This article investigates how the notion of ‘the African family’ used pervasively inregional policy on old age-related questions, plays out in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. It doesso by looking at the quality of intergenerational relationships from the point of view of olderwomen who are also sole breadwinners in multi-generational households. Drawing from a socialgerontological reading of the concept of moral economy, the article examines how culturalrepresentations of womanhood as self-sacrificial motherhood, conditioned the support that olderwomen were expected to give, but also entitled to receive. The article shows how older womenand their younger family members dismissed customary duties in favour of personal judgementsregarding the quality of their relationships, and suggests that the strategies older women deployedin an effort to cope with intergenerational tensions both exacerbated conflict and amplified thewomen’s feelings of desertion.