This  Place is better than my Home’: Anecdotes on child fosterage and child domestic work in three Districts in Northern Ghana

G. ADOBEA  OWUSU; FRANCIS G.  ADJEI

G. ADOBEA OWUSU University of Ghana
FRANCIS G. ADJEI University of Ghana

Keywords: Child fosterage, child domestic worker, co-wife rivalry, polygynous marriage, northern Ghana, qualitative in-depth interviews

Abstract

Fosterage in West Africa is peculiar and has key benefits. This study, which
was conducted in three districts in the Upper East and Northern regions of
Ghana, uses qualitative in-depth interviews to fill some essential gaps in the
study of fosterage. Unlike most studies on the phenomenon, ours provide
perspectives from both the foster children and the receiving parents, and
employs cultural relativism to analyze the data. The findings supported
several past studies on the subject--fosterage was being done as a social service within the context of the extended family mainly and nearly all the
foster children were girls. Crisis fosterage was predominant. Although both
children and foster parents/guardians seemed to have some challenges, all
the children said that they fared better in the foster homes, compared to
their biological homes. This was not without financial strains to the foster
parents. We found an eclectic mixture of previous explanatory frameworks
proposed for child fosterage in the sub-region. Policy implications of our
findings are given.