Mainstream research and the popular media often equate female-headship with household vulnerability, crisis, and disorganization. Epidemic levels of HIV/AIDS in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa compound this portrait of hopelessness. In South Africa, the impact of HIV/AIDS on households depends on race, class, and place. As female-headed households increase in number, we need to better understand how female-heads in poor rural areas contend with AIDS related challenges. We analyze qualitative interviews with 16 female heads and the members of their households in a rural community to examine the response to AIDS-related illness, death, or caring for orphaned children. Our analysis examines female-heads' financial and social resources and how these resources buffer against hardship in households affected by AIDS. We find considerable heterogeneity among rural female-headed households and their access to resources to combat AIDS-related hardship. Our findings have important policy implications both in terms of identifying individual and household vulnerabilities as well as leveraging the potential for resilience for female-heads in rural South African communities.

The sites for earning a living and for maintaining a family, of production and reproduction, remain geographically separated for many South Africans. Yet the common assumption that only fathers who live with their children provide support for them, substantially underestimates fathers' financial contributions to their children. In this article, we examine the association between children's connections to their fathers and paternal support. Using data on 272 children collected as part of a study of Children's Well-Being and Social Connections in the Agincourt sub-district of Mpumalanga, South Africa, we identify three types of connection between children and their fathers and four levels of paternal support. We present empirical evidence on histories of children's residence and support to advance three propositions: first, that children's co-residence with their fathers is neither an accurate nor a sufficient indicator that they are receiving paternal financial support; second, children are as likely to receive financial support from fathers who are not even members of the same household as from fathers with whom they are co-resident and, finally that children who receive support from their fathers for any part of their lives are likely to receive support consistently throughout their lives. These findings underscore the importance of using a more nuanced conceptualisation and more inclusive measurement of father connection and support in order to determine the contributions that men make to their children. Children born since 1991 are significantly less likely to receive support from their fathers than are those born before. This difference is not a reflection of different levels of support for children of different ages but is due to real changes in paternal action.

This article examines the influence of maternal status, socioeconomic status of the household, and household composition on the mobility of children aged 0–14 in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, from 1999 to 2008. Using data from the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System, we found that children whose mothers were temporary migrants, living elsewhere, or dead had higher odds of moving than children whose mothers were coresident. Older children and children living in richer households faced lower odds of mobility. For children whose mothers were coresident, there was no effect of maternal substitutes on child mobility. However, among children whose mothers were temporary migrants or living elsewhere, the presence of prime-aged and elderly females lowered the odds of mobility. For maternal orphans, the presence of elderly women in the household lowered their odds of mobility. The results underscore the importance of examining the conditions under which children move in order to strengthen service delivery targeted at safeguarding children’s well-being.

We used data from the Birth to Twenty Cohort study to understand children’s receipt of financial support from their fathers in a low income, Black community in urban South Africa. Specifically, we (1) described fathers’ financial support over the life course of children; (2) estimated survival probabilities of receiving support for all children and not receiving support for children who experienced a parental union dissolution; and (3) identified factors that explained variation in the receipt of support after a union dissolution. Results suggest that most children received full or partial support throughout the life course. Furthermore, a high proportion of children received support after a union dissolution with much of the variation driven by pre-dissolution support, father’s education and the presence of extended kin.

In this analysis, we draw on qualitative data to examine the management of non-marital fertility among young women in two rural, Black communities situated in different provinces of South Africa: KwaZulu–Natal and Mpumalanga. While the two communities share a history of economic and social disadvantage and limited access to the labour market, there are, nonetheless, distinctive features that are evident in the management of non-marital fertility. We show that young women in both communities aspire to an ideal ordering of events that places finishing education before getting married and having children, but this is not easily attained. However, there are important differences in the ways young women and their families respond to union formation and childbearing that often occurs outside of a recognised union. In Hlabisa, KwaZulu–Natal, formal processes for legitimising non-marital pregnancies through union recognition are still in place whereas, in Agincourt, Mpumalanga, more emphasis is placed on securing support and paternal recognition for the child rather than on cementing the union between the young woman and her partner. We also find that the older generation in Agincourt at times views education as a threat to marriage while this is not common in Hlabisa. Our findings have important implications for intervention programmes that often treat Black communities as homogeneous wholes.