Let us consider a complex abelian scheme endowed with a section. On some suitable open subsets of the base it is possible to define the period map, i.e. a holomorphic map which marks a basis of the period lattice for each fiber. Since the abelian exponential map of the associated Lie algebra bundle is locally invertible, one can define a notion of abelian logarithm attached to the section. In general, the period map and the abelian logarithm cannot be globally defined on the base, in fact after analytic continuation they turn out to be multivalued functions: the obstruction to the global existence of such functions is measured by some monodromy groups. In the case when the abelian scheme has no fixed part and has maximal variation in moduli, we show that the relative monodromy group of ramified sections is non-trivial and, under some additional hypotheses, it is of full rank. As a consequence we deduce a new proof of Manin's kernel theorem and of the algebraic independence of the coordinates of abelian logarithms with respect to the coordinates of periods. (Joint work with Paolo Dolce, Westlake University.)