Browsing by Author "Moore, Elena"

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    Delaying divorce: pitfalls of restrictive divorce requirements
    (SAGE Publications, 2015) Moore, Elena
    A period of separation is a ground for divorce in some countries. During this waiting period, some parents live apart in two separate residences, while other parents live apart in one residence. In this article, I examine the experiences of fathers who remain living in the same residence as their former partners and the experiences of a number of fathers who had to move out of the family home and live in a separate residence after the decision to separate. The findings show that restrictive divorce policies that delay divorce potentially create a situation of prolonged boundary ambiguity which complicate the process of renegotiating boundaries between parenting and former spousal relationships on divorce. The article argues that for a sample of divorced fathers, the policies that require a prolonged waiting period relate in some way to issues of unclear boundaries.
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    Exploring the influence of intlawulo on father Involvement among Xhosa speaking black South African fathers raised and living in Cape Town
    (2020) Samukimba, Jill Chidisha; Moore, Elena
    Studies on African fatherhood represent African fathers as problematic and in South Africa, they are identified as ‘‘emotionally disengaged, physically absent, abusive and do not pay for their children's upkeep'' (Morrell & Ritcher, 2006:81). Many studies link the high rates of absent fathers to poverty and irresponsibility. Such literature is devoid of cultural factors that might be contributing to the high rates of absent fathers in most African communities. Across Southern Africa, intlawulo, a customary practice that involves the paying of a fine by a man responsible for impregnating a woman out of wedlock and his family to the pregnant woman's family. Historically, intlawulo served as a critical means of regulating and mediating unmarried fathers' involvement in their children's lives. Therefore, this explorative qualitative research project explores African fathers' experiences of intlawulo and its subsequent links to father involvement. To gauge their experiences and interpretation of intlawulo and father involvement, I conducted face-to-face in-depth qualitative interviews with a purposive sample of 8 black Xhosa speaking South African fathers from Cape Town who have gone through the intlawulo negotiations for the past five years or less. This study aimed to explore how the customary practice of intlawulo or ‘paying damages' influences a father's involvement in his child's life in Khayelitsha, an urban township within Cape Town. It argued that the payment of intlawulo regulates a father's involvement in childrearing, his interaction with and access to his child. In contrast to how fathering has been described in previous literature, this thesis argues that becoming a father is a process and intlawulo is the entry point where it can be denied, stopped and negotiated.
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    Forms of Femininity at the End of a Customary Marriage
    (2014) Moore, Elena
    This paper explores women's daily practice of resistance built into the racialised and gendered social structure of customary marriages in South Africa. I argue that women resist, accommodate, adapt and contest power and authority in the decision to leave the marriage, in negotiating the exit from the marriage and in their approach to the financial consequences of the separation. By using the myriad of daily practices as evidence for resistance, the study identifies three forms of femininities which emerge from the data: emphasised femininity characterises women's compliance with women's subordination, ambivalent femininity describes a complex combination of compliance and resistant activities in women practices and alternative femininities typifies the rejection and resistance with women's subordination. The paper discusses how these different forms of femininity emerge in their specific cultural, class and temporal context. The findings reveal that the resistance practices are accompanied by more general ideological awareness of how gender and class shape the lives of these women at this time of transition.
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    From Traditional to Companionate Marriages: Women's changing expereince of divorce
    (Policy Press, 2012) Moore, Elena
    Dominant macro social theories on changing personal relationships have tended to place little emphasis on the significance of difference across individuals. This article makes a contribution to this field, drawing on data from 19 qualitative interviews with a group of middle-class divorcing women in Ireland. This research has uncovered a cohort effect in women's experience of marriage and divorce and points to a striking polarisation of women's experience of marriage and divorce in Ireland. Findings from the Ireland-wide trends on changing family practices and the case studies demonstrate that younger women, who were better educated and higher income earners, perceived separation as a form of 'liberation'. On the other hand, the older cohort of divorcees, who were less well educated and dependent spouses during the marriage, felt that they were actively abandoned and did not negotiate the ending of their marriage.
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    The gendered experiences of women, men and couples who plan, have and narrate homebirths
    (2015) Daniels, Nicole Miriam; Moore, Elena; Chadwick, Rachelle
    In South Africa excellent scholarship exists on women's experiences of homebirth but no studies have yet examined men's or couples' experiences. The thesis sought to make a valid contribution by uncovering a relational view of homebirths that made sense of the gendered interactions and relational negotiations of women, men and couples who experienced homebirth. It adopted a longitudinal, qualitative approach based on thirty interviews with five couples before and after homebirth. Dyadic interviewing and the listening guide offered relational methods of collecting and analysing data that additionally engaged the researcher in highly reflexive modes of producing knowledge. By foregrounding the relational context, narrative constructions of homebirths showcased simultaneous operations of gender as both opportunity and constraint. This study uncovered the active social processes involved in couples' decision making narratives and the relational interactions in their homebirth experiences. Joint narratives of homebirth displayed the interconnectedness of relating-selves where couples' relational scripts were brought to bear on the meanings of homebirth. Women and men found meaning in their experiences through connection with others; men privileged a selfless masculinity and women a self-reliant femininity. Both positioned women's relationship to their body and thus their baby as central to homebirth. Through in-depth scrutiny of the practice of homebirths, this study detailed how intimate interpersonal relationships are shaped by broader social and gendered processes.
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    Household economies of low-income, African female-headed households in Khayelitsha: intergenerational support, negotiation and conflict
    (2016) Button, Kirsty Allen; Moore, Elena
    Low-income, African female-headed households represent a large segment of households in South Africa. Despite this, little is known about how financial and non-financial resources are provided, controlled and used within these households. Less is known about how these dynamics shape intergenerational relationships and positions of power within female-headed households. This thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of these issues by examining how the household economies of fourteen low-income, African female-headed households in Khayelitsha operated on a day-to-day basis. It also sought to understand how two generations of household members experienced these practices. Through the collection and analysis of qualitative data, this thesis shows that the households were sites of support as household members relied on each other for various forms of support. However, many of the female household heads bore the greatest responsibility for the physical and financial maintenance of their households. Furthermore, the findings build upon existing understandings of low-income, multi-generational households as also being sites of negotiation and contestation. The unequal burden of care experienced by the older women and the patterns of support provided by other household members was often the outcome of intergenerational negotiation. The participants' experiences of these dynamics shed light on the shifting positions of power within their households. The older women struggled to maintain their authority and negotiate for financial and practical assistance from their younger household members. As a result, the provision of support and perceptions about their interpersonal relationships were framed by experiences of intergenerational conflict and feelings of ambivalence. The findings highlight experiences of multi-generational family life and inequality in a context where feelings of obligation, broader socio-economic conditions and the nature of state support may constrain how the participants were able to provide support and handle instances of intergenerational conflict.
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    How and why do states provide for children? Comparing social grants for families with children in Southern Africa
    (2018) Chinyoka, Isaac; Seekings Jeremy F; Moore, Elena
    This thesis explores variation in public policy with a focus on the provision of social grants (social cash transfers) for families with children. The thesis investigates how and why three middle-income countries (South Africa, Namibia and Botswana) and a low-income country (Zimbabwe) in Southern Africa provide for children in different ways. In-depth interviews and desktop research established that ‘child welfare regimes’ (CWRs) (a combination of programmes affecting the welfare of children, primarily cash transfers, feeding programmes, health and education fee waivers) are similar in providing some form of social grants, directly and/or indirectly to children or families with children. But there are significant variations between the CWRs. The CWRs primarily vary across two dimensions: first, the coverage of programmes; and secondly, their targeting, specifically whether they are targeted on poverty or on perceived ‘family breakdown’. I present a taxonomy of CWRs with four distinct types: a pro-poor (poverty-targeted) CWR (as in South Africa), a familialist CWR (targeted on ‘broken’ families) (as in Botswana), a mixed (pro-poor-familial targeted) CWR (as in Namibia) and an agrarian (family-targeted) one (as in Zimbabwe). A pro-poor CWR is distinguished by high coverage and generous transfers. A familial CWR provides medium coverage with overall generosity but with parsimonious cash benefits. A mixed CWR has low coverage and modest generosity while an agrarian CWR has low coverage and ungenerous benefits. This taxonomy emphasises variation in targeting form, an important but underestimated dimension in identifying and explaining CWRs particularly in Southern Africa. In explaining the variation, the factors that were especially important include colonial antecedents, need or structural factors (particularly AIDSrelated health shocks, demographic changes and family breakdown), international influence by international organisations, particularly UNICEF, the level of democracy but all these factors and the choice for a CWR reflect domestic politics (party politics and civil society organisations). These findings extend the Power Resource Theory beyond developed countries but also reveal new influential factors, within the theory, that have been overlooked but significant in explaining variation between CWRs.
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    Kin, Market and State in the Provision of Care in South Africa
    (2013) Seekings, Jeremy; Moore, Elena
    The provision of financial assistance and personal care in contemporary South Africa entails a distinctive combination of state, market and kin. The state assists financially the deserving poor, but provides little personal care. Better-off people rely increasingly on the market for both income support and care. The poor rely heavily on kin, especially female, maternal kin. The South African case is unlike any of the standard welfare and care regimes identified by Esping-Andersen or his critics.
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    “My husband has to stop beating me and I shouldn’t go to the police”: Woman Abuse, Family Meetings and Relations of Authority
    (2016-11) Moore, Elena
    In this article, I examine how family meetings, which are traditional systems of arbitration, act as a site for challenging male authority and patrilineal power in South Africa. By drawing on dyadic interviews with wives, husbands and wider kin members, the article shows how women resist definitions and practices of abuse and resist domination, even when male authority of the domestic system continues and is secured through support from female kin members. I describe three ways in which wives threaten domination: reporting abuse to the state and using the state as the authority which legitimately determines the rules of social order; challenging the patriarchal norms of marital conduct and the definition of abuse put forward by the abuser; rejecting norms that husbands have authority over household income. These challenges to men’s right to authority are occurring at a time of legal change and a growing acknowledgement of social crises, including high levels of woman abuse. They are rooted in broader contestations of the patriarchal norms and conventions that assert male authority in a postcolonial context. By analysing the challenges to patrilineal power and men’s authority, I go beyond claims that women engage in individual acts of resistance, and I argue that women, through both private and public challenges are refusing to comply with patriarchal norms and breach the normative order of domination.
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    Negotiating normativities: Counter narratives of lesbian queer world making in Cape Town
    (2018) Holland-Muter, Susan; Moore, Elena; Matebeni, Zethu
    This thesis explores the different modes and meanings of queer world making (QWM) of lesbians in Cape Town. Through an analysis of in depth interviews and focus groups it reveals lesbians' constructions of their intersectional and permeable QWM through a series of counter narratives enacted in three interconnected socialities. Generational narratives reveal psycho-social processes of recognition of lesbian desire and coming into a lesbian subjectivity in a range of modes of QWM. Lesbian erotic world making centres their entitlement to enact sexual autonomy and sexual pleasure. Their counter narratives reveal how they simultaneously inhabit and extend normative gender regimes. Their productions of desire reveal a lesbian centred frame of sexual pleasure that extends the erotogenic body beyond the genitalia, innovates and transforms hegemonic libidinal zones, and extends phallocentric culture. Lesbian motherhood as a site of QWM reveals the participants' negotiations, conflict, stress and agency in relation to the 'good mother' discourse that undergirds mothering practices in South Africa. Their counter narratives reveal how they simultaneously resist and re-inscribe heteronormativity in their motherhood practice. Ironically, it is through publicly assuming their sexuality that they are they able to perform 'good motherhood'. They perform private resistance and public complicity with good mother ideologies; and simultaneously centre and destabilize the role of the father. They manage their 'difference' to the heterosexual norm by providing their children with tools to navigate heteronormativity, while simultaneously claiming being an unexceptional family. Their queer place making strategies in everyday spaces in Cape Town demonstrate how they rework racialised notions of belonging to incorporate the queer body (at times ephemerally) to make Cape Town home. Their creation of lesbian social networks and communities, embodied in lesbian social scenes and within their private homes, reveals how Cape Town is experienced as a hybrid space, their contrasting and competing narratives of the city revealing narratives of fractured belonging. QWM reveals how lesbians resist and (re)shape hegemonic identities, discourses and practices, revealing 'a mode of being in the world that is also inventing the world' (Muñoz, 1999: 121). QWM is about borderlands (Anzaldúa, 1987), where one lives within the possibility of multiple plotlines (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2006). Their queer life worlds are permeable to racialised heteronormativities. But their agency reveals multi-vocal and multivalent queer life worlds, enmeshed in the web of racialised, gendered, sexualised, aged and class-based hierarchies in Cape Town. There is no singular way of doing a lesbian subjectivity, no singular utopian notion of a lesbian community. Their differences are located in their varying political perspectives and their social positionalities of privilege and penalty, in short, how they position themselves within the 'politics of belonging' (Yuval Davis, 2006).
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    Obstetric-risk objects: a multi-site, feminist ethnography of private-sector obstetric, maternal and unborn, caring concerns in Cape Town
    (2021) Daniels, Nicole Miriam; Moore, Elena; Pande, Amrita
    This thesis contributes to the literature on the management of risk in pregnancy and birth, while examining the impact of technology in shaping risk configurations and articulating knowledge of the unborn. By adopting multiple perspectives on childbirth as a socio-cultural event, I argue that obstetric professional practices are active forces, shaping how pregnancy, childbirth and the unborn become known. Furthermore, a view of both social groups (i.e., obstetricians and pregnant persons) responsible for the management of risks to the unborn, highlights that respectable maternity as a cultural signifier is constructed in collusion with the precepts of medical science. A mixed approach to data collection, utilising a feminist, multisite ethnography helped uncover an interconnected web of relationships and made visible an architecture of risks. Findings are based on observations, indepth, longitudinal interviews, and participant observation with seven obstetricians, a lawyer, an academic, and fourteen pregnant women utilizing six private and one public hospital, obtained over a two-and-a-half-year period in Cape Town, South Africa. I consider various risk objects that configure the caring relationships and re/produce risk sensibilities between obstetricians (as the default caregivers in private sector, middle-class childbirth in South Africa), pregnant, and birthing persons, and the unborn. Obstetric risk objects are here understood to mediate the relationships that emerge between multiple entities and locate the order of importance of risks. Examining the function of high-risk birth as a boundary object, litigation and negligence as intra-acting objects and the unborn as maternal and obstetric work objects, I uncover a hierarchy of structural, organisational, and individual-level risks. I therefore address a gap in the literature on the sociology of risk in childbirth by connecting the top-down structure of power through which institutionalised risk disciplines and constrains behaviour, to the negotiation, and internalisation of risk in everyday life worlds. I thus link macro-structural, maternity systems-risk to meso- institutionalised risk to micro-every day, intimate-risk practices. I use socio-cultural and symbolic theories of risk to account for notions of purity and danger, risk and blame, and vulnerability and power in the configuration of a perfect obstetric professionalism safeguarding access to the sacred unborn. Through finely graded analytical work, woven through with transdisciplinary insights, including from African cosmologies and customary practices, I call for greater collective responsibility to the reproductive capacities that sustain and ensure continuity with all life on earth. Thus, using theory from the south, I propose that ambiguity moves theorisation about reproduction beyond binary positions and further, that it enables conceptions of the unborn to transcend notions of individual, right bearing self-hood. The findings reveal that the preparation, production, and performance of high-risk birth is an already inevitable configuration of private sector childbirth, which explains the exorbitant costs and high rates of interventions that are an obstinate, and historical feature of private sector maternity care in South Africa. High-risk birth is thereby paradoxically and complexly interlinked with the structural preparation of risk within the maternity sector, to its production within a highly at-risk, litigation averse obstetric profession, and to risks ritualised performance in intimate clinical encounters.
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    Protection of Women's Marital Property Rights upon the Dissolution of a Customary Marriage in South Africa: A View from Inside and Outside the Courts
    (2015) Moore, Elena; Himonga, Chuma
    Based on an empirical study of marital dissolution, this paper examines the effectiveness of the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act 1998 and its enforcing institutions to provide the necessary protection of women's marital property rights when customary marriages end. Drawing on data from court (divorce) files and semi-structured interviews, the paper will examine the effectiveness of the new laws for individuals who seek to regulate marital dissolution through both judicial and extra judicial systems. In doing so, it examines how judicial and extrajudicial systems interact and co-exist. The findings show that both systems of regulation are failing to recognise women's right to an equitable distribution of the marital estate upon divorce. The paper demonstrates the weaknesses inherent in the judicial regulation of divorce combined with the consequences of the continued private regulation of marital dissolution. Resistance to an equal division of marital assets continues and a more dedicated and systematic effort is required to curb financial exploitation upon the dissolution of a customary marriage if the State wants women living under customary law to enjoy their human rights under the Constitution.
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    Renegotiating intimate relationships with men: how HIV shapes attitudes and experiences of marriage for South African women living with HIV: 'Now in my life, everything I do, looking at my health'
    (Juta Law, 2013) Cooper, Diane; Moore, Elena; Mantell, Joanne
    This paper explores marriage attitudes and practices among Xhosa-speaking women living with HIV (WLHIV) in Cape Town, South Africa. It reports on a study that assessed the fertility intentions of a cohort of people living with HIV, aimed at informing an HIV care intervention. It draws on qualitative data generated from 30 successive interviews with WHLIV in wave 1, 23 interviews in wave 2 and 20 follow-up interviews in wave 3. Gender inequality, marriage and HIV are strongly intertwined. Broader layers of South Africa's history, politics and socio-economic and cultural contexts have consequences for the fluidity in intimate relations, marriage and motherhood for WLHIV. Key and conflicting themes emerge that impact on marriage and motherhood. Firstly, marriage is the ‘last on a list of priorities’ for WLHIV, who wish to further their children's education, to work, to earn money, and to achieve this rapidly because of their HIV-positive status. We demonstrate that the pressure women face in marriage to bear children creates a different attitude to and experience of marriage for WLHIV. Some WLHIV wish to avoid marriage due to its accompanying pressure to have children. Other WLHIV experience difficulties securing intimacy. WLHIV may find it easier to seek partners who are also living with HIV. A partner living with HIV is perceived as sharing similar fertility goals. In this study, HIV accentuates existing issues and highlights new ones for WLHIV negotiating intimacy.
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    Renegotiating Roles Post-Divorce: a decisive break from tradition?
    (Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2012) Moore, Elena
    On the basis of a qualitative study of 27 separated and divorced parents, this article seeks to examine the extent of shift toward more egalitarian and democratic intimate relationships between men and women by looking at postdivorce and separation relationships. The article uses the division of labor in single- and dual-earning couples, to map the role division in responsibilities postseparation. The findings suggest that the renegotiation of family practices postseparation is heavily influenced by the gender roles practiced during the marriage. The article draws attention to some of the grave consequences of leaving out discussion of structural aspects of societies and personal relationships, for the people themselves and our understanding of changing family practices.
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    The Lived Experience of Inheritance for Muslim Widows in Contemporary South Africa
    (2020) Megannon, Vayda; Jolobe, Zwelethu; Moore, Elena
    This empirical research explores experiences of inheritance in Muslim families, drawing upon case law, archival research and in-depth interviews with 6 Muslim widows in Cape Town. I examine women's experience of and attitudes towards inheritance in middle class Muslim families around Cape Town. This research aims to document Muslim widow's experiences of inheritance, furthermore, explore their attitudes towards these practices among their wider family. In particular, I investigate the experience of inheritance for Muslim widows, and interpret how these experiences relate to the governing principles of equality and diversity in the South African Constitution. This research has found that fairness and reciprocity serve as guiding principles of inheritance practices in middle class Muslim families around Cape Town. This is evidenced by two prominent practices of inheritance identified in the data, namely gendered conditionalities of inheritance shares, secondly the practice of gifting while alive. These findings indicate that to a large extent, on the micro level, the experiences of inheritance practices for Muslim women are in fact aligned with the principles of equality and diversity in the Constitution. However, these patterns of inheritance do occur in a context of gendered family practices. It is therefore argued that the challenge arises from the informality of inheritance practices among middle class Muslim families in Cape Town, characteristically occurring in the private sphere. In instances where fairness and reciprocity are not given primacy as guiding principles of inheritance practices, women tend to experience downward social mobility. Weak legal protection for Muslim widows during instances of discriminatory inheritances practices is resultant of the lack of a transformative mandate in the public sphere. Embedded within social forces, Muslim women's agency is conceptualised as proactively and strategically shaping their lives and the lives of female family members. Bringing the findings into conversation with transformative justice, there has been a stratification of rights and the realisation thereof, therefore resulting weak legal protection for Muslim widows in instances of discriminatory inheritance practices. It is further noted that existing international discourse regarding family law reform on a state level is relatable in this instance as gender-sensitive reforms do not in fact erode the foundations of religion and family, but merely challenge the tenuous balance of power. This research contributes to the developing body of literature on Muslim family practices in South Africa and acts as a lens in which to understand links between wider family history, and established social and institutional systems; therefore, leading to an evaluation of the role of transformative justice in this instance.
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    The lived experience of leaving a Muslim marriage, as experienced by Muslim women in South Africa
    (2023) Samodien, Zeenat; Moore, Elena
    The lived experience of leaving a Muslim marriage, as experienced by South African Muslim women is the focus of this master's thesis. Using a qualitative research design approach, four Muslim women from Cape Town, KwaZulu-Natal and Johannesburg were interviewed to learn more about leaving a marriage as a Muslim woman in South Africa. The findings revealed that the women sought divorce due to experiences of intimate partner violence, which included various forms of abuse, particularly economic abuse, social isolation, and physical abuse. This thesis employs an Islamic feminist approach, understanding these forms of abuse as rooted in patriarchal misinterpretations of religious text and ‘classical' Fiqh operating as ‘objective religious knowledge' in the contemporary moment. With an Islamic feminist approach, the findings further revealed the ways women resisted the various forms of abuse. These ranged from personal strategies of resistance in which the women aimed to manage and prevent further abuse whilst remaining in the marriage, to seeking external assistance from Muslim judicial councils, family, and friends in an attempt to exit the marriage. In the context of the nonrecognition of Muslim marriages, the findings reveal that Muslim women are left unprotected, unable to access their rights as Muslim women from the Muslim judicial councils, and unable to turn to the state for protection. Based on the experiences shared by the women interviewed, their friends and family proved critical in ensuring a safe exit from the abusive marriage. This research contributes to the limited academic material prioritising the lived experiences of Muslim women in South Africa, particularly related to Muslim marriage, divorce, and experiences of abuse in South African Muslim communities.
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    "The more you stretch them, the more they grow": same-sex marriage and the wrestle with heteronormativity
    (2019) Scott, Lwando; Moore, Elena; Matebeni, Zethu; Posel, Deborah
    With the understanding that marriage is a historically heteronormative institution that was (and in many respects continues to be) underpinned by heteronormativity, in this doctoral thesis I engage the ways that same-sex couples wrestle with heteronormativity in marriage. I move beyond the assimilationist vs. radicalisation debate that was central in same-sex marriage conversations characterised by the disagreement between Sullivan (1996) and Warner (2000). The assimilationist vs. radicalisation debate is too neat and relies on a binary logic of either or, whereas the experiences of same-sex couples in Cape Town, South Africa demonstrate a much more complicated picture. I argue that while same-sex marriage does not radically change the institution of marriage, it does provide a challenge to systems of dominance such a heteronormativity and has a transformational impact on the interpersonal relationships of same-sex couples. It is an interpersonal transformation, that with time, could possibly change the institution. Through marriage, same-sex couples provide alternative ways of reading samesex intimacy, readings that challenge the prejudice and stereotypes built on homonegativity. In wrestling with the norm, in challenging dominant gender and sexuality systems through marriage, same-sex couples are engaged in a process of stretching. They stretch themselves as they become more assertive in making claims about their sexuality, they also stretch those around them to become more open to the possibilities of same-sex intimacy. Ultimately samesex marriage provides alternative ways of reading familiar categories like “husband” and “wife” and reminds us that only our imagination is the limit in the infinite possibilities of relationship construction.
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    Transmission and Change in South African Motherhood:Black Mothers in Three Generational Cape Town Families
    (Taylor and Francis, 2013) Moore, Elena
    This article explores changes in the conceptualisation of motherhood, drawing upon life history interviews with six families over three generations in Cape Town. I examine the practice of mothering, how women of each generation talked about motherhood and how maternal identity is transmitted over time and across generations. In particular, I investigate the ways in which marriage and motherhood have uncoupled within a changing socio-historical context. Findings from a South Africa-wide attitudinal survey and a case study demonstrate how structural and cultural changes have influenced the model of ‘good mothering’ in the youngest generation: Notions of motherhood have changed from solely cultivating a ‘good provider and caring role’ toward a growing emphasis on achieving personal goals and working on ‘the project of the self’. Meanwhile the absence of men as participatory caregivers remains a continuous theme across generations. This research contributes fresh insights to the discussion of motherhood in South Africa while drawing on some of the broader contextualisation and generational models adopted in previous studies.
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    Understanding Childcare Choices amongst Low-Income Employed Mothers in Urban and Rural KwaZulu-Natal
    (2020) Mbokazi, Nonzuzo; Moore, Elena; Seekings, Jeremy
    This study explains how low-income employed mothers navigate care strategies for their young children (0-4 years). The study considers the constraints within which they make ‘choices' about caring for their children using the market, kin and state. In addition, the study argues that these ‘choices' are immensely constrained and that the low-income employed mothers have no real choice. For many women, the ‘feminisation of the workforce' – the growing number of women in paid work – has entailed enormous stress and pressure, as they combine strenuous paid work with the demands of mothering. Low-income employed mothers must balance paid with unpaid work, in ways that are different to women who have more resources. This study analyses how women do this within households where gendered roles and a gender hierarchy continue to prevail. In some cases, low-income employed mothers must take on not only do the ‘work' of managing the household but also the additional ‘work' of soliciting the fathers for financial support and involvement in at least some aspects of their children's lives. This is a phenomenon that existing literature has not captured. The work performed by low-income employed mothers is shaped by changes in the family structure and kinship relations. The family structure in South Africa has been described as disintegrating and in crisis. I argue that the presence of paternal kin had traditionally been a pertinent one in the life of a child (specifically in KwaZulu-Natal, the study site) based on patrilineal belonging. This has significantly shifted and has implications for low-income employed mothers already stretched thin balancing work and childcare with limited support. The ‘choices' made by working women are also framed by their understanding of motherhood, which are in turn framed by cultural and societal expectations and perceptions. Having engaged with the balance between paid and unpaid work (and other forms of work – cognitive work and the work of chasing money and involvement) that the mothers must do (mothering practices), the thesis makes sense of Zulu ideals about motherhood, and how these have shaped and informed the experiences of the mothers, in the present context of the changing position of women. Mothers are nearly always the gatekeepers for the provision of care for children. This study uses the lived experiences of low-income employed mothers to show that they cannot exercise much choice in determining how to provide care for their preschool children. Most of the institutional options – both through the market and the supposed state – are constrained by their inability to afford to look for better options and by their lack of time to travel to better options. Familial or kin options are constrained by the ambivalence of kin and mothers' own expectations and understandings of their own roles. The result is that employed mothers are often on their own, piecing together a combination of childcare arrangements that is very far from the ideal childcare they would like to provide for their children. Low-income employed mothers need to be supported in their roles as employed mothers; this would be possible through subsidized public provision of quality early childhood services. However, policy implications of this would need to be considered. For instance, what would quality childcare provision cost the state? Is it feasible in a country still working on undoing the policy implications of the apartheid state? It could be that the state might not have the capacity to organize this. The South African state has a very poor track record in converting public expenditure into high quality public services. Lessons from this can be drawn from a few examples, for instance health care, education and housing (which are problematic). This thesis adds to the literature in using the lived experiences of employed mothers to show that neither the state nor the market nor kin provide an adequate safety net for the care of the children of low-income employed mothers.