Peer-reviewed article
Lived Experiences of Young Mothers Parenting in Urban Slums: Evidence from Ghana
Portia Nana Ama Brempong, Kingsley Saa‐Touh Mort, Eunice Abbey, Samuel Eduaful, Phoebe Afram et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This qualitative study explored how 20 young mothers aged 18–35 raise children in two informal settlements in Accra, Ghana: Old Fadama and African Eleven. The mothers described frequent childhood illness, limited access to formal health services, overcrowded and flood-prone housing, and money problems that made schooling hard to afford. Their accounts suggest that caregiving choices were limited by few material and institutional options, yet the mothers kept working with the resources they had and held hopes for their children's education. The two settlements differed in how severe the hardships were, but not in their basic characteristics. The authors call for joined-up interventions on health care, housing, education and mothers' economic conditions.
Key points
- Mothers reported recurrent childhood illness and limited access to formal health services.
- Living environments were overcrowded and flood-prone.
- Financial barriers limited children's schooling.
- Caregiving decisions were shaped by restricted material and institutional options, while mothers kept negotiating available resources and sustaining educational aspirations for their children.
- The settlements were described as a 'slum of hope' and a 'slum of despair', but settlement type shaped the intensity of hardship more than its fundamental characteristics.
Limitations
The study is a small qualitative study of 20 mothers in two settlements in Accra, so its findings describe experiences and cannot be generalised or used to measure how common these problems are. It does not test any intervention, so it cannot show what works to improve child well-being.
Abstract
Abstract Parenting in urban informal settlements is shaped by intersecting economic, environmental, and institutional constraints. However, less is known about how young mothers experience and make sense of everyday caregiving under these conditions. This study explored the lived experiences of 20 young mothers aged 18–35 years raising children in Old Fadama and African Eleven, two informal settlements in Accra, Ghana. Guided by Jack’s framework of ecological influences on parenting and using an interpretative phenomenological analysis, the study examined experiences of child health care, housing, and education. Participants described recurrent childhood illness, limited access to formal health services, overcrowded and flood-prone living environments, and financial barriers to children’s schooling. Their accounts suggested that caregiving decisions were shaped by restricted material and institutional options, while mothers continued to negotiate available resources and sustain educational aspirations for their children. Although the two settlements differed as a “slum of hope” and a “slum of despair,” settlement type shaped the intensity of these hardships more than their fundamental characteristics. The study contributes an experience-centered account of parenting under structural constraint and highlights the importance of integrated, context-responsive interventions addressing health care, housing, education and the socioeconomic conditions of young mothers and improve child well-being in marginalized communities.