Adoption and fostering Books

Book SynopsisIn Transfers of Belonging, Erdmute Alber traces the history of child fostering in northern Benin from the pre-colonial past to the present by pointing out the embeddedness of child foster practices and norms in a wider political process of change. Child fostering was, for a long time, not just one way of raising children, but seen as the appropriate way of doing so. This changed profoundly with the arrival of European ideas about birth parents being the ‘right’ parents, but also with the introduction of schooling and the differentiation of life chances. Besides providing deep historical and ethnographical insights, Transfers of Belonging offers a new theoretical frame for conceptualizing parenting.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Figures List of Abbreviations Glossary Introduction  Baatombu Peasants  National and Regional Embeddedness  Social Relations  Kinship Terminology  Fieldwork and Methods  Field Research  Thick Participation  Childhood Studies  Norm, Practice, Emotion 1 Theoretical Approaches and Concepts on Child Fostering  A Structural-functionalist Perspective: Parenthood and Social Reproduction  Bearing and Begetting: Birth Parenthood  Status Entitlement: Legal Parenthood  Nurturance, Training and Sponsorship: Social Parenthood  Delegation of Parenthood: Types, Reasons and Functions  Discussion  A Structuralist Perspective: The Circulation of Children  Discussion  Other Perspectives  The Turn to the Actor  Transfers of Imagined Belonging 2 Parenthood in Rural Borgu  Birth Parenthood  An Open Secret  Birth  Giving Birth in the Health Centre  Rites of Transition  Everyday Practices  Acquiring Knowledge  Yearning  Happy Foster Children  Conceptions of Parenthood  Motherhood  Fatherhood  Child Fostering  Decisions  Transferring a Child  Possible Foster Parents  Same Sex  Kinship  Hierarchy  Order of Siblings  Reasons for Child Fostering  Kinship Cohesion  Preventing Regressive Behaviour in Children  Social Parenthood Supports the Hierarchies  Children as Workers  Childlessness  Crisis Fostering  Women’s Interests  Child Fostering, Gender and Marriage  Exchanging Children and Women  Conflicts  Avoidance and Indirect Communication  Open Conflicts  Self-reliance  Foster Parents  Running Away  Arguments against Child Fostering  Kinship Conflicts  Schooling  A Bad Investment 3 Child Fostering in the Twentieth Century  Precolonial Times  Everyday Realities  Violence and Gifts  Oedipus in Africa?  Colonial Changes  End of the Raids  New Conceptions  Sero Toro Tuunku and his Foster Son  New Life Courses  Christian Missions  The Introduction of Schools  State Policy  The Post-colonial Period  Urban Baatombu Households  Expansion of Educational Facilities  Between Town and Village: A Conflict  Child Fostering in Urban Areas: Cotonou and Parakou  Urban Households  Mobility and Education  Household Composition  Fostering and Education  Belonging  Well-being  Exploitation?  Generations  Child Fostering in the Villages of Tɛbɔ, Kika and Yarɔ  Frequency of Child Fostering  Birth Rate and Child Mortality  Gender  Schooling and Fostering  Family Relationship between Children and their Foster Parents  On the threshold of the 21st Century: Two Conflicts  Rafa  Djamila  Conclusion Appendix  Names and Interviews  Interviews Cited References Index

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Book SynopsisChristina G. Villegas, PhD, is Professor of Political Science at California State University-San Bernardino, USA.

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