Abstract
As Ghana goes through a demographic transition, in which people are living longer and with long-term, chronic diseases (de-Graft Aikins et al 2012), families are experiencing a growing strain in caring for their elderly and frail members. Reciprocities across the generations are changing (Aboderin 2006, Apt 1996, Dsane 2013). There is a growing demand for elder care providers to supplement the direct care of kin busy with work and school in Ghana and abroad. Middle-class households in urban and peri-urban areas tend to use the labor of househelp and fostered adolescents for this purpose, while wealthier households and middle-class urban households with access to migrant remittances increasingly turn to carers hired through commercial nursing agencies, who supplement the work of househelp and fostered adolescents and work alongside them in households. Thus, changes in ageing in Ghana have generated a new, emergent occupation: the elder carer. Although the occupation is modeled after its counterpart in the United Kingdom and other Western countries, I argue that it is understood in relation and opposition to recognized social roles in Ghana, in particular those of daughter, househelp, and nurse.