Families and Households in Post-apartheid South Africa

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Socio-demographic Perspectives We know that the structures of families and households have changed in recent decades and that this has had a profound effect on public policy planning and service delivery in South Africa. The family institution interfaces with other social institutions in any society. Therefore, it stands to reason that the political, social, and economic transformations resulting from colonialism and apartheid in South Africa have affected families and their residential dimension, the household, for all cultural groups. Before the democratic transition in 1994, studies of families and households were limited by the political economy of apartheid in general and, more specifically, by inadequate quantitative socio-economic data. Since the transition, however, the proliferation of such data has largely overcome this problem, making it possible to undertake more representative, comprehensive studies than was the case in the past. In this research monograph, a group of well-established social scientists from diverse disciplines, such as economics, demography, sociology, and psychology, attempt to explain the myriad changes in families and households in South Africa following the end of apartheid.

Professor Acheampong Yaw Amoateng is a family sociologist and former Director of Research in the Child, Youth, Family and Social Development Research Programme at the HSRC.

Professor T.B. Heaton is a Professor and Research Associate at the Center for Studies of the Family at Brigham Young University in the United States. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Carolina Population Center and the Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests are family change in developing countries, marriage and divorce.