Relatives in Residence: Relatedness of Household Members Drives Schooling Differentials in Mozambique
| Date | 01 August 2017 |
| Author | Sara Lopus |
| Published date | 01 August 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12393 |
S L Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
Relatives in Residence: Relatedness of Household
Members Drives Schooling Differentials in
Mozambique
Children typically receive investments from
their fathers, but absent fathers often invest at
low levels. In a father’s absence, what types
of nonfathers invest heavily in children? This
article investigates educational participa-
tion as a reection of childhood investments
on Ibo Island, Mozambique, where only one
third of school-aged children live with their
biological fathers. Father-present children
generally attended school at the highest rates.
Stepchildren and father-absent relatives (e.g.,
grandchildren, nieces) attended school at com-
parably high rates if any coresiding children
were father-present. This may signal high
altruism among present fathers toward some
nonoffspring. Consistent with this result, a xed
effects model indicates that, within the same
household, adult males invested equally in
their own children, relatives, and stepchildren.
Prejudicially lower investments were made in
children who were unrelated to the household’s
adult males, however; this result has strongneg-
ative implications for the well-being of African
children fostered by nonrelatives.
Adults make monetary and time-based invest-
ments in children for a variety of reasons,
Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies,
Louis A. Simpson International Building, Princeton
University,Princeton, NJ 08544 (saralopus@princeton.
edu).
Key Words: African families, education, family structure,
fathers, xed effects models.
including altruism, old-age security (Becker,
1992), and the evolutionary drive to protect their
genetic relatives (W. D. Hamilton, 1964). Often,
children receive their principal monetary invest-
ments from their biological fathers, although
the degree to which fathers feel driven to invest
may vary meaningfully with their presence in
the household. A nonresident father may invest
little in his children because he feels reduced
altruism toward them (a potential consequence
of reduced interactions), he does not expect
them to support him in his old age, or he has
developed a close relationship with the children
of a new partner (Cox, 2007). These drivers
explain the frequently observed association
between paternal absence from the household
and negative outcomes for children in both
Western (Anderson, Kaplan, & Lancaster,1999;
Case, Lin, & McLanahan, 1999; Emmott &
Mace, 2014) and African (Anderson, Kaplan,
Lam, & Lancaster, 1999; Clark & Hamplová,
2013; Ntoimo & Odimegwu, 2014; Thiombiano,
LeGrand, & Kobiané, 2013) contexts.
When fathers are absent, others typically do
not invest in children at levels high enough to
fully mitigate the negative impacts of pater-
nal absence. One framework for understand-
ing the low investments made by nonfathers in
the children with whom they coreside is fam-
ily structure theory. According to this theory,
role ambiguity in a foster or blended household
and the associated feeling that resource alloca-
tion is not one’s own responsibility (Bledsoe,
Ewbank, & Isiugo-Abanihe, 1988; Cherlin &
Furstenberg, 1994) can contribute to reduced
Journal of Marriage and Family 79 (August 2017): 897–914 897
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12393
898 Journal of Marriage and Family
investments in father-absent children (dened
here as children whose fathers do not live in
the household). Despite these structural chal-
lenges in father-absent households, researchers
have identied scenarios in which alternative
father gures, such as adoptive fathers or step-
fathers, invest highly enough to close the gap
associated with father absence (Gibson, 2009;
L. Hamilton, Cheng, & Powell, 2007; Hofferth
& Anderson, 2003).
In this article, I study whether Mozambican
children in all types of father-absent households
receive comparable investments or if related-
ness through blood or marriage dictates the
level of investment. An adult’s willingness to
invest in the children with whom he coresides
may be driven by his genetic closeness to that
child in accordance with kin selection theory
(Cox, 2007; L. Hamilton et al., 2007; W. D.
Hamilton, 1964). Kin selection theorists argue
that a biological father (who shares half his
genes with a child) feels twice as strongly to
invest as does a biological grandfather or uncle,
each of whom shares only a quarter of his
genes with that child. Moreover, a nonrela-
tive (e.g., a stepfather or nonbiologically related
uncle) will lack this drive to invest altogether.
Under kin selection theory, one would expect
to see a relatedness-driven hierarchy in child-
hood investment outcomes in which the highest
investments are made in father-present children,
followed by children living with nonpaternal rel-
atives, followed by children living with nonrela-
tives. In an investigationof Sub-Saharan African
orphans, Case, Paxson, and Ableidinger’s(2004)
results were largely consistent with this pattern:
Children were enrolled in school at lower rates
when they were more distantly related or unre-
lated to their household heads.
Within this kin selection framework, special
attention must be paid to the role of gender
in shaping household members’ investment
preferences and abilities. On one hand, maternal
and paternal presence might be expected to
have similar impacts on the level of invest-
ments a child receives. After all, mothers—like
fathers—share half their genes with their off-
spring, so they might feel comparably driven
to invest in their children. However, Investment
behavior is dictated by preferences, earning
potential, bargaining power, and spending
autonomy, all of which can be associated with
one’s gender (Akashi-Ronquest, 2009; Gum-
merson & Schneider, 2013; Lloyd & Blanc,
1996; Lundberg & Pollak, 1996; Luz & Agadja-
nian, 2015). In contexts in which women make
the majority of decisions regarding household
investments in children, a father’s principal
inuence on childhood investment levels may
be through the impact of his earnings on
household-level resources. On the other hand,
in contexts in which women have less spending
autonomy, a mother of half-siblings may prefer
to invest in all of her children equally regardless
of paternity, but her ability to actualize that pref-
erence may be impeded by her position within
the household (Akashi-Ronquest, 2009; Lund-
berg & Pollak, 1996) or by her new partner’s
hostility to her children from a previous relation-
ship (Case et al., 1999; Daly & Wilson, 1980,
1988). Under such circumstances, preferential
investments will be shown to children whose
fathers are present in the household, regardless
of the mother’s desire to buffer this effect.
If mothers have weak household bargaining
power, father absence in particular (regardless
of mother presence) will drive the investment
trends, and a fostered child may be no worse off
than a stepchild who lives with his mother.
In contrast to the preceding scenario, a step-
father or other individual with a strong, famil-
iar relationship with his coresiding children may
choose to invest highly in them. After all, an
individual’s stepchildren, similar to his biolog-
ical offspring, are potential providers of old-age
support and security against risk (Allen-Arave,
Gurven, & Hill, 2008), impact his relationship
with his current partner (Anderson, Kaplan, &
Lancaster, 1999), and might drive him to feel
truly altruistic. African stepfathers and the con-
sequences of maternal remarriage in Africa have
only recently begun to receive researchers’ spe-
cic attention, in stark contrast to the level of
attention paid to closely associated themes, such
as African child fostering (Bledsoe et al., 1988;
Case et al., 2004; Isiugo-Abanihe, 1985) and
female-headed households (Kennedy & Had-
dad, 1994; Luz & Agadjanian, 2015; Onyango,
Tucker, & Eisemon, 1994).
Investigations relating to household structure
and childhood investments are of particular
importance in Africa, where households are
often complex, father absence is often the
norm, and childhood investments are often
low. In Mozambique, for example, fewer than
half of adolescents live with their fathers,
and 8.9% of adolescents have never attended
school (Mozambican National Institute of
To continue reading
Request your trial