Aid workers parenting in the field: Children-as-audience and the generational transmission of privilege in Senegal

Abstract

This article, based on ethnographic research in Senegal, explores parenting practices of expatriate international development workers who bring their families with them to overseas posts. These parents experience various ambivalences regarding class, privilege, and racial consciousness, and these are manifested in their concerns about the unintended lessons their children absorb from the dynamics that they observe. Children are ever-present spectators to the choices their parents are making, not only in terms of their parenting, but in their broader lifestyles as well. Often unwittingly, children represent a potential challenge to parents’ reproduction of themselves not just as good parents, but as good people.