Against the odds : engaged young fatherhood in contemporary South Africa

Abstract

This article explores the positions of young fathers living in contexts of unemployment and poverty in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. We use two primary sources of data to explore young men’s ideas about fatherhood, as articulated in letters written to their children as well as in ethnographic fieldnotes based on conversations with 11 young fathers. This article highlights the ambitions that young men have for themselves as providers for their children, despite the precarity they face. We explore contextual factors which impact on how fatherhood is experienced. We identify issues of precarity (joblessness; lack of resources, prospects and customary transactions) which limit the ability of fathers to realise their own expectations and hopes for decent fatherhood. We examine how a group of young fathers convey both their aspirations for, and regrets about, their relationships with their children. Ultimately, the conditions of precarity frustrate young fathers’ ambitions, and continue to work against the enactment of new gender orders and positive masculine norms in South Africa.