Mother Is Gold Father Is Glass Gender And Colonialism In a Yoruba Town

During my third extended research trip in Kétu, Bénin, in the fall of 2006, when I asked people to explain the Yoruba proverb “mother is gold, father is glass” (ìyá ni wúrà, bàbá ni dígí), they invariably told me a story.1 An elderly woman explained that a mother would never let her child go hungry. “A mother’s love is different from a father’s love,” she said. “A mirror—that breaks. The father is for everyone. The mother is your mother and she doesn’t want to change you.”2