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Title: | Fathering, Mothering and Making Sense of Ntamoba: Reflections on the Economy of Child-Rearing in Colonial Asante |
Author: | Allman, Jean |
Year: | 1997 |
Periodical: | Africa: Journal of the International African Institute |
Volume: | 67 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 296-321 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Ghana Great Britain |
Subjects: | Ashanti colonialism child rearing Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration Women's Issues Cultural Roles Historical/Biographical Family Life Women and Their Children Sex Roles |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/1161446 |
Abstract: | This article explores the changing dynamics of childrearing in colonial Asante (Ghana) through the problematic concept of 'ntamoba'. In the historical record, and in popular memory, 'ntamoba' has survived in a number of forms - as a marriage payment, as a rite connected with birthing and naming, and as an indemnification paid to a father by a child's matrikin to signify the termination of a father's rights in that child. The article seeks to historicize and explain the multiplicity of meanings and the eventual disappearance of 'ntamoba' by examining the ways in which a father's rights of use in his children were transformed into rights of ownership. This transformation occurred at a time when the economic cost of rearing children, particularly as a result of school fees, was rising dramatically. The article gives prominence to time and social place/status as key variables in its investigation, demonstrating how the disappearance of 'ntamoba' was connected with the conflation of subordinate social categories in 20th-century Asante. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. |