beatings or being disinherited or disowned. For example, as a boy Mugabo conflicted with his wealthy father. When he married, his father only gave him one cow, while his brothers received many. Similarly, illegitimate children, step-children and maternal orphans had limited access to either lineage or state resources. Half of the grandparents’ cohort (and many other participants) fell into these categories. Thus, the reciprocal and distributive aspects of children’s kin relations were complementary and favourable when group well-being was the goal, but they could be treacherous when an individual’s actions threatened another member’s status (see also Erny, 2005; Meschi, 1974).

Sommers and Uvin (2011) argue that Rwanda’s hierarchical, rule-bound culture limits young people’s capacity to act (also Sommers, 2012). However, I found that children have many established ways to achieve their objectives. Chief among them is to act covertly and silently. For example, Aurora secretly solicited help from her father’s overlord to refuse her arranged marriage. Francine abandoned her father’s cows to hide outside the Mission window to listen in on lessons. A young Celestin took his little stepbrother from his abusive father to ‘visit’ their grandmother with no intention of returning him. Similarly, young people routinely remarked that they ‘left at night’ to secretly elope or migrate to Kigali. They use ‘quiet agency’, as Grant (2015) terms it, to improve their lives – especially when acting against group interests.

Second, children who had favour with kin also had ‘social’ agency: that is, they could work together with others to achieve culturally valued life goals, such as customary marriage or schooling, which would otherwise be unattainable. This collective action was usually very creative – an opportunistic and sometimes cunning ‘do what it takes’ process in which roles and responsibilities became flexible and rules and norms were subverted to achieve the group’s goal. For example, in contrast to his ideal narrative above, Celestin was an illegitimate maternal orphan who never knew his father. However, he enjoyed the favour of his lineages. Thus, when it came time to marry, both exceeded their customary obligations: instead of negotiating a ‘free’ wife (nkuli) for their illegitimate son, his maternal aunt provided a calf for his bridewealth; his paternal uncle provided a marriage land inheritance. This inheritance was so far beyond the customary rules that Celestin later gave the land back to avoid conflict with his younger (legitimate) male cousins.

Across generations, individuals and groups strategically used the tactics inherent in ‘quiet’ agency to navigate constraints and pursue opportunities. But if children had the favour of kin, they also had ‘social’ agency. Thus, pleasing authority was not just a cultural or political imperative: in this unequal society, securing favour enhanced a child’s agency, and this improved their life chances.

Reproducing and changing kinship relations

With the introduction and expansion of European and global institutions during colonialism (1895–1961) and following independence, young Rwandans increasingly encountered individuals and groups beyond kin. Children now lived at the interface of multiple institutional ‘rule’ systems, ‘endogenous and exogenous’ (Nsamenang, 2002: 96). As they engaged with both, they reproduced and changed kinship rules, roles and relationships. In the following generational analysis, I illustrate these dynamics by focusing on young people’s interactions with the Church, schooling and children’s rights.

Children and the Church prior to 1994

The dark politics, history and legacy of the Church (primarily Catholic) in Rwanda have been well documented (see, for example, Carney, 2014; Longman, 2010). But this is not the story parents and grandparents recounted in their early life narratives. Their memories were of escaping work and the compound to attend church and meet children from other hills. While these actions were recounted as benign, unexceptional aspects of participants’ early lives, young people’s engagement with the Church had a significant impact on the kinship relationships that bound their lives.

Pacifique, Aida and Adrien each explained that children who attended church learned to read and write – skills their parents did not have. Some, like these, used their newfound literacy to covertly write courtship letters to a boy or girl they met at church (see also Ahearn, 2001). Adrien explained, ‘It was the time of democracy’, meaning that letter writing allowed children to pursue a marriage relationship in a modern, ‘democratic’ way based on choice and mutual attraction, rather than the best interests of the group. Although parental consent was still required for marriage, these secretive courtships challenged generational power structures. They also made marriage and processes of social reproduction more about the individual than the group.

Children’s involvement with the Church also challenged gender and generational norms and indigenous beliefs and values. At a time when adolescent girls (umwangavu, umwari) were restricted to the compound, those – like Pacifique and Aurora – who could go to church gained a newfound freedom of movement and association. As young people increasingly attended church classes and became literate, donned European clothes, were baptised and given Christian names, prayed and married in the church, they encountered new forms of authority, morality and spirituality; acquired new forms of knowledge and status; developed new social networks; and adopted new categories of belonging and identity that extended far beyond lineage and clan. The more children engaged with the Church, the more they took on – and inhabited – a Christian identity, and with it, modernity. As they did, they diminished the exclusivity of family relationships and the authority and knowledge of elders.

But children did not simply engage with the Church and dispense with kinship. Rather, they weighed this new involvement against other opportunities and obligations. Thus, while young Christians like Ada and Adrien increasingly chose their own partners through written courtships, they also continued to regard customary marriage – not religious or civil marriage – as the essential first marriage even though the state did not recognise traditional unions after 1962.⁴ They did so because customary marriage provided resources for adulthood and demonstrated their status and belonging within their lineages . Thus, even as kinship institutions were being weakened, children’s continued engagement with them ensured their reproduction.

Schooling and kinship during the Two Republics

Following independence in 1962, President Kayibanda established ‘fee-free’ mandatory universal primary schooling to redress colonial inequalities related to education (Hoben, 1989). Under President Habyarimana (1973–1994), access was expanded and quality improved⁵ (King, 2014). Despite this, school attendance and completion were very low within the parents’ generational cohort⁶ (n = 37): one-third completed up to 3 years of schooling, two-thirds did not go beyond Primary 6 and only 5% completed secondary school. These completion rates resemble national averages for the period (see King, 2014).

Education studies explain these poor outcomes by showing that schooling did not redress structural inequality, as proposed; rather, itdeepened the regional, ethnic and socio-economic divisions that contributed to the 1994 Genocide (see, for example, Hoben, 1989; King, 2014). Findings from this study support this argument. But I find that schooling also created significant divisions within families. It did so in two key ways.

First, primary school attendance became a common source of conflict between children who wanted to attend school and parents who did not want them to. A retired primary teacher recalled, ‘[Children would say to parents,] “I’m tired! Let me go to school. If I’m late the teacher will beat me.” But the parent would say, “Stay here, come and help me work!”’ Here, conflict is related to parents’ need for their children’s labour. But Pascale recounted that many parents, like hers, simply did not value schooling:

In that time, you missed school not because your parent lacked the means to send you, but because they did not want to send you to school. They did not care about education! You could find children whose parents were poor, but they took them to school. But our parents chose to keep us at home and told us to take care of the cows! That was their mentality. They used to say, ‘If you don’t take care of the cows, you will not come back in our house!’ So, when you didn’t have a choice you had to take care of the cows to keep your place in the family.

These narratives reveal that school-related disagreements contributed to intergenerational conflict and weakened children’s respect for their elders. These dynamics also help explain low attendance rates and dropout.

Second, schooling created a class divide between siblings who attended school full-time and those who did not. This situation was prevalent because few siblings had the same opportunities: most households only sent one or two children to primary school full-time – usually a son or their favourite – and only 6%-9% of students could advance to secondary school (Hoben, 1989: 48). Siblings who remained home took on the student’s roles and responsibilities. With minimal schooling, they remained ‘backward’ peasants, while their student-sibling advanced to join the educated class. At age 50, Josie explained that her more educated brothers still look down on her, even though her labour benefited them:

Josie:

When they finish school they have their lives, but they crush you – you will always be the unfortunate sister […] They come with their wives who went to school also; they look at you as if you are a useless dish. They see you as a poor sister who came to beg, isn’t it?

RA:

Does that mean that if someone went to school, it’s precious, you have more value?

Josie:

So much more.

Over time, this class divide within families has only widened as sons/daughters marry within their class and land plots shrink.

Because so few children attended school full-time during the Two Republics, children’s informal education and kinship relationships have remained predominant despite family conflict.

Kinship in the ‘New Rwanda’: Did ‘rights’ go wrong?

The 1994 Genocide and post-Genocide reconstruction and development introduced unprecedented changes in children’s lives (see also Pells et al., 2014). Life histories suggest that the most fundamental impact of the Genocide and its legacies for children was the loss of adult kin (see HRW, 2003, for national patterns). In every family study, this loss was substantial. Children lost family due to death, flight, imprisonment, abandonment and/or soldiering. Some also effectively lost kin to overwork and physical or mental illness. In Rwagati, these losses were exceptional and exceptionally gendered: the village was almost entirely women before the Gacaca (community) trials began to return Hutu husbands from prison in 2007. Without husbands, brothers and uncles to help, women struggled not only to support and discipline children but also to pass on kinship norms and values; as Concilie bluntly stated, ‘We were too busy surviving to pass on our culture’. At the same time, rapid state-led reconstruction and development was introducing children to new national and international institutions and actors. These dynamics converged to influence children’s kinship relationships in complex ways. Participants’ responses to the introduction of children’s rightsillustrate these dynamics well.

In Inkombe sector, parents responded to children’s rights laws (see Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion, 2011), policies and discourse in very different ways. My village chief and his wife, Josie, both Tutsi survivors, could afford to recognise their children’s right to full-time schooling because they had land and some employment. In addition, their four eldest had FARG (Fond d’Assistance pour les Rescapés du Génocide) scholarships for schooling. However, most parents had less access to resources and most prioritised household development over national development priorities (e.g. schooling). Consequently, they recognised their children’s new rights more selectively. As Adrien learned the new rules, he beat his children less. Just home from prison, he allowed Aimee to attend school full-time; however, he forced Aimable to quit because he needed his labour for farming. A few parents, like Fidel, blatantly ignored their children’s rights. Local leaders could do little in response (see also Pells, 2012; Pells et al., 2014).

Children interpreted rights discourse rather differently from adults, but also from each other. From radio shows, government sensitisation campaigns, and children’s rights organisations, most understood they had the right to attend school, have a say in their lives, say ‘no’ to parents, and not be beaten (see UN General Assembly [UNGA], 1991: Art. 12, 13, 15). Unlike the law, they did not limit these rights to people aged 0–18; ‘children’ was a generational category. Beyond these shared understandings, difference emerged.

Secondary students, like Aimee and her friends, demanded recognition of their legal rights to enhance their freedom and life chances. Balancing their responsibilities against their rights, they often refused curfews and dress codes, left the compound without permission, and ignored parents’ requests for help. Sometimes they did so for the sake of work or studies.

By definition, out-of-school young people (the majority) were not experiencing their right to schooling. Many were not realising their right to basic provision. Unsupported, rights were about making choices autonomously. Augustin explained, ‘Today we are independent. My parents cannot make decisions for me. I choose by myself what I want and I say, “Let me do that which is important for me.”’

Young children learned their rights – as they learn most things – by observing and imitating older siblings. They learned well. Parents complained that children often refused (or took hours) to fetch firewood and water, gather grass for livestock and cook – all essential and quintessential childhood tasks.

With rights discourse telling them they have the right to say ‘no’, and parents who struggled to fulfil their reciprocal obligation of care, children no longer felt obligated to obey, respect and labour for their caregivers. At the same time, adults were confused about the limits of their authority and how to enforce it. Without the freedom to beat their children for disobedience, parents were unable to secure their children’s labour, so they worked long hours. Elderly Concilie reflected, ‘Having children nowadays, it is not like before. Today, having children does not help you’. Conflict was widespread as family members tried to renegotiate gender and generational roles, responsibilities and power relations (see also Tafere, 2015).

Overshadowing these dynamics and moderating children’s behaviour was the reality that although adult presence and mutual understanding had diminished, children’s family relationships remained their primary source of social and economic support. Development had delivered electricity and schools, but the state has yet to become the dominant welfare provider. Thus, even as conflict threatened relationships, young people continued to invest in reciprocal relationships of care with kin: Aimable laboured for his abusive father, Adrien, in the hope of bridewealth and a marriage land inheritance; Jeanne provided childcare for her aunty, who supported her schooling. When these young people faced obstacles to achieving life goals, they could call on kin; they had ‘social’ agency. Thus, when Aimable was ready to build his own home, his father lied to authorities to get a permit for him to build illegally on family land. In contrast, Adrien beat his eldest son, Augustin, and refused to give him bridewealth or a land inheritance because Augustin had refused to labour exclusively for him. When children like Augustin lacked this reciprocal care, they typically ‘left home without telling anyone’; they used ‘quiet’ agency to try to improve their life chances apart from kin.

Conclusion

Across generations, modern institutions and exogenous forces have converged with kinship institutions to shape children’s lived experience. But endogenous actors – children and their families – have played a significant role in determining how these forces influence their relationships with kin. When young people, living at the interface of multiple rule systems, actively and opportunistically engaged with both kinship and modern institutions, they changed and reproduced kinship rules, roles and responsibilities. Over time, they shifted gender norms and transformed intra- and intergenerational power relations. But they also reproduced the importance of these relationships by continuing to invest in long-term, reciprocal relationships of care with kin.

Seeking to improve their lives, young people navigated their changing environment opportunistically. If they lacked family support for their actions, they acted covertly, alone or with the help of others. These acts of ‘quiet’ agency were more likely to change, than reproduce, kinship norms. However, when young people faced obstacles to achieving culturally valued life goals and they had the favour of kin, they also had ‘social’ agency. These collective projects generally reproduced kinship institutions.

By locating children’s lived experience within broader historical, social and institutional processes and relationships, it becomes evident that we are not observing an evolutionary transformation from tradition to modernity in Rwanda. Rather, we are observing a reordering in response to the convergence of two institutional systems, ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’, which are both characterised by structural inequality. Living at the interface of these systems, a few privileged children accessed opportunities in modern institutions, moved up the social hierarchy and expanded their networks beyond kin. However, the majority have remained dependent on reciprocal relations with kin even as their elders have become less capable of fulfilling their reciprocal obligations to them. Today, an alarming number of children lack adequate opportunities or support in either system. Consequently, they are looking beyond the purview of kin and state to ‘improve themselves’ and survive (see also Berckmoes and White, 2016; Sommers, 2012).

Future child and youth research in rapidly changing, conflict-affected countries like Rwanda must take a relational and generational approach to studying children’s lives. This approach provides critical insights into the micro-social dynamics that underpin broader patterns of reproduction and change. But it also uncovers how and why different children experience and respond to systemic change differently. With these findings, we can (re)theorise childhood as a relational institution and gain deeper insights into children’s changing lives so that we can support their well-being more effectively.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Timothy Williams, Solange Fontana and three anonymous reviewers who provided extensive feedback on earlier drafts.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

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

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research for this study was funded in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (No.752-2013-0061). The author is grateful to the Oxford Department of International Development, who provided financial support for the publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Kirsten Pontalti

Notes

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