‘In Earlier Days Everyone Could Discipline Children, Now They Have Rights’: Caregiving Dilemmas of Guidance and Control in Urban Tanzania

Abstract

Caregiving practices in Tanzania are potentially affected by socio‐demographic change such as urbanization and globalization. The aim of this study is to explore adult caregivers' discourses regarding the responsibility of caregiving, related to guidance and control of children in Tanzania. Data was collected in focus group discussions with parents and grandparents in an urban area of Tanzania. The analysis found two interpretative repertoires: guidance and control as a community matter and guidance and control as a family matter. These repertoires are related to responsibility and to an ideological dilemma regarding parental authority and individual's rights. The findings are discussed in relation to the tendency to polarize between ideologically traditional versus modern societies. This illustrates how lived ideology of caregiving responsibility is historically and socially situated, in the local context and how the spread of Children's Rights ideology needs to be understood in this context. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Implications of Teacher Life–Work Histories for Conceptualisations of ‘Care’: Narratives from Rural Zimbabwe

“…Faith's positioning of herself as the parent and so being justified in beating her student is rather different from policy visions of teachers loving children like a parent, and speaks to a much wider tension surrounding the guidance and control of children. Frankenberg, Holmqvist, and Rubenson () describe this ‘ideological dilemma’ (citing Billig 1988) as arising from conflicts between the (Western) individualist ideology of child rights and participation versus more community‐situated practices built on protection through authority. They highlight how the latter childrearing ideology has been broadly disrupted by communities becoming more diverse and accordingly detached as well as by global influences through technologies (ibid).…”

“…Clearly the barriers to [emotional] caring teacher–student relationships in contexts such as Zimbabwe run much deeper than UNESCO's identification of a lack of training, time, space, and guidelines (2008). As Frankenberg, Holmqvist and Rubenson () highlight ‘It is in relation to local ideology that the discourse of child rights needs to be understood by professionals as well as caregivers themselves, as it is this local ideology that provides the foundation for caregiving practices based on child rights’ (p.202–3). In order to create space for emotional care in school settings, the material and disciplinary aspects to care need to be acknowledged, unpacked, and integrated in some way, and situated in the wider ideological dilemma surrounding childrearing.…”

Partners in Parenting: An Overview of the Literature on Parents’ and Nonparental Adults’ Perspectives on Shared Responsibilities in Childrearing

“…Johnson Frankenberg, Holmqvist, and Rubenson (2013) also studied the influence of societal developments such as urbanization and globalization. Their study focused specifically on Tanzanian caregivers" -parents and grandparents -perspectives on shared childrearing responsibilities.…”