This paper is dedicated to Prof. (em) Elizabeth Amoah. She is affectionately known as “Grandma” by colleagues and students in the Department for the Study of Religions, University of Ghana. She has devoted over four decades to teaching, research, and mentorship after completing her PhD in 1979. Renowned for her embodiment of hospitality, care, and communal responsibility, she practised motherhood as both a personal virtue and a scholarly ethic. Her home and professional life reflected an unwavering commitment to supporting family, students, and community members, often extending assistance far beyond conventional expectations. Her generosity was exemplified by acts of profound sacrifice, including providing financial support to students in need. Through a life of service, she consistently practised the values she taught, leaving a legacy of compassion, mentorship, and selfless care.
Abstract
This article examines adanelile (Nzema), or ‘ɔbatandiɛ’ (Wassa), an indigenous concept through which the Wassa and Nzema peoples of Western Ghana understand motherhood, hospitality, and womanhood. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and life-history narratives collected through the “river of life” method, the article argues that motherhood in these Akan-speaking communities is defined not primarily by biological reproduction but by moral responsibility, care, and relational obligation. Motherhood is constituted as a religious and ethical vocation realized through hospitality, fostering, and nurturing both human and non-human lives. Within Wassa and Nzema cosmology, a woman’s status and moral worth are affirmed through her capacity to sustain kinship networks, foster children within the extended family, and maintain harmonious relations with ancestors and spiritual forces. Participants described adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ as a moral framework that binds women to communal responsibility while also conferring social and religious authority. Hospitality emerges not merely as a social virtue but as a gendered practice through which women embody ideals of care, continuity, and belonging. It challenges biologically deterministic interpretations of motherhood and highlights how Wassa and Nzema women negotiate social obligation and religious meaning within communal life. Findings reveal that adanelile and ɔbatandiɛ are moral imaginations in which motherhood serves as a central practice sustaining both social cohesion and spiritual continuity.
Keywords: Adanelile (ɔbatandiɛ), motherhood beyond biology, hospitality, care, gender and moral obligation, Wassa and Nzema (Ghana)
1. Introduction
In many West African societies, motherhood is multifaceted, encompassing biological, social, and religious dimensions. Nonetheless, academic discourse on motherhood in the African context has often emphasized reproductive capacity and lineage transmission (Akujobi, 2011; Maher, 2010; Neyer & Bernardi, 2011; Hollos & Larsen, 2008), while often neglecting the moral and religious labor through which women uphold social cohesion. In Ghana’s Western Region, the Wassa and Nzema communities perceive motherhood as an experience that transcends childbirth and the immediate family unit. They express this through the concept of ‘adanelile’ (Nzema) mothering—used interchangeably with ‘abadaɛ’ caring, ‘ɛnayɛ’ mothering, or ‘ɔbatandiɛ’ mothering—a culturally ingrained moral principle that integrates womanhood, hospitality, and caregiving into a cohesive ethical framework. Through ‘adanelile’ or ‘ɔbatandiɛ,’ motherhood is manifested as a lived praxis rooted in responsibility towards kin, community, and the spiritual realm; these two terms are, therefore, used interchangeably.
The communal living of the Akan notably emphasizes the values and virtues that define an Akan as a ‘community’ or ‘ubuntu’ (Mabovula, 2011; Mogobe, 2014), which translates to ‘humanity’—specifically, the notion that ‘I am because we are.’ This exemplifies human reliance on others for survival. The interconnectedness of the familial lineage extends beyond the human community into the metaphysical or spiritual realm (Mokgobi, 2014; Moyo, 2013; Nrenzah, 2025, p. 178). When individuals pour libations to deities and ancestors, they invoke them to grant additional children to preserve humanity. Consequently, motherhood becomes a conduit for expressing the aspiration for continuity. Motherhood is regarded as one of the fundamental communal virtues among the Wassa and Nzema Akan groups. These ethnic groups’ beliefs and practices center on this virtue.
This article explores adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ as a form of moral imagination through which the Wassa and Nzema communities conceptualize motherhood beyond biological ties. In these Akan-speaking societies, a woman’s social recognition and moral worth are realized through her capacity to nurture life, foster children within the extended family, and maintain harmonious relationships with both human and non-human entities, including ancestors and spiritual forces. This ethic is rooted in hospitality and expressed materially through sharing, generosity, and care. These principles are not merely social virtues but constitute a religious ethic through which motherhood is enacted and assessed. Participants frequently reported that women are socialized with this ethic from an early age and are expected to embody it, regardless of their marital status or biological motherhood.
This study critically examines biologically deterministic perspectives on motherhood and emphasizes how Wassa and Nzema women navigate sociocultural obligations, communal expectations, and personal agency within a moral economy of care. Utilizing qualitative fieldwork and life history narratives collected through the “river of life” methodology, the research posits that motherhood is a fundamental religio-cultural practice that reinforces social cohesion and continuity among the Wassa and Nzema peoples. This is akin to delineating the roles and responsibilities of a Wassa or Nzema woman in fulfilling her hospitality obligations. The article argues that participant narratives suggest adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ may be understood as an indigenous Akan moral framework through which the Wassa and Nzema interpret motherhood as an act grounded in hospitality, care, and communal accountability, rather than solely a biological designation. The primary research question investigates how the Wassa and Nzema conceptualize and embody motherhood through the indigenous notion of adanelile (ɔbatandiɛ) and how this concept expands the understanding of motherhood beyond biological reproduction to include hospitality, care, fostering, and communal responsibility. The empirical analysis will examine adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ across dimensions such as fostering, childlessness, kinship obligations, hospitality, and non-biological motherhood.
2. Literature Review: Motherhood, Care, and Moral Obligation
Feminist scholarship has long challenged biologically deterministic understandings of motherhood. Rich’s (1976) distinction between motherhood as lived experience and as a patriarchal institution opened space for examining maternal identities beyond reproduction. Subsequent work in motherhood studies and matricentric feminism has conceptualized motherhood as practices, relationships, and responsibilities rather than a universal biological condition (Glenn, 1994; O’Reilly, 2016; Elliott et al., 2013). Care ethicists similarly emphasize nurturing, responsiveness, dependency, and responsibility as central to mothering (Ruddick, 1989; Held, 2006). Together, these studies demonstrate that motherhood may be enacted through social relationships rather than biological maternity alone.
Relational Agency
The concept of adanelile can be understood through relational agency, which situates action within networks of social obligation, reciprocity, and care rather than individual autonomy. Mahmood (2005) argues that agency may be exercised through culturally meaningful norms, while Oyěwùmí (1997) and Nnaemeka (2004) emphasize relationality, negotiation, and communal responsibility as dimensions of women’s power. Similarly, Nodding’s (1984) and Held’s (2006) view caregiving as a source of moral authority and social recognition. These perspectives illuminate how Wassa and Nzema women gain legitimacy through fostering children, sustaining kinship ties, and practicing hospitality. Yet caregiving may also be constraining (Rich, 1976; O’Reilly, 2016). Adanelile, therefore, represents a culturally grounded form of relational agency in which women exercise influence through care while remaining accountable to communal expectations.
Feminist Critique
Euro-American traditions continue to shape dominant frameworks in motherhood studies. Although scholars have extensively challenged essentialist assumptions, some analyses still privilege individual autonomy, reproductive choice, and the nuclear family (Glenn, 1994; O’Reilly, 2016). Feminist critiques often interpret motherhood primarily as a site of patriarchal regulation and reproductive discipline (Rich, 1976; Westervelt, 2018). While valuable, these approaches do not fully explain contexts in which motherhood also functions as a source of moral authority, communal responsibility, social recognition, and spiritual significance. Rather than rejecting feminist scholarship, this study situates it within a broader comparative framework attentive to diverse understandings of care, reproduction, and personhood.
Studies of social motherhood show that mothering can occur through adoption, fostering, and other forms of non-biological caregiving (Ulrich & Weatherall, 2000; Renegar & Cole, 2023). However, they often pay less attention to the indigenous moral frameworks that authorize and sustain such practices. This article argues, based on the data, that maternal identity among the Wassa and Nzema is constituted through adanelile or ɔbatandiɛ, where maternal recognition derives not solely from childbirth but also from hospitality, nurturing, fostering, and care for kin and community. Maternal status therefore emerges from participation in a moral economy of care, extending theories of social motherhood by demonstrating that caregiving is simultaneously a social, ethical, and religious vocation.
Care Ethics
Feminist care theorists, including Gilligan (1982), Ruddick (1989), and Held (2006), emphasize attentiveness, responsibility, and relationality as central to ethical care. While these insights resonate with Wassa and Nzema’s understandings of womanhood, Adanelile locates care within broader networks of kinship, spirituality, and communal obligation. Care encompasses not only children but also extended family, visitors, neighbors, ancestors, and future generations. Therefore, it is a religio-cultural responsibility that maintains social cohesion. In this way, the study extends care ethics by showing how indigenous African moral frameworks ground care in collective relationships rather than primarily in individual moral agency.
The study further engages matricentric feminism by complicating dominant feminist critiques of motherhood. Rich and O’Reilly distinguish maternal experience from patriarchal structures and highlight the constraints imposed on mothers (Rich, 1976; O’Reilly, 2016). However, the Wassa and Nzema case suggests that motherhood cannot be solely understood through oppression and resistance. Through adanelile, women acquire social legitimacy, moral authority, and communal belonging, even as these expectations impose demanding responsibilities. Motherhood is therefore negotiated within moral economies that both sustain and constrain women’s lives, calling for a more culturally situated matricentric feminism attentive to relational forms of agency and obligation.
Personhood and Relational Ontologies
The article also contributes to scholarship on African kinship and moral personhood. Mbiti’s (1969) formulation, “I am because we are,” emphasizes the communal foundations of existence. Menkiti (1984), Gyekye (1997), Bujo (2001), Ramose (1999), Oduyoye (2001), and Oyěwùmí (1997) similarly stress relationality, responsibility, and interconnectedness in African social thought. Building on these traditions, the study argues that adanelile, according to participants, is a Wassa and Nzema moral framework that integrates motherhood, hospitality, and communal responsibility into everyday life. This argument does not establish a simple opposition between Western individualism and African communalism.
Collins and Glenn document collective caregiving and shared mothering within Western societies (Collins, 1994; Glenn, 1994), while contemporary African women navigate changing family structures, education, migration, and economic transformation in ways that complicate idealized notions of communal life (Collins, 1994; Glenn, 1994; O’Reilly, 2016), so instead of essentializing either context, the study demonstrates that Wassa and Nzema concepts provide indigenous theoretical resources for understanding motherhood as a moral practice of hospitality, care, and relational responsibility. In doing so, it contributes to the decolonization of motherhood studies by treating African concepts as sources of theory and extends debates on social motherhood, care ethics, feminist scholarship, and African moral personhood.
3. Methodology and Conceptual Framework
This study employed a qualitative ethnographic design to explore indigenous understandings of motherhood, care, hospitality, and womanhood among the Wassa and Nzema peoples of Ghana’s Western Region. Fieldwork was conducted between January and June 2024 in Mporhor and Half Assini and their surrounding communities. Data was generated through in-depth interviews, participant observation, non-participant observation, a focus group discussion, and visual life-history narratives using the River of Life method.
The researchers selected participants through purposive and snowball sampling. Recruitment targeted individuals with knowledge of local understandings and experiences of motherhood, fostering, childlessness, care, and family relations among the Wassa and Nzema—the final sample comprised thirty participants, including twenty women and ten men. Fifteen participants identified as Wassa and fifteen as Nzema. The sample included women who were biological mothers, foster mothers, or childless, and men (four family heads/elders and six married men), whose perspectives provided insight into community expectations surrounding motherhood and kinship.
The primary dataset consisted of thirty semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Interviews explored individual experiences and cultural interpretations of motherhood, womanhood, fostering, hospitality, and social expectations surrounding reproduction. With participants’ permission, the interviews were audio-recorded and later transcribed for analysis. Interview guides were flexible, allowing participants to narrate their experiences on their own terms and to introduce culturally significant concepts such as adanelile and ɔbatandiɛ. Interviews were conducted in English, Nzema, Wassa-Fanti, or a combination of these languages, depending on participants’ preferences; the researcher translated local languages into English during transcription.
The researcher conducted a focus group discussion with five participants selected from the wider group of thirty interviewees. The focus group provided an opportunity to explore shared understandings of motherhood and communal obligations and to observe how participants collectively negotiated meanings associated with adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ. The researcher conducted participant and non-participant observation during the discussion to capture group interactions, nonverbal communication, and community dynamics. Following the focus group discussion, the same five participants completed a River of Life visual narrative exercise (Krause, 2013; Carmody, 2023). Participants received sheets of paper, pencils, charcoal, paints, brushes, and other art materials and were invited to represent their life journeys visually through the metaphor of a river. The river began at the lower-left corner of the page, symbolizing birth and the past, and extended toward the upper-right corner, representing the present and the anticipated future. After completing their drawings, participants narrated the meanings behind the visual elements they created. The exercise provided an additional way to access personal memories, emotions, and reflections that might not have emerged through conventional interviewing alone.
Data analysis proceeded in stages. The team read interview transcripts, focus group transcripts, observation notes, and River of Life narratives repeatedly to become familiar with the data. A thematic analysis followed, beginning with open coding of recurrent concepts and experiences. The researcher grouped codes relating to motherhood, childlessness, fostering, hospitality, care, kinship obligations, and women’s moral responsibilities into broader thematic categories. The visual data were not analyzed independently; instead, participants’ drawings were interpreted alongside their accompanying oral narratives to keep the meanings grounded in their explanations. Integrating interview, focus group, observational, and visual data enabled methodological triangulation and enhanced the credibility of the findings.
The River of Life exercise contributed to the findings by providing visual representations of participants’ experiences of motherhood, childlessness, fostering, care, and family relationships. The drawings enabled participants to articulate memories, emotions, transitions, and significant life events that they did not always fully express during the interviews or focus group discussion. The visual narratives helped illuminate how participants understood motherhood as a life journey marked by obligations, challenges, support systems, and moments of personal transformation. During analysis, the drawings were examined alongside participants’ oral explanations, allowing the researcher to identify recurring themes and symbolic representations related to adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ, hospitality, kinship, and communal responsibility. The visual data therefore served not as a separate source of evidence but to deepen and corroborate themes emerging from the interviews and focus group discussions.
Integrating multiple data types enabled triangulation. While the interviews provided detailed personal accounts and the focus group generated collective perspectives, the River of Life exercise revealed how participants visually mapped relationships, caregiving responsibilities, experiences of childlessness, fostering practices, and moments they perceived as central to becoming or performing motherhood. These visual narratives helped refine thematic categories and deepened participants’ moral understandings of care, hospitality, and womanhood.
Ethically, we obtained both oral and written informed consent from all participants. Participants were told they could withdraw from the study at any time and for up to a year after. We provided contact details, including telephone numbers, email addresses, and the research location, to facilitate future communication or withdrawal requests. To protect participants’ identities, we used pseudonyms throughout the article.
3.1. Data Analysis and Theme Development
I conducted iterative thematic analysis. I read interview transcripts, focus group discussions, observation notes, and River of Life narratives repeatedly to become familiar with the data and identify recurring patterns. Initial open coding focused on participants’ descriptions of motherhood, childlessness, fostering, hospitality, caregiving, kinship obligations, and moral responsibility. We then grouped related codes into broader categories and refined them through constant comparison across data sources. We retained themes when multiple participants supported them, and they were corroborated across interviews, focus group discussions, observational field notes, and visual narratives. We analyzed the river of life drawings alongside participants’ explanations rather than as independent visual texts, keeping interpretation grounded in participants’ own accounts. Triangulation across the different data sources strengthened the credibility of the thematic findings. It enabled the development of the overarching concept of adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ as a framework linking motherhood, fostering, care, hospitality, and communal responsibility.
3.1.1 Coding table
| Theme | Number of Participants | Number of References/Coded Segments |
| Motherhood, adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ | 26 | 100 |
| Hospitality | 24 | 60 |
| Fostering, childlessness, Social Motherhood | 24 | 78 |
| Moral Responsibility | 20 | 50 |
| Kingship, Personhood, and Community obligation | 26 | 80 |
| Care and Spiritual Dimensions of | 24 | 60 |
Table 1.
3.1.2. Theme Analysis
The theme of fostering and adoption adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ as a foundation of motherhood emerged across a substantial proportion of participant interviews, Focus Group Discussions (FGD), and the river of life narrative, frequently appearing in 26 of the 30 participants in both ethnic groups (Nzema 13 and Wassa 13) analyzed and generating 100 coded references. Participants consistently described maternal identity not simply in terms of biological reproduction but through practices of care, hospitality, reciprocity, and communal responsibility.
Hospitality also emerged as a recurrent theme from the interviews and observations of community interactions—24 of the 30 participants and 60 coded segments. Rather than functioning as a peripheral virtue, hospitality was frequently described as an essential dimension of womanhood and maternal recognition. Social motherhood, fostering, and non-biological caregiving emerged as themes in interviews, FGDs, and the river of life. References to fostering and non-biological caregiving appeared in 24 of the 30 interviews and generated 78 coded excerpts. These narratives demonstrated how maternal status and social recognition were often linked to caregiving practices rather than childbirth alone. Moral responsibility was discussed in 20 out of the 30 interviews and generated 50 coded excerpts. Kinship, personhood, and community responsibility emerged from the interviews, observation, and River of Life. This theme appeared across generations and gender groups. The theme of moral personhood and womanhood was taken from interviews and FGDs. It was a recurring theme that connected expectations of communal belonging to personhood. Personhood and community appeared in 26 of 30 participants and generated 80 coded references. Interestingly, kingship, personhood, and community recurred in interviews with participants, both male and female, aged above 60, from both ethnic groups, and were connected to spiritual dimensions of care. It appeared in 24 of 30 interviews and generated 60 coded references.
3. Concept of ‘adanelile’ or ‘ɔbatandiɛ’
Adanelile is the fostering and adoption of children among the Nzema and Wassa, according to participants in the study; this practice is called ‘ɔbatandiɛ.’ Adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ is not essential for a childless woman or for women with no biological children. However, a parent may task women deemed exemplary mothers with fostering a child. This means that a motherless woman who is deemed a competent nurturer can be tasked with mothering children, and the same goes for mothers who already have children. Children with living parents can visit their parents or have their parents visit them (Serra, 2009). A fundamental difference exists between adoption/fostering in a modern social sense and in the practices of the Nzema and Wassa people.
Fostering or adopting children is often perceived in a modern sense as taking care of other people’s children because biological parents are unable to care for their children for various reasons (Steenbakkers et al., 2018; Leve et al., 2012; Wildeman & Waldfogel, 2014). Fostering children among the Wassa and Nzema societies means that, contrary to this popular explanation, the parents of the child do not adopt the “no parenting” option; instead, they want a particular mother or woman to nurture their child, especially a girl child, because that mother has the gift of nurturing successful children. Women who perform the role of motherhood may be either childless or have children and may also perform ancillary duties for the family or community. The community highly regards Adanelile as one of its many social creations in child-rearing practices.
Adanelile, or ɔbatandiɛ, viewed through the lens of childlessness, emerges not merely as the absence of biological children but as a condition that can be socially negotiated through caregiving and fostering. Similarly, alternative forms of motherhood, including fostering and sibling-assisted childbearing, become intelligible as expressions of maternal responsibility rather than as deviations from normative motherhood. Participants repeatedly identify hospitality, generosity, and the nurturing of others as markers of positive motherhood, thereby illuminating the concept. In this sense, adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ serves as the unifying thread linking the study’s themes of childlessness, fostering, care, hospitality, kinship continuity, and women’s moral obligations. While the concepts emerge from the particular social, kinship, and moral worlds of the Wassa and Nzema, these communities are neither culturally homogeneous nor static. This paper therefore provides a brief overview of the Wassa and Nzema socio-cultural context before presenting the findings.
4. The Wassa and Nzema people of the western region of Ghana
The Wassa and Nzema are Akan-speaking peoples of Ghana’s Western Region. Wassa occupies the region’s central part. At the same time, the Nzema inhabit Ghana’s southwestern coastal areas and neighboring Côte d’Ivoire, where they are also known as the Apollo. Both groups share key features of Akan social organization, including matrilineal descent, clan affiliation, inheritance through the maternal line, and a worldview that recognizes relationships among humans, ancestors, and spiritual beings (Nrenzah, 2019, p. 198; Mokgobi, 2014; Moyo, 2013).
Scholarship on Akan societies highlights the importance of women and motherhood in sustaining lineage continuity and social reproduction. Nrenzah (2015, p. 206) describes women as “givers of life, originators of communities, and sustainers of the continuity of communities,” while Makinde (2004, p. 166) notes that motherhood occupies a highly valued status because “the preservation of humanity depends on the role of mothers in society.” Within Akan matrilineal systems, lineage identity and inheritance are transmitted through the maternal line, reinforcing the social significance of motherhood and caregiving beyond biological reproduction.
Participants in this study similarly linked motherhood to lineage continuity, caregiving, and communal well-being. However, their narratives also reveal variations in how motherhood is understood and practiced. While eighteen participants emphasized biological childbearing, others highlighted fostering, nurturing, and responsibility for relatives’ children as equally important expressions of motherhood. Participants often explained these practices through the indigenous concepts of adanelile among the Nzema and ɔbatandiɛ among the Wassa, which encompass hospitality, caregiving, and assuming responsibility for children beyond biological ties.
The findings further suggest that understandings of motherhood are neither uniform nor static. One participant explained motherhood is not necessarily about producing one’s own child but about caring for and sustaining family relationships: “A woman, whether married or not, must be hospitable to produce a child and foster other children in the family through adanelile in the case of the Nzema and ɔbatandiɛ in the case of the Wassa people, that is, fostering others outside one’s womb” (M. Tayiba, personal communication, May 1, 2024). Another participant similarly observed that “sharing what one has with others helps a woman hold the family’s ancestry together” (Tawia, personal communication, May 2, 2024). These perspectives provide the cultural context for understanding how participants in this study conceptualize motherhood as both a reproductive and a moral practice. Against this socio-cultural backdrop, the interviews, focus group discussions, and River of Life narratives reveal how participants understand and negotiate motherhood through the intertwined practices of reproduction, fostering, caregiving, and hospitality. The following section presents these findings and analyzes the meanings participants attach to adanelile and ɔbatandiɛ.
5. Analysis, Findings, and Discussion
Across the interviews, focus group discussions, and river of life narratives, participants consistently invoked adanelile (Nzema) and ɔbatandiɛ (Wassa) not simply as terms for fostering or social motherhood but as indigenous conceptual frameworks through which motherhood is imagined, evaluated, and enacted. Twenty-six of thirty interview participants explicitly linked motherhood to care beyond biological reproduction, so, instead of defining motherhood solely through biological reproduction, participants used these concepts to describe a broader moral vocation grounded in care, hospitality, nurture, kinship responsibility, and communal continuity. As an analytical lens, adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ helps frame motherhood as a relational and ethical practice that encompasses childbirth, fostering, caregiving, alternative pathways to motherhood, and the maintenance of family and community wellbeing.
5.1 Motherhood and social construction of childlessness among the Nzema and Wassa people
Most societies widely assume that having children is a natural and unavoidable part of womanhood. It seems that women’s natural biological state requires motherhood. For the Wassa and Nzema ethnic groups, the social order embedded in their worldview almost makes it compulsory for women to procreate to continue the maternal lineage. Motherhood is the most valued thing women can provide to their families and society, but it is not just a biological trait; other native practices also play a role. Makinde opines that among the Yoruba of Nigeria, a woman occupies various positions as a mother, a wife, a daughter, a priestess, or even a witch, but “the highest value is given to women as mothers because Yoruba people revere motherhood” (Makinde, 2004). She adds that perceptions of a woman’s position are reflected in social commentary, songs, works of art, music, language, and religion.
These beliefs hold partially for other cultures that do not necessarily associate motherhood with womanhood. In New Zealand, “as in other Western cultures, beliefs and expectations of motherhood are being challenged and disrupted by the increasing tendency to delay motherhood and by declining fertility rates” (Ulrich, 2000). Motherhood, while observable across cultures, can also be understood in its specific cultural context. Different cultures process mothering/motherhood differently: in some communities, it is an unvoiced social compulsion, while in others, women have choices about whether to become mothers or not to procreate. For example, one participant in my fieldwork said it was stressful for her not to have a child, even in modern Ghana. She said this almost in tears:
I have worked hard to build a successful career and support both my immediate and extended family. Although I do not have children, I love them and spend time with my relatives’ children whenever I visit home. Nevertheless, my family and community still see something missing. People often mockingly ask whether a child near me is mine and remind me that I should have offspring before it is too late. An auntie said, ‘I am disappointing my ancestors by failing to continue the family lineage. Others wonder who will inherit my wealth or care for me in old age. Despite my education and achievements, my childlessness often overshadows everything else in my community’s eyes (Manza, personal communication, January 10, 2024).
Manza’s account demonstrates that childlessness among the Wassa and Nzema is interpreted not merely as a biological condition but also as a moral and social concern. Her narrative reveals how motherhood is tied to the continuity of the matrilineal abusua, obligations to ancestors, inheritance, and social reproduction. The accusation that she is “disappointing” her ancestors reflects the expectation that women contribute to the lineage’s continuation and sustain the relationship between the living and the ancestral world. Likewise, questions about who will inherit her wealth and care for her in old age point to the broader social significance of children within Akan society, where descendants represent both lineage continuity and a form of social security (Makinde, 2004; Nrenzah, 2015). The longer interview expresses concern about who will perform funeral obligations and “put the cloth on her coffin,” further underscoring children’s role in ensuring a person’s proper social and ritual transition into ancestorhood.
The narrative, therefore, illustrates how childlessness can be constructed as a failure to fulfill expected responsibilities to family, the community, and ancestors. Despite her educational attainment, economic success, and generosity toward both nuclear and extended family members, Manza’s achievements are rendered incomplete because they are not accompanied by biological offspring. Motherhood thus becomes a key measure of social recognition and moral worth. As participants repeatedly suggested, a woman’s success story is often expected to include a child; without one, professional accomplishments and economic resources may be viewed as insufficient markers of fulfillment or status.
These accounts highlight the social construction of infertility and childlessness as predominantly women’s problems, even though reproduction involves both male and female factors. Participants reported that responsibility for childlessness is frequently placed on women, while men may resist medical investigation of infertility because sexual performance is equated with fertility (Azane, personal communication, March 27, 2024; Kabby, personal communication, May 20, 2024). Nvida shares her story of a six-year marriage without children. The doctor said she was fine and suggested her husband should be examined. He refused to let her stay, brought other women home, and made her sleep in the living room. Frustrated, she left, and he replaced her two weeks later. She became pregnant after her first time with another man, birthing four children after leaving her marriage. (Nvida, personal communication, February 4, 2024). Nvida’s experiences further show how these expectations can shape marriage and family life, leading women to seek alternative means of motherhood to preserve social standing and marital stability.
Examined through adanelile and ɔbatandiɛ, however, these pressures also reveal why alternative forms of motherhood become socially meaningful. If childlessness is regarded as a failure to sustain lineage continuity, fulfill obligations to ancestors, manage inheritance, and secure care in old age, then fostering and caring for children emerge as culturally recognized means for women to attain maternal identity and fulfill broader moral responsibilities. In this sense, adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ operates not only as a practice of caregiving but also as an indigenous response to the social anxieties surrounding childlessness.
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5.1.1 Motherhood through Science and Others
Advances in assisted reproductive technologies such as IVF and surrogacy have expanded possibilities for individuals and couples who are unable to conceive naturally (Golombok et al., 2003; Morgan, 1994; Van Den, 2003). However, while these technologies address the biological dimensions of infertility, they differ from the indigenous framework of adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ.
Participants’ accounts suggest that motherhood among the Wassa and Nzema is valued not only for childbirth but also for ensuring lineage continuity, fulfilling obligations to family and ancestors, and enabling women to occupy socially recognized maternal roles. In contrast to assisted reproductive technologies, adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ conceptualizes motherhood more broadly through caregiving, fostering, and responsibility for children’s well-being.
Thus, while IVF and surrogacy provide one route to motherhood, adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ offers a wider moral and social framework that extends maternal identity beyond biological reproduction and locates it within kinship, care, and communal responsibility (Golombok et al., 2003; Morgan, 1994; Van Den, 2003).
5.2 Sibling-Assisted Childbearing
The study identified two cases in which women enlisted their biological sisters to help them have children after prolonged difficulties conceiving. Although these arrangements share features with what biomedical literature describes as surrogacy (Morgan, 1994; Van Den, 2003), participants themselves framed them not as medical interventions but as kinship-based obligations rooted in matrilineal values and family solidarity.
Afiba explained that after five years of unsuccessful attempts to conceive, she asked her sister to bear children with her husband because, within a matrilineal system, her sister’s children would remain part of the same abusua (family). For her, the primary concern was preserving the maternal bloodline: “The most important reason for using my own blood sister is to maintain my blood in the child; this is an obligation to the abusua family” (Afiba, personal communication, March 8, 2024). Similarly, Kafraba described how her sister helped her have a child, an act she believed saved her marriage and spared her social ridicule (Kafraba, personal communication, May 4, 2024).
These two accounts should not be taken as evidence of a widespread or emerging trend, but they illustrate how participants navigated childlessness through existing kinship relationships and obligations. Unlike assisted reproductive technologies, these arrangements relied on family cooperation, shared understandings of lineage continuity, and the cultural importance of preserving the abusua. At the same time, such arrangements raise important questions about consent, kinship expectations, sexual relations, and the potential pressures placed on sisters to assume reproductive responsibilities for other family members. The available data do not permit firm conclusions on these issues, but they point to the need for further research.
Although these cases involve biological reproduction, their significance lies less in conception itself than in how kinship obligations were mobilized to sustain lineage continuity and maternal identity. They therefore point toward the broader indigenous framework of adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ, through which motherhood is understood as a relational and communal responsibility rather than solely a biological achievement.
5.3 Adoption, Fostering, and Adanelile/ɔbatandeɛ
Adoption and foster care are legal and administrative arrangements through which children are cared for by adults apart from their biological parents. Adoption establishes a permanent parent-child relationship, whereas foster care is a temporary caregiving arrangement (Van Den, 2003). These practices are increasingly familiar in contemporary Ghana, although they originate from legal frameworks different from indigenous kinship systems.
Participants’ accounts suggest that adanelile/ɔbatandeɛ shares certain features with adoption and fostering in that it involves the care and upbringing of children by adults who may not be their biological parents. However, crucial differences exist. Unlike state-regulated adoption and foster care, adanelile/ɔbatandeɛ is rooted in kinship obligations, communal responsibility, and the moral value of caregiving. Biological parents may remain actively involved in a child’s life, and children may move between households without severing ties to their natal families.
While adoption and foster care share similarities with adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ in that they involve caring for children beyond biological parenthood, participants distinguished adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ as a kinship-based moral practice rather than a legal arrangement. Motherhood therefore lies not simply in biological reproduction or legal guardianship but in the capacity to nurture, care for, and assume responsibility for others. This insight directs attention to the broader indigenous concept of adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ, through which participants articulated motherhood as hospitality, kinship maintenance, and communal responsibility.
5.4 Adanelile or ɔbatandiɛ as an Indigenous Framework of Motherhood
First, adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ offers childless women a pathway to motherhood. Participants expressed differing views. Fifteen participants believed parents seeking a respected matriarch to raise their children would hesitate to entrust them to a childless woman, viewing childlessness as evidence of limited mothering experience. Others argued that women develop mothering as a capacity through care rather than childbirth. This perspective resonates with critiques of the social stigma attached to childlessness (Gotlib, 2016, p. 327) and challenges assumptions that women are naturally destined for motherhood (Maher & Saugeres, 2007, p. 6; Douglas & Michaels, 2005). Ama explained that adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ “offers an option for childless women whose relatives died prematurely, have a strange disease, have gone insane, and have no choice but to obtain the opportunity to be mothered” (Ama, personal communication, June 5, 2024).
More broadly, adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ eases the social pressures surrounding childlessness by creating culturally recognized avenues to maternal status. Before formal adoption became available, children who lost one or both parents were commonly incorporated into the households of relatives. This practice enabled women who otherwise could not have children to become socially recognized mothers, and vulnerable children remained within family networks.
A second function of adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ is social security and intergenerational care. In Wassa and Nzema communities, children are traditionally expected to care for parents in old age. Twenty-four out of the thirty participants in both communities alluded to this idea, and the conversation generated 60 codes. Intriguingly, this obligation is reflected in the proverb, ye nea kakula ma ↄgyea fifi, na ᴐdayie noko ya lea yawofo ya ma begyea adudu (“your parents take care of your teeth to grow, so that you also take care of them for theirs to fall”). The proverb captures the reciprocal relationship between generations and helps explain why childlessness is often viewed with concern. Within this context, adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ enables childless women to participate in this social support system through caregiving relationships that extend beyond biological ties.
Third, adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ facilitates resource circulation and strengthens family networks. In a matrilineal society, wealth is understood as belonging not only to individuals but also to the abusua (family). Here, twenty-six participants, fourteen among the Nzema and twelve among the Wassa, all representing eighty codes, made this finding forceful. Foster mothers can teach children, provide vocational training and material support, and pass on future inheritance so that resources remain available to the wider family and community.
Finally, adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ helps sustain kinship and communal care. Foster mothers care for orphans and children whose parents are ill, absent, or unable to provide adequate support. Many fostering arrangements occur within families, but the practice extends beyond kin. What matters is the ability to nurture and raise children successfully. As Mary, a childless businesswoman caring for eleven children, explained, “My children are eleven in all … I am so blessed to have had them all” (Mary, personal communication, May 11, 2024). Mary consistently referred to the fostered children as her own and viewed them as her future social support. She explained that because she had helped their “teeth to grow,” they would in turn help hers “to fall” in old age (Mary, personal communication, May 11, 2024). Her account illustrates how adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ expands motherhood beyond biological reproduction and locates it within care, reciprocity, hospitality, and communal responsibility.
6. Hospitality and the Nzema and Wassa Women
Among the Wassa and Nzema, hospitality constitutes a central ethical expression of motherhood. Rather than a performative act, hospitality is understood as a lived practice of care, generosity, openness, and responsibility toward both kin and community. This understanding resonates with Morales’s description of hospitality as a spiritual discipline and expression of care, as well as with African feminist theological perspectives that emphasize hospitality as a relational and ethical practice (Morales; Amoah, 1995, 2014).
Participants consistently linked adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ to hospitality. As discussed earlier, women are expected not only to bear children but also to nurture them, share resources, foster them, and maintain harmonious relationships within the family and community (M. Tayiba, personal communication, May 1, 2024; Tawia, personal communication, May 2, 2024). Through such practices, motherhood becomes an expression of communal responsibility rather than simply biological status.
This perspective therefore demonstrates that adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ is best understood as an indigenous moral imagination of motherhood. It provides a conceptual framework through which the Wassa and Nzema extend motherhood beyond biology and construct it as a practice of sustaining individuals, families, lineages, and communities. As such, the concept offers a locally grounded contribution to motherhood studies by reframing motherhood as an ethical and relational achievement rather than a purely reproductive status.
6.1 Adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ as an Indigenous Theory of Relational Motherhood
Adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ represents an Indigenous moral imagination through which motherhood is understood not as a biological status or individual identity but as an ethical and relational achievement. It provides a locally grounded yet theoretically significant framework for understanding personhood, care, responsibility, and social reproduction. The concept of adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ positions itself alongside Indigenous knowledge systems rather than treating it solely as culture or tradition. Placing this moral imagination at the center, the study shows that Indigenous African concepts are not merely cultural data to be interpreted through existing theories but sources of theory capable of reshaping contemporary feminist debates on motherhood, agency, and relationality. The article contributes an Indigenous theory of motherhood that extends and challenges dominant feminist paradigms rooted in Western liberal assumptions.
Conclusion
This article has established that adanelile and ɔbatandiɛ are Indigenous Akan models of understanding motherhood outside of biological reproduction for the Wassa and Nzema. Participants’ accounts reveal that motherhood may be achieved not only through childbirth but also through fostering, caregiving, hospitality, and kinship support, thereby extending maternal recognition to women who do not bear children.
The study’s central contribution signals a tension within adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ. On the one hand, the concept broadens motherhood beyond biology by creating socially valued pathways for childless women to attain maternal status. On the other hand, it simultaneously extends expectations of care, nurturing, and responsibility to all women, regardless of their reproductive status. Motherhood is therefore expanded but not necessarily relieved of obligation; rather, maternal responsibilities are redistributed across a wider field of social relationships.
In this sense, adanelile/ɔbatandiɛ complicates conventional distinctions between biological and social motherhood. It challenges biologically deterministic understandings of motherhood while reinforcing communal expectations that women sustain families, kinship networks, and social continuity through acts of care and hospitality. The study therefore contributes to motherhood studies by demonstrating that motherhood among the Wassa and Nzema is both an avenue of inclusion and a moral expectation, revealing it as an ethical, relational, and communal vocation rather than solely a reproductive status.
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