This dissertation is a history of Accra residents’ memory and experiences with family planning programs in the capital of Ghana from national independence in 1957 through the 1990s. In the final chapter I extend my analysis to the present to explore the ways that the NDC Generation, the youngest generation in this study, are currently navigating fertility decisions and parenting. Beginning my analysis at independence allows me to explore how the discourses of nation-building reignited existing, and facilitated new, negotiations over gender, sexuality, fertility and family as the government and everyday people sought to build prosperous lives as individuals, families, communities, and as a nation.
Examining family planning discourses and programs through the 1990s is useful because members of this generation were adolescents and young adults during a particularly dynamic moment in population, family planning, and sexual health. During this decade, international paradigmatic shift in population programs, renewed government emphasis on curbing population growth and corresponding attention on women’s rights and contributions to nation-building, and increased government promotion of sex education and HIV/AIDS programming for children.
Including the perspectives of Accra residents who grew up in the 1990s allows us to examine how contestations over the course of several periods of political and economic stability and instability have led to the current moment as members of this cohort build their own families.In this dissertation I ask: how have government and NGO actors promoted family planning as useful for particular ideas of economic development, national prosperity, biomedical reproductive health, and promoting gendered roles in nation-building? how have Ghanaians interpreted and engaged with these discourses and family planning programs throughout their lives from adolescence to adulthood as they navigated decisions regarding their reproductive health, family size, roles as parents and spouses? how have Ghanaians seen family planning in relation to their own ideals of gender, sexuality and family, and how have these ideals have shifted over the course of their lives? And finally, how have those that did not fit the presumed model of family planning discourses and programs—monogamous, heterosexual marriages—seen family planning as relevant to their sexual and reproductive health and desires?
I utilize oral histories to analyze shifts in women and men’s perspectives regarding fertility, reproduction, and health across their own life course and in the context of broader political, social and economic change. With assistance from Theodora Agyeampong Oduro and Steven Danso, I conducted 206 life history interviews with Ghanaians aged 35+, who grew up in, and/or raised their children in Accra, with the vast majority being low-income with a middle-school education or less. Centering life history interviews was crucial for moving beyond a focus on state and institution-led population, health, and social initiatives, and instead evaluate the perspectives of everyday people as they experienced reproductive health and family planning campaigns.
I investigate the ways that peoples’ views of what it means to be a woman or man at various phases of life between adolescence, adulthood, parenthood, and old age have shifted as they have navigated these stages themselves, and watched their elders and children do the same. Analyzing these ideas in relation to peoples’ perspectives on and engagement with the family planning movement over the course of their lifetimes allows me to examine how gender and age have impacted their approaches to parenthood, spousal relationships, fertility, reproductive health, family, and sexual behavior. I include 26 interviews with lesbian and bisexual women as part of this dissertation to investigate the perspectives of people who have historically been marginalized or altogether ignored in discourses of family planning, population, and nation-building. I examine how these women have seen family planning as valuable to their own lives and the LGBT+ community more broadly.
My analysis of government policies using archival sources is in service of better understanding the frameworks that shaped government interventions in population and family planning that Ghanaians experienced. When possible, I privileged government and NGO sources that were directly aimed at the public, such as advertisements and documents that reveal program strategies, rather than those that illuminate the inner workings of these institutions. I made this choice to ensure that my exploration of government efforts concentrated on aspects that were visible to the public, and that would potentially have been reflected in peoples’ memories of population and family planning efforts. By tracing the life histories of women and men alongside government interventions in the realm of family planning, I merge life histories with national history to examine how everyday people and government actors have engaged with this idea and influenced each other to form ideas about the future of women, men, families, and the nation.
The first major argument of my dissertation is that the family planning movement was a turning point in the history of reproduction in Ghana. Everyday people and early family planning advocates distinguished between existing fertility management methods and family planning programs. Each group contributed to local definitions of these concepts and highlighted that the latter was new and distinct. The second argument is that in their views of the value of family planning movement, people across generations have been primarily concerned with the impact on their own health, social, and religious lives rather than the broader community, and were mostly uninterested in dictating other peoples’ participation. The third argument is that Accra residents’ openness about discussing sex education and family planning has increased over time despite the fact that questions of women’s and men’s sexual’ morality have remained. However, concerns over morality have shifted from focusing on women’s sexual behavior towards more general worries of increased social vices such as petty crime, loitering, and drug use. The fourth argument is that the family planning movement has been interpreted by both governments and everyday people first and foremost in terms of economic impact rather than potential to shift social norms regarding gender, family and sexuality. Ideals of family and gender roles have remained similar across all generations with the exception of the youngest generation in this study. Moreover, people have articulated support for shared financial and childcare responsibilities between spouses and small family sizes in terms of economic circumstances rather than interest in women’s rights or gender equality.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/j5zm-8c74 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Cohen, Jessica |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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