When liberals seek increased government spending these days, they’re less apt to cite the latest Brookings study than to offer up a bit of simple folk wisdom. “It takes a village to raise a child,” they’ll say, “village” being shorthand for “federal government.” The phrase has become a favorite of Jesse Jackson, metro-page columnists, and Amitai Etzioni, self-described”founder of the communitarian movement.” Now Hillary Clinton has appropriated the saying for the title of her new book.
Ubiquitous they may be, but where do the words actually come from? They first appeared in a major newspaper in 1984, when the Washington Post quoted one Sylvia Steed: “I think it was Maya Angelou who said it takes more than two parents to raise a kid — it takes a whole village.”
In the years since, the phrase has almost invariably been described as an ” ancient African proverb.” According to Horace Dei, an information offcer at the Embassy of Ghana, the phrase is indeed both ancient and African, though its meaning seems to have been garbled a bit in the translation from the original Akan.
When residents of Ghana observe that it takes a village to raise a child, says Dei, they aren’t talking about fully funding Head Start. Most likely, they’re discussing the terms of an arranged marriage, usually between minors.
Dei describes the process: “I say, ‘I like your son, he’s a very nice young man.’ You say ‘I like your daughter, too.’ And so I’ll give her to you. Before we realize it, we have connected them.”
My, how progressive.
