Abstract

"Kitting Out the Nursery: Mothercare Shops and Mothering Technologies in Neoliberal Ghana"

Afua Quarshie, Johns Hopkins University (aquarsh1@jhu.edu)

In post-independence Ghana, a particular conception of modern mothering was performed through access to imported goods. These consumer goods drew women into transnational networks of mothers drawing from the same wells of knowledge about material objects essential for mothering. For example, global trading houses like the United Africa Company influenced new consumer imaginaries and desires through their Kingsway Department Store. Complete with baby sections that hosted baby shows and competitions, Kingsway modeled the ideal baby and nursery, inviting customers into mothering practices deeply embedded in international consumer cultures. Having a “Kingsway baby” distinguished a mother and her child as discerning, cosmopolitan consumers. However, Kingsway’s idealized image of mothering remained aspirational for most Ghanaian mothers, especially through the lean 1970s. The mid-1980s marked a shift in market access with the advent of the neoliberal era. Entrepreneurs, including market traders, capitalized on trade liberalization policies to establish Mothercare shops in Accra, particularly in the central market of Makola. This article presents a two-fold argument. First, it posits that the proliferation of locally owned Mothercare shops in the 1980s expanded and democratized access to mothering technologies. Second, it shows how these mothering technologies and products mediated the relationship between mothers’ and children’s bodies, altering the physical and emotional labor of mothering. Mothercare shop owners curated and imported a range of goods for expectant and new mothers through their networks of foreign markets and manufacturers. Over time, these business owners collaborated with their customers to stock goods that responded to evolving tastes and needs. Utilizing newspapers, government data, and oral interviews, this paper recounts how Mothercare shops developed as multisited enterprises that shaped the materiality of mothering. In doing so, it addresses a silence in the scholarship on mothering, material culture, and trade in West Africa.