Introduction: Parents’ Involvement in Children’s Lives in Africa

Abstract

A common phrase used when talking about child socialisation in Africa is that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. This phrase emanates from a context where a child is part of a larger network of people that extends beyond the nuclear and extended families to include members of the child’s community. Such networks are possible in a relatively cohesive society found in rural communities where residential patterns are stable, local resources shared, and common descent claimed. These communities share a common language and social and ethical norms that govern daily interactions and practices. Needless to say, people in such communities know each other well. My own childhood memories of growing up in the early 1970s in a small rural community in Eastern Kenya are of my parents and grandparents being keenly interested and involved in my peers’ school attendance and even reprimanding them for sneaking out of school to go to the local shopping centre during school hours. This attention was not only supported but also encouraged by the parents and relatives of those children, making it possible for an adult (not related to the child) to reprimand him/her when in the wrong and then report the incident to the child’s parents who would in turn punish their child. I am sure this social practice is not limited to African societies but can be found in other societies where survival of a community is strongly dependent on, among other things, the role played by each member and private property ownership is not a highly developed phenomenon. Such a social arrangement would also thrive in a community with a worldview that embraces a collectivist, as opposed to an individualist, approach to life where one’s individual aspirations are often suppressed for the sake of the goals of the larger community.

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