Questionable Issue

Over 40 per cent of all children in South Africa are born to unmarried people. In some communities this figure reaches 70 per cent. Why is this figure so high? To be born "illegitimate" once carried a grave social stigma with severe legal disabilities. In Europe this has changed, and single parenthood has become an accepted and chosen alternative to birth within marriage. Yet in South Africa illegitimacy is still a contentious issue, and both social and policy recognition of change lags far behind reality. Written by a team of academics and practitioners in the fields of law, anthropology, religious studies, economics, clinical psychology, psychiatry and paediatrics, this volume provides perspectives on a largely unrecognized aspect of social change in South Africa.
It examines: why so many South African children are born outside marriage; the attitudes of teenagers and unmarried people to non-marital births; the problems associated with rearing children in the absence of two parents; the attitudes of the major religious communities to births outside religiously sanctioned unions; the effects of migrancy and apartheid on the possibilities of marriages for black South Africans, and the consequences for their children. Most importantly, the authors recommend changes in the legal provisions governing non-marital children, and suggest policy changes directed at the provision of welfare facilities for unmarried parents and their minor children.