Jill Brown Creighton University

1. Mothering, Brothering and Othering: Socially distributed caregiving among Owambos in northern Namibia Jill Brown Creighton University

2. “There is no such thing as a baby…there is a a baby and someone else” David Winnicott (child psychiatrist) • Attachment and child care • John Bowlby • Primarily mother and infant

4. Nsamenang (1992) proposed a psychological theory of human development that reflects African conceptions of “personhood.”

5. Nsamenang, 1992, 144: “ … although there may be a ‘natural’ developmental path, every culture superimposes its own imprints on it. In this sense, the developmental tasks contained in most English language developmental texts may be no more than the cultural agendas for the development of Western middle-class children. Thus the experience of childhood in West Africa, for instance, may not necessarily accord nor exactly correspond with the definition and experience of childhood as portrayed in the current developmental literature.”

6. Nsamenang’s Stages of Selfhood Development *One of seven “social selfhood” stages.

7. Extending attachment into the field • Sarah Hrdy (Plesteiscene ancestors) • Barry Hewlett (Efe foragers) • Pat Draper (Ju!housi San hunter and gatherers) • Tom Weisner (Luo Kenya)

8. Socially distributed child care Child caretaking often occurs as a part of indirect chains of support in which one child assists another, who assists another. Support is not always immediate and not necessarily organized around exclusive relationships between parent and child Aggression, teasing, and dominance coincide with nurturance and support and come from the same people. Dominance increases with age Food and other material goods are used to threaten, control, soothe, and comfort Children are socialized within the system through apprenticeship learning of their family roles and responsibilities. Children look to other children for support as much or more than they look to adults Care often occurs in the context of other domestic work Elaborate verbal exchanges and question-framed discourse rarely accompany support and nurturance for children. Verbal bargaining and negotiations over rights, choices and privileges between the caretaker and child are infrequent Social and intellectual competence is judged by a child’s ability to manage domestic tasks, demonstrate appropriate social behavior, do child care, and nurture and support others. School achievement emerges as a competency Mothers provide support and nurturance to children as much by securing that others will support their children as by supporting their children directly. Fostering and other forms of child sharing are common Weisner,T.S., Bradley, C., Kilbride, P.L. (1997). (Eds.) African families and the crisis of social change. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.

9. Child Fosterage • The process of raising a child (not your own) • Oluteku

10. Child Fosterage • Motivations: • teaching discipline • education • gifting/sharing • establishing social bonds • enhanced fertility • entering new relationship • times of crisis • apprenticeship/domestic work • Outcomes: • health and illness • education • work

11. And then there is Madonna…. • Additive not substitutive

12. Child Harkness, S. & Super, C.M. (2002). Culture and parenting. In M.H. Bornstein (Ed). Handbook of parenting, Vol. 2, Biology and ecology of parenting (2nd ed.). (pp. 253-280). Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass.

13. Table 1. Patterns of fostered children as a percentage of all children under age 15 in selected countries Living with Country Survey Year # Surveyed Both Mother only Father only Foster/neither Southern (median) 50.7 18.4 2.7 11.3 Namibia DHS 2000 13,641 26.4 29.2 3.6 26.3 Zimbabwe DHS 1999 11,313 45.6 20.5 3.6 12.5 Botswana MICS 2000 9,950 26.1 33.1 2.1 19.4 Eastern (median) 70.7 10.7 1.8 5.2 Kenya MICS 2000 16,394 57.9 20.5 2.3 7.0 Uganda DHS 2000 19,538 60.4 12.4 4.0 9.9 Tanzania DHS 1999 8,293 62.5 13.8 4.3 9.4 Western (median) 66.3 9.8 3.1 9.0 Ghana DHS 1998 9,379 49.1 26.3 4.5 13.2 Sierra Leone MICS 2000 10,131 60.9 8.8 5.0 10.3 Nigeria DHS 1999 17,027 72.0 5.1 2.4 5.8 Central (median) 65.6 12.1 3.2 7.9 C.A.R. MICS 2000 47,516 68.1 10.0 4.7 6.4 Gabon DHS 2000 12,481 41.4 28.1 6.6 14.6 Cameroon MICS 2000 10,979 65.6 11.5 3.8 7.9 Adapted from Monasch, R. & Boerma, J.T. (2004). Orphanhood and childcare patterns in sub-Saharan Africa: an analysis of national surveys from 40 countries. AIDS, 18(2), S55-S65

15. The North of Namibia

17. Distribution of Owambo children’s kinship relationship to head of household

18. Fosterage Chains • What is the cultural logic of fostering among Ovambos in Northern Namibia? • Brown, J. (in press). Child fostering chains among Owambo families in Namibia. Journal of Southern African Studies.

19. Fosterage Chains • The Case: 4 families • 3 connected through fostering (one not) • September –November 2006 • Interviews audio taped • Field notes audio taped • Transcribed in English

24. Research Question • How do Owambo women remember and make sense of their experiences of child fosterage? • Brown, J. (under review). Sisters and Brothers over Others: Life history interviews of child fosterage with Owambo women in Namibia.

25. Memories of Fosterage • 11 Life history interviews with Owambo speaking women in Namibia • 1.5-4 hours each • n=6 rural • n=5 urban • Aged from 25-67 at time of interview • Aged from 3 months-13 years at time of first fosterage

26. Table 1. Characteristics of Owambo women

27. Children are not people…they are children • “So when we go for holiday at Christmas I am together with my parents and they treat us nicely and every time we want to talk to our mother and father about our problems, like I have this problem and that problem, I had to keep it inside myself. Even the bad treatment I get from my grandmother I have to keep it strictly to myself. “ • “You must trust the family, but you don’t have power over it. Even if the child is telling me about the treatment, we are the adults and we do not listen. To adults it is just talk.”

28. Preservation and Dissolution of Sibling Groups • “We played together. The time we are fetching water we can yell for each other. ‘Come on Olivia ‘let’s go’. The time we go to pick up omauni [fruit] or evanda [spinach] in the bush we are together. We go to church together. And we go to Sunday school together. It was very good.” • “At first it was very difficult. I am oshivele (firstborn) and it is difficult because the one that came after me, that I use to wash and carry, I saw her when she was grown up. I wasn’t even thinking she is my sister. They said, yeah this is your sister, but it didn’t feel like it. I was happy to meet her but it didn’t feel like she was my sister. That was the tragedy in this, you see.”

29. Moral development • “My mother died earlier so I got that love but not too much let me say that if you are staying longer with your mother then you have to learn more, how to suffer, how to survive. That is what I used to tell my kids ‘don’t think you will always stay with your parents’.” • “I feel I am lucky being raised by my grandparents because my attitude compared to my brothers and sisters who were raised by their own parents is quite, quite different. I can’t say that I am better than them but I have different ideas. I think I am stronger in the mind and I have developed into a person who can endure and does good for others.”

30. Cultural models of parenting • What is unique to Owambo parenting? • Maternal ethnotheories • Tradition • Benevolence • Agency/Self Direction • Power • Relatedness

31. Table 1 Demographic Characteristics of Sample (N=42) ________________________________________________________ M S f(%) Age of mother (16-80) 34.62 14.23 Age of father (19-70) 36.43 12.32 Education mother (0-14) 9.13 3.23 Education father (0-12) 8.21 4.54 Income (N$) $1,307.0 1,503 Adults in household (1-43) 6.08 6.8 Head of household Male 21(56) Female 18(43) Fostered No 23(56) Yes 19(43)

32. Aaumbo US • Tradition and conformity • Power and Achievement • Benevolence and prosocial • Relatedness • Agency • Separateness • Agency/Self direction • Benevolence and prosocial • Tradition and conformity • Relatedness • Power and achievement

33. Mean scores on Values and Goals (Suizzo, 2007) for Aaumbo and US mothers

34. Table 2. Correlations Among Sociodemographic Variables and Goals Scale (N=42) *p<.05, **p<.001

35. Why might this matter? • Fosterage is a critical part of the social welfare system of many African communities.

38. Conclusions • Children’s agency within cultural context that favors obedience, discourages verbal exchanges and bargaining • Sibling caretaking overlooked in most studies of child fosterage • Education • Fosterage is increasingly important as over 20 million orphans are being cared for within the system (UNICEF, 2007)

39. Developmental research questions illuminated by fosterage • What are the psychological implications for an infant when his mother’s initial response to him, as well as her availability over time, is contingent nor just on her own past experience and physical condition but also on her perceptions about who else is around and willing to help? • How does dependence on (and perhaps attachment to) multiple others affect an individual’s outlook during his lifetime, as well as over the many lifetimes that cumulatively add up to evolutionary change?

40. Future Research • Look at attachment and not assume that multiple caregivers means multiple attachments • Explore sibling relationships

41. References • Bledsoe, C. (1990). The politics of children: Fosterage and social management of fertility among the Mende of Sierra Leone. In W.P. Handwerker’s (Ed), Births and1 42Power: Social Change and the Politics of Reproduction, (pp.81 100.) • Bledsoe, C., Ewban, D., & Isiugo-Abanihe, U.C. (1988). The effect of child fostering on feeding practices and access to health services in Sierra Leone. Social Science & Medicine, 27(6), 627-636. • Brown, J. (2009). Child fosterage and the developmental markers of Ovambo children in Namibia: A look at gender and kinship. Childhood in Africa: An interdisciplinary journal, 1, 4-10 • Creswell, J.W. (2003). Research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed method research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. • Goody, E. (1973). Contexts of kinship: An essay in the family sociology of the Gonja of northern Ghana. London: Cambridge University Press. • Harkness, S. & Super, C.M. (2002). Culture and parenting. In M.H. Bornstein (Ed). Handbook of parenting, Vol. 2, Biology and ecology of parenting (2nd ed.). (pp. 253-280). Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass • Levine, R.A., Dixon, S., Levine, S., Richmean, A., Leiderman, P.H., Keefer, C.H., & Brazelton, T.B. (1994). Childcare and culture: Lessons from Africa. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. • Monasch, R. & Boerma, J.T. (2004). Orphanhood and childcare patterns in sub-Saharan Africa: an analysis of national surveys from 40 countries. AIDS, 18(2), S55-S65 • Weisner, T.S., Bradley, C., Kilbride, P.L. (1997). (Eds.) African families and the crisis of social change. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey. • Whiting, B.B. & Edwards, C.P. (1988). Children of different worlds: The formation of social behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.