ABSTRACT
WHEN Yoruba domestic life was organised around the family compound, children were brought up among the members of their lineage, under the care of uncles, aunts and grandparents, and their mother's senior co-wives, as well as their own parents. But though each household now tends to live separately, kinsfolk still care for each other's sons and daughters. If the parents cannot afford to maintain all their children, a brother, sister or cousin may take charge of them: even when the parents are not in need, they may do so as a gesture of goodwill. Old people also like to have some of their grandchildren with them, for companionship and to help with the housework, a wish which the parents could not ignore without giving offence. So children are likely now to spend more of their childhood away from home. Sometimes, too, a boy or a girl may be sent to live with a respected teacher to whom he is not related at all, paying for his training by making himself useful about the house. Since, moreover, so many wives do not live with their husbands, and perhaps a fifth of marriages fail, children often cannot share a house with both their parents. So they learn early to adjust themselves to different households, to be responsible, and to look for care and affection to others as well as their own father and mother.
