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37 Guild Prac. 23 (1980)
Family Problems in Africa

handle is hein.journals/guild37 and id is 33 raw text is: JEANNE MARTIN-CISSE FAMILY PROBLEMS IN AFRICA I will speak briefly about the family in Africa, and es- pecially sub-Sahara Africa. Here, the family is the basic unit of society, and the fundamental element is the woman. Here the family has a much wider meaning. In addition to father and mother, it also includes grandparents, uncles, aunts, and all the extended family, all the family of the huband and the wife, their ancestors, etc. Physically, in talking about family problems, they are very different in our countries from industrialized countries in Europe. Traditional Marriage, Divorce, Child-rearing Fertility and motherhood have always been highly valued in Africa: fertility of the earth and of living creatures and of human beings in particular; the woman being the one who gives and protects life. So women were queens at home, but were not supposed to get involved in public affairs except in indirect, very discreet ways. In certain societies, in addition to other daily, rou- tine tasks, they had to cultivate their families' subsist- ence crops. Within the family, the women were responsible for edu- cating the children, and especially the girls, who had to be taught to do domestic tasks and to be prepared for their future role as wives. From an early age they were incul- cated with the idea that they were there primarily to serve men, to whom they owed total obedience: obedience to their husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles. In contrast, the most important event in a boy's educa- tion, the initiation rites, was the responsibility not of the mother but of the society as a whole. Generally, the initiation rites developed the boys' sense of honor and patriotism, cultivated their sense of nobility and of su- periority over girls. ... Thus the children's education was a way of alienating women and of subordinating them to men. This explains the fact that African women were considered for a long time per- Jeanne Martin-Cisse is Minister of Social Affairs, Republic of Guinea. 23

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