When my sister gave birth, joy met complexity in a way that felt familiar to the Ghanaian family of today – the quiet tension between tradition and modern life.
In earlier times, childbirth set off a predictable rhythm: the mother of the new mother would arrive from her hometown, hands full of spices, baby cloths, herbs, and care.
For weeks, sometimes months, she would anchor the new household – bathing the baby before dawn, feeding the mother, whispering prayers, and offering instruction passed down through generations. It was care as continuity, and no one questioned its order.
But this time, it wasn’t so simple. My mother, who manages a shop in Kumasi, could not immediately travel to Accra to stay with my sister. The decision wasn’t emotional – it was economic, logistical, and deeply moral all at once. My father needed her presence in Kumasi. Her small business could not close indefinitely. And she, too, is a woman of her generation; not idle, not retired, not waiting for calls to service, but managing work, marriage, and meaning all at once. What would have once been an unquestioned cultural duty had now become a hard personal choice.
This small domestic episode mirrors a much larger national story that sits at the intersection of changing family structures, modern employment, and gendered expectations. The Ghanaian family, once defined by proximity and collectivism, is slowly transforming into smaller, more scattered units. Education and work have carried people across cities and continents. Urbanisation has compressed space and time, trading communal living for individual survival. Ghana, like much of Africa, is living through the quiet collapse of the extended family care system that once anchored our social lives.
The Ghanaian family has grown smaller, more mobile, and more individualistic. The women who once carried the burden and blessing of care are now active participants in the formal economy. They are doctors, lawyers, traders, civil servants, and entrepreneurs. They contribute taxes, ideas, and leadership, but this very progress has redefined the old rhythms of birth, nurture, and domestic supportTravel guides Ghana
We live in a moment where the biological and professional clocks tick in dissonance. A woman in her late twenties or early thirties is expected to be ascending her career ladder just as society begins to whisper questions about marriage and motherhood. The traditional script no longer fits the modern reality. Women are studying longer, marrying later, and giving birth at ages that used to be considered “late.” And yet, the policies and social infrastructure that should make this possible lag far behind the cultural change.
Maternity leave in Ghana, for instance, remains at a minimum of twelve weeks under Section 57 of the Labour Act (Act 651, 2003) – barely three months. The same law allows for an additional two weeks in cases of multiple births or complications, but that hardly matches the real demands of postnatal recovery or the World Health Organisation’s recommendation of six months of exclusive breastfeeding.
The law was a milestone in its time, yet twenty years on, it feels outdated. Compare this with organisations such as the British High Commission in Accra, which grants its staff six months of paid maternity leave and ensures that a cover officer steps in so that the mother’s career does not stagnate while she bonds with her child. That single policy choice communicates something powerful: that care is not a private inconvenience but a public value.
It is sad that the broader Ghanaian labour ecosystem still treats maternity as an individual matter rather than a collective concern. Many employers, especially in the private sector, view pregnancy as a disruption. Some quietly penalise women for taking their entitled leave, with others hesitating to hire women of childbearing age. The very structures that celebrate women’s education do little to protect them once they become mothers. The result is a growing tension between aspiration and accommodation, as well as the promise of equality and the lived experience of working women.Buy vitamins and supplements
This tension spills into homes. Without grandmothers or aunties nearby, new mothers turn to house helps, crèches, or daycare centres, often with mixed results. Recent headlines have exposed horrifying cases of abuse, with children being beaten, neglected, or molested by those entrusted with their care. The anxiety around childcare is no longer confined to working-class households; even professionals struggle to find safe and affordable options. Many of these domestic workers are themselves young, undertrained, and underpaid. They migrate from rural areas to cities, entering informal employment without regulation or oversight. The care chain has become precarious: a working mother depends on a girl who herself has no protection, both navigating a system that sees neither of them fully.
The deeper issue is that Ghana has not yet fully recognised care as part of the economy. It remains invisible, unpaid, or underpaid work, performed mostly by women, and expected as duty rather than compensated as labour. Economists call this the “care economy”: the vast, often unmeasured web of activities that sustain households, communities, and the workforce itself. Cooking, cleaning, raising children, caring for the elderly – these are not marginal tasks; they are the foundation upon which productivity rests. When mothers take time off to give birth or nurture infants, they are not stepping away from the economy; they are sustaining its future labour force.Travel guides Ghana
A new understanding of care requires both cultural and institutional shifts. It calls for governments and employers to view caregiving not as a private choice but as a public responsibility. Policies must evolve to match the demographic and social realities of modern Ghana. Extending maternity leave to at least sixteen or twenty weeks – ideally six months – would align national practice with global health standards and demonstrate that the country values both women’s health and children’s early development. Paternity leave, currently tokenistic, must also expand to encourage shared domestic responsibility. The notion that caregiving is a woman’s exclusive domain belongs to another era; the modern household thrives when fathers participate fully in childcare, not merely as helpers but as co-parents.
For young singles preparing for marriage, this changing landscape demands foresight. Marriage today is not merely a union of affection but a partnership of logistics, time, and shared responsibility. Couples must plan not only for wedding ceremonies but for the years of balancing work, fertility, and parenting that follow. Conversations about savings, maternity leave, domestic help, and support systems should not be afterthoughts. Too often, love stories falter under the weight of unspoken expectations about who will sacrifice what when children arrive. The biological clock is not merely a personal concern; it intersects with national labour realities and gender policy gaps.
The truth is that Ghana’s social fabric is being rewoven. The extended family, once the bedrock of postnatal care, has thinned under the pressures of urban migration. Mothers no longer live a street away from their daughters; grandmothers are not always available. The nuclearisation of families – once a symbol of progress – has also produced isolation. Young parents find themselves alone in apartments, trying to manage sleepless nights, demanding jobs, and rising living costs without the informal safety nets that once cushioned our grandparents’ generation. As cities grow denser and life faster, time becomes the new scarcity. The act of caring – once embedded in community – now competes with deadlines, traffic, and digital distractions. Mothers pump breast milk between Zoom meetings, as fathers rush home through congestion to see their children before bedtime. The domestic space has become a site of negotiation rather than natural support.
Amid this transition lies an opportunity. Ghana’s youthful population, vibrant private sector, and expanding middle class create fertile ground for innovation in care infrastructure. The rise of professional childcare centres, flexible work policies, and hybrid employment models can transform the way the country supports families. Technology can also help, through apps for parental scheduling, online support groups, even tele-health consultations for postpartum care. But these tools must operate within a framework of standards and accountability. We cannot outsource care without oversight.
The issue of trust in domestic care cannot be ignored. Too many families have turned to house helps or private caregivers with little vetting or oversight. The tragedies of abuse, neglect and even death that follow, speak to a vacuum of regulation. Ghana must formalise the domestic work sector, providing certification, background checks, and basic rights for workers. Domestic care is professional work; it deserves training, contracts, and dignity. Agencies that recruit house helps should be licensed, and households must be held accountable for safe working conditions. Childcare centres should meet regulated safety and educational criteria. Protecting caregivers is part of protecting children; exploitation breeds negligence. Every caregiver, whether domestic or institutional, should receive basic training in early childhood development, first aid, and child protection. Licensing and periodic audits could prevent the tragedies that have too often surfaced in the news. A national childcare accreditation board, working alongside the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection, could set benchmarks for quality and affordability, much like how the Food and Drugs Authority ensures standards in another essential domain – what we consume.Travel guides Ghana
Beyond regulation, Ghana must also invest in public early-childhood education. The first five years of life are crucial for cognitive and emotional development. Countries that invest in early learning reap dividends in productivity and social stability. Expanding government-supported crèches and pre-schools, particularly for low-income families, would relieve pressure on mothers and reduce inequality. When childcare is secure, women can work without anxiety, and when women work, the entire economy benefits. Incorporating early childhood education modules into teacher training colleges will raise standards for those who manage daycare centres. National guidelines on child–caregiver ratios, nutrition, and hygiene could mirror public health protocols. These steps do not require vast budgets – only the will to enforce consistency. When every mother can leave her child in a safe, stimulating environment, she returns to work not with fear, but with focus.
We also need to rethink the workplace itself. Flexible hours, remote work arrangements, and lactation facilities should not be luxuries reserved for international organisations. They are practical responses to the realities of working motherhood. Companies that adopt such measures report higher employee retention, loyalty, and morale. The care-sensitive workplace is not merely an act of kindness; it is sound economics. Corporate Ghana can pioneer family-friendly policies that make workplaces more humane. Some banks and telecommunication firms have already introduced daycare facilities or flexible schedules for nursing mothers. Others partner with wellness organisations to support mental health during postpartum transitions. But these remain exceptions rather than norms. A corporate culture that sees employees as whole people – workers, parents, and citizens – will outlast one that sees them only as productivity units. Boards and executives must begin to ask: how does our company sustain life, not just profit?
A former employee of the British High Commission once told me that mothers there are given six months of maternity leave, and the organisation ensures that a temporary cover staff steps in during the absence. It is a simple but transformative practice: it acknowledges that care work has value, and that a woman’s absence from the office does not mean disruption, but continuity planned with empathy. Such models prove that maternity-friendly policies are not acts of generosity; they are marks of social intelligence. The public sector in Ghana, and indeed most of Africa, must learn this truth. A woman’s reproductive capacity should not be treated as an inconvenience to be managed, but as a social investment to be protected.Buy vitamins and supplements
At the policy level, Ghana could draw lessons from the International Labour Organisation’s Maternity Protection Convention (No. 183) and Recommendation 191, which urge at least fourteen weeks of paid maternity leave and protection against dismissal. Ratifying and implementing such frameworks would demonstrate national commitment to gender equity. Additionally, integrating childcare benefits into national health insurance and social security schemes could ease the burden on families.
But even as we advocate for institutional reforms, the cultural conversation must evolve. Many women still carry an invisible guilt: the feeling that they must excel at work while also embodying the ideal of the self-sacrificing mother. Society still romanticises endurance rather than support, applauding women who “do it all” instead of questioning why they must. True progress lies not in glorifying exhaustion but in designing systems that prevent it.
The role of fathers is equally central to this vision. Traditional masculinity in Ghana often associates fatherhood with financial provision, while emotional and physical caregiving remains the woman’s domain. Yet, research shows that when fathers actively participate in early childcare, children develop stronger cognitive and emotional resilience. Fathers who share domestic duties also model equality to their sons and daughters. Expanding paternity leave to at least one month, as seen in countries like Kenya or South Africa, would mark a small but powerful shift in social imagination. It says: nurturing is not gendered; it is human.Travel guides Ghana
For rural communities, where formal childcare may be scarce, strengthening local health posts and mother-to-mother support groups can fill the gap. The National Commission for Civic Education and district assemblies could collaborate to run public campaigns on responsible childcare, nutrition, and early learning. Even faith-based organisations can model this care ethos by supporting families with counselling, childcare initiatives, and flexible ministry schedules for young parents.
If there is one truth the twenty-first century keeps teaching us, it is that nations rise or fall on the strength of their homes. Every policy on productivity, education, and national development eventually finds its roots in the domestic sphere. When mothers and fathers are supported, societies thrive; when they are abandoned to private struggle, even the best economic blueprints falter. The New Care Economy, therefore, is not simply about longer maternity leave or better crèches. It is about redefining what we value as work, and what we recognise as national contribution. Public investment in care infrastructure is not charity; it is strategy. Nordic countries long ago learned that affordable childcare and generous parental leave increase female labour participation and birth rates simultaneously. Ghana’s fertility rate has declined steadily, especially among educated urban women. The reason is not lack of desire for children, but the practical cost of combining work and family. When societies make it easier to care, they secure both human capital and social continuity. A generation that delays or forgoes childbirth because of economic or professional barriers represents not empowerment, but systemic failure.
To build this new economy, Ghana must begin by acknowledging the invisible labour that women perform daily. The Ghana Statistical Service estimates that women contribute more than half of the country’s GDP if unpaid care work is counted. Yet, because most of this work is done within homes, it rarely enters our data or policy discussions. The woman who wakes at dawn to prepare her children for school before reporting to her office does two shifts: one unpaid, one paid. Her productivity in the formal economy rests upon the unpaid work she performs at home. If we measured care accurately, we would realise that Ghana’s economic story is incomplete without these invisible hands.
Globally, the conversation on care is shifting from welfare to infrastructure. Economists speak of the “care economy” as the next growth frontier. Just as roads and energy fuel commerce, childcare and eldercare sustain the labour market. Investing in care creates jobs for teachers, nurses, counsellors, social workers, and multiplies social returns. For Ghana, this means integrating care into its development agenda alongside technology and manufacturing. A national care strategy could coordinate ministries of gender, health, education, and labour to align objectives. Tax incentives for employers who provide childcare, subsidies for accredited centres, and community-based caregiving hubs could form a network of support across the country.School supplies
Yet, as we look outward to policy, we must also look inward to values. The old Ghanaian extended family system was not only practical; it was moral. It rested on the idea that no child belonged to one pair of parents alone, that every life was held in community. Modernisation should not erase that ethos; it should reinterpret it. We may live in smaller homes, but we can still build wider circles of support. Friends can rotate childcare, workplaces can form parent networks, churches can host “baby banks” for shared supplies. The principle of mutual care can survive even in a digitised world.
Ultimately, the success of the New Care Economy will depend on leadership. Policymakers must see care not as a sentimental issue but as governance. Parliament could review the Labour Act to extend maternity and paternity leave, incorporate breastfeeding-friendly workplace standards, and create fiscal incentives for family-centred policies. Ministries can coordinate data collection on childcare and unpaid labour, ensuring that national statistics reflect reality. Civil society can hold both employers and government accountable. Universities can drive research on family policy, ensuring decisions rest on evidence, not assumption.Travel guides Ghana
The moral argument is simple: care builds nations. Every president once lay in the arms of a mother who needed time, rest, and support. Every engineer, teacher, and soldier began life as a child whose earliest environment determined their capacity to trust and to think. When we underinvest in care, we underinvest in our collective future.
The modern Ghanaian mother is not asking for sympathy; she is asking for structure. She is not rejecting tradition; she is negotiating its renewal. When my mother hesitated to leave her shop in Kumasi to help my sister in Accra, it was not because love had diminished. It was because the economic and social equations had changed. Care now competes with commerce, and devotion must be balanced with duty. Our challenge is to design a society where those choices are not so painful – where a mother can support her daughter without jeopardising her livelihood, and a new parent can nurture her child without risking her career.
As I think back to my mother, torn between her shop in Kumasi and her daughter’s newborn in Accra, I realise she stands at the intersection of two Ghanas: one communal, one modern; one bound by kinship, the other by contracts. Neither is wrong. Both need each other. The task of our generation is to merge their virtues – to bring efficiency to empathy, policy to love. The grandmother’s instinct must meet the policymaker’s insight.Buy vitamins and supplements
This is the promise of the New Care Economy: a society where love is structured, and structure is loving. Where the nation recognises that the labour of care – though often quiet – is the loudest measure of civilisation, where no woman must choose between her womb and her work, and where no child grows up without the safety of responsible eyes watching over them.
The new Ghana will not be built only by roads and reforms, but by the simple, radical act of caring well – for mothers, fathers, and the future they cradle.
About the Writer
Gifty Nti Konadu is an Occupational Therapist by training whose career and calling have evolved toward public security, policy research, and legal reform. With an academic background spanning health, peace, and intelligence studies, she writes and speaks passionately about human security, social justice, and governance transformation in Ghana and across Africa. Her essays explore how personal, institutional, and societal wellbeing intersect – from the care economy to national policy. Gifty’s work appears in public commentary and policy platforms, where she advocates for systems that safeguard dignity, strengthen law and governance, and nurture a more equitable and morally grounded society.