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SOME FACTORS CAUSING LACK OF PARENTAL CARE IN GHANA

Polygamous Society: Some tribes in Ghana are of polygamous culture and a man has the right to marry as many women as he can. It is very common for a man to have about five wives with over thirty children. Thus, the man will be financially incapable of taking care of all the children. In addition, the cultures of some tribes in the country do not take the education of girls seriously.

Religious Belief
In some religions in Ghana, men can marry as many women as they wish. These same religions also support divorce and remarriage. The divorced wife’s children usually suffer from abandonment by their father. The net result is that the children of the divorce are no longer acknowledged by their father, who for all practical purposes might as well be dead to them. The Akan clan has a proverb; “ɔhene ba ne de ne de ne maame te awade ase” (the privileged child is the one whose mother is still married to his or her father).
Tragically, some traditional beliefs cause people to abandon babies in the bush to die due to the circumstances surrounding their birth.

  1. Traditional Customs

Some traditional customs often result in girls being pulled out of school at an early age to help manage the household. The main message girls receive is that the woman’s main responsibility is to produce offspring to augment society.

In rural areas, only a handful of female children enrolled in primary schools make it to High School. The high female dropout rate in basic education is the result of a number of factors. These include cultural practices such as early marriage, teenage pregnancy, and child trafficking.

  • Broken Marriages

Children from broken marriages, especially the children of broken polygamous marriages, are mostly left on their own and eventually become a nuisance and danger to society.

  • HIV/AIDS

With the outbreak of the dreadful disease HIV/AIDS, many children lost their parents and have no one to truly support them and send them to school.

Rape and Unexpected/Unwanted pregnancies

Children who result from these unplanned pregnancies are mostly left to grow up on the streets. These youths then perpetuate the cycle, which results in many youths living in the streets with no one taking responsibility for them.

Death
When the death of a man occurs and his children are young, the progress of their lives becomes affected. Because of society and the roles assigned to women, very few women are capable of taking good care of their children when their husband dies. In most cases, the children will have to struggle for their survival and are dropped out of school because there will be no one to help them to pursue their education. Feeding the children becomes so difficult for the widow that she dares not even think of paying school fees.