In one of our training courses for child and youth care workers there was a reading for the facilitator. It was to help embroider an exercise on the wearing of "masks". It described a young woman who grew up in a loving family with her older sister. It had to do with the way her parents valued her from the beginning....they called her older sister "the clever one" . Your sister is the "clever one" they would say to her,"but .....you, you are mummy and daddy's " cuddly bunny" She learnt from the beginning to behaves the child not as bright as her sister. After all, that was not the way she was valued and not the way to guarantee her connection with mom and dad. She was valued as the one who was somehow to be cute, crawl onto laps and snuggle up. She was, the "cuddly bunny"
Right into adulthood she rained the most approval and acceptance by being what her parents valued her to be and not the independent, intelligent achiever that she really was.
It took psycho-therapy for her to rid herself of the persona that she was not, and to rid herself of the "cuddly bunny" mask to allow herself to be who she really was.... her real "self"
The sadness of this child, trapped inside her mask, scared to drop it, not able to come out and realise her full "being", resonated with me somewhere.
The body of research called the "value of Children" or VOC investigates this phenomena and its significance for development and child rearing practices.
What follows rests heavily on two research papers flowing from the VOC research project: Sam(2001) and Ware.H (1978)
The thinking behind research into the value of children is that having children is a mixed blessing. VOC is a psychological construct to reflect why people choose to have children. That is, why do people decide about the benefit they will derive from having children vs the cost of fertility?
The VOC thinking is that parents choose to have children because the must percieve some benefit , .. that they will somehow benefit by them.
VOC identifies three areas of value or benefit within which parents believe they will derive from having children: The psychological value, (p- voc), social value (s-voc) and/ or economical value (e- voc). Various weighting in their decision to have a child or children may be given in these areas, depending on geographic, economic and cultural situations of the parents
Parents who place value on the psychological benefit they will derive from having a child,outweigh the stress and discomfort of fertility with the joy, happiness and unconditional love that they will get from it. The perception of this value often varies with the hoped for , or actual gender of the child . The first born in addition to the other psychological benefits is perceived as giving an exciting new experience to the parent(s). The second is often valued for the benefit it will bring the first. A third may be valued for providing a child of different gender to the first two if they are of the same gender and so provide the exciting new experience of the first.
It would seem that urban, Western parents often stop at this point if the value of children to them is p-voc.
Parents who see benefit in having children for their social value choose to have children because society or the culture somehow expects it. The understand society or their culture has this idea that an ideal "family" has children. Often there is a societal or cultural expectation (especially in Africa) that it is the role of women to bear children, or that children completes, binds or commits a relationship.
In many African societal/ cultural thought there is the idea that a son secures the family line and the family name.. It is said that a male cant take the risk of being forgotten by having one son only as then his name may be longer remembered and so he will be longer recognised as an ancestor.
The idea that a parent may choose to have children for economic reasons seems to be more heavily weighted in rural agrarian communities and especially in African and Asian studies. There is an old African thought that the more children a family has, the richer the family. The children are seen in e-voc fertility decision making to become extra hands in the field . They may be conceived for the direct or indirect , immediate or longer term economic support they will provide.
In South Africa there are a number of immediate economic benefits that derive from a child: child care grants, maintenance payments, foster care grants, disability grants, "damages " if the girl child falls pregnant. A girl child can provide domestic help, clean, cook and look after the your child and so allow the parent work.
Parents that place value on having a child for its economic value in the longer or long term, consider, the 'lobola' value of the girl child, care for the ageing parent (girl child), the financing of the family (boy child) ,.or the reciprocal benefit of investing in the education of a child now for support later. There are other such longer term benefits such in the cultural thinking around property rights of the male child.
There is comment that comes out of VOC research that the benefit or value to the parent in choosing to have children or a child has implications in child-rearing practices and as in the "girl in the mask" contributes to the formation of the child's "self" concept and so to the very nature and behaviour of the child.
The effect then of the VOC research on child development theory seems to deserve more attention in developmental studies, and we appear to have somehow overlooked it.
and it has particular importance in child development in Africa.
Sam.D.L., Value of Children: Effects of globalisation on fertility behaviour and child rearing practices in Ghana. Research Review NS 17.2 (2001) 5- 16
Ware . H., The economic value of children: comparative study in Asia and Africa: comparative perspectives., Papers of the East- West Population Institute . No 50. April 1978
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