The life course perspective provided a useful way in which to explore the experiences of young women raised in non-resident households. The theory was important for the purposes of this this study because it captures the complexities of lives, explores interrelationships between social structures and elucidates on the impact of time, place and history on the lives of young, adult women. Below is the summary of the theoretical framework. Although, this study may be an important contribution to the literature on fatherhood. It is important to note that some of these findings are not necessarily new either to the literature on fatherhood or to the life course perspective.
6.3.6.1 Father’s disappearing – Timing lives
In summarising the themes of timing lives as they appeared in this study, three important features of transitions over a life course, as outlined by Hareven & Masaoka (1988), were utilised. Firstly, there is the timing of the individual entry into and exit from the different work and family roles. In many developing countries throughout the world, the age at which women are becoming parents have decreased dramatically. According to Morrell et al. (2012), in South Africa there has been a reported drop in the number of teenage pregnancies although, as reported in chapter 2 of this study, one in three girls in South Africa is pregnant by the age of 20. Although it may be taboo in some countries to have a child during the adolescent years, Willan (2013) reports that 34% of young South African between the ages of 15 and 19 who were pregnant reported these pregnancies as planned. Furthermore, teenage pregnancy has been linked by researchers such as Peacock & Weston (2008) to paternal abandonment and thus the presence or absence of a father during pregnancy is an important feature of the earlier transitions of young women. The results of this study correspond with the literature review above with this study also finding that the age at which young women are entering universities and the labour force is increasing. This is a consequence of a number of events. However,
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the most pertinent to this study is the failure to meet the minimum requirements to progress to the next grade. This failure is normally blamed on a lack of parental support. Those who fall pregnant, may take a year off school to nurse the child. A second feature is the harmonisation of an individual transition with that of the collective family. Once babies are born they inevitably become part of the family. In South Africa a child under the age of 18 is regarded as a minor and, as such, the parents of these pregnant girls become the legal guardians of the babies.
Teenage mother often return to school after giving birth and are, thus, required to balance their school work and being a parent. According to Morrell et al. (2012), teenage mothers are often left to shoulder considerable responsibilities, juggling motherhood and schoolwork and often with little or no help from the father. The participants narrated cases in which the children of teenage mothers are raised by their maternal grandmothers with little or no help from the child’s father or his family.
Finally, the feature of timing is of importance in view of the cumulative impact of early transitions on the transitions that follow. At the heart of teenage pregnancy is unprotected sex which exposes teenagers to the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. According to Wilan (2013), by 2010 in South Africa approximately 30.2% of women between the ages 15 and 19 were living with HIV. The early transition of unprotected sex and teenage pregnancy may lead to premature death in young women. Furthermore, as a result of this earlier timing teenage girls are at the risk of dropping out of school (Wilan 2013). The high rate of unemployment in South Africa also implies that these young women will probably struggle to find decent work later in life. Teenage mothers who return to school after giving birth find themselves completing matriculation in their late teenage years (19 years) or early twenties and, as indicated above, this delays their entry into institutions of higher learning and/or the labour force.
6.3.6.2 Resist or respond – Young women’s reaction to non-resident fathers
Personal decisions as part of human agency, particularly, life course agency, also emerged strongly in this study. From the outset of this study it was alluded to that human agency, as an aspect of the life-course perspective, is evident in the way in which individuals respond to the
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life events with which they are confronted. The main life event that had confronted the participants in this study was the absence of their fathers either through parental separation, divorce, non-disclosure by the mothers and abandonment. The responses of the participants in this study were classified under two themes; namely, feelings of anger and resisting teenage pregnancy. Daughters tend to project their feelings of anger onto both their mothers and their fathers. Daughters raised in non-resident father households are often angry with their mothers for denying them access to their fathers because the fathers fail to live up to certain social and cultural criteria. These criteria include, among others; demands for maintenance even when the father is unemployed, non-disclosure of the father’s paternity and demands for damages and lobola.
On the other hand, daughters feel angry because their fathers succumbed to the societal and cultural pressures by choosing to abandon their children. According to Makusha et al. (2015), the ability to provide for one’s children is as important aspect of masculine identity and an inability to provide material resources may damages masculine identity, thus forcing the man to respond in different ways. Makusha et al. (2015) continue by stating that some men have responded by distancing themselves from their children and, in some cases, even abandoning them. The second response of the young women in this study was their resisting the pressure to fall pregnant in their teenage years. Of the 34 participants in this study one participant only reported having fallen pregnant during her teenage years. The young women contended that one of the most important reasons why they managed to avoid falling pregnant during their teenage years was not merely the discipline at home or the lessons learnt from their friends’
experiences and their environment but, rather, their ability to set goals and follow these goals.
Coupled with this was the desire to make their mothers proud and at times to prove to their absent fathers that they (daughters) had been able to make something of themselves despite the absence of their fathers’ help. It is recommended that future research in South Africa should study the extent to which father absence leads to teenage pregnancy, in particular in view of the fact that life course in the West has shown a strong link between father absence
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and teenage pregnancy (Hutchison 2007; Carpenter 2010; Ellis et al. 2003).
6.3.6.3 The role of historical events – Old versus new fathers
The historical events of the time are also an important predictor of father presence with historical events playing an important role in shaping fatherhood. The historical landscape in black South African men in the 1960s, for example, found themselves in did not allow them to become actively involved in their children’s lives. There were two main reasons for this, namely, repressive laws under apartheid and the emergence and prominence of the migrant labour system that separated black South African men from their families. It has also been noted that older fathers find it difficult to showing their emotions to their children as they believe this makes them appear weak in front of their children. Society has also prescribed to men the type of behaviour they should demonstrate in public with such emotions such as sadness and depression being contrary to the hegemonic masculinity (Van der Walt 2007). Thus, men tend to refrain from expressing these emotions in an attempt to preserve their masculinity (Van der Walt 2007). Crying is considered unmasculine and, hence, the famous saying “boys don’t cry”
(Vogel, Heimerdinger-Edwards, Hammer & Hubbard 2011).
The high rates of father absence in South Africa and globally has pushed for increased efforts to mentor fathers into becoming emotionally involved in their children lives. Such efforts include, among others, the HSRC Fatherhood Project, Sonke Gender Justice, National Fatherhood Initiative and Fathers for Justice. These endeavours are helping to shape a new generation of fathers who are more emotionally available than fathers were in the past. Finally, the school curriculum has been hailed by young women as one arena that teaches boys to be more emotionally involved with their children, namely, through a subject known as Life Orientation. It is little wonder that a study by Swartz et al. (2009), titled “Teenage Tata: voices of young fathers in South Africa”, found that teenage fathers in the 21st century are more involved in the well-being of their children than their fathers were. The historical times in which these young fathers find themselves are encouraging them to be more involved fathers than their fathers ever were.
119 6.3.6.4 Intricate interrelationships
By its very nature, family is marked by and, to a large extent, thrives through interdependence.
In line with the findings of Kok (2007), this study found that a family member’s life course transitions have an impact on the entire family. Consequently, the life trajectory of the daughters is linked to their relationship with their fathers. Father absence had clearly had a negative impact on the lives of many of the young women in this study. The study identified three main challenges that young adult women experience as a result of father absence.
Firstly, such young women find it difficult to form romantic and trusting relationships with other males thus providing evidence that the relationship between a father and a daughter is a powerful predictor of a daughter’s relationship with other men. This study highlighted that the absence of the father in a household is, therefore, linked to the distrust of young women who grow up in such households towards other males. The study further revealed that such young women tend to form romantic relationships with older men or with men who remind them of their fathers. Thus, these inversely intergenerational links also appear to dictate the types of relationships which young women enter into. Some of the participants in this study alluded to their choosing men who displayed the same behaviours as their non-resident fathers, thus implying that these young women were trying to replace their fathers.
Secondly, households without a father are more likely to experience financial difficulty. Thus, father absence, as a transition, often has negative impact on the financial status of the family, especially if the father was the main breadwinner. In such cases, the father’s absence leaves the mother burdened financially and forces the children to grow up quickly, for example, the participants reported that, at times, their mothers were forced to either take two jobs and/or work longer hours in order to provide for the family. This had forced the young women to take care of their young siblings and the household chores at an early age. Furthermore, some reported being left with their maternal grandparents while their mothers went to seek for migrant work. Finally, it would appear that the absence of a father may expose young women to danger. Households without a father-figure were also identified as ideal targets for robbers
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