Shock figures show crippled youth

Michelle Jones

SINGLE-PARENT households have become the norm in South Africa, while nearly 100 000 children live in child-headed households, according to an SA Institute of Race Relations report released yesterday.

The study also found 32 percent of sexually active 12- to 22-year-olds have had four or more partners while 62 percent were not consistent condom users. About 31 percent of the nation’s youth had consumed alcohol and 62 percent of 12- to 14-year-olds said they had easy access to alcohol. The report, The First Steps to Healing the South African Family, documents the extent of family breakdown and its effect on children and the youth.

Katharine Hall, a senior researcher at the Children’s Institute based at UCT, said it was important to look at the factors that influence strategic decisions about household form and not make assumptions based on the figures: “The bottom line is we shouldn’t assume that poor families are not acting in the best interests of children.”

She co-authored a paper cited in the report and coordinates Children Count, a data project at the Children's Institute, from which the report draws much of its data.

Hall said families often had to make difficult “trade-offs” to survive, including when parents left their children in the care of relatives to find employment elsewhere.

She said the report had rightly emphasised the effect on children of poverty, unemployment, inequality and HIV.

The information, gathered from sources including UCT and Stats SA, includes:

l Only a third of children live with both of their parents.

l Nearly 1 million children have lost both their parents, the majority to HIV/Aids.

l There are 98 000 children living in child-headed households, 81 percent of whom have a living mother.

l About 8 percent of children live in “skip-generation” households with grandparents or great-aunts and uncles.

l Nine million children (48 percent) are growing up with absent but living fathers.

l About 50 000 schoolgirls fell pregnant in 2007.

l More than a third of the country’s prison population is under 25.

The report tracked the effects on children and young people of unstable families. It referred to international and local research which had found that children growing up without both parents are at a significant disadvantage in educational outcomes, employment prospects, behaviour and future relationships.

Lucy Holborn, family project manager at the institute, said children growing up without families led to uncertain futures. ”Problems such as youth unemployment, high rates of violent crime, teenage pregnancy and alcohol and drug abuse may have their roots in children and young people growing up without positive parental role models.”

The research found youth unemployment figures stood at 51 percent, and there were 3.3m young people not in education, employment or training.

The report found the number of children with absent, but living, fathers had increased from 42 percent in 1996.

“Increasing numbers of fathers are absent, and a ‘crisis of men’ in South Africa seems to be perpetuating patterns of abuse and desertion that will most likely continue with future generations.”

The report also said a third of young people thought it was acceptable to physically attack somebody who had assaulted them. Violence within families was found to be a “major contributing factor to youth crime”. It cited a study which had compared young offenders and young non-offenders. About 27 percent of offenders said people in their families hit each other, compared with 9 percent of the non-offenders.

michelle.jones@inl.co.za