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Some Trends in Modern Marriage among West Africans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

Kenneth Little  and
Anne Price
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Extract

This article describes and attempts to analyse the nature and content of marital relationships in the ‘modern’ West African family. To an increasing extent educated young people apparently want a companionate marriage on Western lines (Marris, 1961). Evidence comes from interviewing and from studies made of the attitudes of students and of secondary school boys and girls in a number of countries, including Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Omari, for example, collected data from 293 students in a sample of eight Secondary and Teacher Training Institutions throughout Ghana. About three-quarters of these subjects said they would like to be married either in church or before a magistrate (1960, pp. 197–210). A statutory marriage of this kind, unlike traditional marriage, makes bigamy a crime, and so we may assume that the young people concerned had monogamy in mind. A group of Nigerian secondary school girls also declared, with a single exception, that monogamy was the ideal form of marriage; they insisted that they wanted to choose their own husbands (Baker, 1957).

Résumé

TENDANCES ACTUELLES DU MARIAGE CHEZ LES AFRICAINS DE L'OUEST

De plus en plus, les jeunes Africains de l'Ouest cultivés désirent trouver dans le mariage une compagne, suivant le modèle occidental.

La notion d'amour romantique joue un rôle important et, dans l'élite de la société, la plupart des mariages sont contractés soit à l'église, soit devant un magistrat. Ceci est dû en grande partie au fait que, pour les hommes, la monogamie est la forme socialement approuvée du mariage. Ils veulent des femmes jolies et élégantes, mais se font une idée stéréotypée des femmes instruites, qui seraient encombrantes, critiques, revendicatrices, insubordonnées et négligeraient leur mari et leurs enfants. Les filles reconnaissent que le mari doit détenir l'autorité, mais elles souhaitent aussi être acceptées comme partenaires.

Cet intérêt pour l'amour romantique doit être considéré en partie comme une rationalisation d'un individualisme croissant. D'un autre côté, mari et femme continuent à dépenser l'argent sur leur propre patrimoine familial; et, selon la tradition, l'on donne raison au mari si, en dépit du statut de son mariage, il continue à fréquenter les anciennes épouses quʼil tient du droit coutumier, ou d'autres femmes. Le résultat, étant donné que beaucoup de femmes s'efforcent de se rendre financièrement indépendantes, en est que les activités familiales ont tendance à s'organiser sur la base de réseaux sociaux distincts pour le mari et pour la femme. Les époux, suivant la terminologie de Bott, ont des relations conjugales de ségrégation. Cependant, bien que les mariages réussis et durables semblent être l'exception, il existe aussi une tendance au mariage qui fait de l'homme et de la femme des compagnons. Ceci se retrouve principalement parmi les classes professionnelles désireuses d'appliquer les modèles occidentaux à leur vie sociale. Ayant tous deux recç une éducation avancée, mari et femme ont plus d'intérêts communs, et coopèrent fréquemment, en particulier pour l'éducation de leurs enfants. Les romans, les revues et le cinéma propagent les idées occidentales, et l'industrialisation développe les migrations. Celles-ci, en éloignant les couples mariés de leur ville natale et des associations traditionnelles, encouragent d'autant plus les époux à rechercher une adaptation réciproque.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , October 1967 , pp. 407 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1967

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