Fathering, mothering and making sense ofntamoba: reflections on the economy of child-rearing in colonial Asante

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the changing dynamics of child-rearing in Asante (Ghana) through the problematic concept ofntamoba. In the historical record, and in popular memory,ntamobahas 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. This article seeks to historicise and explain the multiplicity of meanings and the eventual disappearance ofntamobaby examining the ways in which a father's rights of use in his children were transformed into rights of ownership. It foregrounds time and social place/status as key variables in its investigation, demonstrating how the disappearance ofntamobawas connected with the conflation of subordinate social categories in twentieth-century Asante.

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