Young Families: Gender, Sexuality and Care draws together unique and compelling essays about the contexts of early childbearing, a topic that is now taken for granted. It draws on empirical data, multi-level approaches and inter-disciplinary perspectives on the dynamics that underpin young people’s experiences of being pregnant, having a child and caring for the child.
The book explores the contexts in which young families are constituted and shaped along with the kinds of social relationships and communities of care that early childbearing creates (or in some instances destroys). It shows the entanglement of gender, sexuality, race, age and class in the formation of young families and its effects on caring practices.
This book draws together unique and compelling accounts that address a gap in the existing literature on families in South Africa while also providing an understanding of the diversity of young South African families. Young Families will be of interest and of benefit to those in the fields of Women and Gender studies, Anthropology, Education, Sociology, History and Demography.
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List of Tables and Figures
OPENING LINES
Chapter 1: Understanding Young Families in South Africa
Nolwazi Mkhwanazi and Deevia Bhana
Chapter 2: Popular Perspectives on Teenage Pregnancy in South Africa
Rebecca Hodes
Chapter 3: Teenage Mothers and Fathers: A Demographic Perspective
Sibusiso Mkwananzi
YOUNG MOTHERS
Chapter 4: Anisa’s Story: Becoming A Teenage Mother In An Indian Community
Deevia Bhana
Chapter 5: Mina’s Story: ‘Sick’ with Child in an Afrikaans Speaking Community
Nina Botha
Chapter 6: Aliyah’s story: Generational Change in Manenberg
Anna Versfeld
Chapter 7: Rethabile’s Story: To Be Young, Pregnant and Black
Nolwazi Mkhwanazi
YOUNG FATHERS
Chapter 8: Regulating and Mediating Fathers’ Involvement in Families: The Negotiation of Inhlawulo
Nolmvuyo Nkani
Chapter 9: “I was not planning to have a child at such a young age”. Experiences of young fathers in Durban, South Africa
Siphamandla Chili and Pranitha Maharaj
Chapter 10: Ubaba ukhona kodwa angikabi namandla: Navigating Teenage Fatherhood in Rural Kwazulu-Natal
Nozipho Mvune
INTERGENERATIONAL CARE
Chapter 11: Young Mothers Parenting at School: Gendered Narratives on Family and Care Practices
Sisa Ngabaza and Tamara Shefer
Chapter 12: Control as Support: Improving the Outcomes for Teenage Mothers
Shakila Singh and Preenisha Naicker
Chapter 13: Negotiating Motherhood at the Intersection of Intergenerational Fertility, HIV and Care
Alison Swartz
Chapter 14: Moral Mothers and Disobedient Daughters: A Politics of Care and Moral Personhood Across the Generations
Rosemary Blake
DISRUPTIONS
Chapter 15: Disrupted Families: The Social Production of Child Abandonment in Urban Johannesburg
Deirdre Blackie
