Phallic Competence: Fatherhood and the Making of Men in Ghana

Abstract

Popular notions of womanhood among most Ghanaian societies include the role of motherhood, particularly biological motherhood. There is an appreciation that women will be engrossed with thoughts of childbearing, and that no normal woman would give up motherhood voluntarily, except, perhaps, for religious reasons. Thus, if a couple is childless it is typically the woman who bears the brunt of pressure, taunts, and even abuse, both from her husband's family as well as, sometimes, her own. Men are generally felt to be able to avoid the stigma of being infertile. Thus, the contemporary literature on childbearing and parenthood, especially that coming out of sociology and demography/population studies, has focused on women. This is surprising given that family planning research since the 1980s has shown that programmes have not worked as well as they might have done because they failed to acknowledge men's fertility desires. An understanding of men's needs and desires around fertility and fatherhood are important for any discussion of gender, power, sexualities, and well being particularly around HIV/AIDS. The current study investigates the meanings and significance of biological fatherhood and their relationship to constructions of masculinity among a sample of urban Ghanaian men; particularly the associations men make among adulthood, marriage, manhood and biological fatherhood. We find that the associations made between biological fatherhood and manhood, as measured by notions of phallic competence, are so important for most of the men that they have implications for the stability of a marriage, as well as questions of remarriage and extra-marital relationships.