Yoruba proverbs which usually appear in the form of a plain statement of fact, or of a warning; are capable of making a point more sharply than ordinary statements (Oni, 1995). The importance of Yoruba proverbs is summarized in the proverbial sayings that ‘owe l'esin oro, bi oro ba sonu, owe ni a fi n wa a,' meaning, ‘a proverb is a horse which can carry one swiftly to the idea sought' (Delano 1973:77). In this study, Yoruba proverbs were used to find answers to important demographic and health questions. The reliance of the researcher on exploring Yoruba proverbs as part of his qualitative data to explain complex demographic and social events proved interesting and insightful. The use of local expressions and proverbs by respondents and discussants provided a remarkable and valuable option to expressing their ideas and opinions (Oni 1996a,b, Oni and Oguntimehin 1996). As a result of this approach, a great deal of information was gathered to explain the intra-household variation in management of child illness in Ekiti Yoruba households. The Study reported in this paper, covered 1536 households, and was carried out in Six Yoruba communities in Ekiti District, Nigeria between 1993 and 1994. The study was designed to examine intra-household responses to, and treatment of child and mother’s illnesses.The findings from the study show that Yoruba proverbs capture and explain the differences and the differential treatments for mothers and children in time of illness, which often exist within the family and the larger households in Yoruba societies.

Exploring the various Yoruba proverbs, the study revealed that differential treatment and responses to children illness within the home was based on whether the mother of the sick child was present or not in the marriage. Also, a fostered child will likely be left alone without treatment compared with a non-fostered when both fall sick. The findings in this study explain while many social scientists are becoming increasingly aware that “quantitative methods used in isolation tend to jump ahead to a focus on reliability and replicability, and that if validity is compromised, these efforts are wasted on data which sometimes do not reflect reality. It is a accepted view today that qualitative methods can capture actual behavior with great accuracy, and can produce detailed information and insights applicable to both the development of testable hypotheses and the interpretation of quantitative data” (Scrimshaw, 1991:237). It is now clear that without paying close attention to the culture, customs, language of the people, some respondents often tell lies and conceal useful information from interviewers in large-scale surveys. Bleek (1987), found that lying interviewers as well as inefficient interviewers can thus plague large-scale quantitative. Thus, the paper conclude by calling for more demographic research into Yoruba or traditional cultures (language, custom, beliefs etc.); with the strong belief that such in-depth understanding will enhance better explanation of many demographic, sociological and health events.