JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies

Niara Sudarkasa

Introduction

One of the most significant contributions of anthropology, dating back to the 19^th century theorists, is the proposition that all kinship is cultural. The early comparative studies of kinship in various societies around the world, carried out by scholars such as Lewis Henry Morgan (1870) and W.H.R. Rivers (1924), demonstrated that kinship positions and kinship terminologies did not bear a one-to-one relationship to biology at all. As a matter of fact, the biological acts of mating and procreation might be termed nature’s precursors to culturally defined kinship. In all known human societies, kinship was and is created and terminated by rules, regulations, and behavior that was, and is, culturally prescribed, proscribed or preferred. Thus, in human societies, when we speak of kinship, we cannot oppose “nature” to “culture” because nature itself has become enculturated. Even “motherhood,” which many might assume to be an obvious “fact of nature”, is in reality “a facet of culture.”

Admittedly, mothering, in the sense of conceiving, giving birth, and nurturing dependent offspring, derives from and is found in nature. However, in human societies, mothering is encased in culturally variable rules, regulations, expectations, and patterns of behavior. To begin with, in all human societies, there are rules by which mating is culturally transformed into marriage or one of its alternatives (Marshall 1968). That is significant because in all human societies of which I am aware, parents are categorized as being either “married” or “unmarried” when their children are born. In other words, of all the parental attributes that might be focused on when children are born, the marital status of the parents, and particularly of the mother, is the one that is consistently considered to be relevant in many, if not most, human societies. This is a very powerful universal, or near universal, whose implications need to be explored, especially in today’s societies where the expectations and statistics concerning marriage are undergoing such significant changes.

The second point that illustrates the “encasing” of motherhood in culture, is the fact that everywhere giving birth to children is only one of a number of culturally accepted patterns by which women become mothers. They may have children who are “adopted”, and from the African researches that I conducted, I added that they may have children who are “assumed” or “assigned.” In indigenous African societies where adoption as known in the West was not common, women often assumed responsibility for the care and upbringing of one or more children of their relatives. Or, without asking for a child, they might have children “given” or “assigned” to them. In the West, with the exception of paid relationships such as foster- parenting, the practice of “assigning” children to women is uncommon, if not unknown. Yet, in Africa, women may be assigned or “given” children who are not “theirs” in an exclusive sense, but to whom they relate “as a mother.” Women who have not given birth, or those whose children are no longer living with them might be “given” (or “assigned”) a child who will remain in their care for an unspecified period of time in return for the usual affection and assistance parents receive from their children when they are growing up. As a matter of fact, when I was in Nigeria conducting my first field work, as an unmarried woman in my early 20’s, I was an oddity in the small town where I lived, and various people wanted to “give” me a child for whom I would take on the assigned role of mother.

I am saying all this to say that when we speak of “motherhood”, we are not speaking of something “natural”, in a strictly biological sense. We are not focusing exclusively on “giving birth.” We are speaking of a set of behaviors, expectations and responsibilities that constitute culturally defined kinship roles. Of course, we know that even the act of childbirth itself varies according to culturally prescribed rules and expectations. Where and how a woman gives birth varies according to the cultural norms in her part of the world. We are all aware that the typical contemporary Western mode of childbirth, where a woman lies on her back, with her legs spread apart is by no means the “natural” or relatively comfortable position for delivery. In parts of Africa and elsewhere in the world, the more traditional women still give birth from a kneeling position, which makes for greater ease in pushing down and passing the newborn out of the birth canal. Thus, we are reminded that from mating, through conception, to birth and beyond, motherhood is a cultural phenomenon.

Approaching the comparative analysis of “motherhood” as one aspect of culturally defined kinship, we might begin our discussion by examining some of those facets of culture that bear on the variability of the phenomenon of motherhood. That is, we might examine those factors that cause or affect the concepts (“images”), behavior, and values associated with motherhood in different parts of the world. Many scholars have approached the comparative study of motherhood and other aspects of family and kinship by examining their co-variation with complex “mega” variables such as class, race , ethnicity, and nationality (see, e.g. McAdoo 1993). To some extent, the present paper follows this tradition by contrasting motherhood in the context of nuclear family structures that evolved in Europe, with motherhood in the context of extended family structures that evolved in Africa.

The focus of the present paper, however, is on the contrasting types of family structure, not on the overall culture history of the regions themselves, in explaining some of the differences in behavior and ideologies associated with motherhood in those areas. The paper starts from the proposition that motherhood is first and foremost defined, affected and impacted by the type of family structure or kinship grouping in which it is lodged. It looks at motherhood in the context of nuclear and extended family structures that developed in Europe and Africa, respectively, but recognizes that when those family structures have been transported to other cultural contexts, transformations in motherhood and other familial roles and relationships have occurred or will occur (Sudarkasa 1980, 1981, and 1995). The typology used in this paper, namely that of nuclear and extended families, is that of George Peter Murdock (Social Structure, 1949) but the definitions of the terms also incorporate Ralph Linton’s concepts of conjugal and consanguineal families. (Study of Man, 1936).

The main argument in this paper is that the images, behavior and values associated with motherhood, and other kinship relationships within nuclear and extended families, reflect the constraints and elasticities that derive from the family structures themselves. Thus, for example, the nuclear family with its relative isolation, its relative insulation, and its inward-looking philosophy that stresses the “husbanding” of resources unto itself, imposes different constraints on women in their roles as wives, mothers, and daughters, than does the extended family, with its expansive, inclusive network that values the sharing of resources beyond the conjugal family unit. (Sudarkasa 1973, 1980, 1981). On the other hand, extended families also impose their own types of constraints on women as mothers, wives and daughters, and both nuclear and extended family structures have built-in elasticities that help to account for differences in motherhood and other roles and relationships.

Claryfying the Concepts of Nuclear and Extended Families

Approaching the comparative study of family organization from the perspective of social structure, George Peter Murdock (1949) proposed that all families derived from a basic structural group which he termed the nuclear family, comprised of a husband and wife and their children. Arguing that the nuclear family is the building block for all other types of families, Murdock re-defined the extended family (a term used previously by 19^th and early 20^th century scholars) as two or more nuclear families linked by the parent-child tie or the sibling tie. (See Figure 1, based on Murdock 1949, pp. 2 and 23).

Ralph Linton’s earlier typology of families had been based on principles of group formation rather than on group structure or composition (Linton 1936). He emphasized that families, by definition, include relationships based on both conjugality (marriage) and consanguinity (i.e. “blood ties”). In other words, the kin groups Linton (and other anthropologists) categorized as families ideally include a husband and wife whose relationship is based on marriage, and children, whose relationships to each of their parents, as well as to each other, are based on “blood ties.” Families are contrasted with consanguineal kin groups, such as clans and lineages, in which kinship is based solely on “blood ties.” Each person in such groups is related to everyone else, and to a common ancestor, by “blood ties” alone. Today we use the generic term “descent group” to refer to what Linton called consanguineal kin groups. With respect to families, Linton observed that even though by definition they include relationships based on both conjugality and consanguinity, in all families one would find that one of the two principles was dominant in family formation. (Linton 1936, pp. 159-163). Linton used the term “conjugal family” to describe a family built around the conjugal or marital relationship, whether monogamous or polygamous. By contrast, he labeled as “consanguineal families,” those built around a core group of “blood relatives,” as would be the case with families built around a clan or lineage.

Over the years, Murdock’s typology of nuclear and extended families has gained general acceptance by the lay public as well as by the scholarly community. The use of Murdock’s terms persists even among scholars, such as myself, who argue against their universal applicability as he defined them. Although the importance of Linton’s principles of family formation is still recognized, his typology fell into disuse after the publication of Murdock’s. No doubt, this was due to the initial acceptance of Murdock’s argument for the universality of the nuclear family and the apparent logic of his model of the extended family as a structure built upon it. Although I found Linton’s typology more useful in my analyses of African-American families, in discussing consanguinity, I always have to place blood ties in quotation marks because of the outdated notion that biological characteristics are transmitted from parents to their offspring through “the blood,” rather than via their genes. The concept of descent, which has both genetic and cultural connotations, has replaced consanguinity in most writings on kinship.

This essay makes some use of the concepts of both Murdock and Linton. I use the term “nuclear family” in reference to the European and American families that conform to the Murdock model, and to this type of family when it has been transplanted, adopted, or re-created in Africa. For reasons noted below and elaborated later in the essay, I do not use the term “nuclear family” in describing indigenous African families based on marriage. For these families, I use Linton’s concept of the “conjugal family,” which has broader applicability than does Murdock’s “nuclear family.” The terms polygamy and polygamous, meaning plural spouses, are used in the paper because they are better known than the terms polygyny and polygynous, which are the more technically correct terms referring to marriages involving plural wives.

I consider the term “nuclear family” to be an inaccurate description for both the monogamous and polygamous families that made up indigenous African extended families. First of all, even though the monogamous conjugal family made up of one man, his wife and children, seems to be structurally identical to the nuclear family, there are important differences between them. In a context where polygamy was legally accepted and widely practiced, a monogamous conjugal family was usually only one phase in the developmental cycle of a polygamous family. The monogamous conjugal family could be the first phase of a man’s family, before his marriage became polygamous, or it might occur in later years when only one of his wives was still with him. Thus, in the context of polygamy, the woman in the role of wife and mother in a monogamous family has different expectations of herself, as well as different expectations of her husband (and he of her), than would be the case in a Western nuclear family. (Sudarkasa 1980, pp.43- 46; 1981, pp. 40-44).

All the relationships in polygamous families, including those between a husband and his wives (especially those who are already mothers of his children), among the co-wives, between the children and the mothers of their “paternally-linked” sisters and brothers, and among the children themselves, are much more complex than relationships between parents and children in nuclear families. In an effort to force these data into the nuclear family model, Murdock erroneously characterized polygamous families as “two or more nuclear families with a spouse in common.” (Murdock 1949, p.2) Later discussions in this paper should indicate the inaccuracy of this formulation. Other scholars have proposed equally misleading interpretations, such as when Elizabeth Colson describes the mother-child clusters as “nuclear families” incorporated into larger family groupings. (Colson 1962; Sudarkasa 1980, pp. 43-44, 58).

It would be virtually impossible not to use the term “extended family,” popularized by Murdock, in describing African families. As noted earlier, this term was in use before Murdock re-defined it in his particularly narrow way. In fact, one would have to agree with Joan Aldous that “the concept of extended family developed from studies of African peoples” (Aldous 1965). Given Murdock’s familiarity with the African ethnographic data, it is surprising that he defined “extended families” as a group of interrelated nuclear families, which conforms to the realities of family structure in many parts of Europe, but not in indigenous Africa or some other parts of the world (Shorter 1975; Stone 1975; Tilly and Scott 1978; Goody 1976; Sudarkasa 1981). One can only assume that Murdock either overlooked the facts or wanted to force the facts to fit his thesis that the nuclear family is the “building block” for all other types of families. Yet, what the Ghanaian scholar P.A.Tetteh observed for Ghana may be said of indigenous Africa as a whole: “when the word ‘family’ is used, it does not usually refer to the nuclear or elementary family based on the husband-wife relationship but to the extended family based on descent.” (Tetteh 1967, p. 201) Thus, when the term “extended family” is used in this paper, it refers to that large family grouping built around the descent group known as a lineage, and also divisible into smaller conjugal families built around monogamous and/or polygamous marriages.

Motherhood in Nuclear and Extended Families

As previously noted, this paper proposes that a number of differences in patterns of motherhood can be traced to the constraints and elasticities in nuclear and extended family structures as these have evolved in Europe and its Diaspora, on the one hand, and in Africa and its Diaspora, on the other. Many of the ideas in this paper can be found scattered throughout earlier publications of mine. Since the early 1970’s, I have published a number of papers comparing and contrasting the structure of African extended families and European-derived nuclear families, as these impacted on families developed by enslaved Africans and their descendants in America. These papers, along with others, have been collected in my book entitled The Strength of Our Mothers (Sudarkasa 1996). Although, of necessity, I discussed aspects of motherhood in those earlier papers on nuclear and extended families, I now appreciate the opportunity to focus more specifically on motherhood in these two family traditions.

My discussion of motherhood in the African context draws mainly on the archival and field research I have conducted on African women since the early 1960’s. Most of my anthropological fieldwork has been carried out in West Africa, focusing on Yoruba women traders in their domestic and commercial settings, first in Nigeria, and later in Ghana and the Republic of Benin. My dissertation, Women, Trade and the Yoruba Family (Marshall 1964) and the monograph based on it, entitled Where Women Work (Sudarkasa 1973) were the first publications to analyze in detail the roles of Yoruba women as wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters in their lineages, natal and affinal compounds ( residences of the extended families based around the lineages), and conjugal families. Because this research was conducted in 1961 and 1962 in the small traditional Yoruba town of Awe, outside the city of Oyo, my findings concerning wives and mothers in their extended and conjugal families are used to illustrate many of the points in this paper concerning indigenous family patterns. Similar patterns have also been reported by other scholars for various parts of West Africa. (See, e.g., Fortes 1949, 1950, 1953; Shimkin, et.al. 1978; Shimkin and Uchendu 1978.)

This is a conceptual essay, intended to stimulate discussion and future research. Obviously, it would have been strengthened by quantifiable data in support of the generalizations made about motherhood in nuclear and extended families, as well by references to, and examples of, variations in patterns of motherhood within, as well as between, the types of family structure described. Such data were not available in the descriptive anthropological case studies on which most of my observations are based. Nevertheless, it is hoped that this essay will provide a significant starting point for future comparative research on motherhood.

The essay utilizes the topics below in discussing some contrasting aspects of motherhood in nuclear and extended family structures and ideologies:

1. Household Composition and Patterns of Post-Marital Residence

2. Dimensions and Expectations of Women’s Roles as Wives and Mothers

3. Power and Influence in the Roles of Wife and Mother

4. Differing Concepts of “Real” Mothers and “Half” Siblings

5. The Differing Relationship of “Marital Stability” to “Family Stability”

1. “Establishing a Separate Home” versus “Joining a Compound”: Patterns of Residence as Sources of Constraints and Elasticities related to Motherhood

As an ideal, and at its most basic, the nuclear family is built around a newly-married couple. Ideally, nuclear family residence is “neolocal.” That is, after marriage, the husband and wife are expected to establish a separate household, unto themselves, and to maintain a separate dwelling as long as the family exists as a unit. Even when nuclear families are located in spatial proximity to other nuclear families, they are distinct, inwardly-focused residential units.

Historically, this relative isolation and insularity of the nuclear family had a special impact on women as wives and mothers. As the writings of many contemporary feminists have shown, mothers in nuclear families who do not work outside the home spend much of their time with their children, rather than with other adults. Without getting into the debate over the “value” of women’s work as wives and mothers within their homes, I simply want to note the constraints on the interaction with other adults that the structure and relative isolation of nuclear families impose on mothers operating within the home. As one of the two adults in the home, a woman as wife and mother was traditionally subject to these constraints moreso than her husband, who was the traditional breadwinner, interacting more regularly with a network of other adults.

Obviously, mothers in nuclear families had (and do have) networks of people, particularly women, with whom they interact frequently, or infrequently. Some of them live near their kin; others have clubs and associations to which they belong. This, however, is quite different from the position of the African mothers living in a dwelling where they are literally surrounded by other people, and where there is a very different notion of “privacy” than obtains in nuclear families.

In many indigenous African societies, the common residential grouping was a large extended family, built around a lineage, which is a unilineal descent group comprised of relatives who trace their relationship to each other, and to a common ancestor, through a line of fathers (patrilineal) or mothers (matrilineal), but not both. The founding ancestor is male, in the case of patrilineages, and female, in the case of matrilineages. The lineage collectively owns and allocates properties, such as land and titles, among its members. Thus, it is a corporate, property-owning and property-holding group, intended to exist in perpetuity (Fortes 1953; Lloyd 1955).

The lineage is exogamous, meaning that members must take their spouses from outside their own patrilineage or matrilineage, depending on the rule of descent in the society concerned. Members of a lineage own and share a large dwelling or group of dwellings, commonly known as a compound, in which they live with their spouses and children. This group makes up the co-residential extended family. I insert the word “co-residential” because some members of the lineage or the extended family may reside in different towns, or even in different countries, but as members of that lineage or as spouses in the extended family built around that lineage, they regard that compound as their residential home base.

In a patrilineal society, the extended family is comprised of the adult male members of the lineage, along with their wives and children. Historically, many or most of this group would reside in the compound belonging to the lineage. Each married daughter or sister of the men in the patrilineage resides in the compound owned by her husband’s lineage. In cases of divorce, and sometimes for other reasons, these sisters and daughters may exercise their right to return to live in their “father’s house”, i.e. in the compound belonging to their own patrilineage. (Sudarkasa 1973, p. 102, passim.).

The main point to establish here is that according to indigenous African patterns of residence associated with lineages, compounds and extended families, newly married couples did not, and many still do not, establish separate residences apart from their families. In patrilineal societies, the groom usually has his own room in the compound, which he may have had before marriage, may have built or may have been assigned in anticipation of marriage. Only rarely would a new wife have her own room when she first moves into her husband’s compound. She might initially share a room with her husband’s mother or with a wife of another man in the compound. Of course, she would sleep in her husband’s room in accordance with the prevailing customs surrounding marital cohabitation. (Figure 2 provides a schematic diagram of an extended family living in a compound in a patrilineal society.)

Matrilineal residential patterns are more complex than those in patrilineal societies, but when a couple gets married they also do not establish a separate isolated household. They reside in an existing compound with members of the extended family of the bride, or in separate compounds with their respective matri-centric extended families.

Thus, African conjugal families, unlike Western nuclear families, were not structural and spatial isolates. There are many behavioral correlates of this residential pattern, but I will mention only a few that specifically pertain to motherhood. First of all, virtually everything that a mother does during her waking hours is done in the presence of others who reside in her compound, are visitors to the compound, reside in compounds where she is a visitor, or interact with her at her place of work, such as in the market or at the site where she carries on her craft. In contrast to nuclear families, therefore, where much of a mother’s behavior goes unobserved by other adults, in African extended families, a mother’s behavior is observed (and, if necessary, scrutinized) by other women including her mother-in-law, co-wives, members of her husband’s lineage, and an unpredictable number of people throughout the community. Her actions as a mother, including the way she relates to, interacts with, teaches, and disciplines her children, are all carried out under the watchful eyes of others.

Westerners may think of this as a “lack of privacy” or a potential loss of individuality, and some of these views have indeed been transplanted to Africa as a result of the influence of nuclear family ideologies spreading from the West. But, the Yoruba mothers I studied in Awe in the early 1960’s valued the companionship of their female relatives, co-wives (when relations were cordial), friends, and female Elders. They shared information helpful in the upbringing of their children. And even though mothers normally carried their nursing babies everywhere with them, if they needed baby sitters for their other children, their mothers-in-law and other women in the compound -- or their own mothers, sisters and friends from other compounds -- provided trustworthy childcare providers, who knew the children well, and willingly looked after them.

One of the thoughts I had in response to recent incidences of American mothers who took their children’s lives while the children were in their care, was that in an extended family setting this would rarely, if ever, occur. If, as reports suggest, one of the guilty mothers was suffering from severe stress and other emotional or mental disorders, someone in the compound would have observed this and would have taken steps to help the mother or get her the help she needed. Moreover, such observers would not have felt that they were “intruding” if they intervened when a mother was doing something they considered to be potentially harmful to her children.

In general, mothers’ roles in the socialization of their children were (and are) significantly different in extended families and nuclear families. In extended families, the care and upbringing of children is never left exclusively to their parents. The extended family is always involved. In fact, members of the extended family, and particularly women in the extended family, are seen, and see themselves, as resources for each other in the rearing of their children. (See, e.g., Sudarkasa 1973, pp. 132-144). Only societies with extended family structures, and supporting ideologies and values, could have produced the proverb that “it takes a village to raise a child.”

Among nuclear families, parents generally regard themselves as the only ones who “have the right” to decide on how to bring up their children, especially the right to decide when and how to discipline them. In nuclear family ideology, even though parents may delegate some of the responsibility for looking after their children, they never really see themselves as delegating or even sharing their authority over those children. ( I must insert the caveat that the State or the nation, through its law enforcement apparatus, has always had the final authority over its citizens, including those who are minors. And, in the second half of the twentieth century, in many Western countries, the judicial system has replaced parents as the final authority over what can and cannot be done to, or with, children.).

2. Dimensions and Expectations of Women’s Roles as Wives and Mothers in Nuclear and Extended families

An adult woman has two kinship roles in the nuclear family she and her husband form at marriage (i.e., within their “family of procreation”), namely those of wife and mother. Of course, she has other kinship roles, such as those of daughter and sister, in relation to the nuclear family in which she grew up (i.e., within her “family of orientation”), but the focus in this discussion of women in nuclear families is on the family of procreation.

Drawing on data from the Yoruba, it is easy draw contrasts between the two ”straightforward” roles of wife and mother in nuclear families, and the complexity of the wife and mother roles in African conjugal and extended families.

1) First, a woman is wife to her husband, which I term the conjugal role of wife.

2) Secondly, a woman is co-wife to the other wives of her husband, and is ranked according to the order of her marriage to their common husband. This co-wife role is a derivative of her conjugal role of wife.

3) Thirdly, a woman is symbolically a wife to all her “in- laws”, i.e. to all the male and female members of her husband’s lineage. This I have termed her affinal role of wife.

4) Fourth, a woman is one of the entire group of wives in the compound, and as such, is ranked according to the order of her marriage into the “house” (i.e. the compound). This is also an aspect of the affinal role of wife. With respect to lineage affairs, wives are the “out-group” whereas their husbands and members of his lineage, including her children, are the “inside core group” within the compound.

5) As mother, a woman is mother to her children to whom she has given birth.

6) She is also “mother” to all the children for whom she has assumed responsibility as well as to any children “assigned” or “given” to her.

7) As discussed below, a woman may also be seen as a “co-mother” to her husband’s children by her co-wives.

8) As the Mother of So & So (the name of her first child) within the community, she has part of the collective responsibility for all children in her husband’s compound, as well as for children in all other families and compounds to which she is related (e.g.. her own father’s compound, or that of her mother’s father ).

9) As mothers reach the age and status of Iya Agbas ( Elder Mothers or Mother Elders), their motherly roles seem to eclipse all others, except those associated with chieftaincies, and they are among the most honored persons in their compounds and communities.

To appreciate the implications of these various roles, let me review the structure of African extended families and their sub-divisions, again using the Yoruba as an example of this structure.

African extended families could be subdivided in two ways. First, there was the division between the nucleus formed by the lineage members (the “inside-group”), on the one hand, and the group formed by the in-marrying spouses ( the“outside-group”), on the other. In many African languages, the in-marrying spouses are collectively referred to as “wives” or “husbands” by both females and males of the lineage. Thus, for example, in among the Yoruba, the in-marrying women are collectively known as the wives of a particular house. (Sudarkasa 1973: 101-109; 1980, pp. 43-46; 1981, pp. 41-44) As such, their membership in the compound is rooted in law and can be terminated by law, whereas membership in the lineage is rooted in descent and exists in perpetuity.

African extended families may also be divided into conjugal family units, comprising parents and children. In fact, that is the unit that many scholars have focused upon as the building block of the extended family. As noted earlier in this paper, Murdock and some other scholars have described the polygamous conjugal family as “several distinct nuclear families with a husband/father in common.” ( Murdock 1949:2; Colson 1962). In my judgment, this erroneous conception overlooks a number of significant facts.

First, whether a man’s marriage was monogamous, with one wife and children, or polygamous, with more than one wife and children, his was one family among the conjugal families in the compound. The mother-child units were not conceived of as separate families, only subgroups within the one family. Both the husband and the senior wife played important roles in integrating the family (Fortes 1949, chs. 3, 4; Sudarkasa 1973, ch. 5; Ware 1979). Secondly, although for certain purposes, each mother and her children constituted a sub-group within the polygamous family, no mother could think of her husband and her children’s father as sometimes “attached to her group” and at other times “attached to another group.” At all times a wife had to acknowledge her husband as the head of the entire family, and she had to think of herself and her children in relation to all the wives and children in their family. Thirdly, the very existence of the extended family as “an umbrella” group for all of the conjugal families within it, meant that even though the monogamous families resembled nuclear families in terms of composition, their dynamics differed significantly from nuclear families. They seldom included only children of the couple themselves, but rather included children of other members of the lineage, such as children of a husband’s “brother” (who could be any male member of the lineage in his generation) or children “given” or “assigned” to the wife by her sisters or other members of her lineage. These examples indicate that monogamous conjugal families did not have the nuclear-family type ethos or the rigid boundaries that could have enabled them to “just say no” to relatives in need or turn down requests to take in children of their kin simply because they wanted to save their resources for themselves.

In other words, the various “mothers and fathers” in the extended family could not focus solely on caring for their “own” children as is expected in more inwardly-focused nuclear families. Parents within the extended family often assumed responsibilities for children “other than their own, as if they were their own.” During my studies of Yoruba traders in Ghana, I found that many of them were rearing the children of their brothers and sisters back in Nigeria. These children were treated “as if they were their own” because, in fact, the principles of joint responsibility and reciprocity within the family, meant that those children were indeed “like their own.”

This is reflected in the Yoruba kinship terminology, which falls in the category of what we anthropologists call a “generational” system. The terms ”mother” and “father” are extended to the siblings of the father and mother, i.e. to those who in English would be termed “aunt” and “uncle.” The terms “mother” and “father” are also extended to a wide range of other kinsmen and kinswomen in the father’s and mother’s generation. Reciprocally, the term for “child” or “offspring” refers not only to one’s “own” children but to the offspring of all those who are considered to be one’s siblings. The category of siblings includes not only those who in English are termed brothers and sisters, but also those termed “half-brothers and sisters,” and cousins. In other words, kinship terms which in English are used only in reference to “close relatives” are extended to “distant relatives” in the same generation within the lineage and extended family. In my view, by collapsing relational distance within these large kin groups, the terminology serves to reflect and reinforce the values of social cohesion, shared responsibility, and intergenerational reciprocity, thereby enabling these groups to survive even in the most adverse of circumstances. The two most important kinship categories in these generational systems are those of “mother” and “father” because they not only bring into existence each succeeding generation, but they acknowledge and accept the responsibility for rearing, educating, and launching the careers of as many as possible in the generation they term their “children.”

3. Some Dimensions of Power and Influence in the Roles of Wife and Mother in Nuclear and Extended Families.

Motherhood enhances the position of wives in African conjugal families as well as in the overall extended family. As a wife, a woman is an “outsider” vis-à-vis the patrilineage and its affairs. (Of course, as a daughter and a sister in her own patrilineage, she is one of the “insiders.”). As a mother, although a woman is still one of the “out-group” vis-à-vis her husband’s lineage, through her children she has contributed to the perpetuation of that lineage. As soon as a wife has her first child, her husband no longer views her primarily as a wife, but as a mother of his children. Among the Yoruba, henceforth, he does not refer to her, or address her, by the term “Iyawo” (wife), but rather by reference to the name of her first born. She may be called “Iya ‘Tunde” or “Mama ‘Tunde”, for example. (Of course, I am not speaking of the more Westernized husbands and wives who might address each other by their given names).

When a wife becomes the mother of a child, and preferably of many children, who will contribute to the continuity of her husband’s lineage, or to her that of her own lineage, in the case of matrilineal societies, she joins the ranks of the most revered women in Africa. After a wife becomes a mother, she is expected to have power and influence over her children, but she also aims to have increased power and influence over her husband as the father of her children. A first wife may expect to have such influence over her husband, as part of her role as his chief confidant, as well as coordinator and peacemaker within the conjugal family. However, as a mother who has gained favor with her husband, the father of her children, as a result of the number of children she has, or because her husband is especially fond of one or more of her children, a lower ranking wife may also gain influence over her husband’s attitudes and behavior within his conjugal family as a whole.

All mothers want to have the maximum possible influence over the fathers of their children, and this is reported by virtually all observers as the greatest source of competition and discord in polygamous families. (Sudarkasa 1973, 111-116) It should be noted, however, that such discord is not inevitable, and would not be a concern of a husband and his wives alone. Others in his lineage, such as his father or senior brothers, would step in to advise him as to the appropriate and expected behavior toward his wives and children. The man’s mother, who also would be one of the senior wives in the extended family within his compound, and who would be in a position to observe and listen to his wives, would also give him (and his wives) advice as to how to peacefully settle the discord among them.

No doubt, the constant concern by African mothers for the welfare of their children is partly a response to the realities of polygamous marriages, but most mothers everywhere are noted for “putting their children first.” Nevertheless, my experience as an African American born and bred in the United States where the nuclear family is the ideal, indicates that some patterns observed and reported among mothers in nuclear families there would not be found in African conjugal families.

Among mothers in nuclear families in the United States, for example, there appears to be as much concern with protecting their statuses as wives, as with securing rights and resources for their children. In fact, it is not uncommon for mothers in nuclear families to be portrayed in literature, or reported in the press, as being in competition with their children for the attention, affection or favor of their husbands. Interestingly, when nuclear families are terminated by divorce and mothers no longer have the possibility of deriving power, prestige or resources through their positions as wives, an “all out war” may ensue to secure rights and resources for both themselves and their children.

This suggested contrast between the way mothers view themselves and their children in African conjugal families and Western nuclear families seems to derive from the differential power attached to the roles of wife and mother in the two family structures. Whatever power a woman has within the nuclear family derives mainly from her position as wife. In the ideal situation, she is an equal partner with her husband at the core of the family, but even where she is treated as subordinate to her husband, she still derives status in the eyes of her family as well as in the outside world, from her position as “the wife of So and So.” Motherhood, particularly in the early years, does not confer on her the special power and influence that attaches to motherhood in Africa. In fact, in nuclear families, women sometimes are reported as resenting the onset of motherhood because it “ties them down” with children, and limits their ability to function socially as wives to their husbands. Such a view would be almost unthinkable in African families.1

Of course, in African conjugal families, a wife also derives some power and influence in the outside world from the position of her husband. However, because her conjugal family exists within the umbrella of the extended family, and because her husband is subject to the influence of his lineage, his mother, and his other wives, a woman, other than a senior wife, cannot expect to have but so much power or influence within the home, based on her position as “wife”. Even the influence of senior wives and favorite wives is constrained by the influence of their husbands’ fathers and other lineal relatives, as well as that of their mothers-in-law. As noted above, a wife’s chances of increasing her power and influence within the conjugal family are enhanced by motherhood, and particularly by the example she sets in carrying out her role as mother.

This illustrates a point I made in earlier publications, when I noted that many Western scholars have erred in assuming that the “status” of women in Africa can be discerned solely from their status as wives, without regard to their other kinship positions as mothers, daughters and sisters. I remarked that a scholar who pointed to the “bowing and scraping” of Yoruba wives before their husbands, failed to note that the same men prostrate before their mothers, senior sisters, and other female relatives of sufficient age and rank. (Sudarkasa 1981, p.43; 1981b, p.62; 1986; 1987).

Another point of contrast between women as mothers in nuclear families and African conjugal families has to do with the way in which husbands and wives view their roles as providers in these two family contexts. From my researches, I would suggest that whereas traditionally, motherhood encouraged women to become more economically independent in African conjugal and extended families, motherhood may encourage some women to become more economically dependent in Western nuclear family settings.

As has been noted for women throughout indigenous Africa, in both monogamous and polygamous households, motherhood not only confers prestige, it creates the responsibility to bear a major share of the cost of bringing up one’s children. (Sudarkasa 1973; Hafkin and Bay 1976; Pala 1976; Amadiume 1987; Mikell 1989; 1997)

In indigenous West African conjugal families, husbands and wives normally keep “separate purses.” As a rule, they do not co-mingle their incomes; they do not have joint accounts, and they make separate contributions to the expenses associated with their family. Usually, husbands and wives have different responsibilities, with mothers assuming as much responsibility as possible for their children, including the expenses associated with their education in the early years. (Fathers are expected to contribute more to their children’s education in later years when the expenses are higher.) Husbands and wives have their own occupations or businesses, which they usually manage independent of each other. I have argued that this is a way of minimizing economic risks in situations where spouses have limited capital to invest in their small scale commercial or agricultural enterprises. But since this pattern also exists in middle class, wage-earning households, it can be argued that over time a cultural pattern has developed where women as mothers value their right to accumulate, manage and allocate their own resources, just as men do theirs. (Sudarkasa 1973; 1981b; Sims 1981; Amadiume 1987; Mikell 1989)

Undoubtedly, this is partly a function of the fact that lineages are keystones in the social structure, and each spouse is expected to take on certain responsibilities associated with their respective lineages without encumbering the resources of the other. As wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters, women have economic obligations that are independent of their husbands and they take pride in their ability to earn the monies to meet these responsibilities. Most of all, as mothers, women want to be in an economic position “to do their utmost” for their children.

In nuclear families, motherhood often makes a woman more economically dependent on her husband, at least in the early years. If she had not been employed before the birth of her first child, she might choose not to enter the labor market while her children are pre-school age. The decision as to whether a woman will continue to work (if she has been employed beforehand) usually depends on whether the formerly two-income household can be supported on her husband’s income alone. The ideal that the husband should be the breadwinner is still sufficiently entrenched in the nuclear family ideology that both the husband and wife might be encouraged to “get along” on the husband’s income, rather than have a new mother “go out and get a job.” 2

Within the nuclear family, there is not the incentive that exists in the African conjugal and extended families, for mothers to try to become as economically independent, or self-reliant, as possible. One factor that mitigates against this view is the fact that in the nuclear family, joint accounts and joint management of the family purse are promoted as “best practices” for the family. Thus, a woman as wife and mother does not have to have her own income in order to feel that she is in control of at least her “fair share” of the family resources. In fact, what from the perspective of the African conjugal family would appear to be a wife’s dependence on her husband, would from the nuclear family perspective appear to be co-dependence on each other. Especially in recent times when feminism has stressed the economic value of a woman’s work in the home, wives and mothers need not feel dependent because they are not earning an income outside the home. Their in-home contribution to the household may be seen as having equal or nearly equal value as that of the husband who earns his share on the outside.

This section of the paper opened with the observation that motherhood enhances the status of wives in African family and community contexts. Based on my researches among the Yoruba, I would add that the longer a mother lives, the more her status as mother literally overshadows her status as wife. Of course, this speaks, in part, to the importance of seniority in Yoruba society, a fact which a number of scholars have noted, but which has been given great prominence through the recent work of Oyeronke Oyewumi ( 1996. See also Fadipe 1936, 1970; Bascom 1942 and 1951; Marshall 1970; Sudarkasa 1973, 1987).

In my work, I define “seniority” as a more inclusive concept than does Oyewumi, who seems to confine it to greater age and what I termed “priority of claim.” Writing from Ghana 1968, I reflected on my earlier field experience among the Yoruba in Nigeria, with the following observation:

Months before I even saw Awe, I had come to realize that by calling attention to seniority as a determinant of status in Yoruba society, Bascom (1942) had singled out the most important regulator of interpersonal behavior. Age, sex (or gender), office, and what be termed “priority of claim” are the variables that interact to determine seniority. Degree of formal education is not a determinant of seniority: however, because it enters into the assessment of status, it can effect patterns of deference displayed in particular situations. In some circumstances the determination of seniority can be a delicate and complex affair, and ambiguity may be a necessary attribute of both the display and interpretation of deferential behavior. Generally speaking, however, men out rank women, [but] greater age confers seniority. In appropriate circumstances, however, both age and sex may be overridden by office and “priority of claim” as determinants of seniority.” (Marshall 1970, p.176).

As a woman ages, as I said above, her status as a mother gains in prominence and her status as wife becomes less important. (I note that this is not necessarily the case among professional women married to professional men). Among the Yoruba, as a mother ages, she becomes an Elder- Mother or Mother- Elder (Iya Agba, which is often translated as grandmother, but youthful grandmothers would not be termed Iya Agba). Within her husband’s compound and extended family where she resides, an Iya Agba is one of the seniormost wives, but more importantly, she is one of the seniormost mothers of the adult men and women of the lineage. Progressively, her status as a mother has overtaken and encompassed her status as wife.

In Western nuclear families as a woman grows old, her status as a wife is usually enhanced, as long as her husband is alive. The husband and wife relish “growing old together”, oftentimes far away from their children. Visits from their children and grandchildren on holidays are considered adequate and appropriate. As mothers, elderly women from nuclear families (and an analogous point might be made with respect to elderly men) often suffer in their old age because they are left on their own by their children. If they cannot live out their days in their own homes with their husbands, or by themselves as widows, they usually end up in nursing homes. If an adult child visits his or her mother in a nursing home on a daily basis, that is considered a great accomplishment, and a show of utmost caring and concern.

In African extended families, elderly mothers are cared for by at least one of their children and some of their grandchildren. They are usually either in the compound where they have lived since marriage or in the home of one of their children. Occasionally, elderly mothers might have returned to their natal compounds where their own lineage resides. But wherever they are, these Iya Agba are expected to live out their days among their children, grandchildren or other relatives.

Of course, in some families in Western countries, the same is true as well. Care for the elderly in institutions outside the home is a twentieth century phenomenon that reflects changing residential patterns, changing demographics, changing approaches to health care, and changing values regarding family obligations to the elderly. No change has had more impact in this regard, than the spread of nuclear family households with an attendant nuclear family ideology that does not consider it an obligation to “make room” for more than the two generations who are expected to reside together “as a family.”

Yet, the bottom line, as it were, is that when the elderly do not have the insurance to pay for extended care in a nursing home, and when their adult children cannot afford the cost, nuclear families may be forced to “take in” their aging mothers or fathers even when to do so might be considered an undue burden requiring great sacrifice, rather than an expected and accepted responsibility.

4. “Real” Mothers and “Half” Siblings: Contrasting Concepts in Nuclear and Extended Families

In both Western nuclear families and African conjugal families, women are mothers to children other than their biological offspring. It is noteworthy, however, that the nuclear family tradition appears to place greater emphasis on distinguishing between a woman’s “own” (biological) children and others she may be rearing, than does the African extended family tradition.

It is common to hear a person from a nuclear family tradition ask another person: “Is that your real mother?” or “Is that your own child?” These are not questions that would be asked (other than by Western researchers) in African societies with extended family traditions. In Africa, biological motherhood is certainly very highly valued, but if a woman has not “had an issue,” it would be embarrassing, hurtful and insensitive to ask if the children she is rearing are her “own” children. Similarly, to ask if a woman is someone’s “real” mother, could raise a number of issues that neither the de facto mother, or the biological mother, would want to have raised. This does not mean that such topics cannot be discussed, but the approach to them is different than in nuclear family contexts, where people regularly distinguish and discuss “biological” motherhood versus adoptive motherhood.

Questions such as: “are these your own children?” or “is this your real mother?” are not necessarily considered insulting, prying, or hurtful in the nuclear family context. They are “just normal”, information-seeking questions. In the United States, for example, where a woman is recognized as the lawful mother to her children, both “natural born” and “adopted,” it is still common for persons inside the family as well as those on the outside, to make a distinction between the biological children and the others.

Granted, in most nuclear families, a “good mother” would try not to discriminate in her treatment of her biological and non-biological children. Yet, an adoptive mother may answer “no” to the question of whether she is the “real” mother of an adopted child although she is legally the mother, and treats the child as she would her “own” children. And certainly, most American women would not consider themselves to be “the mother” of children whom they rearing for others, when they are not adopted. As I have noted, however, African women often describe themselves as the “mothers” of children “given” or assigned to them, even though they may be willing to explain the difference when circumstances warrant it.

When I was conducting fieldwork among the Yoruba in Ghana as well as in Nigeria, I saw many women who had “had no issue”, but had children they were rearing as their own. Sometimes one or more of these children might not even know that this was not his or her “birth mother” until they were well beyond school age. And even when they found out, they still addressed, and referred to, the woman with whom they were living as their “mother.” That did not preclude them from referring to their newly identified “birth mother” by the same term. As earlier noted, one of the factors contributing to this is the kinship terminology and the structure of the extended family itself. Children with good manners are brought up to relate to a number of women as “mothers”, even though there is a special bond between children and their “own mother.” What has to be realized is that sometimes the woman regarded as a child’s “own mother” is not the birth mother. That special bond can exist between a child and the mother who had assumed, or been assigned, responsibility for his or her upbringing.

In the extended family context, the respect due to a woman who is a mother is not diminished because she is not the “birth mother” of her children. Of course, so long as a “barren woman” is of childbearing age, whenever her kinswomen or her women friends gather to pray, they will pray that one day she will conceive and give birth to a child. In everyday conversation, however, it would be considered hurtful and insensitive to comment on this matter.

As I reflect on motherhood among the Yoruba, I realize that typically, all adult women are presumed to be mothers and are addressed and referred to by terms relating to motherhood. The senior-most women, as already noted, are addressed and referred to as Iya Agba, regardless of whether or not they are biological mothers. A woman who has not yet reached that senior status is addressed and referred to by the name of one of her children: Mother of So and So. If one does not know a woman, she may be addressed as “Mama” until the appropriate term of address is known. A recently married woman is usually addressed as “wife” (Iyawo) by those in their compound, and as “wife of a particular compound” (e.g. Iyawo Ile Bale – wife of the Bale’s House) by others until she has a child. Afterward, as noted above, she is addressed by reference to the name of her first child. In the exchange of greetings that is so much a part of Yoruba etiquette, a married or mature woman is always asked “how are your children?” The answer is always a polite “they exist, thank you” (which is a literal translation of a phrase meaning “they are well, thank you.”). This answer is given even when the woman has not yet had a child. Thus, it seems accurate to say that adult Yoruba women are expected to be mothers first and foremost, and are treated as such.

Another point of note in regard to motherhood in African conjugal families, is the fact that even though women in polygamous marriages are referred to as “co-wives”, they are seldom thought of as “co-mothers.” In fact, the assumption is that there is too much friction and discord in the co-wife relationship to allow them to be considered “co-mothers.” In the literature, competition among co-wives has often been focused on to the exclusion of any discussion of cooperation among them. Yet, cooperation among co-wives is common, and “good mothers” rear their children to have good relationships with their paternally-linked siblings. (Sudarkasa 1973; Ware 1979). To the extent that they are “good mothers”, co-wives are, in fact, co-mothers.

Just as there are differences in the way nuclear families and extended families conceptualize mothers and motherhood, so too, are there differences in the way children are categorized and referred to in the kinship terminologies. Of special note in relation to this discussion of motherhood are the ways in which biological links between mothers and their children are conceptualized in nuclear families as compared to extended families. Interestingly, in nuclear families, the biological link between children and their parents receives greater emphasis. When siblings have only one parent in common, for example, they are considered to be “half-siblings”, “half-brothers, ” or “half-sisters. Over the years, I have found that most students from Western countries automatically assume that the logic underlying the concept of “half-sibling” is universal. Yet, from my studies of African (and African-American) kinship, I know that this is not the case.

In polygamous families in Africa (as in other parts of the world), children of the same father are considered to be an indivisible group for certain purposes, and for other purposes, they are considered to be divisible into groups headed by their respective mothers. The divisions among the children usually surface in connection with the allocation of the father’s resources during his lifetime, and the distribution of at least some of his property after his death. Most people point out that children of the same mother [and father] are expected to be closer to each other than they are to their siblings by the same father, but different mothers. (See, Amadiume 1987, p. 36 passim) Intuitively, this seems to be logical, not only because of the biological ties, but because in the socialization process, the children of one mother are more likely to be reared to develop special ties to each other within the polygamous environment. In this situation, persons from societies with nuclear family ideologies are likely to automatically consider the children of different mothers as “half-siblings.”.

Using the concepts in Yoruba kinship as an example, I want to demonstrate that the biological links between parents and their children, and particularly between mothers and their children, in polygamous African conjugal families, are not conceptualized as Westerners might expect them to be. It will be argued that the presence of the lineage in Yoruba society is the key to explaining the difference between the Western nuclear family conceptions and the realities in Yoruba society.

Among the Yoruba, children of the same father are known as Omo Baba or Oba Kan. A father’s children born of different mothers are known as Omo Iya, i.e. children of one mother [by the same father]. As noted above, a Westerner with a nuclear family background might automatically assume that siblings in the different sets of Omo Iya are the equivalent of “half-sisters” or “half-brothers.” From my understanding, however, I would say there are significant differences between the concepts.. I should note, however, that the terms “half-brother” and “half-sister” are used today by some Yorubas and other Africans, when speaking in English, about their siblings who have different mothers than their own. Such usage does not always go unchallenged.

To understand the difference between the Yoruba concepts and the ones we in the West are familiar with, let me remind the reader that Yoruba kinship terminology is of the “generational” type that extends terms for “close” relatives to other more distant relatives in the same generation. The terms for senior sibling (egbon) and junior sibling (aburo) are used in reference to, and in addressing, all brothers and sisters (including those English speakers would term “half” brothers or sisters) and all cousins in a speaker’s generation. The Yoruba do not have a word for “half-sibling.” As Oyewumi’s recent work has emphasized, and a number of earlier scholars also noted, there is no gender distinction in the terms for siblings; only seniority is indicated by the word for sibling that a particular speaker chooses. (Oyewumi 1996, Sudarkasa 1973, Bascom 1942, Lloyd 1955, Schwab 1955, Fadipe 1936).

In sum, although there is no term for “half-sibling” in the Yoruba kinship terminology, there is the cross-cutting division of one man’s children (Omo Baba) into groups born of the same mother (Omo Iya). How does one reconcile these two facts? Why are distinctions made between siblings within the family (i.e. groupings into Omo Iya) that are not reflected in the terms of reference or terms of address for siblings in the kinship terminology? Could it be that Westerners consider the distinctions more important than they are? Has the spread of the nuclear family ideology from the West made the distinctions among a man’s children take on a meaning that they did not have before the twentieth century? Or could it be that the different groups of Omo Iya are in fact conceptualized as the equivalent of “half-siblings” even though there is no such word in the kinship terminology?

First, it must be recognized that although the concept of Omo Iya is important in certain circumstances within the family, no single group of Omo Iya ranks higher than any other. In fact, within the conjugal family, all of a man’s children (Omo Baba ) are ranked according to their order of birth, regardless of who their mothers happen to be. Among the children, seniority depends solely on order of birth. The second point to note is that the identity a man confers on his children derives from his lineage, and that identity is not divisible. Membership in a man’s lineage devolves equally on all the children he can show to be legitimately his own. (Disputes do arise as to who is the father of a particular child, and hence, it might be necessary to establish the lineage to which a child rightly belongs) Within the lineage, the determination of seniority is totally independent of seniority within any conjugal family. Each member of the lineage is ranked according to his or her order of birth..

As can be deduced from what is said above, the division of siblings into Omo Iya within their conjugal family does not carry over into the lineage. As far as lineage membership and the conduct of lineage affairs are concerned, it is does not matter that some of the lineage members who have the same father, have different mothers. The only relevant consideration is that they are children of their father, and through him they are members of the lineage. There are no “half-siblings” within the lineage.

The fact that there are no “half-siblings” in the lineage precludes their being “half- siblings” in the conjugal family. Indeed, although children are divided into Omo Iya for certain purposes within the family, and although mothers nurture close bonds among their children, they know that they cannot rear their children to think of their father’s other children as “half-siblings.” My research showed that mothers had to teach their children to recognize and respect the rank order of their siblings, especially of their brothers and sisters born of the same father. Mothers also had to help instill in their children the importance of their lineage as the fountainhead of their identity. Children had to learn the history of their ancestors and know and respect their living elders before the question of the lineage as a source of certain property rights, opportunities for office, and other entitlements would arise. Hence, mothers were partly responsible for promoting a sense of solidarity and respect between her children and all others in their lineage. The best mothers had to have the ability to promote harmony among all the children in their family, while at the same time nurturing a special bond among the children she bore for her husband.

This discussion demonstrates that the ties of descent that link parents with their children are not equally weighted in all societies, as is the case in societies with nuclear family ideologies. Wherever lineages exist, either the fatherline (in the case of patrilineages) or the motherline (in the case of matrilineages) will be given the greater weight in determining the kinship of one person to another. Predictably, the concept of “half-siblings” would not apply to the children of the same father, in the case of patrilineages, or the children of the same mother, in the case of matrilineages. As I noted earlier, however, in today’s world, where the nuclear family ideology and related kinship terminology has spread virtually throughout the world, terms such as “half-brother” and “half-sister” are gaining usage in Africa as elsewhere.

Among the Yoruba, there is one relationship among a mother’s children that bears a closer analogy to that of “half-sibling”, but even then, some might argue that the concepts are not the same. I am referring to the concept of Iye Kan, which applies to children of the same mother, but different fathers, These are children who belong to entirely different lineages, as a result of their mother’s marriage, divorce and re-marriage. Sometimes a woman would have had a child out of wedlock, and later married a man other than that child’s father. The concept of Iye Kan emphasizes a link with the mother, but it does not imply legal siblinghood with the mother’s other children who belong to a different lineage. Emotionally, these children might be brought up to regard each other as “siblings,” and they would use the terms for siblings – egbon and aburo - in addressing each other, but their relationship is qualitatively different from that of siblings who share the same father, even by diffeent mothers. Hence, my suggestion that this relationship is closer to that of “half-sibling,” as the concept is used in English. This is a question for indigenous Yoruba-speakers, who also know the Western concept, to debate and decide, though possibly no two of them would agree on the answer.

In my view, the existence of the concept of Iye Kan shows how much motherhood is valued among the Yoruba, and indicates that regardless of the prevailing rule of patrilinality, acknowledgment must be given to the strong and enduring ties between a mother and her children, regardless of who their fathers happen to be.

During my first fieldwork in Nigeria, I happened to know one family very well, in which all three sets of the relationships described above existed among the siblings. Although this fact did not come up in day to day conversation, the siblings exemplified all three groupings: Omo Baba, Omo Iya, and Iye Kan. This was a monogamous conjugal family, in which the mother and father had each had one child before they married each other. Together they had four children. Those four children and the father’s oldest son represented the group known as Omo Baba, i.e. children of one father. The four children constituted a group that would be termed Omo Iya, or children of one mother and one father. The mother’s first son, who was born when she was quite young, belonged to his father’s lineage, and had resided most of his life with his father’s extended family. He and his mother’s four younger children constituted an Iye Kan, i.e. children of the same mother, but different fathers.

In keeping with lineage principles, the mother’s oldest son and the oldest son of the mother’s husband, were not regarded as kin. There is no concept of “step-brothers” here, in contrast to what exists in nuclear family kinship systems. These were men who belonged to different lineages, period. In fact, even though, in accord with protocols already discussed for Yoruba extended and conjugal families, the mother in the family was regarded as a “mother” (not “step-mother”) by her husband’s oldest son, her own first born son did not regard her husband as a “father” (or “step-father”), except in the sense that this was a male elder who deserved the respect accorded to a father.

The first thing I noticed about the four younger siblings in this family was the great respect they accorded their oldest brother, i.e. their father’s oldest son. The deference toward him was greater than it might have been because of the age difference between himself and the oldest of his younger siblings. The fact that he was seven to ten years older than his nearest brother, made him a male authority figure second only to their father in their immediate family. The oldest brother was also very respectful to the mother of his siblings, a woman Westerners would term his “step-mother”, but whom he treated as if she were his mother. He addressed her by the same term used by her other children, which in this case, happened to be “Sisi,” not Mother or Mama. ( She was also addressed by this term of endearment by her husband and everyone else close to her.)

Even though I know the four children saw themselves as “Omo Iya”, i.e. children of one mother [and one father], I am not sure to what extent they really thought of themselves in juxtaposition to their oldest brother, whose mother was deceased. The relationship of the four children to their mother’s oldest son was very different. Even though the four siblings were very affectionate and easy-going with their mother’s oldest child, they did not regard him as a “brother” in the same sense as they did their father’s oldest son. He and they were simply Iye Kan, children of one mother, but different fathers.

One of the clearest lessons from this discussion of the Yoruba conceptions of the relations between mothers and fathers, and their children, is that kinship roles and relationships must be understood culturally, and cannot be reduced to biology. Yet, the Western nuclear family ideology places great emphasis on biology in matters of kinship, as indicated by the use of concepts such as “real mothers” and “half-siblings.”

In seeking an explanation for this, I was reminded of the relevance of Oyeronke Oyewumi’s discussion of what she terms the “somatocentricity” in Western culture. She makes a compelling case for the centrality of biological explanations and emphases throughout that culture (Oyewumi 1996, esp. pp.1-17). As this paper indicates, there is much evidence of this somatocentricity in the ideology and behavior associated with nuclear families. I might add that while my research does not support Oyewumi’s thesis concerning the absence of gender in indigenous Oyo Yoruba society, I would certainly agree with her that the somatocentricity observable in Western culture did not exist among the Yoruba. Nor from my reading of the literature, does it appear to have existed in any of the other well-documented indigenous cultures of West Africa.

5. The Differing Relationship of “Marital Stability” to “Family Stability” in Nuclear and Extended Families

Up to this point in discussing motherhood in nuclear and extended families, the paper has focused on formative and on-going family relationships, without reference to the break-up or break-down of these relationships. Yet, we know that the severance of family relationships, as much as the establishment and maintenance of these relationships, is a regular part of family histories and domestic cycles. This is particularly the case with marital relationships based in law, in as much as these are relatively easily severed by law. In the remaining section of this paper, I want to briefly comment on the dissolution of marriage and its implications for motherhood in nuclear and extended family systems.

In nuclear families, marital stability and family stability are regarded as one and the same. When a marriage is dissolved, families are considered to be “broken,”. and children of divorced parents are characterized as children of “broken homes.” When a legal divorce occurs, the ties between mothers (and fathers) and their dependent children are affected by the terms of the divorce as decided in a court of law. For most of the twentieth century, the courts favored awarding custody of minor children to their mothers, with terms of support and visitation by the fathers also being stipulated in the divorce decree. The dissolution of the marriage relationship also officially dissolves all affinal ties between a woman and her former husband’s family, even though some of those affinal relationships (such as between former mothers- and daughters-in-law) might be informally maintained, especially “for the sake of the children.”

Until recently, in nuclear families in America (and perhaps elsewhere), the ties linking parents to their children have been presumed to be life-long ties. In the United States, in the past one or two decades, however, children have been allowed to “divorce” their parents in courts of law. In keeping with nuclear family ideology, the family is not dissolved as a result of a parent-child divorce, as it would be in the case a divorce between the parents. In fact, ironically, the nuclear family might be seen as having been been strengthened by the divorce action initiated by a child because it might have “brought the parents [and their other children] closer together.” The point is, the marital bond between a husband and wife is that which keeps the nuclear family together, and it does not officially “break-up” unless that bond is severed.

In African extended families, the ties around which the family is built are lineage ties based on descent, and these are presumed to be unbreakable. This has important implications for what happens when there is a dissolution of a marriage within one of the conjugal families that make up the extended family. It also has implications for the relationship between divorced husbands and wives. In a patrilineal situation, it has special implications for the continuing affinal relationships between a mother and the lineage and compound (i.e. the extended family) of her children and their father.

To anticipate the main point here: in African extended families, because of the continuity provided by the lineage, marital stability and family stability are not one and the same. Family stability rests upon the lineal descent ties which , as previously noted, are presumed to exist in perpetuity. A divorce cannot break these ties, and when divorce occurs, the marriage is broken, but the family is not. The conjugal family to which a divorced wife previously belonged remains a part of the compound. When the marriage was polygamous, the family continues with little disruption. If the marriage was monogamous, the man takes another wife as soon as possible. The family continues, and there is no sense of “a broken home.”

In patrilineal societies such as the Yoruba, when a divorce occurs, older children continue to reside in their father’s compound, while younger ones would most likely remain with their mothers until they are considered old enough to return to their fathers. In the compound, the children will be cared for by the father’s mother, one of his other wives, a brother’s wife, or another woman in the compound. (An entirely different set of actions would probably occur when the marriage is across cultural or international lines, and especially when the departing wife comes from a Western nuclear family tradition.)

Some of the most important aspects of extended family organization are revealed by studying what happens after divorce. Again, referring to patrilineal societies, the extended family ideology emphasizes that the ties between a man and the mother of his children can never be broken. Thus, even though a man and woman may sever their conjugal ties as husband and wife, they have continuing ties as parents of their children.

In the case of the Yoruba, this is most clearly demonstrated by the ties a mother maintains with the lineage, compound and extended family of her children, which, of course, are also those of her former husband. These ties will be less visible when the mother remarries, but they may still be manifest. At important ceremonials, such as weddings or funerals, a mother (and former wife) will usually return to her former husband’s compound to “do her part” on behalf of her children. This underscores the importance of distinguishing a woman’s conjugal role as wife, from her affinal (in-law) links to the compound and extended family, where she is the mother of some of its members. In other words, a woman often continued some of her affinal duties as wife, even after her conjugal role as wife had been terminated. I describe this as a continuance of her affinal role as wife because as the mother of a child or children of the lineage, in all ceremonial contexts, she will take her place among the other wives (and mothers) of the house who, as will be recalled, are juxtaposed to the members of the lineage, including her former husband and the children she bore for him.

After a divorce, children were expected to maintain respectful relationships with both parents, regardless of which one was the de facto custodial parent. Of course, in patrilineal situations, the children legally belonged to (and with) the father, and he would be regarded as their legal custodian, regardless of where the children resided. This is important to note because in cases of divorce within nuclear families, parents often openly vie for custody of their children as well as for their children’s “love and affection.” The result is that children are oftentimes deliberately alienated from one parent or the other. In African extended families, although love between parents and children is important, respect is even more so, and neither parent is expected to undermine a child’s respect for the other.

Conclusion

This paper has discussed motherhood and other aspects of kinship in nuclear and extended families without reference to the many on-going changes that have affected both of these institutions, especially in the second half of the twentieth century. In concluding this discussion, I want to call attention to a few of the many changes that are critical to understanding today’s family structures. These changes will affect the way scholars frame future comparative research on motherhood.

The most far reaching of these changes are three: (1) the spread of nuclear family structures and ideology from their roots in Europe and America to virtually all parts of the world; (2) the more recent dramatic decline in the number and percentages of “in tact” nuclear families in the very countries that exported those structures to other parts of the world; and (3) the rise of feminism, womanism, and related ideologies and movements that seek to redress the power relations between men and women the world over.

Throughout the twentieth century, as a result of the spread of what someone termed “the book and the bible” (i.e. Western education and the Christian religion), nuclear families have been promoted as the family structure that can best serve the “will of God,” promote economic and social “modernization,” and ensure the overall advancement of humanity. Toward the end of the twentieth century, as a result of the global outreach of the West through television, movies, videos, the Internet, and other forms of electronic media, most of the world is being exposed to both the continued promotion of the nuclear family ideal, and the realities of changing families and family values in the West, especially in the United States.

How much the spread of the nuclear family ideal has affected the world is indicated by the fact that heads of state, heads of government, and other senior officials from nations and cultures all around the globe choose to “ put a nuclear family face” on their domestic arrangements whenever they are publicly involved in official activities, particularly those that put them in the international spotlight. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, monarchs from non-Western countries could be seen in public or in pictures with multiple wives and many children. Today, if one observes social activities at the highest international levels, it would appear that all men and women are married monogamously, and living in nuclear families.

In the context of the spread of nuclear family ideologies to all parts of the globe, including Africa, it will be necessary to have far more studies of this phenomenon if we are to understand its implications and ramifications, including those related to women in their roles as mothers. Various scholars working in Africa have begun to analyze the impact of nuclear family ideologies and the Western-derived legal systems which support them, on the structure and functioning of indigenous African extended family systems. Many of the existing studies focus on the increasing tensions between conjugal families aspiring toward the more closed, inwardly-focused nuclear family model, on the one hand, and the traditional “demands” of the extended families on the other. Not surprisingly, when these studies look at the implications of these tensions and confrontations, they focus on the desires and complaints of women in the role of wives, many of whom express the desire to have more “freedom” from the “interference” of their in-laws in matters affecting their conjugal family; more exclusive access to their husbands’ resources; more protection for themselves and their children in cases of separation; and a lower incidence of polygamous marriages. ( Oppong 1974, Sudarkasa 1983, McAdoo & Were,1987, Mikell 1997, Toungara 1997, and Manuh 1997).

In keeping with the focus on motherhood pioneered in this Conference, we should promote and encourage research that will consider the implications for women as mothers of the on-going changes in family structures and ideologies evident on the African continent. When we design research that requires women to focus on their various familial roles, especially those of mother, daughter and sister, as well as that of wife, they will have to deal with the often conflicting requirements, responsibilities and rewards of these different roles. In that context, women can be encouraged to “sort out” their priorities and make informed decisions as to the family policies they want to advocate as being in their best interest and the interests of those segments of the society they represent.

In teaching about families and family structures, in academia as well as in other settings, there is a need for us as women scholars to provide realistic, rather than idealistic, information about the Western nuclear family structures African women tend to see as desirable from a distance. By the same token, it is necessary to realistically analyze the extended family structures they know from experience, but may think of mainly in terms of the burdens they impose, rather than in terms of the assistance they provide and potentially can provide in achieving the goals women (and men) have for themselves, their families and their society. Thus, both the “upside” and the “downside” of nuclear and extended family structures should be a subject not only of research, but of discussion and analysis wherever people gather to consider the institutions they wish to see in Africa’s future.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the changes being wrought on African families, and especially on African mothers and grandmothers, by the impact of the HIV-AIDS pandemic. Nevertheless, mention must be made of this scourge because all reports indicate that for the foreseeable future an increasing number of women throughout the continent will be required to shoulder the responsibilities of motherhood, grand-motherhood, and even foster-motherhood without the support of husbands, and with only minimal assistance from their governments and other public and private agencies. Population decimation, as well as fear of the disease, is reportedly forcing many women to shoulder the burdens of caring for large numbers of children without the assistance of their extended families. Concern for containing and curtailing the impact of this disease can provide opportunities for community-based analyses of African family structures and ways of utilizing them to address a situation that everyone recognizes as urgently requiring indigenous as well as outside assistance. As women scholars both on the continent and outside, we must factor this disease into our research and activist agendas, especially those that focus on motherhood.

The second set of changes I mentioned that have had, and will continue to have an impact on mothers and families stem from the rapid and dramatic decline in the incidence of “in tact” nuclear family structures in Europe and America. In the United States, single-parent households, “blended families” and “step families” make up most of the “alternative” families that are replacing the traditional nuclear family. Many scholars are studying the trends underlying these changing family patterns with a view to better understanding both their causes and their implications. We know that almost all of the changes are placing mothers, and particularly low-income, single mothers, at an increasing disadvantage, both economically and socially. Right in America, this represents an aspect of the global phenomenon of the feminization of poverty, and it requires research, not only into the interrelatedness of the changing family patterns and economic deprivation, but also into ways in which women as mothers might intentionally modify their residential and family networks so as to render greater assistance to one another. In various publications, I have suggested the need to mount “an all-out effort to re-build extended family support systems for these single mothers rather than hold out the unrealistic expectations that two-parent families will remerge as the predominant household structure” (Sudarkasa 1996 p 73; Sudarkasa 1993).

Finally, let me just mention a third set of changes that are having a fundamental impact on the behavior and values associated with motherhood in all parts of the world. I refer to the rise of movements to empower women -- movements that are generally discussed under the rubrics of feminism and/or womanism. Of all the socio-economic and political changes taking place in the world today, none will have as profound an effect on women’s roles within their families, as the improvements in their legal, political, and economic statuses that are being promoted through various international, national, and local programs.

As women push the planet toward the overall goal of gender equity in all areas, not only do they envision a vast improvement in their own lot, but they also see themselves as effectively addressing many of the inequalities in the world, starting with the amelioration of poverty which is fundamental to eliminating other injustices and inequalities around the globe.. The slowness of progress toward the goal of gender equity can be discouraging, but progress is being made. (Pala-Okeyo 1997, UNIFEM 2000; Sudarkasa 2000) In terms of research mandates, more women scholars are needed to identify areas in which, and the ways and means by which progress has been made, so as to provide models that can help to speed up the process of positive change. Motherhood and all other facets of the lives of women would be the beneficiaries.

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[1] Lest the reader protest that many women in Western nuclear families and in African conjugal families derive their power and influence from the resources they bring to the marriage as working women, let me concede this point, noting that it has been made over and over again in my own work. but let me try to show why that is not the issue being discussed here. Of course, women in the Western world gain power and prestige within their homes from their positions in the corporate and professional world outside. So too, do African women who are noted for their work as small scale traders and farmers as well as professionals and large scale entrepreneurs in various fields. The argument here is focused on the power and influence attached to the role of wife and the role of mother, per se, in extended and conjugal families in Africa, on the one hand, and in nuclear families in the West, on the other. Holding women’s economic positions constant, I am suggesting that in African family and community settings, it is the role of mother that brings the greater prestige, power and influence. In the nuclear families of the West (using the U.S. as the example), I am suggesting that the role of wife carries the greater measure of prestige, power and influence.

[2] In generalizing about any social phenomena, there are always many points left out that should have been included. In characterizing motherhood in nuclear families as often “making a woman more economically dependent on her husband,” I realize that in America alone, there are millions of working mothers, who are far from being dependent on their husbands. In fact, in most cases, the incomes of these working mothers are necessary to the survival of their families. Among low-income nuclear families in America, normally the wife and husband are employed or seeking employment. I realize that when I speak about mothers being dependent on their husbands in nuclear families, I am speaking only about families in which the husband’s earnings, along with other resources available to the couple, are sufficient to enable the wife to remain in the home rather than work outside. On the other hand, in most African conjugal families, even when a mother can afford not to work, she is most likely to choose to be self-employed. In Nigeria, for example, the wives of many very wealthy men are engaged in businesses of their own. Even when they do not have shops or stores, they might have special customers who come to their homes to buy “high-end” items such as jewelry, designer handbags, shoes and other accessories purchased from abroad. These women do not “need to work” but they choose to work because it is a part of the culture, and indeed, a part of what they feel they want to do to maintain some economic independence from their husbands.

Copyright © 2004 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies: Issue 5, 2004