JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies
ISSN: 1530-5686
Mothering Among Black and White Non-Ghanaian Women in Ghana[1]
JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies ISSN: 1530-5686 Mothering Among Black and White Non-Ghanaian Women in Ghana[1] |
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Akosua Adomako Ampofo
Prologue
Although “race”, like “gender” is a socially-constructed category, “colour” still has deep meaning and significance for most people. Often disconcertingly so. In 1998, during a trip to Germany with my daughters, at the time aged two and five, we shared one such experience. The three of us were travelling in the tram (or streetcar) with my sister and her son, aged one at the time. My nephew is phenotypically “white” with fair skin and blonde hair, while my sister and I, and my daughters, are varying shades of brown. At one stop an elderly lady got on board and sat close to me. It must have been obvious that my sister and I and our children belonged together. As the journey progressed it became clear that the woman was very curious about our party of multi-hued individuals. When she could no longer contain her curiosity the woman asked me. I explained the family connections. She wanted to know how come my nephew was so white. I explained that his father was white. The woman then remarked matter-of-factly, “oh – he must have been very relieved that his son didn’t turn out dark.”
I was too amused by the old woman’s complete lack of sophistication and sensitivity to have room for any anger or irritation at the racial slur. My sister had decided, she explained later, that she did not have the energy to begin an argument with someone who was so obviously unaware of her racialised thinking. However, the entire experience set me thinking about the power that parents, and in my sister’s case mothers, have to transmit, and more importantly subvert, “ racial” identities to their children. Clearly, for the white woman the Caucasian child was central and powerful while the rest of the family were the “other”. But how do mothers transmit or circumvent such images and racial identities when it comes to their own children? What race, or ethnicity, does your child become when s/he does not necessarily share your race/ethnicity? The question itself poses a contradiction. These are the issues that this paper explores.
In today’s so-called “globalised” world, as we face the challenges brought on by living in an increasingly diverse socio-cultural society, the perspectives of the various population groups that make up this diversity must be acknowledged and understood, and the silent voices need to be heard. Essentially, in Ghana, with the possible exception of the highly industrious Levantine and Indian traders and business people, and despite the fact that being “white” or Asian, or speaking with a foreign accent, makes one highly visible, discussions about “race” are limited, and the life situations of non-Ghanaian women (and men) in Ghana remain mostly invisible. People who are not of colour in Ghana continue to be a curious “other” for whom, despite the usual privileges of class, “race” (or ethnicity) is rarely overtly imputed as playing a significant role in their life experiences and socialisation practices. And yet, not infrequently, one will hear reference made to “the white man”, or “Akwasi Obroni” [2] and his achievements and options. The implication is that the lives and experiences of these “others”, and their impact on the lives of members of the dominant society in terms of the production and reproduction, or the contestation of social inequalities, remain largely obscured.
Since the 1950s when African men on the continent who had gone to study abroad (mainly in Western and Eastern Europe, but later also in North America), began to return home with foreign wives, the incidence of “mixed” marriages became an increasingly evident phenomenon in the urban areas of Ghana where most of these men lived and worked. The increase in these “mixed” marriages has resulted in growing numbers of Ghanaian-descent children in Ghana consciously or unconsciously claiming multiple cultural, ethnic and perhaps even “racial” identities. The implications of this in Ghana, a relatively homogeneous society in terms of “race” (although not ethnicity), have hardly been addressed. While the discourse on ethnicity endures in salience in various aspects of Ghanaian society, discussions about “race” are hardly audible, being subsumed by conversations about the white “visitors” and their antics as tourists or expatriates, while race discourses focus on racism in America and Europe, and, more recently, and also disturbingly, on the role that “race” plays in the development of peoples. And yet children born into multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural families may contest, subvert or reproduce existing ethnic politics in interesting ways. Nonetheless, while motherhood and the socialisation of children has been an important arena of theoretical enquiry in feminist analyses, very little attention has been given to trans-racial, trans-ethnic and trans-cultural motherhood and its effects on transforming majority cultures.
Mothers who classify themselves as members of a social category that is presumed to be distinct from that of their children can contest and disrupt hierarchies of inequality by challenging racist ideologies and constructions. From a larger study that seeks to explore the lives of non-Ghanaian women and men who have migrated to Ghana, the current paper extracts the mothering experiences of white and black non-Ghanaian women living in Ghana, who are the mothers, or potential mothers of Ghanaian children. As one of these children myself it has been my experience that children from “biracial” or multicultural families vary greatly in the extent to which they identify with “Ghanaian” culture and I became interested in understanding the personal and racial politics of non-Ghanaian mothers, and how they transmit particular cultural identities to their children. The paper draws on data from an on-going study to examine how “white” and “black” non-Ghanaian women experience options to become mothers, how they construct their own cultural and mother identities, and how this informs their mothering practices both consciously and less consciously: what messages have they imparted about “race” and/or colour? Have they actively sought to expose their children to any particular “culture”? What are their own understandings about the mother role and do they see any differences between this and the role of a mother among the dominant culture? Ultimately, what do racial politics and culture have to do with mothering?
I begin the paper by describing my methods and the sample. Because the concept of race is so central to the current analyses, I then go on to discuss the problematic surrounding its construction and use. I continue by pointing out the ways in which the situation of multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-ethnic people have been located in the discourse. The rest of the paper is devoted to a discussion of my conversations with the interviewees. I focus on their own racial and ethnic identities; the options of motherhood as they perceive them; how they construct motherhood; the cultural identity of their children; and how these identities are transmitted and formed.
This paper draws on nine focused conversations[3] conducted with middle class “black” and “white” non-Ghanaian women in Ghana.[4] These data form part of an on-going research project on inter-cultural heterosexual relationships in Ghana and Europe.[5] I identified and recruited volunteers to participate in the study through the International Spouses Association of Ghana (ISAG)[6] and through personal contacts. Additional participants[7] were engaged through contacts made by some of the original interviewees on my behalf. None of the women I contacted declined to be interviewed, and all the women gave permission for the conversations to be tape recorded. The conversations took place in the respondents’ homes or my office at the university, and lasted between one-and-a-half and four hours. I followed an interview guide, but also explored issues that were raised spontaneously by the women during the interviews. I felt that the participants might want to be associated with their responses in any publications ensuing from this study; after all the contributions to the discourses on race, gender, and mothering are theirs. At the time of the interview they gave varying levels of consent regarding how I could cite them and my use of the data: all indicated that I could cite them as having taken part in the study, however, while some indicated that they could be linked to (some) of their responses, others wanted no direct association to be made between them and their responses. In the current paper all names have been changed and I have tried to remove all descriptions which might lead to direct associations being made to individual women.[8]
The historical and racially-inflected cultural dynamics that have shaped this work form an important link to this study and my own relationship to the data for the work is situated in a particular place and time and related to my own positionality as a mother of a particular “race”. The research is carried out in Ghana and is intimately connected to my life growing up in an “inter-racial” family. But it is also shaped by my experiences in Europe and America as an adult. The motivation for this study, therefore, obtains from my own history and my intellectual and political interests in the politics of identity.
The anecdote cited at beginning of the paper reveals the racialised thinking that remains prevalent for many “white” people. However, black people are socialised to be just as racialised in the ways that they construct individuals and their attributes and attitudes. Recently I gave a former graduate student and research assistant of mine a ride into town from campus. He commented on my driving as he had often done before, which, according to him, was “aggressive, like a man”. The comment was intended as a compliment. Later we got into another conversation about assertiveness and the ability to subvert cultural norms, both of which he considered as positive attributes that I had, and which he ascribed to my German heritage. I agreed that my German mother had brought her children up in particular ways that probably contributed to my possessing these “attributes”, but I insisted that my father was also culpable if my siblings and I had become “revolutionaries”, and that contrary to his conviction, this probably had little do with the “colour” of my mother’s genes.
According to the Oxford English Reference Dictionary (1995; 1996) “race” refers to “Any of the major divisions of humankind, having in common distinct physical features or ethnic background...a tribe, nation etc., regarded as being of distinct ethnic stock…a group of persons, animals or plants connected by common descent.” However, the dictionary also notes that, “It was not until the 19th century that … attempts to systematize racial divisions were made... Although this notion of race as a rigid construct has now been abandoned, some of the terms used in the classification (such as Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid), outlined by early 19th-century anthropologists such as Blumenbach are still in use... [S]cientifically it is accepted as obvious that there are subdivisions of the human species, but it also clear that genetic variation between individuals of the same race can be as great as that between members of different races, and that racial characteristics which might once have been distinctive have, with few exceptions, been complicated and obscured by long histories of interbreeding. Terms such as “black” and “white” really have little empirical meaning except in the most stereotypical ways (Stanfield 1993).
Like gender, race is a social, not natural category which people “acquire ... through their entry into historically specific and racist social relations.” (Aziz 1992:294). Progressively throughout the twentieth century, reputable anthropologists and biologists have demonstrated the fallacies inherent in categorising human populations along racial lines. Human genetic variability between populations of Africa and of African descent peoples, or Europe or Asia are not much greater than variations within those populations. Asserts Appiah, “apart from the visible morphological characteristics of skin, hair, and bone, by which we are inclined to assign people to the broadest racial categories – black, white, yellow – there are few genetic characteristics to be found in the population of England that are not found in similar proportions in Zaire or in China.” (1992:35). An equally important, and perhaps more familiar consensus is that differences in language, belief systems, or aesthetic attitudes – those that we may refer to us “culture” and that are most important in human relations – are not biologically determined to any significant degree. Yet “race” and “colour” hold deep meaning and significance for many people.
As an adult I find it extremely disconcerting when, in daily discourse, “ordinary” Ghanaians refer to Akwasi Obroni and his achievements in relative terms to those of the so-called “black” race. This was not my experience growing up as a child when there was a lot of black pride and a thriving nationalist spirit. Like Kwame Appiah, my siblings and I grew up straddling two worlds “divided by several thousand miles and an allegedly insuperable cultural distance, that never, so far as I can recall, puzzled or perplexed us much.” (1992, viii). Even as an adult, it was not until after my first visit to the US that I became concerned about how profoundly theories and practices of race affect daily living; how an emphasis on “phenotypic differences is linked to presumptions about moral character, personality, interpersonal behaviour and intelligence” (Stanfield 1993: 17). It is not that I had not been conscious of race, racism or racialised constructions of the world and their effects on the lives of people of colour especially. It was just that in my own experience, race, as a variable of stratification, was never quite as important as I experienced it to be when I moved to the US. I remember the first time I was confronted with a form where I had to check a box marked “race”. How I responded – or reacted – depended on my mood. Very often I left the form unmarked, sometimes I marked “other”, sometimes I checked the “African-descent” box. On rare occasions I would check the “European descent” box because, although, having been born and raised in Ghana I have tended to think of myself as “Ghanaian” more than anything else, I was annoyed at having to privilege one strand of my heritage over the other.
I found the US to be a society of uncompromising binary polarities that demanded that everyone be neatly classified into self-contained, mutually exclusive categories. If I supported the life of unborn children I could not be a feminist and I must be against the rights of women to self autonomy; if I was a leftist, socialist or Marxist I could not be a Christian because Christians belong to the religious right which is conservative; and if I was “bi-racial” I could not be “black”, and certainly not “white” – and vice-versa -- because to claim my European heritage meant to deny the African one – and vice versa.
All of this does has a great deal of relevance for the lives of supposedly non-racialised Ghanaians like myself, because, unfortunately, despite its invisibility, “race” appears to be growing into an increasingly salient aspect of Ghanaian social life along with ethnicity. International politics and economic liberalism are collaborating in ways that increasingly divide the world into a rich, “white” world and a poor, “black” world. Institutionalised cultural hegemonies polarise us further as Western (read: “white”) cultural practices are privileged and Third World and African (read: “black”) cultural practices are consigned to the category “underdeveloped”. Along with all of this the globalisation of information exchange have shown that racialised images and discourses are profitable commodities in today’s mass consumer culture, further entrenching “race”, over culture, as a variable of interest.
The armed uprising in our neighbour Côte d’Ivoire in 2002 have shown us what damage references to “real” or “true” nationals can bring. During 2003 a man who had put himself forward for election as MP in a bye-election in Ghana was taken to court as not “coming from that area”, not being an indigene. (It was argued that he had also not fulfilled the residency requirements for a non-indigene). The matter went to the Supreme Court who ruled for the plaintiff. However, public debate before and after the ruling indicate that the question of who a “real” anything is, is extremely significant for a lot of people, and its interpretation is as variable, with potentially dangerous references to ethnicity and, sometimes race.[9]
The inadequacy of the terms bi-racial, inter-racial, multi-racial, and even race, as expressed were obvious to me when one “white” respondent said, almost defiantly, “I don’t use that [term]”. She preferred to talk about cultural differences. And yet, we have been so strongly socialised to construct, or refer to cultural differences as racial and ethnic differences. The women in my study, and I myself, have inherited “race” and racialised discourses, but we also transgress the discourses and locales that “racialise” us, for example Birgit above, when she indicates she doesn’t do race. Throughout the interviews I consciously relied on the raised hands to signify the proverbial quotation marks when I referred to “race” or “Black”, “white” or “biracial”. The women I spoke with are all, to varying degrees, though some less consciously so, politicized by their cross-cultural relations and experiences. Most of them contest the discourse and labels, or enact antiracist agendas in their plans for their children’s schooling and experiences. In the rest of this paper I use the terms black, white, race, and their derivatives without quotations marks, not, as should be obvious, because I consider them unproblematic, but simply for ease of reading, and, to some extent, to distinguish between women from Africa and those from Europe and America. At some points I refer to the geographical heritage of the women.
Scholarship on interracial families and identity have generally come from a psychological, social psychology, social work, or counselling perspective, and, as I have already indicated, has not been taken up much by feminists or multicultural researchers (Twine 1998). As for issues of multi-racial or inter-ethnic mothering, that has largely been limited to work on white mothers who adopt black babies. Indeed, an important impetus for organizing the workshop on “Images of Motherhood” where I presented an earlier version of this paper, was the scarcity of feminist theorizing regarding 'motherhood'. Furthermore, racial identity is theorized exclusively as an identity marker of groups and persons of colour (Luke 1994). Most people on hearing or reading “race”, “racism” or “race riots” hear and see “black” (McKoy***) with its implications for black as pathological. The ideology of normative whiteness is too often constructed as a de-racialised and monolithic dominant other subjugating difference(s) which exempts whiteness as “non-race” ontology and epistemology. As Luke argues, “This legacy limits analysis of racial identity politics to embodied, “visible” racial difference as the only site on which to map theories of race-based identity. It lets whiteness conceptually off the hook as ‘not of color’ and thereby unchallenged as a powerful socio-political form of racialisation.” (1994: 52).
Work on biracial or multicultural children has focused primarily on issues pertaining to the children’s personality adjustments and the conflicts said to derive from experiencing conflicting adjustments to two cultures (e.g. Brown 1990; Poston 1990; Root 1990) with much of the research indicating the negative effects on identity, self-concept and self-esteem (Adler 1987; Johnson and Nagoshi 1986; Overmeier 1990). [10] Other research emanating from the US suggests that biracial children have “average” self esteem and develop greater sensitivity to diverse cultural values, practices and attitudes and are exposed to “richer options” by virtue of their “richer” bicultural heritage, are more extroverted and sociable, and are seen by others as having more socially desirable characteristics (eg. DeAnda and Riddle 1991; Johnson and Nagoshi 1986; Kerwan et al. 1993; Wardle 1987). Alternatively, mixed-race persons are exoticised. The rest of the paper is devoted to my respondents own perceptions about the place of race, ethnicity and culture in the socialisation of their children into racial and ethnic beings.
How the women themselves identify in terms of race and ethnicity has relevance for the ways in which they socialise, or are likely to socialise their children. While some of the white women described themselves as “white” or “Caucasian” when I asked them what race they were, others contested it. For example Birgit already cited above says when I ask:
Akosua: Do you think of yourself in ethnic terms?
Birgit: No, national terms
Akosua: How about race?
Birgit: I don’t use that for human beings
Akosua: You refuse to call people black or white?
Birgit: I don’t use the term ‘race’
Akosua: What do you use?
Birgit: Ok, its colour, but the cultural or the background is more important, or nationality, but even that one it depends where you grew [up].
Akosua: So if you were in the US and you are given a form to fill and you have to pick race, will you - ?
Birgit: I write ‘human’; I had this already once, even in Burkina Faso they use it. I wrote ‘human’ and there is no race [laughs].
Another woman, also referring to a form she had been required to fill says, “And they asked ‘race’ and I said ‘human’.... And then ‘tribe’ and I said ‘Irish’”.
Even those white women who self-defined as “white” recognised the burdens inherent in the reliance on racial categories. A US citizen, after stating that she is “white American” goes on to say:
“It is such a terrible tragedy [...] that we have this legacy, which we are still...struggling with. In my society, in any kind of social interaction across racial lines, ethnic racial lines, that [race] is ever present, and one of the things that I have [pause] most loved about Ghana is being out of that. [...] I never forget what I am but there is not an emotional burden, an emotional content to it. [...] my time in Ghana and Nigeria have been just so liberating to get away from that burden and now when I go home or when I work with colleagues, American colleagues, even if I’m in Ghana or in Washington [...] because of my experience here, I feel liberated. I feel freer, I’m out of that [short pause] and that’s a gift, [...]. I feel really great not living in those pathologies, although I get weary in Ghana as well constantly being reminded that I am a foreigner.”
The black women are more conscious of belonging to a shared cultural group; they consider their “Africanness” as creating a common bond of shared experiences and norms and consider racial and ethnic identities as less relevant for them. Mabel, a black East African woman, says she identifies as an “African”, and that her ethnic identity is less significant because she is “mixed” (her parents come from two different ethnic groups) and she is not “into ethnicity”. Another feels that there are many issues of cultural difference that may be challenging for white women that are not applicable to her because as an African woman she shares many common cultural practices and an identity as a person of colour with Ghanaians. She too self-identifies as an “African”. It is not that the black women do not self-identify with an ethnic marker, for in deed they do; however, they simply find ethnicity less salient for them in Ghana.
In a US study among white women who were in relationships with black men Luke (1998) found that the interviewed women all identified first and foremost with the culture of their partners even though their connection to that heritage is acquired, of shorter duration, and therefore, in many ways, weaker than the connections to the white culture into which they were born. The women I spoke with, while they all felt a strong connection to, or love for Ghana, emphasising the positive aspects of “Ghanaian culture”, still maintained personal identities such as “Irish”, “Scottish Canadian” or “Kenyan”. Somehow, they did not seem to find that living in Ghana presented a need to choose an ethnic or racial allegiance that conformed with their partners’.
Throughout the conference “Images of motherhood” where I presented an earlier version of this paper, motherhood was seen as a cultural construction, which, particularly in the West was generally confined in patriarchal structures of nuclear family ideals, while in Africa it was located more in extended family structures. Mothering in most African societies involves a collective responsibility held by a network of women, but also including some men, in a given community. For the African woman, the experience of being mothered as a child by a whole community and taking responsibility of younger siblings and fictive kin at an early age creates an ethic of caring and advocacy for a collective good. Fostering, that is taking responsibility for a child or children not one's own through a formal or informal arrangements is a common practice in Ghana. My own maternal grandmother and my mother-in-law, for example, nurtured, trained and socialized scores of children and the concept of being a mother is opened to include biological and legal mothers as well as nurturers and care givers.
Nonetheless biological parenting remains important and understanding the politics of childbearing is crucial to the understanding of conjugal relations in Ghana. Children bring prestige to the lineage and in the past were considered important economic assets. The birth of children is an important aspect of the marriage, ensuring the continuity of the lineage and “proof” of fertility. A woman’s fertility is so important that most ethnic groups have special ceremonies to commemorate a girl's entry into potential motherhood. Fortes (1970) observes that there is a deeply-ingrained idea that "normal" men and women should continue to bear children throughout their reproductive years. Hence, when couples remarry upon the death of a spouse or widowhood, subsequent marriages are likely to produce offspring (Anarfi and Fayorsey 1995). Childless individuals are, if not scorned as they once were, at least viewed with curiosity or pity. Among the Akan an impotent (and, hence, a childless man) was given the name kte krawa, or inadequate penis, and an infertile woman was referred to as boni, a term used to describe brackish water in which no fish can thrive. Sarpong (1970) also indicates that because the survival of the matrilineage depends on its female members, childlessness in an Akan woman is viewed as the ultimate betrayal. Bearing and raising children is said to be an Asante woman’s most important contribution to her lineage since they provide assurance of its continuity. Children are so important to the lineage and the family that childlessness remains an important reason for divorce, or, for men, the taking on of a second wife or the bearing of extra-marital children (Adomako Ampofo in press). Kwakye (2000) in her work on African-Americans in Ghanaian marriages notes that children play an important role in the relationship between the nuclear and extended family, and serve as a link between the foreign spouse and the family of the Ghanaian partner. She points out that the “outdooring”[11] of the children, an obligation for the Ghanaian family, cements relationships between African-American spouses and Ghanaian family members. Children also served to maintain links between African-Americans and their spouses’ families after the death of the Ghanaian spouse.
All the women I spoke with indicate that they expected to be mothers at some point in their lives. That is, none of them had ever consciously decided not to be mothers, although a couple of the white women acknowledged that being a mother was not a “necessary” aspect of their lives and that they did not “have” to be mothers. Explains Birgit, “Yes. I never thought I don’t want children but it was not that I necessarily have to [...] to tell the truth I didn’t really understand it [mothering] here. But here I think first of all, all women have children. It’s part of the system.” I could concur because I had myself never questioned whether I would ever be a mother or not as a young woman.
Helene, a white American, and her husband were was unable to have children and the couple have two daughters from his extended family; however, this is not a ready option for all childless women. Two women, both 40, are still expecting to be birth mothers, and one of them, Shirley, is certain that her husband does not consider adoption as a viable option. Other women have fewer children than they had planned or hope for. For example Anne, from Germany, aged 56, had wanted to have five children, but after several miscarriages she did not have her only son until she was 39. Mami, a Nigerian-born mother of two, who considers herself more American than anything else, and who had originally wanted four children tries to explain her desire for children:
“I don’t know why I want another child but its something you do [...] I’ve not really sat down to think about it, if you would have a child why would you want to have another child? What is it that you are looking out for or that you need to do with a third child. I just haven’t reached there yet. I am so overwhelmed with this one (laughs).”
While all except one respondent indicate that they did not experience overt pressure from their families, husbands or in-laws to have children, some did feel some anxiety from their partner’s families about the couple’s childlessness, or perceived delays in producing the next child. Mabel, a black Kenyan, had met her husband during a period she had spent in Ghana and had returned a few years later to get married. In the three years between her arrival and the birth of her son, three years during which she had deliberately delayed childbearing in order to adjust to her new environment, she had been prodded by “everybody and anybody [about her childlessness] [...] ‘is there a problem?’ [laughs] and I said no [...]”. Mabel finds that Ghanaian women have a lot of anxieties about childbearing although she understands the social pressures when she narrates an experience she had during her first visit to Ghana when she visited a doctor in connection with an aliment unrelated to her reproductive health:
“And he really went on [...] started lecturing me, oh he really patronised me [...] women, you wait too long then you start giving us problems. I said I don’t even have a boyfriend, he said ‘how come’ and I said ‘God hasn’t given me one’. And he said ‘you should help God’[...] and he went on [...] and I was 27. I was shocked! And they [Ghanaian female peers] were very worried for me.”
Shirley, a white Canadian, the one woman who has experienced both overt nudging and direct pressure to become pregnant explains:
“His [husband’s] mother wondered [when they got married], ‘does she want children?’ that’s the stereo type [about white women] [...] but I so love children [...] and I am sure that a lot of people think that it’s my choice that we don’t have a child [...] after I had the surgery she [aunt] was more concerned about my fertility than like was I okay [...] if we don’t have a baby I am sure it’s going to be an issue, but it will be very hard for my mother-in-law [...] he [husband] is her eldest son.”
On one occasion, Shirley’s husband’s aunt had summoned her specifically to have a conversation about her childlessness. Shirley found the experience to be quite disconcerting, more so perhaps because she herself badly wants to have children, and because of the beliefs that white women’s childlessness, unlike that of black women, may be self-chosen and imposed on an unwilling Ghanaian spouse. While Shirley’s husband was annoyed with his aunt for her insensitivity, he is also concerned that they have children and does not view adoption as an option. Clearly, such situations have implications for the mothering options of a non-Ghanaian woman.
All the women I spoke with acknowledge that childless marriages can be very stressful for Ghanaian women, but also for non-Ghanaian women, thus potentially putting a strain on the marriage, more so because “I am not a local girl” as Mabel, the 36-year-old Kenyan mother of a three-year old son puts it, “and it [the stain] might manifest with a kid appearing.” None of the respondents would accept husband’s extra-marital child easily, or at all, and all say how traumatising it would be. Mami, a Nigerian, insists it would be the end of her marriage, “I would take my children and go away [...] really I would just go away...that’s the one thing -- I’m not vengeful – [but] that’s the one thing I would want to plot to hurt you if he went out to have a child with someone else [...]”
The importance of biological motherhood is further reflected in the respondents explanations that it denoted arrival. Sylvie, now 70, explains how her mother-in-law, had initially been upset that her eldest son had married a white girl, yet, without any further signs of conflict, had sent a name for Sylvie’s first child when she heard of her birth. Mabel, who came to Ghana 40 years after Sylvie, still found that motherhood connoted arrival and acceptance, “When I got [my son] people now started telling me, ‘oh, so now you are one of us’. I was really surprised. Then it occurred to me that if I hadn’t had him I wasn’t really belonging [...] even my neighbours downstairs said, ‘now you are one of us, now you can stay’ and I had been here [...] three years!”
Unlike white women of African-descent children living in the UK, none of the women I spoke with described their maternal competence as having been called into question by their Ghanaian mothers-in-law (Twine 1998). Their Ghanaian in-laws respected them and accorded them the space to bring up their children as they saw fit. Nonetheless, like African in-laws in the UK, Ghanaian in-laws did try to influence child-rearing so that “Ghanaian values” would be inculcated. This was especially so for the white women, which seems to suggest that Ghanaian in-laws are not fully confident about socialisation and child-rearing practices among whites. For example, Helene, a European American, and her husband who have adopted two daughters was constantly encouraged by her mother-in-law to “make these daughters of ours, really aware of how privileged they are, they should not take for granted what they have [...] they should be aware of themselves as part of the wider family.” Helene herself appreciates the strong sense of family and kinship among Ghanaians and has taken it upon herself to consciously raise her African adopted daughters to appreciate this sense of community and responsibility.
Generally all the participants acknowledge that there are differences between their constructions of motherhood and those in the dominant culture. Some of them perceive that in their own (Western) cultures mothers spend more time with their children doing things together. For example Birgit commented that when she tried to organise a mothers and children gathering women simply dropped off their children:
Birgit: So I invited a few women to come with their kids and then some sent their children.
Akosua: [laughs]
Birgit: So I had the house full with children but the mothers were not interested. That was frustrating.
Akosua: Why do you think that was so?
Birgit: Ok, because first of all the idea is different. First of all here you don’t go with your children to – I mean maybe over Christmas or you go and buy an ice cream. Some people do but it is not very common that you take your children out. You go and see somebody and you take your children with you but you don’t go and see somebody because of your children. Or that the children can see these children. So the whole thing – I don’t know.
Birgit’s position, shared by some of the other mothers and would-be mothers, is that in Ghana, because of the acceptance that women will occupy personal spaces outside the domestic sphere, and because of the options to have ‘other mothers’, whether family members or hired help, women have the space to be mothers and to develop their careers. Birgit seems to appreciate the options that the having separate gendered spaces in Ghana affords each partner, and especially wives, to maintain a level of autonomy not usual in Germany.
Birgit: Ok, in Germany sometimes the nuclear families they are too close so they are all the time together. Every evening you sit with your husband in front of the TV, you only have common friends, you only have hobbies that you can share with your spouse and that one is too much [...]
Akosua: And here – people have their own space?
Birgit: They have their own space –
Akosua: Do you find yourself veering more towards the Ghanaian model?
Birgit: Yes, I need my own space. For example here everybody takes it for granted that you go to work. But in Germany everybody, every day they will see how your children behave, whether you neglect your children because you go to work [...]
Akosua: So they put a guilt trip on women for pursuing their professions?
Birgit: Oh yes! Anything – once your child slightly misbehaves its because you are not in the house.
Akosua: But not the father?
Birgit: Um mmm, not it’s the mother. For me, I really have a lot of advantages I think.
Yet at the same time Birgit also feels that the diverse spaces women occupy creates a certain distance between mothers and children once the children move out of the toddler stage. The very autonomy created by separate gendered spaces and other mothering that she so appreciates, results in mothers becoming less engaged with the day to day activities of their children which she seems to question.
Akosua: Do you think that in Ghana a good mother is constructed differently?
Birgit: Oh yes – very differently!
Akosua: How?
Birgit: [...] my personal impression is that they look after the children quite well for the first two years. [...] and then after 2 years the child can sit and wee wee and eat by himself. When they have money they start nursery or they leave the child with somebody or an elder brother or sister. [...] But then they care for good education, health, food. Sometimes physical education and discipline.
Akosua: What’s missing from your construction?
Birgit: In my culture that is different you have to invest much more [...]
Akosua: What do you have to do that here you don’t have to do?
Birgit: The understanding of education for example is different. Here some children they start school or nursery and in the school they will teach them the different colours, to make it, to make it clear.
Akosua: But in Germany the parents will do that?
Birgit: Yes! So a lot of things you learn in the house. The language skills you learn in the house, that is very clear. The ability to eat, to dress yourself these ones you may learn here [Ghana]. Drawing, cutting, using scissors, all this, everything. So then you also bring your children out, the child should learn a music instrument, the child should go to –
Akosua: Do you have to do it with the child because here too the children learn –
Birgit: Yes!
Akosua: Because here too the children learn sports and a music instrument, the children are taken or the teacher comes. The parents facilitate this but this doesn’t necessarily mean –
Birgit: Ok many things you do it with your children, especially when they are small and then when they are older you organize them to go to courses.
Yet Birgit recognises that doing all of this brings with it “a higher burden” and that this burden, invariably, is carried by the mother, “on the parents ideologically but its still on the mother. But if you are here [in Ghana] you can also share” and she re-states the options that Ghanaian society provides to share these roles with other women, while in Germany, her native home, women are judged negatively if they assign nurturing and childrearing roles to others.
Birgit: Share with – ok, some husbands they may also share. If there are older children you share with them. Eh, you can have a house help. You can have other family members who are in the age to look after the children. You can also go abroad for 3 years and leave the children with a grandmother or a sister, that one for example we can’t do it. You can’t leave your child –
Akosua: Because there is no one to do so or because people judge you?
Birgit: Both. There is no way to do it. I don’t see it. Maybe if you are very seriously sick and you have to go for treatment and you really can’t look after the child. But if not – once you have a child you have to look after it. And the burden is also higher-
Akosua: The financial burden?
Birgit: No – its also a pressure.
Akosua: Is it because there are more expectations of what a parent will do, should do?
Birgit: Yes, you have to do much more.
Mabel says she hasn’t thought much about the mother role, “I just do it”; however, she thinks she is less rigid than the average Ghanaian mother, “He [her son] doesn’t have really strict bed hours, which he should… places he sits when he eats. I am more relaxed in my approach.”But there are also reflections among the women that more closely resemble the perceived Ghanaian perspective. “The role of a mother is”, says Anne, “well, she’s umm, the head of the household – the internal head of the household. And she is responsible for whatever affects the family – food-wise, economically, umm, socially”. Essentially it seems that the constructions of motherhood share a greater similarity across age cohorts than race or ethnic categories, with older women, whether black or white, conforming more to traditional forms of motherhood, and younger women being less inclined to confine themselves to the role of the dominant childrearer.
The participants and their partners have discussed, or are discussing the ways in which colour and ethnicity will affect their children. For others citizenship is more salient. In her work Luke (1998) found that parental socialization of biracial children is often fraught with tension between the parents, and between the parents and children over the teaching of cultural values and attitudes (Luke 1998). In fact I found tensions about the transmission of cultural values and identities among only two couples, both Africans, around language and names. Mami’s husband expected his children to learn to speak “his” language. However, he travelled a lot on the job so he was not as present as Mami, and consequently he expected that she would teach them this language. At the time of our conversation Mami, a Nigerian, had been in Ghana for 6 years, and while she wanted her children to speak her husband’s language, and, indeed, wanted to learn it herself, she resented having the role of teacher pinned on her.
Two of the African respondents, Mami and Mabel also referred to the issue of the name of the child as an important identity marker and point of some disagreement with spouses. Says Mabel:
“The only time I realised it’s a different place is when he [son] was born. In Kenya we give names from both sides of the family and he [husband] told me that’s not done [...] or the first son is named from his side and the second from your side [...] or if it’s a daughter the first one is named after his mother and the second after your mother.”
Mabel’s some does have a Kenyan name, but it was only “after some long lengthy discussions [...] I was really shocked and offended [...] I’m just having kids and after nine months I can’t been have a say in a name [...] I was like, am I just a vessel?” In such situations gendered cultural norms are in conflict with the women’s own gender ideologies and identity politics in connection with their children.
Mami also felt badly that since her daughter, the first child, was named by her husband, her son could not have the name she suggested. She eventually gave in because she felt the name of her child was not significant enough to make it an issue. Her acquiescence may also have been related to the fact that her own identity politics are not strongly hooked into an ethnic Nigerian position.
On the whole, however, husband’s were less invested in the development of a particular cultural, ethnic or racial identity for their children, perhaps because the children were growing up in Ghana and they believed that they would be Ghanaian or belong to the husband’s own ethnic group. Nonetheless, few husbands actively sought to socialise their children in particular “cultural” ways and seemed content to leave the socialising to mothers. When I discussed the transmission of a particular “mixed” identity many mothers said they and their husbands had not consciously discussed this. Anne explained, “No, we never thought about it [her son’s race]. My husband is himself – the family is -- he is a descendant of [...] there’s a Scottish influence. So he is also not purely African. And going back to the three languages spoken in the family, it also shows that there is a mixture already. [...] He [husband] is so much mixed up already that he doesn’t need to think about it [her son’s ethnic identity]”.
Some of the bi-racial children identify with the white mother’s country – i.e as being, say “German” – rather than with race, as being white -- because of the advantages that come with having an European or American passport and citizenship. So, even though Anne’s 17-year old son sometimes says he’s German she notes that, “I think he identifies more with Ghana.” I go on to ask:
Akosua: You already [...] do you think of him as a particular colour or is he just your son? Is he a particular race? Is he black? or white? Or both?
Anne: I don’t see any colour.
Akosua: What about him?
Anne: I can’t tell, maybe I have to ask him now [both of us laugh]
Akosua: Because – and of course America is a very particular context where the minute you are not white you are black –
Anne: The Americans are blowing everything out [of proportion] die machen Elephanten aus einer Mücke[12]. But they are overdoing it.
Birgit, whose children currently only have German citizenship, and who attend a German-language school, says culturally her children are both German and Ghanaian. She acknowledges, however, that “at the moment because they are at the [German language] school I think they have more from the German”. Her older son, aged eight, self-identifies as German, although Birgit feels that when he was younger, and in a Ghanaian kindergarten he may have felt more Ghanaian. She was also unaware that under older legislation children could hold dual citizenship until the age of 21 and her husband was obviously also unaware or the children’s citizenship did not matter to him.[13]
Alie, aged 40, who earlier had indicated she fills the “race” box on forms by declaring “human”, and who is currently childless, after some thought responded to my question, “what would your children tick on a form that said ‘black’, ‘white’ or “other’?” by saying, “I think they’d put black, eh, I suppose.”
Akosua: I think that you said that your children would be Ghanaian, or your children - something about being in Ghanaian society and the language. Would you see them as more Ghanaian than Irish?
Alie: Yeah, absolutely.
Akosua: Why?
Alie: Because they are living here, and I think its really important to uh, it’s very important for them to be part of where they are and be involved in the society where they are and not to be thinking of themselves as some visitors.
Akosua: They might decide I want to live and go to school in Ireland?
Alie: I am sure they might –
Akosua: Would they not need an Irish identity?
Alie: Oh, yes they would
Akosua: Or is that not so necessary?
Alie: Yes, they will to a certain extent, and they will get that, they will know that they have an Irish heritage. Their Irish aunties and uncles, their Irish grandmother they will certainly fill them in. But [...] we’ve chosen to live here [...] I want them to be really grounded, I don’t want there to be –
Akosua: Confusion [about an identity]?
Alie: Yeah, or even any sort of [...] those kinds of airs and graces you know, like a highly affected accent [both laugh][...] so it’s not like I’m negating their Irish heritage [...]
Akosua: Would they be black, white or bi-racial?
Alie: I presume bi-racial – in Ireland or here?
Akosua: Here, to you, in your construction, or in your socializing them?
Alie: In that case they are black, yeah, ...in that regard I would [...] certainly I don’t want them to think of themselves as oddities [...] in England or Ireland they would be black. If you are slightly darker than ivory [...].
All the participants recognise their children as being Ghanaian and having roots in Ghana, although white respondents seem slightly more conscious of having their children recognise their dual citizenship. Helene explains:
“There is just one thing that does concern me, its the one thing I think does concern me, it did concern me then and even does now, that is that my children will be somewhat Ghanaians and somewhat Americans, I mean even though they are now, I mean both Ghanaians, [...] that they will be both. Neither [husband] or I had any experience, much experience, or skill to prepare them for what it means to be black Americans.”
However, black respondents also feel this way, though perhaps not as strongly, as reflected in Mabel’s comment:
“Its good for him to know he has a dual heritage [...] whether he has a Kenyan name or not [...] I think it’s a strength really [...] and he would have options.” When I asked three-and-a-half year old Kwame on one of his many incursions into the room if he knew he was Kenyan, he chirped, “I am a Kenyan boy [...] and I’m from Ghana!” Kwame had only been to Kenya once as a four-month, yet he had obviously heard the story of his trip often for he informed me that he had been to Kenya.
With the exception of Birgit who strongly rejects the use of racial categories, all the white participants also recognise their children as being persons of colour, including Alie and Shirley who are still childless. Indeed, for the white participants having their children self-identify as persons of colour is viewed as giving them both a strong, as well as a realistic ethnic identity. For some, like Alie and Sylvie, a black identity also serves to inhibit feelings of (racial) superiority. While this seems to indicate some contestation of racial politics of white superiority and hegemony, at the same time it feeds into racial categorisations of the “one drop” syndrome.
Recent and past feminist research on motherhood provides very little empirical data on how mothers transfer a racial identity to their children. Black feminist scholars in the US and UK have theorized somewhat on the interaction of race and class on the transfer of identity between mothers and daughters. Twine (1996) found that Asian and European-American mothers played a critical role in providing daughters with an experience of racial neutrality. These daughters experienced class and gender identity as more primary than their African heritage in defining their identity. The mothers never trained them to a racially marked identity, or they were not “racialised”, not told that they belonged to a black racial category, or any other racial group, and so were not conscious of having a racial identity as children. This absence of racial marking may create a white identity in the US, but in Ghana, where almost everyone is black, it does not have same results. Twine’s work though useful is limited to the perceptions of daughters so the current paper should be helpful in filling some of the gaps from the perspective of mothers.
There are many ways in which mothers impart a cultural identity to their children. There is the reliance on cultural symbols and cultural attributes. Birgit explains:
“Ok, there are many things. I mean you grow up with certain things that you also like so you also do like birthday traditions, Christmas traditions and so on [...]”. Anne, also German, thinks that there are some attributes particular to her heritage that she has consciously sought to impart to her son. “Well, there are some things that are typical German, let’s say your sense of duty, or, honesty [...]. Form home I know that one has to be punctual, one has to be honest in his work. But all the same not to be afraid of confessing, or admitting a fault.”
Some women experience the need to convey a sense of “Ghanaian-ness“ quite profoundly. The culture of the other parent is transmitted in different ways, sometimes by the non-Ghanaian mother, sometimes by the father. Birgit says that her husband is very present and this is how their children learn “Ghanaian culture.” “Culture” can be reflected in several forms and people have several cultural symbols available to them. In the rest of the paper, however, I focus on the importance of location and kin relationships, language, and schooling choices on the transmission of a cultural identity.
All the North American and European mothers and would-be mothers indicate that in social terms and security Ghana is a safer and more friendly place in which to raise multicultural children. For some, living in Ghana is also about the opportunity to raise their children in a context where they can learn to be socially conscious because of their exposure to poverty and inequalities. These mothers and would-be mothers want to raise children who are aware of the privilege their own class bestows, but who will not be imprisoned by it. Alie describes this intent when she says, “[...] I think that [...] I’d love the situation where my children would run out on to the street and play you know... I just have this thing that they should be very aware of social issues, not that they would have to know all the woes of the world from day one but just that they would be... for example I would like to live in quite a mixed area in terms of income so that they don’t imagine they are better than others.”
Location was also important that all the mothers felt that mothering in Ghana had been easier in the sense that they had more space to be mothers and to pursue their careers at the same time because there was help through other mothers but also, a cultural expectation that women would work. Thus, women pursing their careers did not have guilt trips put on them, and did not themselves feel guilty about not being all things to their children.
Describing the links between her husband’s relatives and her own nuclear family Birgit says, “Like all those who are in Nigeria when they come they come to our house and they are all very nice. Then there are two in Germany, one sister too she is a very good friend of mine now. Two are in US. One, when he comes, he was just here at the weekend, they come [to stay with us]. They sit and talk for hours, it’s very nice. There’s 1 sister here, two in Kumasi, when they travel they come to the house.”
At the same time that participants want their children to be hooked into the families and cultures of their spouse, some try to limit the number of visits of in-laws. As also noted by Kwakye (2000) most wives want to retain their nuclear family space and their spouses seem to respect this. Kwakye also notes that African-American wives in her study have the upper-hand in decision-making when it involves decisions about which relatives come to live with the couple, when, and for how long. Obviously such restrictions limit the extent to which the Ghanaian spouse’s family members can influence the socialisation of the couple’s children. And as will be clear in the next section, this has further implications for the ability of children to learn a Ghanaian language.
Also important for the women is the need to maintain links to their natal families abroad, who are also keen to sustain connections to their children and grandchildren. Every year, or every few years, depending on how much it costs, the women go back to visit their natal families, often with their children, but more often without them due to the cost of international travel. One African woman whose children are now schooling in the UK, made sure her children went to visit her family every other year, and all the participants consciously try to make sure that the children have connections with their natal families in some way. For example my own mother made sure that we wrote letters and sent cards to our grandmother and her sister when we were young. The exercise was also meant to improve our skills in the German language. Some family members visited often. Alie’s mother, has not only visited very often in the 7 years Alie has been in Ghana, but she also celebrated her 70th birthday in Ghana – an event that was attended by Alie’s several siblings and their partners. Such socialisation ensures that children in cross-cultural marriages are more likely to learn the ‘culture’ of their mothers.
While a few have made some efforts to learn a Ghanaian language through tutors and books, especially their partner’s language, most respondents do not know how to speak their partners language or any other Ghanaian language for that matter. Kwakye (2000) found the same to be true of the African- American spouses in her study. Kwakye argues that few spouses made any serious efforts to learn the language and that many did not see the need to try, other than to use a few common phrases for greetings or general courtesies. This is also true in the current study. Participants did not feel pressured to learn a Ghanaian language because in their professional and social lives they have been able to get by successfully with English and they feel that they do not find many opportunities to speak Ghanaian languages. Further, while black respondents experienced some expectations from family and friends to speak their husbands’ languages, the white participants indicated that they were generally excused. However, the participants in my study all claim that they think it is important for a foreign resident of Ghana to learn at least one Ghanaian language. Shirley reflects the general position when she says, “Being in someone’s country you should really make an effort to learn the language.” An important reason given for learning is so that they can communicate with the children in a language of the country in which they live, and to which the child is linked:
“I have to learn more because Kwame is starting to speak...so I’d like to learn too.” Says Mabel, a Kenyan."When I pointed out that Kwame could speak his father’s language (Akan) with his father Mabel said that her husband tended to speak English with her son and she felt her son, Kwame, needed to learn “his” language. In other words, Mabel clearly constructed Kwame’s language, especially as he lived in Ghana, as Akan. She was also keen that Kwame should learn his father’s tongue because she had never really learned her own father’s language and she thought it was a pity. Beyond making attempts for Kwame to learn to speak Akan, his father’s mother tongue, Mabel also speaks Swahili with her son, because like the other participants, she believes that learning to speak both parents’ languages is important to maintain a dual cultural identity.
When I shared with Anne, a white woman, that Mami, a black woman felt resentful about her husband’s pressure on her to learn his language so their children could learn it from her, Anne’s response regarding her own son was:
“I have handled the language problem with my son in such a way that he had for every language a different focal person [...] [consciously] [...] Because my English is not good so why he should he pick up the bad English? So he had always somebody from whom he picked the language. [...] He speaks five languages [laughs][...] So I think this woman should also have somebody from the Fante family so that the children pick it from there.”
As far as Anne is concerned, her son is a member of several cultures, and thus he needs to speak the languages that represent these cultures. For her the matter was simple – find a significant identifier with each language for her son.
In Birgit’s family there is a common language – hers, although she grants that she would want her children to speak a Ghanaian language. However, Birgit herself acknowledges that she has never made any effort to learn any Ghanaian language. She explains that it is rarely expected of her and that Ghanaians, “rather want my children to speak Twi than myself.” According to Birgit this arrangement of speaking German at home is purely for practical reasons. The family were living in Germany prior to the move to Ghana and she herself is in Ghana on a short-term contract. This, there exists the possibility that the family will move back to Germany and both she and her husband feel that it is important that the children are fluent in German in the event that the family does move back to Germany. When I ask, “Do you, or does their father have an investment that they should speak Twi, or Ga, or Fante or whatever?” she answers:
“No. I think it would be good if they would speak (laughs). My husband, ehm, ok, then he would have to do it...ok, the point is my husband speaks quite a number of languages but because he also likes language and he studied language he really thinks that, ehm, what do you say, ehm, like he missed something. Like none of the languages he speaks is 100%. So that always if he speaks Twi there are always certain things you will speak English. And in English there are always things you don’t know. And, that one personally I can understand because I really like languages. In German for example I am very good in writing. But in English I will not be able to write. I am also very good in French, but English -- now I can write, but I won’t have my own that good style and it will take much more time. So he then says that German is a very difficult language and it is very good for them to have the first one and then the English of course they pick it. And because we were here, we went back, we came here, we don’t know how long we will stay. I don’t know. I also think – some people, some parents they are very ambitious about their children, they have to be in 3 languages then they go back and they forget about all of it...I would like them to it’s part of their culture, their background.”
So, unlike Anne who has ensured that her son learns all his cultural languages, and who has no fears that he will be “master of none”, Birgit and her husband have taken a strategic approach to focus on the language(s) of the more powerful cultures – German, and English.
Alie, who is not yet a mother, also sees the importance of a Ghanaian language for identity formation. She also thinks that it is useful in terms of negotiating life in Ghana so that she promotes the idea of not only having her children learn her husband’s language, but also the language of the locality where they live.
“Yeah, I think that’s really important and its something I’ve thought about and spoken about...that the children would speak some of the local languages very well, like because they are living in Accra Ga, and hopefully Fante as well. [...] I would feel very strongly that they are Ghanaian children and they should be speaking Ghanaian languages. So if anything would push me to speak Fante or Twi that would be it. I would still love them to have a smattering of Irish but it would be very, very difficult [...]. Like a lot of children who grow up in Accra, middle class children, they are not speaking any local language and I think its absolutely a shame.”
Except for Birgit, who seems to look at language more from a strategic perspective, all of the women associate language with cultural identity, and therefore consider it important for their children to learn the language of the their partner. Some have made conscious efforts towards this end, and some partners have supported this effort, or as in the case of Mami have insisted on this.
All of the mothers, as well as the would-be mothers point out that the issue of schooling, finding a good school that includes small classes, a good curriculum, not excessive physical discipline, and with options for creativity is very important but very challenging. While some would-be-mothers like Alie, and some older mothers like Sylvie, Anne and Helene, consciously wanted their children to mix with other Ghanaians, other mothers like Birgit and Mami are more concerned about the content and quality of education and teaching styles, leading to the enrolment of children in elite, private international schools like the German-language school Birgit’s sons attend. For none of the mothers is really an either-or situation; however, in the latter case, the mothers privilege the educational curriculum and school philosophy over social interaction with Ghanaians. Birgit explains:
“I think the Ghanaian, the so-called good Ghanaian schools they put a lot of [academic] pressure on the children and [...] then I was also told that many of them do tests for them so that you have to be fluent in writing or whatever even before you can enter it. And that one also I didn’t like it to put pressure on my son to pass these tests.”
Mabel also feels that there is an over-emphasis on academics in Ghana. Referring to the trend of sending children to pre-schools she complains, “I felt that children go to school too early in Ghana.” However, eventually her son was sent to a pre-school at age three because both partners work from home and having him in the house was too distracting. But in shopping for a school Mabel was discouraged when she saw a teacher brandishing a cane in one hand – even though she believes that physical discipline can have its place. “I said ‘no way…this has been the major argument in the marriage...it’s really been a discussion...he said, ‘this is Ghana’ and I said ‘but we have to find a middle ground’. Now Mabel’s son goes to a Montessori school and she is happy because she doesn’t see any sticks and the classes are small.
Many mothers are thinking increasingly about sending their children abroad for college education, and this also influences the choice of primary and secondary schools since the children must be prepared for these international entry-exams. Older mothers like Sylvie whose children went through the educational system before the advent of structural reforms and cost-cutting in the 1980s, relied predominantly on local schools and appreciated the fact that this enable the children to learn “Ghanaian” values and discipline.
Food is an important cultural and identity symbol and what children learn to eat may be important in the extent to which they feel associated with a particular culture. Gender prescriptions determine that many women undergo initiation rites into the new family and culture of their partner, and learning the ways of the partner’s family is a common experience shared by women all over the worked, as it is for some men. However, an interracial/cultural relationship poses new challenges, such as learning to cook in new ways. When it comes to cooking, mothers and sisters-in-law and other female relatives are often in charge of this domestic reconstruction. While the domestic and culinary pressures women face vary, most indicate some form of initiation into food and cooking regimes, accompanied by subtle supervision, teaching and judgments of performance during the first few years of their relationships. However, given the prominence of house helps in Ghana, women also have a lot of leeway in what they are themselves expected to accomplish.
For many mothers the kinds of meals prepared has more to do with personal taste preferences and practical issues such as what is available, than issues of cultural identity. Thus, some provide simple lunches for their children such as pancakes and omelettes. A few insist on a full Ghanaian meal. The majority, however, create their own mixture of Ghanaian food and food from their countries of origin. Mabel found Ghanaian food too spicy and oily, but her husband wouldn’t eat Kenyan food and so she prepares Ghanaian meals but recreates it, or “improvises” as she put it – less pepper and oil, and not cooked as long. Birgit makes sure her family eat Ghanaian food at least thrice a week but has also had trained her cook to cook European foods. All of the women have assistance with cooking – either professional cooks who can prepare both local and international dishes, or domestic helps who can prepare Ghanaian meals. This allows them the flexibility to introduce variety into the meals. Occasionally husbands will also cook, but this is rare.
In racist societies the racial and cultural identity politics of socialisation mean that the choice of toys, books and games for children can be very important. Growing up in the 1960s most of the manufactured toys and games, as well as the imported books that my elder sister and I owned depicted white people. There were few that depicted black families, and certainly none that portrayed multi-racial children or scenarios. Nonetheless, we did have locally-manufactured hand-crafted dolls and games, and many of our story books, as well as the textbooks we used in school largely depicted black people. We thus learned early on
This is an on-going project and many of the issues that are associated with a sense of personal identity and well-being are intimately tied with other experiences such as those in the marriage, with colleagues in Ghana, and social interaction in general. However, the data discussed herein suggest that non-Ghanaian women in Ghana, whether black or white, mother their children in similar ways, influenced heavily by class distinctions mediated by their age cohorts and when they arrived in Ghana. Older women who came to Ghana in the 1950s, 60s and 70s before the onset of structural reforms and severe economic decline seem to be positioned more strongly in Ghanaian ways of life, while younger women generally seem to be more influenced in their child rearing choices by the practicalities of ensuring that their children are exposed to the best options for survival in a globalised (Western) world. While ultimately its not about race, or colour, but about culture, the black women discussed in the current paper make more conscious choices around some aspects of “black” socialisation, such as ensuring strong kin networks, and the learning of a Ghanaian language than the white respondents. This is not true of all white respondents, and in any case black women in the sample experienced greater pressure, covert or overt, to “assimilate” and were given fewer options for deviance. These aspects influence the extent to which they could transmit a cultural identity to their own children.
Clearly, this paper only forms the beginning of a discussion on racialised mothering and socialisation in Ghana. A theoretically useful account of contemporary mothering, and parenting must ultimately include the perspectives of black mothers of multicultural children, as well as the experiences of black and white fathers. An assessment will significantly enhance our understanding of racial and ethnic politics.
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[1] An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Nordiska African Studies Centre conference on “Images of Motherhood” held in Dakar, March 2003. I am grateful to the participants of that conference for their useful comments.
[2] Akwasi is the Akan name given to a male born on a Sunday, Obroni is the term used to describe “white people”.
[3] I refer to conversations, rather than interviews, because while I asked most of the questions, at various points in many of the interviews the women asked me questions as well, or I shared a personal experience or an opinion.
[4] The women range in age from 36 to 70 years, and have lived in Ghana for periods ranging from 6 to 41 years. All of them are, or have been professional women. Three are African women, and six are European or North American. Seven of the women met their partners abroad while three met them in Ghana when they came to the country for professional reasons. Six of the women are biological mothers, one has two adopted daughters, and two expect to be mothers. These latter two, while not yet mothers, have strong perspectives on the cultural identity of their children and what it means to not yet be a mother (childless) in Ghanaian society.
[5] The larger study sample will be more diverse in terms of “race” (to include, for example Asian women) and socio-economic status (to include working class women). Ultimately the study will include some Ghanaian male partners, as well as some non-Ghanaian men and their Ghanaian female partners.
[6] The ISAG is a voluntary, non-sectarian, non-partisan and non-profit organisation of foreign spouses of Ghanaians. Its unique culture derives from the diverse cultures of its members, their belief in the value of diversity, and their commitment to Ghana. Source: ISAG mission statement.
[7] Throughout the paper I use the term participants, respondents and interviewees to refer to the women with whom I held these conversations.
[8] Photographs are also used; however, to date only a few respondents have supplied some.
[9] At the time when the debate about former president Rawlings standing for a second term was raging, and even during other times of his 15 year-rule as P/NDC chairman, there were calculated calls, albeit few, among some of the disenchanted that this person who wanted to rule Ghana was not a “real” Ghanaian and needed to “go home”. Former president Rawlings’ father is a “white” Scotsman, although Rawlings was born and raised in Ghana by his “black” Ghanaian mother alone.
[10] This is in sharp contrast to the perceptions of the women in my study. One white woman of similar age to myself with two young children a little younger than mine, commented to me in an e-mail after participating in a focus group discussion that she felt “mixed racepeople like you have a very special gift of deep insight into different worlds.”
[11]Children are “outdoored”, that is introduced to the family, and named, on the eighth day.
[12] Literally, to make elephants out of a fly.
[13] Ghana’s 1992 constitution recognises dual citizenship for children until the age of 21, after which time they have to make a choice. New legislation on dual citizenship introduced after 1992 seeks to enable adults also to acquire, or maintain citizenship of a country other than Ghana.
Copyright © 2004 Africa Resource Center, Inc.
Citation Format
JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies: Issue 5, 2004.