Mothering, Work, and Gender in Urban Asante Ideology and Practice

Abstract

Conventional Asante gender roles in Ghana emphasize biological motherhood for women, but Asante assume mothers' loyalties and schedule conflicts will interfere with equally female gendered expectations within marriage, not with fulltime paid work. Asante express their maternal devotion most by working tirelessly to meet their children's financial needs, not by staying home with them. In this paper I analyze urban Asante ideals and practices about gender and parenting, drawing on life histories and fieldwork with Kumasi traders since 1978. Market trading is ideal "nursing‐mother work" because it generates the steady income needed to raise children successfully to adulthood, not because it is compatible with childcare. Marriage depends directly on women's intimate domestic work, creating structural tension with motherhood. Concepts about motherly fathers, manly women, and fools of both genders show how the distribution of income and capital defines gender and kin role performance. Asante have accommodated historical changes in gender expectations about work, parenihood, and marriage within their general positive emphasis on negotiability and renegoiiability of relationship content, [ gender, work, Asante, traders, parenting ]