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Sharing Home, Food, and Bed: Paths of Grandmotherhood in East Cameroon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Catrien Notermans
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Abstract

This article focuses on relationships between grandmothers and grandchildren in an urban society in East Cameroon. It argues that despite fluid generational demarcations between grandmothers and mothers, women perform their grandmotherhood differently from their motherhood. As a result of the claims grandmothers often make on their children's children, grandmothers easily replace mothers but they do not rear children in the same way. The sharing of home, food, and bed is central in the performance of grandmotherhood and differs from relationships of sharing in the mother-child bond. The article also argues that grandmotherhood in East Cameroon is not a clearly bounded, unambiguous life stage but that it contains multiple trajectories that do not occur in the same time or in the same order. Multiple trajectories, characterised by both agency and constraint, are explained in terms of differences within and between grandmothers’ life courses. The article shows that grandmothers play vital roles in complex practices of marriage and descent and, in contrast to previous studies in the area, that matrilineages are closely linked to patrilineages.

Résumé

Cet article s'intéresse aux relations entre les grands-mères et leurs petits-enfants dans une société urbaine du Cameroun oriental. Il montre qu'en dépit de démarcations générationnelles fluides entre les grands-mères et les mères, les femmes exercent leur grand-maternité différemment de leur maternité. En conséquence des droits que les grands-mères revendiquent souvent sur les enfants de leurs enfants, les grands-mères remplacent facilement les mères mais ne les élèvent pas de la même manière. Le partage du domicile, de la nourriture et du lit est un élément essentiel de la grand-maternité et diffère des relations de partage qui s'exercent dans le lien mère-enfant. L'article montre également qu'au Cameroun oriental la grand-maternité n'est pas une étape de vie clairement délimitée et sans équivoque, mais contient des trajectoires multiples qui ne surviennent pas au même moment ni dans le même ordre. Ces trajectoires multiples, caractérisées à la fois par l'action et la contrainte, sont expliquées en termes de différences entre les parcours de vie des grands-mères et au sein de ces parcours. L'article montre que les grands-mères jouent des rôles essentiels dans les pratiques complexes du mariage et de la descendance et, par contraste avec les études précédentes dans ce domaine, que les matrilignages sont étroitement liés aux patrilignages.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 74 , Issue 1: Grandparents and Grandchildren , February 2003 , pp. 6 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Southern Political Science Association 2003

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