Books and Babies Pregnancy and young parents in schools docx

Tables vii Acronyms and abbreviations ix Preface xi 1 Pregnancy and parenthood in South African schools 1 Robert Morrell, Deevia Bhana and Tamara Shefer Introduction 31Deevia Bhana 2 Sch

Edited by Robert Morrell, Deevia Bhana and Tamara Shefer

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Tables vii

Acronyms and abbreviations ix

Preface xi

1 Pregnancy and parenthood in South African schools 1

Robert Morrell, Deevia Bhana and Tamara Shefer

Introduction 31Deevia Bhana

2 School principals and their responses to the rights and needs of pregnant and parenting learners 35

Lindsay Clowes, Toni D’Amant and Vuyo Nkani

3 Teacher responses to pregnancy and young parents in schools 49

Deevia Bhana and Sisa Ngabaza

A quantitative analysisIntroduction 63Richard Devey and Robert Morrell

4 Mothers, fathers and carers: Learner involvement in care work 75

Robert Morrell and Richard Devey

5 Mothers: yes, babies: no – Peer attitudes towards young learner parents 87Richard Devey and Robert Morrell

6 Gender and parenting: Challenging traditional roles? 103

Richard Devey and Robert Morrell

Introduction 121Tamara Shefer

7 ‘It isn’t easy’: Young parents talk of their school experiences 127

Tamara Shefer, Deevia Bhana, Robert Morrell, Ntsiki Manzini and Nokuthula Masuku

9 Conclusion: Policy implications and issues for the future 169Deevia Bhana, Tamara Shefer and Robert Morrell

10 Being a learner parent: A visual essay 177

Cedric NunnAuthor biographies and reflections on parenthood 197

Appendix 1: Overview of participating schools 207

Appendix 2: Attitude to parents survey 2006 209

Table B.1 Number and percentage of respondents by school type 68

Table B.2 Number and percentage of respondents by school 69

Table B.3 Number and percentage of respondents by grade 69

Table B.4 Frequency and percentage of respondents by gender 70

Table B.5 Frequency and percentage of respondents by race group 70

Table B.6 Demographic indicators by school type and school 70

Table 4.1 Number and percentage of youth aged 17–19 attending school,

by gender 76Table 4.2 Number and percentage of youth aged 17–19 attending school,

by race group 76Table 4.3 Reasons given by youth aged 17–19 for leaving school, by gender 77Table 4.4 Reasons given by youth aged 17–19 for leaving school, by race

group 78Table 4.5 Number and percentage of respondents who are parents, prospective

parents and substitute parents, by gender 80Table 4.6 Number and percentage of learners who are parents, prospective

parents and substitute parents, by race group 80Table 4.7 Number and percentage of learners who are parents, prospective

parents and substitute parents, by school type 81Table 4.8 Number and percentage of learners who are parents, prospective

parents and substitute parents, by gender and race group 82Table 4.9 Number and percentage of respondents who are parents, prospective

parents and substitute parents, by gender and school type 83Table 4.10 Status of mother and father of learner, by gender 84

Table 4.11 Status of mother and father of learner, by race group 85

Table 4.12 Presence of siblings in home of learner, by gender 85

Table 4.13 Presence of siblings in home of learner, by race group 86

Table 5.1 Mean scores of learners to attitude statements on parent learners,

by gender 93 Table 5.2 Mean scores of learners to attitude statements on parent learners,

by race group and ordered from strongest agreement to strongest disagreement 96

Table 5.3 Mean scores of learners to attitude statements on learner parents,

by parent status 99 Table 5.4 Mean scores of African learners to attitude statements on parent

learners, by gender 100Table 6.1 Learner responses to attitude statements on gender 104

Table 6.2 Correlation between responses to ‘A father can bring up children on

his own’ and ‘A mother can bring up children on her own’ 106

Table 6.4 Mean scores of responses to attitude statements on gender, by

race group 113Table 6.5 Mean bias score of male and female respondents 114 Table 6.6 Mean bias score by gender and race group 114

Table 6.7 African learners’ responses to attitude statements on gender,

Acronyms and abbreviations

ABC Abstain, Be faithful, Condomise

ANC African National Congress

DHS South African Demographic and Health Survey

EMIS Education Management Information System

GETT Gender Equity Task Team

HoD House of Delegates

HoR House of Representatives

MDG Millennium Development Goal

SANPAD South Africa–Netherlands Research Programme on Alternatives

in DevelopmentSASA South African Schools Act (No 84 of 1996)

UKZN University of KwaZulu-Natal

Preface

This book is the result of a five-year collaborative research project funded by the South Africa–Netherlands Research Programme on Alternatives in Development (SANPAD) It began in 2005 when an initial grant was made The project initially involved three universities The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) was the lead institution, and was partnered in South Africa by the University of the Western Cape (UWC), and in the Netherlands by Erasmus University (represented by Dr Karin Willemse) A research team was built around Robert Morrell and Deevia Bhana (UKZN) and Tamara Shefer (UWC) In time, it involved a large number

of postgraduate students and lecturers, some of whom are authors of the chapters contained in this book Others helped with the data collection We name and thank them all at the end of this preface

The project was influenced by Robert’s earlier work on fatherhood (with Linda Richter and the HSRC) (see Richter & Morrell 2006), and Deevia and Tamara’s interest in gender, young people and schooling, and sought to examine the impact

of policy developments on the fortunes of pregnant girls and young mothers and fathers who were still learners pursuing their studies at secondary school The most important of these developments was the passage of the South African Constitution with its Bill of Rights (1996) Laws and policies, including the South African Schools Act (No 84 of 1996), flowed from the establishment of this human rights framework The intention of legislation has been to guarantee rights to education for all children

up to the age of 16 years, and to ensure that these rights cannot be infringed upon

by discriminatory acts, such as expelling pregnant learners or denying young parents access to schools

The research project had the explicit intention of not only creating awareness of the situation in schools based on gender-sensitive research, but also contributing to policy debate about how to approach the thorny issue of how best to support parent learners and pregnant girls in schools

The project was informed throughout by feminist theory, which was used to analyse the gendered dynamics of the situations that our research identified We were explicitly concerned to ask the questions: In what way does gender equality or inequality impact on the lives of pregnant girls and young parents? What do schools

do to promote gender equality in the realm of pregnancy and parenthood? Our research reflected the expertise and interests of the research team (set out in more detail in the author biographies at the back of this book), all of whom have academic training and research involvement in the field of gender, reproductive health and education in South Africa

and supported by the creation of a research team across the two centres (Durban and Cape Town) Annual gatherings were held at Noordhoek (Cape Town) and Salt Rock and Umzumbe (KwaZulu-Natal) As well as the three main researchers (and editors of this book) the team included Cedric Nunn, a local KZN photographer, who was commissioned to take photographs of young parents In the course of

2006 he photographed school-going parents whom he identified in both rural and urban settings in KZN At the beginning of 2007 he visited Cape Town and also took photographs there The photographs gave colour and light to our study, and energised the research project as a whole We consider the photographs to be

an indispensable part of our work, along the lines of the journalistic aphorism, ‘a photograph is worth a thousand words’ In 2006 and 2007, Karin Willemse, our Dutch partner from Erasmus University, Rotterdam, visited South Africa to help with issues of methodology, and to assist with capacity building by working with doctoral students who were participating in the project

The analysis of the data and the writing of the manuscript began in 2008 and were completed in 2010

From the start of the project, we included emerging researchers (particularly doctoral students) in the data collection and writing At each of the workshops, a number of our students were present and contributed enthusiastically and helpfully Not all stayed with the project from start to finish Indeed, the project was marked

by a lot of movement in the research team Relebohile Moletsane left UKZN for the HSRC, and was unable to continue in the project Richard Devey left UKZN to take up a position at the University of Johannesburg, and Robert Morrell took up

a position at the University of Cape Town at the beginning of 2010 It is with great regret that we note Karin Willemse’s absence from the list of authors Karin gave the project a lot of support, but the tragic death of her husband in 2006 made it increasingly difficult and then impossible for her to remain within the project as a central participant Lindsay Clowes from UWC was a member of the team from the start and leads one chapter UKZN doctoral students Vijay Hamlall, Claire Gaillard-Thurston and Bronwynne Anderson were all important participants, although each ultimately elected not to be involved in the writing stage Two other UKZN doctoral students, Nokuthula Masuku and Toni D’Amant, were responsible, respectively, for interviewing learners for Section C of the book and school principals in Section A UWC doctoral candidate Sisa Ngabaza, and Elron Fouten, a junior lecturer in UWC’s Department of Psychology (and now a member of staff at Rhodes University’s Psychology Department), were responsible for the data collection in the Western Cape, and helped write the chapters

This book is designed as a monograph, a treatise on a specific subject It presents a set of arguments on the school context and experiences of pregnant girls and young

parents based on data generated in two specified locations in Durban and Cape Town In order, however, to accommodate the diverse set of contributions made to the project by members of the research team (particularly the emerging researcher doctoral students), the book takes the form of an edited volume Each chapter has a number of authors, and in this way we have been able to include a large number of writers Unlike most edited volumes, however, this book has coherence and a set of arguments that run from start to finish and address the central research questions.

Thanks

First, we would like to thank SANPAD for funding this project Without this support there would be no research data and no manuscript We would specifically like to thank Anshu Padayachee, Sundran Govender, Mervyn Reddy and Shernice Soobramoney of SANPAD Through the SANPAD Research Capacity Initiative, a number of UKZN doctoral students also received invaluable support In this regard,

we would like to record our thanks to Alan Brimer

We would also like to thank the National Research Foundation for its financial support

At UKZN, the support of Arvin Gareeb in the Finance Office was important, and without it we would probably still be puzzling over figures in the annual financial statements that didn’t add up

At UWC we would like to acknowledge the administrative assistance of Charlene Taillard, secretary to the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies

In the final stages of preparing and editing this manuscript we received the magnificent assistance of Anna Strebel The production process was made easier

by the gracious and efficient service of HSRC Press staff Roshan Cader and Inga Norenius, and the copy-editor, Mark Ronan

We also thank Lynda de Maresa, Elron Fouten and Sisa Ngabaza, who helped with the distribution of questionnaires, as well as Bronwynne Anderson, Toni D’Amant, Elron Fouten, Claire Gaillard-Thurston, Vijay Hamlall, Saras Naidoo, Sisa Ngabaza and Phillipa Pierce, who helped with the focus groups For doing the transcriptions/assisting with the analysis, we gratefully acknowledge Bronwynne Anderson, Toni D’Amant, Geraldine Dyason, Claire Gaillard-Thurston, Vijay Hamlall, Nokuthula Masuku, Sthe Mcambi, Saras Naidoo, Phillipa Pierce and Lincoln Theo

On a personal note, Robert would like to record his love and thanks to his wife, Monica Fairall Monica died of cancer on 21 June 2009 as the manuscript of this book was taking shape She was a source of unconditional love, the epitome of generosity, grace and caring As a broadcaster and journalist, Monica touched the

Monica’s approach to life could stand as a model for how teachers might relate to pregnant girls and young parents, assailed with worry and seeking a refuge in the turbulent seas of their young lives

Deevia Bhana records her thanks to her family, and particularly to her sons, Adiel and Nikhil, who might one day become fathers

Tamara Shefer thanks her family, especially Cameron, Lee and Maya, for their tolerance of her distracted parenting, and always inspiring hope for the future.Robert Morrell

Pregnancy and parenthood in South African schools

Robert Morrell, Deevia Bhana and Tamara Shefer

In some countries, particularly in the global north, pregnancy among learners is rare and the news of a girl getting pregnant while still at school can excite attention or even policy debate In other parts of the world, pregnancy among teenagers is common

In South African schools, pregnancy is a frequent media headline, not because it is rare, but because the extent remains dramatic A 2010 newspaper story, for example, was headlined ‘Sexual abuse rampant at rural schools’ The focus of the story was teachers abusing female students Citing a 2008 report on one school district in the province of Mpumalanga, it reports that 1 052 girls from 110 high schools and 58 primary schools had become pregnant (Mail & Guardian 15–21 October 2010) By any standards, these numbers are high Cases of pregnancies in school are not rare

in South Africa, even though the overall national rate is falling In the most recent available official report, the Department of Education puts the number of learners who became pregnant in 2007 at 49 636 The highest proportion of these learners was in KwaZulu-Natal (14 246) In the Western Cape 2 179 learners got pregnant (DoE 2010) One of the key questions that we ask and answer in this book is how do learners cope with pregnancy and, subsequently, parenthood at school?

One of the arguments we make in this book is that pregnancy and parenthood are  important issues for schools, learners, families and parents to acknowledge and address There are two reasons for our position First, the school environment generally, and learners particularly, as well as their families and communities, are affected by pregnancy and parenting This is not to say that all learners become pregnant or young parents Many female learners will go through school without becoming pregnant Although we do not have any figures, it is likely that most boys will end schooling without becoming fathers And yet all learners have some interest in parenting and pregnancy In the most general sense, all children have parents and thus experience parenting Many learners engage in forms of care work (from babysitting to more active and intensive forms of childcare) And most learners

at some or other time are aware of or interact with a girl who gets pregnant or a boy who has fathered a child The learners’ responses, as well as those of the schools and broader community, may have a positive impact on their experience or may serve to impede their progress And all learners are subject to educational policies that oblige them not to discriminate against fellow learners, and which ostensibly provide policy protection for pregnant and parenting learners

The second reason for arguing that pregnancy and parenthood are important concerns in schools is that they crystallise issues of gender and patterns of gender

inequality Schools have a constitutional obligation to promote gender equality Childbearing and parenting are highly gendered practices where the labour and responsibility fall largely on women Internationally there is a movement to include men as fully as possible in the process of childbirth, before, during and after it Involving fathers in these processes challenges the gendered division of childcare, provides opportunities for new gendered identities to emerge and can provide practical support to mothers In the case of schooling, such support has the potential to help young mothers complete their schooling, and thus reduce the risk

of childbirth placing a cap on their adult work lives and ambitions

In the international context, it is commonly acknowledged that pregnancy and parenthood have negative impacts for young females It is for this reason that teenage pregnancy is approached as a challenge in three of the eight UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (accepted in 2000, with the goal of achievement set for 2015) In the area of maternal health, for example, it is noted that the goal is impeded where progress has stalled in reducing the number of teenage pregnancies, putting more young mothers at risk, and where poverty and lack of education perpetuate high adolescent birth rates In the area of gender equality, according to the UN,

‘[f]or girls in some regions, education remains elusive’ In terms of the goal of combating HIV/AIDS, ‘[d]isparities are found in condom use by women and men and among those from the richest and poorest households’.1 As the MDGs indicate, teenage pregnancy and its corollary, young parenthood, are a particular problem when there is deprivation Its unfolding is highly gendered and it is young mothers who are most affected There is, however, an increasing realisation that the biological fathers, particularly if they are also learners, should be involved in all responses to the gender inequalities that are consequent

Since 1994 and the first democratic election, South Africa has developed an extensive body of law and policy that incorporates the Constitution’s Bill of Rights and develops

a human rights culture In 1996 the South African Schools Act (No 84 of 1996) (SASA) was an important moment in translating this commitment into the schooling environment The Act banned corporal punishment, developed democratic school-governance structures and extended the rights of learners so that they no longer had

to suffer the fate of arbitrary exclusion, among other things Before the Act it had been quite legal (and common) for pregnant learners to be expelled

The Act has had some impact, but controversies concerning some of its provisions continue For example, in Mpumalanga teachers insisted that after six months of pregnancy, learners should attend school accompanied by a midwife, as the teachers were not prepared to act as midwives (Sunday Times 29 November 2010) The difficulty of interpreting the Act has resulted in the focus increasingly falling on how best to implement it (a question of monitoring and observation) and how to create mechanisms that more precisely specify the processes by which the goals of the Act can be achieved

In this book we examine how learners, their teachers and school principals respond

to the presence of pregnant girls and young parents Our approach is to shine a

gendered light onto their attitudes and practices in order to show how gender creates different expectations and experiences for young mothers and fathers, and how young mothers are generally left with the greatest burden of responsibility The book

is based on research conducted in secondary schools in Durban and Cape Town Its starting point is a global feminist corpus of literature that stresses how gender inequality is manifested in contexts of pregnancy and disadvantages girls – in some instances ending their schooling summarily, and in others lowering the ceiling of professional, post-school advancement and dramatically reducing earning capacity (Hattery 2001; Lesko 2001; Macleod & Tracey 2010; O’Reilly 2008) Pregnancy is also associated with coercive sexual practices, such as rape and the inability to insist

on condoms, and is often, but not always, a symptom of gender inequality On the other hand, there is growing emphasis on the importance of parenting as a point of intervention for gender-equality interventions (e.g to address the gendered division

of care work, to support women in this work and to engage men in transformative masculinity work), and to offer protection of the rights of children Increasingly, the importance of fathers and the role of fatherhood have been recognised (Coltrane, 1994)

In a national context the book sets out to examine the situation of pregnant learners and young parents who are still studying and trying to complete their schooling The book has as its backdrop the emergence of policies designed to assist young parents and pregnant learners at school The concern of the book is to document the experiences of school managers, teachers, learners and the young parents themselves

In this respect, this book is about the implementation – or lack of implementation –

of existing policy and law

This chapter introduces the study by briefly locating it within the broad framework

of women’s and girls’ rights before elaborating on the specific context of the study, including the demographics of teenage pregnancy and parenting, the policy framework and the social and material context of pregnancy, parenting and schooling

Locating the study: Theoretical and contextual framework of gender equality

International work by feminist researchers, as well as initiatives that may be included under the broad rubric of gender and development work, has highlighted the challenges facing girls and women at multiple sites in their lives Although we no longer view gender as existing in isolation, but as intersecting in complex ways with other forms of social identity and power relations (Hill Collins 1990; Hooks 1984),

it is still widely assumed that we continue to live in a system of global patriarchy (Connell 2000; Walby 1990) It is also evident that most boys and men do not benefit from patriarchy, and dominant forms of being a man have been shown to engender

a wide range of risks for boys and men (Hearn 2007) For example, in South Africa, young men are far more vulnerable to being murdered by other men than women are (Seedat et al 2009) Nonetheless, the way in which current normative gender roles

are constructed in most societies means that women and girls are primarily the ones

at the receiving end of social and economic disadvantage

Gender inequalities are manifested at all levels in our society and in all cultural practices from birth to burial Schooling is a primary terrain for the reproduction and contestation of normative gender roles and stereotypes Schooling also often reflects social hierarchies and endorses unequal gender power relations This is always complex and contains contradictions and opportunities within multiple processes for ‘doing gender differently’ and more equitably We argue that the ways

in which pregnancy and parenting are responded to at school generally reflect some

of the dominant discourses in society about gender in broader society – in particular, what it is to be a teenager with respect to sexuality; what it is to be a boy or a girl; and what it is to be a pregnant and parenting learner However, as we show, there are also signs of gender change and shifts in attitude and practice

In this book we show that policy has a limited capacity to change the experiences

of learners who happen to be pregnant or young parents When policy is converted into school practice it necessarily reflects the moral and gendered perspectives of teachers and school authorities In schools, policy is interpreted in multiple ways and can sometimes be used to exclude rather than include, if not interpreted in a way that is sensitive to gender and supportive When policy is translated into the school environment it does make a difference, though not always in the ways that were intended by policy-makers Schooling practices are profoundly gendered, as is the entire process of becoming a mother or father and of being a parent learner The gendering of pregnancy and parenting is evident on various levels It is generally the biological mother who suffers the consequences of being pregnant, one of which is being ostracised by other learners, teachers and even family members

The experience of pregnant and parent learners is greatly influenced by ‘stakeholders’, particularly school managers, teachers, other learners and family Quite separate from the intention of new laws, all stakeholders bring with them gendered identities and moralities (prejudices, inclinations) and practices (both at school and beyond) This means that some learners have excellent support systems in place, and others have none There are issues of inclusion and exclusion in the question of becoming and being a parent Young females who get pregnant may not have much choice, but how they experience pregnancy, birth and parenting – and how young fathers experience it – will be marked by a series of factors unrelated to school For example, the Zulu custom of inhlawulo (which demands payment from a young father’s family for impregnating a girl in a context where formal bridewealth practices have not been conducted between the families) excludes fathers from being involved in the upbringing of the child (Hunter 2010) The availability of parental or grandparental support (which permits girls to attend school, but may also mean they have little connection with their children) is also often a critical factor These factors affect the ability of young parents to succeed at school, as do a variety of intra-school practices, including, for example, the willingness of school principals to accommodate and support pregnant and/or parent learners

Locating the study: Pregnancy, parenting and schooling

Teenage pregnancy is common in South Africa Nearly a third of women have children before they reach the age of 20 Since education is compulsory until the age

of 16, and many children continue to attend school until they are 20 and beyond, schools frequently encounter pregnancy and parenthood among learners

Pregnancy and parenthood have always posed challenges for schooling Pregnancy reveals the sexual maturity and sexual activity of a girl, and in puritan contexts this was frowned upon (Mkhwanazi 2010) In the past, being pregnant or a parent was often grounds for expulsion from school in South Africa and in other African countries, such as Kenya (Mungai 2002) Teachers as well as learners have always felt the weight of gender prejudice Female teachers used to be moved from permanent

to temporary staff when they got married, and when maternity leave was granted,

it was unpaid Unmarried mothers were not eligible for maternity leave (Kotecha 1994)

Becoming a parent used to be slightly less problematic insofar as it affected the school life of a learner In most cases, the existence of a child was concealed; it was looked after by a member of the extended family, and was thus no intrusion in the school’s routine This meant that young parents could return to school with less fear of sanction by the school, though invariably a pregnant girl would enrol at a different school once she had given birth to avoid gossip and the judgemental gaze of teachers Mothers were more likely to be the object of curiosity or sanction, as fathers were seldom identified and seldom associated themselves with the responsibility of childcare

There is no doubt that in some schools pregnancy and young parenthood is still ‘a problem’ – for the learners, who find themselves with the dual load of being a learner and becoming and being a parent; for teachers, who are called upon to respond to the changing needs of these learners; but also for a wider public concerned with the symbolic meaning of young female learners becoming pregnant Take the example

of the Ohlange Institute, a school founded in Durban in 1891 by John Dube, the first ANC president It attracted national newspaper coverage in June 2009: ‘Last year (2008), at least four schoolgirls in almost each of the 25 classes were pregnant The previous year, 15 matric pupils gave birth Already this year, more than 20 pupils are pregnant, some for the second time’ (Sunday Times 7 June 2009)

National concern is aroused by the continued relatively high rate of teenage pregnancy and parenting for a variety of reasons These include the notion that becoming pregnant is often a life-changing and limiting experience for young females Another

is that some of the girls who get pregnant are not yet 16, and, therefore, pregnancy will have been the result of statutory rape A further consideration is that teachers are in some instances responsible for learner pregnancies and there is increasing discomfort about (as well as official condemnation of) sexual relations between teachers and learners A final reason is moral panic over what is viewed as a decline

in moral values and the ‘looseness’ of the youth’s sexual mores – a panic that has

been fuelled by high HIV infection rates among young people Public concern is also occasioned by schools that ignore policy and law, and continue to expel learners on the grounds of pregnancy In The Mercury (8 May 2009), a Durban daily newspaper,

it was reported that 13 pregnant girls were expelled from a local township school, allegedly as a response to the school’s dismal matriculation pass rate

The policy framework of pregnancy and parenting in South Africa

In South Africa, formal commitment to the rights of women specifically, and to gender equality more broadly, has influenced law-making and policy The SASA does not explicitly mention the treatment of pregnant learners or young parents, but its provisions cover this category of learner The Act makes provision for compulsory attendance of all children ‘until the last school day of the year in which such learner reaches the age of fifteen years or the ninth grade, whichever occurs first’ (South African Schools Act [No 84 of 1996, Chapter 2, 3(1)]) and dramatically limits a school’s rights to expel learners The only provision that exists to ‘permit’ pregnant learners or young parents to be away from school (if they are under 16) is if they get exemption: ‘A Head of Department may exempt a learner entirely, partially or conditionally from compulsory school attendance if it is in the best interests of the learner’ (South African Schools Act [No 84 of 1996, Chapter 2, 4(1)]) The legal situation of pregnant learners and young parents below the age of 16 is, therefore, quite clear They should be at school unless considerations of health demand otherwise The situation is rendered more complicated in the case of learners over the age of 16, as many continue to attend school into their 20s, but at this age cannot

be legally compelled to attend and may voluntarily withdraw at any point On the other hand, a learner who is pregnant (or is a young parent) and who is over the age

of 16 may not be summarily expelled It appears that many schools observe the spirit

of the law Conversely, however, it is not uncommon for pregnant girls and young parents to complain about official hostility towards them at school (Panday et al 2009)

Despite the passage of the law in 1996, the Gender Equity Task Team (GETT), established to examine the state of gender in South African education and to make suggestions about how to achieve gender equality, recognised the importance of being more explicit about the position of pregnant learners and young mothers

It recommended that the Department of Education ‘[f]acilitate the schooling of pregnant adolescents and young mothers, and provide affordable and accessible childcare facilities’ (Wolpe et al 1997: 230) Despite this recommendation, there are few formal guidelines for schools to direct their approach to young parents and pregnant learners And the curious omission of any mention of young fathers by GETT continues to be a blind spot in the way that schools deal with young parents

Up until the publication of Measures for the prevention and management of learner pregnancy (DoE 2007), managers, teachers and learners had effectively been expected

to interpret the law as best they could The 2007 document was designed to make explicit the rights and obligations of schools, teachers and learners Even though the

document was implemented after much of the data for this study had been collected,

it gives a good insight into government thinking and so we summarise the document

at some length here

The document’s focus is the prevention of pregnancy In this regard, it draws heavily

on official government HIV policy, which endorses ABC (Abstain, Be faithful, Condomise) Among the opening phrases is: ‘Children should abstain from engaging

in sexual intercourse’ (DoE 2007: 1) It notes that pregnancy has ‘a far greater impact

on girls than on the boy fathers’ (DoE 2007: 1) and almost grudgingly admits that

‘unplanned pregnancies may occur’ (DoE 2007: 2) The document’s emphasis on prevention, although understandable in the context of high HIV infection rates, has the unfortunate consequence of giving pregnancy and parenthood much less attention, treating it as a rather uncommon occurrence As we indicate below, figures suggest that the scale of the problem in South Africa’s schools is still vast

The primary approach of the document is to educate learners and teachers Learners should be taught to ‘understand and exercise their rights and responsibilities in regard to healthy lifestyles’ (DoE 2007: 1), while at the same time the right to equality and education should be protected, as should the rights of ‘the child (including the newborn child)’ (DoE 2007: 2) The document argues that there are competing rights – those of the (pregnant) learner and those ‘of other learners’ (DoE 2007: 4) The document is careful to include learner fathers along with pregnant learners as a way of ensuring that the approach to the challenges of pregnancy and parenthood is based on gender equality Despite an attempt to be specific about the necessary steps

to be taken, the document is in fact vague, stressing that each situation is different and should be ‘assessed and evaluated on a regular basis’ (DoE 2007: 4)

The guidelines impose a number of responsibilities on learners If a girl knows (or suspects) that she is pregnant she is obliged to inform a teacher The same goes for another learner ‘who is aware that another learner is pregnant’ (DoE 2007: 5) It is acknowledged that schools cannot provide medical care, and so the school is obliged

to call on the local health services for pre- and post-natal support The responsibility

of a school is to ‘strive to ensure the existence of a climate of understanding and respect in regard to unplanned pregnancies’ (DoE 2007: 6)

The responsibility for parenting is given firmly to learners It is a weighty responsibility and ‘a period of up to two years may be necessary for this purpose’ It is specifically stipulated that ‘[n]o learner should be re-admitted in the same year that they left school due to pregnancy’ (DoE 2007: 5) On the other hand, schools are impelled to

‘encourage learners to continue with their education prior to and after the delivery

of the baby’ (DoE 2007: 6)

Despite the document’s attempts to erase ambiguity, the guidelines are not clear, leaving much interpretive discretion with teachers and school managers, particularly

in relation to how long a young mother should be away from school before and after birth This particular ruling is a source of difficulty for young mothers because it delays their progress through the education system, causing them to lag behind

young fathers Indeed, anecdotal evidence shows that learners are frequently turned away from school earlier than they would like – and such reports also emerged in our study It is encouraging that there is some recourse for learners in this respect For example, on 5 November 2010 the South African Human Rights Commission reported that a grade-nine learner from Welkom was back in school after being suspended for being pregnant (Independent Online 2010).

The introduction over 10 years ago of life orientation as a learning area in the school curriculum has meant that, officially at least, issues of sexuality are now taught to learners at primary and secondary level One of the explicit aims of life orientation has been to reduce sexual risk among learners and, in accordance with the Department of Health’s ABC policy, the Department of Education has promoted and disseminated messages that advocate delaying sexual debut, using contraceptives and reducing the number of sexual partners Although the primary goal of this education has been to prevent the transmission of HIV, a secondary (and often just as important) goal has been to reduce teenage pregnancy (Harrison

et al 2001) Under these circumstances one might have expected teenage pregnancy rates to be dropping and, as we shall see in the next section, they have been dropping Nevertheless, rates remain relatively high, and schools, therefore, continue to accommodate pregnant learners and provide education to young parents

Demographics

To listen to many teachers talking about teenage sexuality is to feel that it is out of control and that teenage pregnancy is on the rise In fact, the opposite is true The decline in fertility in South Africa in the last 30 years has been called ‘the quiet revolution’ (Potts & Marks 2001) Fertility in southern Africa has been declining, and this trend probably dates back to the 1960s In the specific case of teenage pregnancy, data show that there has been a decline, at least since the 1980s Comparable data from successive demographic and health surveys have shown that there has been a downward trend in the age-specific fertility rate for 15- to 19-year-olds In the period 1987–89 it was estimated at 124 births per 1 000 women, in 1998 it was 81, and the

2003 estimate was 54 In 1998 more than a third (35.1 per cent) of women had been pregnant by the age of 19 This percentage dropped to 27.3 per cent in 2003 (DoH

1999, 2004, quoted in Jewkes et al 2009)

Demographic patterns within these trends are revealed by the Statistics South Africa

2001 census, which examines the stages of the life cycle among South Africans According to this report, 1.0 per cent of females at the age of 14 had given birth to at least one child By 15 the percentage had nearly trebled (2.8 per cent), and increased

to 6.5 per cent at 16; 13.1 per cent at 17; 21.9 per cent at 18; and 30.5 per cent at the age of 19 (Stats SA 2005a: 78)

Becoming pregnant was much more likely in rural areas (60 per cent more likely), among women with lower educational attainment (a threefold difference was found between completion of primary school and matric) and among African and coloured women (there was a sevenfold difference between African and coloured women

on the one hand, and white and Indian women on the other) (DoH 1999, 2004, quoted in Jewkes et al 2009) The fertility of young African and coloured females is actually rising, compared to that of the equivalent group of white females ‘Based on the 2001 census, Moultrie and Dorrington (2004) estimate that the ratio of “black” teenage fertility has increased from 4 to 5.5 times [that of] “white” teenagers, and amongst “coloured” teens from 4 to 4.5 times [that of] “white” teens’ (Swartz & Bhana 2009: 22, 176) Provincially, teenage pregnancies are highest in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo (Panday et al 2009).

For our purposes the important question is how many of these teenagers (who are pregnant or mothers) are at school? Theoretically, all aged 16 and under should

be at school (when school attendance is compulsory by law), but since there is encouragement and incentive to complete schooling, we would expect a high percentage of young females over the age of 18 and even over the age of 20 to be at school

Exact figures of young parents are not kept by any provincial department, but some provinces do keep figures for pregnant learners In Gauteng the figure jumped from

1 169 in 2005 to 2 336 in 2006.2 In a national survey of research on teenage pregnancy (Panday et al 2009), it has been argued that ‘South Africa’s liberal policy that allows pregnant girls to remain in school and to return to school post-pregnancy, has protected teen mothers’ educational attainment and helped delay second birth’ On the other hand, ‘data from SA shows that dropout often precedes [our emphasis] pregnancy’ (Panday et al 2009: 13) It may be a greater challenge to keep children

in school until the age of 16, rather than help those who become pregnant at school

to return

After giving birth, only about a third of teenage mothers return to school Panday and colleagues argue that this ‘may be related to uneven implementation of the school policy, poor academic performance prior to pregnancy, few child-caring alternatives

in the home, poor support from families, peers and the school environment, and the social stigma of being a teenage mother South African data show that the likelihood of re-entering the education system decreases when childcare support is not available in the home and for every year that teen mothers remain outside of the education system’ (Panday et al 2009: 13)

We have not been able to find any data that indicate either the relative or absolute numbers of young parents in the schooling system, although from the national figures quoted above, the numbers are likely to be high Anecdotally, our sense is that in some schools the numbers of young parents, particularly young mothers, may

be very high In a Durban township school, half of the girls in a grade 10 class were mothers (Masuku 1998) In other schools (generally suburban, middle-class schools) pregnancy is relatively rare and motherhood more so We shall return to this issue

in Section B of the book

There is a disparity between the national decline in teenage motherhood and the Gauteng figures, which indicate a rise in teenage pregnancies at schools in that

province In a provincial summit in Pietermaritzburg in 2006, at which concern was expressed at an apparent rise in teenage pregnancy in KwaZulu-Natal, the rise in the rate of teenage pregnancy was explained by Savell (2006) in the sense that policy that allowed pregnant learners to continue attending school was also held responsible for the rise in pregnancies, as girls were no longer expelled and did not have to face the threat of an end to their school days An opposing view is that most girls leave school and then get pregnant Comparatively few get pregnant while at school and then leave school never to return (Harrison n.d.) For example, 13 per cent of 16-year-old females are not at school, yet only 5 per cent of this age group report ever having been pregnant Harrison (n.d.) further cites a study on Bushbuckridge published

in 2007, which found that the odds of 14- to 19-year-olds being pregnant while at school was roughly a tenth compared to women of the same age group who had left school (Harrison n.d.) We cannot make firm statements about whether the number

of pregnant learners and young parents in school is rising, but we can say that the numbers are substantial, although unevenly distributed Notably, almost two-thirds

of teenage pregnancies are unplanned and unwanted (RHRU 2003)

When teenagers are sexually active, they are more likely to become pregnant the older they get ‘The implication is sexually active young women may initially be better able to protect themselves from pregnancy, but then experience life changes that put them at risk’ (IRIN News 2007: 3) High pregnancy rates are also associated with increased rates of HIV infection In a Ugandan study, the HIV infection rate among pregnant girls was nearly twice that of sexually active females of the same age (Gray et al 2005) In South Africa HIV rates are often established through research conducted in antenatal clinics (i.e with young mothers), although we do not have comparative figures for HIV rates of pregnant, as opposed to sexually active, young people In a national survey (RHRU 2003) the highest rates among 15- to 24-year-olds were in KwaZulu-Natal (14.1 per cent) and the lowest in Limpopo (4.8 per cent) Youth living in urban informal areas had the highest HIV prevalence (17.4 per cent), followed by rural formal areas (13.5 per cent), urban formal areas (9.8 per cent) and rural informal areas (8.7 per cent)

Although pregnancy undoubtedly increases risk of HIV infection, it also impacts

on schooling In KwaZulu-Natal, teenage pregnancy has been a frequent cause of

‘interrupted and discontinued education’ (Hunter & May 2002: 3) The full extent in quantitative terms is hard to determine, but small local studies have reported high levels of discontinuation A 1983 study in Durban and surrounding areas found that over a third (38 per cent) of females in the sample left school because they became pregnant (Hunter & May 2002)

However, this raises the question of whether, having left school, pregnant girls drop out or return to school Put differently, does pregnancy delay the completion

of school or terminate schooling prematurely? The evidence on this is ambiguous Elsewhere in Africa, there is evidence that teenage pregnancies terminate schooling Bledsoe and Cohen’s study of various countries in Africa (excluding South Africa), for example, found that the ‘overwhelming majority’ of female learners do not resume

their studies after giving birth (Bledsoe & Cohen 1993: 162) And, as feminists note, the failure to return to school has more to do with the circumstances in which these learners find themselves than with their desire to end their schooling (Manuh 1999).

In South Africa, the evidence suggests delay rather than dropout Levels of dropout from school are high, but much of this can be explained by reference to other factors For example, in a study of 548 teenagers from working-class communities

on the Cape Flats in the Western Cape, 15.9 per cent had dropped out of school, but only two reported dropping out because of pregnancy The main reasons, in descending order, for dropout were not liking school, poor academic progress and economic constraints (Flisher & Chalton 1995) However, in a 1991 study of 145 black pregnant learners under the age of 18, it was found that half were unlikely to return to school after the pregnancy (Cunningham & Boult 1996), partly due to the lack of willingness of schools to accommodate them and their children Many young females in this position, however, want to continue their schooling For example,

a study in KwaZulu-Natal by Preston-Whyte et al (1990) suggests that it was, and probably still is, normal for African teenage girls to leave school to have children and then to return Their mothers and grandmothers would look after the child after the birth, enabling them to return to school Families are prepared to shoulder the extra burden of childcare on behalf of teenage mothers because of the value placed on education and the belief that it improves a woman’s work (and marriage) prospects.The delay in schooling has a number of educational implications The likelihood

of pursuing education further is reduced and the performance in school is jeopardised: ‘An analysis of the 1996 Census shows that in every age group (12 to

15 years, 16 to 25 years, and 26 years and over) women who have given birth are less likely to be studying than those who have not had children’ (Hunter & May 2002: 23) Furthermore, the likelihood of failing a grade increases with pregnancy

‘In considering the impact of pregnancy on grade attainment and grade enrolment,

it is evident that 37 percent of girls who dropped behind are currently pregnant or have been pregnant at some stage’ (Hunter & May 2002: 24) ‘Just under two-thirds (59 percent) of “ever pregnant” girls have experienced a drop-out episode during the reference period, and 41 percent repeated at least one grade’ (Hunter & May 2002: 28) Pregnancy does not universally end a girl’s schooling or even necessarily negatively impact on her grades or delay her progress, but for many it is a major event that puts a cap on their educational and professional development

Social context of teenage pregnancy and parenting

Teenage pregnancy is often constructed in policy discourse as ‘a problem’ There are

a number of strands in this construction One concerns the burden which young parents may place on state resources, because they need more assistance than older parents in nuclear or extended family situations Another is that females who have children young limit their life prospects (particularly in terms of education and employment opportunites) Thirdly, there is often concern expressed about teenage sexuality, which can become a moral panic (Coleman & Denison 1998; Greene &

Biddlecom 2000) Some of these concerns resonate in local debates about teenage pregnancy (Macleod 2001, 2003) In policy terms, these debates surface in relation

to the child support grant (CSG) The grant was introduced in 1998 with high levels

of take-up Eligibility has changed over time Initially, a single parent or caregiver had to have an income of less than R800 to R1 100 per month to qualify (the range depending on whether she or he lived in a rural or urban setting) As of April 2010

a single parent or caregiver has to earn R2 500 or less per month to qualify (or less than R30 000 per year), while a married couple may jointly earn R5 000 or less per month (or less than R60 000 per year) (Lund 2008).3

In 2000 the number of CSG recipients was 352 617 and this rose to 4 309 772 in 2004 (Meth 2007) According to a report by the Community Agency for Social Enquiry, the grant in 2008 reached 8.3 million beneficiaries.4 Initially, the grant was awarded

to parents or guardians of children under 7 (later extended to the age of 14) The amount of the grant has also risen – from R100 to R240 (from April 2009)

There is much public and media speculation that the CSG encourages teenagers

to have children; however, there is no evidence to support this (Makiwane & Udjo 2006) In a 2006 analysis based on the government’s social pension database, it was found that ‘there had been a huge growth in the number of CSG beneficiaries in recent years’ However, ‘if a comparison is made between the numbers of teenagers receiving the CSG and the incidence of teenage births in the national population, the quantitative analysis suggests that the take-up rate of the CSG by teenage mothers remains low Teenagers (younger than 20 years) represent (only) 5% of all CSG recipients registered at October 2005 These teenagers claiming the CSG were considerably lower (13% lower) than the proportion of teenage mothers in the South African population (mothers younger than 30 years)’ (Steele & Geospace International 2006: vi, vii) In other words, there is no link between ‘the availability

of the CSG and the fertility behaviour of teenagers in the South African population’ (Steele & Geospace International 2006: vii)

For young parents, pregnancy poses particular challenges, although these differ

in kind and severity along gender lines In the following subsections we turn to discussing why young men and women become parents and what the impact is on their lives

Young girls and pregnancy

Why do young girls become pregnant? If some media arguments from urbanised, well-resourced societies are to be believed, they get pregnant because of media images

or a lack of sex education A British study found, for example, that teens who watched

TV with a high sexual content were twice as likely to become pregnant as those who did not.5 We do not think this explanation is particularly helpful in the South African context High rates of teenage childbirth, particularly among Africans, needs to be located historically in the value accorded to human life As Iliffe (2005: 264) argues, in the pre-colonial period, ‘[c]hildbearing had always been the main source of a woman’s respect’ By the same token, infertility reduced a woman’s status (Inhorn 2005)

Preston-Whyte and Zondi (1989) found a strong acceptance of teenage pregnancy among African families in KwaZulu-Natal in the late 20th century On the other hand, improved levels of education, employment prospects and considerations of health (danger of HIV infection) have increased awareness and the use of contraception among young women in KwaZulu-Natal (Kaufman et al 2004)

Invariably, pregnancy is not simply a matter of personal choice Gender inequalities impair the ability of young women to make reproductive and sexual health choices freely, and often frame the experience of sexual intimacy as a whole In these situations, male control over sexuality and women’s lack of negotiation have been well documented (Shefer 2009)

It is clear that many girls have sex under conditions not of their own choosing Gender inequalities deny them the opportunity to express their desires, to insist

on condom use and even to refuse to have sex There is now a substantial body of literature that documents the extent of gender-based violence, including rape as well

as more subtle forms of coercive sex, and which clearly indicates that young women are not always able to negotiate safe and equitable sexual practices and control their reproductive capacity in contexts of intimacy (Dunkle et al 2004; Jewkes et al 2001; Jewkes et al 2006; Shefer & Foster 2009; Wood et al 1998) When female learners have been forced into non-consensual sexual relations, they are much more likely

to drop out of school, and suffer delays and a drop in the levels of their academic achievement (Hallman 2007) In a recent case in KwaZulu-Natal, five teachers at an Umlazi high school were suspended for misconduct (sexually abusing pupils), and it came to light that many girls at the school had been impregnated by these teachers (The Witness 20 May 2009)

On the other hand, focusing only on gender inequalities and the absence of agency among young women prevents recognition of the role that young women themselves play in their reproductive choices There can be no question that young women have sexual agency, and in some cases use it assertively and instrumentally (Haram 2001; Hunter 2002) In order to better understand the agency of young girls we need to examine constructions of young femininity

Girls make their femininity under specific cultural conditions, which may include cultural injunctions against sexual relations and pregnancy, as these are part of a transition to womanhood, an estate that young girls are not simply free to enter (Thomas 2007) And although there is status associated with becoming a woman, there is loss too, described poignantly in the work of Preston-Whyte and Louw (1990) as the ‘end of childhood’

Having a child shows peers that one is a woman, sexually mature and able to reproduce Many men (as opposed to teenage males) regard having children as a sign of manhood, particularly if they are able to support and claim them as part

of their own family Furthermore, it is not uncommon to hear young women talk about having children in ‘order to keep their boyfriend’ On the other hand, as fertility figures show, some young women now prefer to delay motherhood In a

study conducted in Limpopo in 2005/06, Spjeldnaes and her colleagues (2007) found that in three generations of women (teenage daughters, mothers and grandmothers) the teenage daughters on average wanted to have their first child seven years later (in their late 20s) than the desired age of having a first child expressed by their mothers and grandmothers This suggests that their femininity is now more vested

in educational and work achievement than in reproduction A similar finding was made for teenagers (boys and girls) in KwaZulu-Natal (Rutenberg et al 2003); and another study in the province found that adolescents wished to defer pregnancy because it compromised personal, professional and financial goals (Varga 2004).Reasons why girls might wish to delay pregnancy are narrated by Pamphilia Hlapa (2006) in a tale based on her own experience in Limpopo, and which also reiterates the cultural imperatives on women to have children She writes in the author’s note at the beginning of the book: ‘We watched the horrors of single motherhood consume the lives of our teenagers…As for those who survived (HIV and AIDS and backstreet abortions), we watched them die inside as they lost hope.’ Teenage mothers ‘are consumed by pain and fears, cultural taboos and pressures to surrender

to mediocrity Some have become wives at an early age; some got sold into marriages

in order to escape poverty and the fear of facing the world alone They were forced

to surrender their personal power and will to live to the pressures of their world because there is no other life they know.’ Finally, she claims that in Limpopo ‘[i]t

is culturally wrong for a woman to reach the age of 21 without a child It does not matter whether you are married or not; you have to have a child to prove you are not barren Children are born out of children’ (Hlapa 2006)

Constructions of motherhood and the teen mother

Once a young woman has given birth, there are questions about how she will approach her new role as mother and how motherhood will change her status and femininity Motherhood is a marker of womanhood, distinguishing a young, immature female from a ‘woman’ (Smart 1992a) Yet the idea of a ‘woman’ as unchanging, fixed and uniform is itself an effect of dominant discursive constructions In fact, the ‘unruly bodies’ of women resist characterisation and operate to dispute the binary of powerful and powerless that feature in prescriptions about motherhood (Smart 1992b: 8) For this reason, motherhood was and remains contested and what constitutes and what does not constitute motherhood continues to attract debate

As Dally (1982) notes in her historical study set in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, the concept of motherhood is open to interpretation and invention The word ‘mother’ may be one of the oldest in the English language, but the concept

‘motherhood’ only came into existence in the Victorian era, when it became associated with an idealised version of femininity Mothers were serene, sacred and required protection The idolisation of mothers was also a means of arguing for the importance

of the family One of the major implications for women of this idealisation was their increasing confinement to the domestic sphere and their exclusion from work (Hall 1992) It is for this reason that many feminist scholars have analysed motherhood in

relation to regulation Confined to being mothers, women were also incarcerated in families where they were under the control of their husbands, who up to the mid-19th century had the right to beat them (Clark 1992) For mothers, families were considered

to be patriarchal prisons, and motherhood was the key that locked the door

In the context of African feminist scholarship, the importance of motherhood has been emphasised Responding to the suggestion that motherhood was an estate that locked women into subordinate positions within patriarchy, various African feminist perspectives have emerged that advocate the importance of motherhood for women These perspectives emphasise and give value to the experience of motherhood (Nnaemeka 1997) This approach disconnects the condition of motherhood from subordination, and instead argues that motherhood gives women strength and value (Kolawole 1997) In a study of motherhood in Ghana, Tettey (2002: 62) argues that ‘[m]otherhood is central to many women’s lives It shapes their relationship with other people It makes and unmakes the woman; their opportunities for paid employment, their leisure activities and their individual identities.’ In this context, many African societies are pro-natalist and strongly link questions of womanhood

to those of motherhood: ‘Definitions of “good” motherhood emphasize material sacrifice and the child-centered nature of society which frequently puts children’s needs and rights before those of their mother…A real mother not only has a vision for her children but also wants to work for their future, ensuring them a life of peace, freedom and dignity’ (Tettey 2002: 67) These understandings of motherhood find expression in the quantitative responses of learners discussed in Section B of this book It is clearly too simple to argue that motherhood makes women strong or, alternatively, that it undermines their independence, but tenacity of beliefs about the importance of motherhood has implications for pregnancy, parenthood and constructions of femininity in schools

Mothers are often blamed when things go wrong with children (Hanigsberg & Ruddick 1999) In this way mothers are both demonised and idealised As the ideal, they can

do no wrong, they need to be protected and valued Judged against this standard they are bound to fail and be cast as ‘bad mothers’ Public blame leads mothers to blame themselves Hanigsberg and Ruddick (1999: x) explain how the demonisation of bad mothers works and how it impacts heavily on women on the margins: ‘ “Bad mothers” are scapegoats By turning from them in horror, by devising laws to control and punish them, we can quarantine our own hurtful, neglectful impulses and acts Scapegoated

“bad mothers” are also often poor, unmarried, and targets of racism, burdens that typically make ordinary mothering extraordinarily difficult.’ It is easy to be a bad mother because the assumption exists that ‘[m]othering is understood to involve omnipresent nurture’ (Davis 1999: 250)

The (mis)fortunes of children have often been a prompt for focusing critical attention on mothers, because the expectation remains that mothers are the primary parent: ‘The discourse of neglect has long since established “mothers” as the “crucial variable” in neglect’, a belief that is ‘echoed explicitly or implicitly by almost everyone writing about child neglect’ (Swift 1995: 101) Mothers living in situations of poverty

are most likely to be in a situation where they are not able adequately to care for their children It is, therefore, common to find single mothers and families living in poverty labelled as inadequate

Research on motherhood in South Africa has tended to focus on those who are constructed as a ‘problem’ – single mothers, working mothers, jailed mothers, mentally ill mothers, and so on (Kruger 2006) Among those likely to be classified

as bad mothers are teen mothers They have their own developmental needs to take care of, they frequently lack the resources (emotional and material) to be omnipresent, and they suffer the additional barb of being thought of as sexually

‘loose’ However, teen mothers have not always been considered as problems In the 1950s in the US, for example, it was in fact the norm for mothers to be teenagers It was only in the 1970s that teenage motherhood became viewed as a social problem

As Furstenberg et al (1987) point out, this was largely because teen mothers in the 1970s were generally single, whereas in the 1950s they had been married The moral panic that ensued focused on two elements: the link between marriage and sexual activity had become severed; and the fact that research showed that children born

to single mothers (particularly teens) did a lot worse in terms of various indicators than those in nuclear or extended families A longitudinal study in Baltimore, which began with a group of teen mothers in 1966 and was followed up with interviews in

1972 and 1983, documents how a cohort of young mothers negotiated the demands

of looking after children at a young age (Furstenberg et al 1987) The study showed that some mothers coped successfully with the demands of looking after young children They finished school, got well-paid jobs and married Others did less well They did not finish school and they became dependent on welfare Although many factors determined the different life courses of the mothers, the most significant were economically secure families and more educated parents, providing more direct support to young mothers, which helped them to finish school and ‘get ahead’ The in-school experience itself was critical – girls who were competent and motivated

at school were far more likely to succeed later in life This study shows that there is some reason to be concerned both about and for teenage mothers The situation in the UK was similar (Coleman & Dennison 1998)

In South Africa, Macleod has argued that the identification of teen motherhood as a

‘problem’ is part of a larger gender and race project that secures the domination and exclusion of young girl mothers, and singles out black teen mothers, treating them

as somehow exotic and thus available for scrutiny, monitoring and intervention (Macleod 2001; Macleod & Durrheim 2002) There is undoubtedly a danger in pathologising parenthood and pregnancy The difficulty, however, is in trying to make sociological and policy sense of demographic patterns and life experiences, which are profoundly shaped by the history of race and class in South Africa There is a particular awkwardness about the category of teenage mother, which Macleod argues is a problem that emerges out of the need to categorise things in the first place She argues that ‘adolescence’ and ‘pregnancy’ do not belong easily together, only because of the attempt to create adolescence as a separate stage of

development (Macleod 2003) And it is true that in many cultures age is not a factor

in giving meaning to pregnancy and motherhood In the African literature referred

to above, for example, motherhood is a moment that calls womanhood into being, regardless of age or stage of development Tettey (2002: ii) goes on to explain the importance of motherhood for femininity: ‘Motherhood is an important path to social status and personal achievement Children are widely regarded as a great gift and blessing: they continue the family line and preserve property and wealth.’ The recognition of motherhood in this manner is problematic It can lead to very narrow and prescriptive understandings of womanhood, such that if a woman is unable to conceive, she is somehow less than woman In the South African context, another danger is that motherhood can be manipulated for gender-conservative purposes For example, in the context of the Inkatha Freedom Party in the 1990s,

as Hassim argues, ‘Inkatha offers women…centrality and importance within the modern context The role they have always played in keeping their families together and alive now has a central place in a broader political discourse…However the danger of this is that such a strategy may be used to maintain women’s subordination rather than remove it’ (Hassim 1993: 22)

In South Africa, poverty has been racialised The bulk of very poor people today are African Where the ‘popular image of neglect is virtually synonymous with the image of poverty’ (Swift 1995: 9), it is easy to pejoratively conflate issues of race, class and gender (motherhood) In the early 20th century a discourse of eugenics, for example, cast young Afrikaner mothers as being feeble-minded, and hence they were seen as endangering the white minority rule (Klausen 1997) Stereotypes concerning motherhood are historical and have changed over time A current stereotype is that young African females are highly sexed and sexually active from an early age Consequently, they become mothers very early, and this is a problem The problem

is that such views pay no attention to gender inequalities, the autobiographies of the young mothers or of the relational dynamics that form the backdrop of sexually intimate relationships When attention is given to these elements, the role of motherhood can be better appreciated One of the landmark studies in this regard

is that of Preston-Whyte and Zondi (1989) This study found that young, African, isiZulu-speaking women were sufficiently aware of their own bodies and sexuality

to want to assert their rights to contraception or to give birth The agency of young people together with a nuanced understanding of the complexities of their lives needs to be at the centre of analysis, and this is explored in the next section Indeed, the choices that young women make take place within a context, and this often contains a set of discourses that locate ‘bad mothers’ as ‘bad women’ and vice versa Two examples here are adoptive mothers (frequently it is suggested that women who adopt are not good mothers because they lack the ‘natural’ connection with the child) and substance-abusing mothers (who can’t be good mothers because they have already shown that they are ‘bad women’) (Baker & Carson 1999; Wegar 1997) Writing poignantly on the experiences of HIV-positive mothers in South Africa, Long similarly highlights such binarisms in constructions of motherhood,

arguing that mothers are ‘usually only of interest insofar as they pose a risk to children and family’ (Long 2009: 3) The naturalisation of motherhood and its unproblematic connection to women has resulted in a blurring of the distinction between ‘caring for’ and ‘caring about’ one’s children Prescriptions demand that a mother should not only care about her children, but demonstratively care for them This involves demonstrating that she actively protects them and ensures their welfare (Ladd-Taylor & Umansky 1998) In the face of these judgements, women take it upon themselves to show that they are capable mothers

The South African literature on teenage mothers specifically and motherhood more generally is not extensive But we do know that in 1997 43 per cent of black women with children had their first child while still at school (Everatt 2000) Any consideration of teenage mothers in South Africa should take account of the contested nature of the concept of motherhood, its moral context and links to patriarchal control, the different understandings across race, class (and, presumably, religion and other social markers) and its fluidity in time and space

Young men and fatherhood

There are no figures on how many young men become fathers or how many intend

to become fathers (i.e welcome and take responsibility for the conception of a child) In fact it is difficult to establish how many men in South Africa are fathers (Morrell et al 2003) In South Africa, many men (young and old) appear reluctant

to assume a fatherhood role, and marriage rates have fallen dramatically (Hunter 2006) Most men do not attend the births of their children and they frequently fail

to participate in their children’s lives In the early 1990s, half of the mothers of the

22  000 children born in Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg were unable to name and call on the support of their child’s father (Morrell & Richter 2006) In a KwaZulu-Natal survey it was found that half of the province’s fathers do not have contact with their children (Lund 2006) In another study, this time in the province of Mpumalanga, it was found that half of the fathers in the study did not support their children, and a quarter of the children had no contact with their fathers

at all (Madhavan et al 2008) The patterns of young fathers’ involvement in the lives

of their children and their birth mothers are strongly raced and classed, and, since poverty is itself heavily concentrated among African people, it is poverty that exacts

a major toll on African fatherhood Only 40 per cent of African children live with their fathers, compared to 90 per cent of white children (Posel & Devey 2006) In this context, African fathers ‘become “shadowy figures” who are symbolically important but may have little actual importance in children’s daily lives’ (Roy 2008: 99).Some young men regard impregnating as a sign of manhood, but generally speaking, even though there is little research on why young men choose to impregnate women,

it seems that most teen pregnancies are unintended – the consequence of having unprotected sex (Jarrett et al 2002; Morrell 2006) Research in Australia found that young men desired to avoid the complications of a pregnancy, but placed their trust in their partner’s use of contraception, and put the pleasure of flesh-to-flesh

sex above safety (from sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy) (Flood 2003) The desire to avoid the responsibilities of parenthood is also a consideration Young men wish to prolong their lives in ‘guyland’, a stage between boyhood and manhood without much responsibility (Kimmel 2008); and working-class and unemployed men fear the demands for financial support that mothers legitimately make.

Where young men do accept paternity and the responsibilities that it entails, the impact on their lives is dramatic In a study of 27 young black fathers in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal who lived in contexts of poverty, Swartz and Bhana (2009) show how life changes dramatically Anxiety about being a provider is the major burden (along with attempts to earn money), although there are also consequences for studying (i.e much less time for it) and socialising (less opportunity to ‘jol’ and see friends), as well as the commitment of time and energy to childcare (including hospital visits) and seeing the child’s mother (who was never the young father’s wife and generally unlikely to be his life partner)

Schools, pregnancy and parenting

From a legal perspective, we have argued that schools are obliged to provide

a supportive environment for young women and young parents, as part of the commitment towards gender equality encapsulated in the SASA The policy has helped to increase the number of pregnant young women in school, has permitted them to remain longer in school during their pregnancy and has encouraged large numbers of mothers to return to school (Grant & Hallman 2006) Gender equality

in South African education has state backing, and legislation has expanded the opportunities to develop new life chances, particularly for young pregnant women long subordinated under regimes of masculine power, where expulsion from school was the only option before 1996

The legislative environment, however, is not an automatic driver of gender equality

in schools Realising the ideals of gender equality as it pertains to pregnant young women and young parents is difficult The disjuncture between the hope and the actual experience is precisely what we investigate in this book As Harber (2002) notes, access to education, underpinned by its positive outcomes, has been a significant driver for global social justice (see also Unterhalter 2007) In reality, however, the experience of education is unpredictable and ambiguous As early as 1994, Truscott wrote that despite government support, gender inequalities persist in terms of, among others, social, economic and cultural factors The report of the GETT (Wolpe et al 1997), mentioned earlier, was the first comprehensive investigation of gender equality

in South African education from early childhood education to higher education, and

a painted a grim picture of gender relations in schools

Gender violence was put under the spotlight by the GETT It was argued that gender violence was a major obstruction to gender equality in education In the context of violence, schools are not so much institutional recipients or victims of violence, as institutional generators of violence (Harber 2002) South African schools have a poor

reputation when it comes to gender-based violence (by teachers on learners) and sexual relations between teachers and learners In a national representative study,

it was found that within very high national rape rates among girls under the age of

15, 30.8 per cent of girls reported being raped by their teacher (Jewkes & Abrahams 2000) Niehaus, in his ethnographic study of a school in Mpumalanga, concludes, taking inspiration from Achille Mbembe, that ‘[p]ost-colonial bureaucrats, teachers and prefects arrogate to themselves excessive rights to take women, and have practically unlimited rights over those under them These “rights” exempt acts of copulation from inclusion in the category of what is shameful’ (Niehaus 2000: 406) Sex between teachers and students was and remains common, although there is growing visibility and resistance, particularly as it is associated with the violation

of rights The policy context has provided a fertile environment to contest the arrogation of teachers’ power and is deeply implicated in gender struggles

Teachers and school managers are central to schooling In the context of policy implementation, they have an obligation to ensure its enactment However, what teachers do, the choices they make and the meanings they transact are not simply

in the interest of policy, of learners or of teaching As has been shown, teachers are expected to protect and nurture, but instead many teachers are complicit in the sexual coercion of young women in schools (see Human Rights Watch 2001) Putting teachers and managers in the front line of research inquiry is important,

as what they do affects the efficacy of policy Teachers’ and managers’ experiences

of, responses to and interaction with policy in relation to pregnancy and parenting are varied and contested Teachers neither interpret policy in the same way nor view uniformly the challenges that pregnant girls and young parents face Indeed, schools are not stable places effortlessly enacting progressive policy Baxen (2006) writes that teachers are agents and make choices irrespective of the policy context, and these choices necessarily impact on questions of teenage pregnancy and young parenthood Rather than being stable and supportive environments that nurture, protect and encourage pregnant learners and young parents, schools are in tension with policy requirements

Chigona and Chetty (2008: 276) note that teenage mothers lack support from schools; instead, what they get is ‘misunderstanding and pressure’ Local conditions in schools entail many contradictory processes, some of which undermine the institutional environment that should support gender equality Many teachers are not willing to support young mothers who miss lessons The stigma against pregnancy and young parents in school results in difficult circumstances for young women and young mothers In the context of school pregnancy, the sexuality of young girls is often viewed as threatening and stigmatised In a study of a township secondary school in Durban, Kent (2002: 48) quotes a teacher as saying that ‘a pregnant girl is sick, a sick person, who should be attended by those people who are professional in handling such cases Sometimes they are dizzy, sometimes they vomit.’ The gender politics

of power have particular consequences for pregnant young learners, and often reproduce or entrench inequality despite the promulgation of gender equality laws such as the SASA It is possible, however, for schools as institutions to serve as sites

for the development of gender equality, and to some extent and on occasions, schools

do function in this way But institutional support and a legislative framework do not and cannot fully secure protection and gender equality (Unterhalter 2007) For gender equality to have meaning for pregnant learners and young parents, teachers,

in their practice and outlook, need to be available and willing to provide support The is little research that documents and analyses the extent to which teachers and schools are willing and able to translate the rights of young parents and pregnant girls into the experience of gender equality

Popular examples from the media and research highlight the continued negativity, moralistic responses and stigmatisation of pregnant and parenting learners at schools and in communities For obvious reasons, it is girls who bear the brunt of such negative attitudes and practices, as illustrated above There is, however, a dearth

of literature that focuses directly on the subjective experiences of parenting and pregnant learners A number of studies involving young teenage mothers show that they continue to experience stigmatisation by their peers, school authorities and the community more broadly (Bhana et al 2008; Mcambi 2008; Theron & Dunn 2006) Moreover, this is clearly gendered, since the biological father is reportedly more able

to dissociate himself from the pregnancy and/or parenting, so that it is young women who have to deal with social and school-based marginalisation

The burden of care also remains feminised, as highlighted above, and this may also have consequences in the educational setting Women not only give birth, but also carry a disproportionate burden of the childcare responsibilities In the context of

an education system that is in transition, the expectation that young mothers should conform to the gendered norms of parenting has come into conflict with the new norm that they should finish school (or at least be able to continue their studies) Moreover, the broad global gender patterns, which reflect that it is primarily girls and women who continue to carry the burden of caring for a young child in a household, will also necessarily impact on schooling Even when there is a man present in the household, gendered divisions of labour place women and girls in positions of shouldering a greater load of care This has been shown to impact on and constrain their educational and life opportunities (see, for example, De la Rey 2002; Gevisser & Morris 2002) Young fathers are able to avoid the responsibilities

of parenting by contesting or denying paternity, or simply putting geographical and social distance between themselves and the mothers of their children One should remember that not all young fathers seek to avoid responsibility However, for those who seek to participate in parenting, the burden of expectations that they should

‘provide’ for their children weighs heavily, as few, if any, have the material or financial means to bring up a child (Swartz & Bhana 2009)

There has been little documentation of the challenges of balancing the load of being

a parent and a learner, and the extent to which learners feel accepted and supported within the school environment when they are pregnant and after returning to school having had their children Therefore, the narratives of the young people presented

in this book are important in clarifying the extent to which schools are adequately

redressing gender inequalities and supporting the rights of pregnant and parenting learners to continue successfully with their schooling.

Parenting and the gendered division of childcare work

Although there has been much written on teenage pregnancy, there has been less work on the dynamics and experience of being a young, school-going parent A major debate in gender studies concerns the respective roles of mothers and fathers

in childcare Apart from a concern about identifying areas of gender inequality and stereotyping and promoting gender equality, the focus on childcare also helps

to explain why the experience of young mothers and fathers is so different Young mothers tend to experience the disruption of childbirth alone, and they tend to shoulder the lion’s share of childcare responsibilities, often without any visible support of the fathers In a study of home-based care in 36 households in KwaZulu-Natal, for example, Hunter (2007a) found that only 1 out of 22 caregivers was a male

On the other hand, a study based in the same province found that male involvement

in care work was underestimated (Montgomery et al 2006), and that in a based study father involvement was much appreciated by children, and that its nature and extent were growing (Rabe 2006) Nevertheless, many fathers, particularly black fathers, struggle with poverty and the legacy of migrant labour, and do not involve themselves in the lives of their children (Wilson 2006)

Gauteng-The principal reason fathers do not involve themselves in the affairs of their children

is that they are unable to provide for them, and thus fail to meet the expectation (held

by men and women alike) of being the primary provider Lack of involvement is higher among younger men, suggesting that ‘economic and social changes have had

a greater impact on younger men than on older ones’ (Madhavan et al 2008: 662) The simple physical presence of a father does not automatically provide financial or material support, let alone care and love (Madhavan et al 2008) This is in line with research in the US that has been at pains to argue that one cannot equate paternal involvement with the father’s mere physical presence (or absence) (Marsiglio & Pleck 2005) Instead, one needs to take into account the quality of the relationship Notwithstanding material conditions in South Africa, which have intruded on parenting to exacerbate gender divides, ideological and cultural notions of who should do what with respect to children are still an important factor in how such labour is divided The gendered nature of care in society has been an international focus within a growing body of work on feminist ethics of care (for example Held 2006; Kittay 1999; Robinson 1999; Sevenhuijsen 1998; Tronto 1993) And there is no doubt that childcare remains feminised in many contexts, with women still carrying the greater load Although certain societies have redressed this with progressive reforms and provisions that ensure more equitable roles for fathers and mothers, and mostly through providing more state support (as in countries like Sweden), South African society remains highly gendered with respect to normative roles for mothers and fathers, where the work of caregiving, including cooking, cleaning, taking care of children and other domestic roles, has been shown to be the domain of women and

girls (Bozalek 1997, 1999) The normative assumption of women as inherently and naturally nurturant and able to mother is powerfully embedded in ‘traditional and persistent ideologies of motherhood’ that ‘still conceal the many different meanings that mothering can have for different women’ (Kruger 2006: 195) Although this book is concerned with documenting some of these experiences, it also intends to explore the extent to which normative assumptions of parenting – mothering and fathering – and the cultural meanings historically attached to these are played out in the lived experience of a group of learner parents

Overview of the book

This book is based on a two-year research project (2006–07) The research was conducted in urban secondary schools in Durban and Cape Town The schools were selected to reflect the great variation inherited from the apartheid education system (see Appendix 1) The schools in which the research was conducted are not representative in any statistical sense, though our selection process sought to capture diversity in terms of the schools’ resources, history, school form (i.e single sex or coeducational) and demographics (composition of the learner body) The selection was influenced by convenience factors – access to schools often depended on prior research relationships and the willingness of school principals to cooperate Although there was no explicit attempt to triangulate findings, the research design does allow for the expression of a variety of perspectives (school management, teachers, the general learner body and parenting learners) within a limited number of schools The research process was designed to answer six specific questions:

1 Have schools implemented national policy to promote educational performance

of mothers during pregnancy and after childbirth?

2 What are the perceptions and reported practices of school authorities and teachers towards young parents?

3 What are the perceptions of secondary-school learners regarding learners who are pregnant or are already parents (mothers and fathers)?

4 How have young parents experienced schooling and dealt with the challenges

of being a parent and a learner at the same time?

5 How have young parents experienced being parents and how is the labour of childcare shared between young school-going parents?

6 What are the gendered constructions and reported practices of parenting responsibility held respectively by mothers and fathers towards children born

to mothers who are secondary-school learners?

These questions have provided the structure for this book, which is divided into three sections, each based on a particular set of data collected in the course of the project The data-collection processes are outlined in general terms below, but each methodology is set out in more detail at the beginning of each section

Section A examines the school environment and the practices and attitudes of school managers and teachers Chapter 2 answers the question: Have schools implemented national policy to promote educational performance of mothers during pregnancy

and after childbirth? It focuses on the views of school principals (or managers, in the new educational parlance) and life orientation teachers Chapter 3 explores teacher perceptions of pregnancy and young parenting and answers the question: What are the perceptions of teachers towards young parents? These two chapters present the results of qualitative research conducted among school principals and teachers in schools in Durban and Cape Town

For Section A, the primary research instrument was individual interviews with school principals, guidance counsellors and life orientation teachers, and focus groups with teachers The purpose of the investigation was to discover how schools understood and interpreted their obligations and responsibilities towards pregnant learners and young parents This involved drawing on qualitative research methodology For Chapter 2, interviews with school managers, with the chief focus

on principals, were carried out by members of the research project team School principals in particular, but schoolteachers in general, are very busy people, and

it was often not possible to find convenient times to interview them In these circumstances the approach was to interview a teacher, principal or deputy who was available Interviews were recorded, transcribed and then analysed Chapter 3, which focuses specifically on schoolteachers (those at the chalkface, rather than those in managerial positions or with dedicated responsibility for pregnancy and parenthood), involved focus group discussions with teachers Groups ranged in size from three to five teachers, who were engaged in structured conversation by researchers The discussions were recorded, transcribed and analysed

Section B moves from those who exercise authority in schools to those who are subjects

of that authority, the learners These are the young people who constitute the majority

of any school’s population Schools have the responsibility to prepare them for the future, in the workplace, as citizens and as parents Section B is devoted to answering the question: What are the perceptions of secondary-school learners regarding learners who are pregnant or are already parents (mothers and fathers)? Section B contains three chapters and is based on quantitative data collected from learners in schools

in Durban and Cape Town Chapter 4 reveals how many learners are pregnant or are biological parents, but also analyses how many learners undertake care work (for example looking after siblings) Chapter 5 analyses the attitudes of learners towards pregnancy and parenthood in school What learners think of their peers who are either parents or pregnant influences the school environment, promoting a climate of either tolerance or stigma Chapter 6 focuses on the gender attitudes of learners Do boys and girls support gender equality? Do they believe that girls who get pregnant should complete school? Do they believe that boys who become fathers should provide for their children, or that girls who drink alcohol want to have sex? The attitudes of learners contribute to and feed off the normative climate in schools, which can either contribute to young parents and pregnant learners feeling supported in their dual roles

of learner and parent, or lead to feelings of alienation, discomfort and unhappiness For Section B, a quantitative methodology was used A questionnaire was developed and piloted It consisted of five sections, including biographical information,

experiences of parenting by the mother and by the father, attitudes towards young school-going parents, and views on gender and parenting Questionnaires were distributed to over 1 000 grade 10 and 11 learners in 11 schools, 8 situated in Durban and 3 in Cape Town The sample was intended to reflect roughly the diversity of school populations in terms of race and school type So, for example, 32.4 per cent

of the sample was located in township schools, while 57.9 per cent of the sample was African, indicating in part the movement of African students into schools formerly reserved exclusively for white, coloured or Indian learners.6 The sample had more females (57.9 per cent) than males (42.1 per cent)

In Section C the focus is parenting learners The two chapters in Section C are based

on interviews with young parents as well as on the field notes of researchers on the Durban and Cape Town schools they studied Chapter 7 addresses the questions:

• What are the gendered constructions of parenting responsibility held

respectively by mothers and fathers towards children born to mothers who are secondary-school learners?

• How is the labour of childcare shared between young school-going parents?

As our research unfolded, we realised that this question generally involved going mothers rather than fathers Most of the fathers were no longer at school and were not included in this study Furthermore, it was difficult to identify and interview young fathers.7 Unlike the case with young mothers, it is not obvious when a male learner is a father, and he may well not know he is a father or deny paternity Therefore, in this section we focus primarily on young mothers and their experiences of being at school and juggling the dual roles of being a parent and a learner In Chapter 8 the focus shifts from the domestic realm of childcare (and the gendered division of care work between mother, father and others) to the interface

school-of school and home, and asks: How have young parents experienced schooling and dealt with the challenges of being a parent and a learner at the same time? The chapter presents and analyses the experiences of young mothers, showing how they experienced pregnancy in school and how they coped thereafter with being a learner and a parent simultaneously The chapter explores the mesh between what school managers and teachers said about how they treated pregnant girls and parenting learners, and how the intended recipients of these actions actually experienced these policies and actions

In Section C the methodology was chosen to present a qualitative picture of the lived experience of parent learners Eighteen learners from two schools in Durban, and eight from five Cape Town schools were interviewed Although the learners interviewed came from a spectrum of schools, the majority were from lower socio-economic households Identifying learner parents was not always easy In both cities we were fortunate that a number of our fieldworkers were teaching at the schools where they conducted the interviews or were well acquainted with the schools through other practical or research work, so were well located to access the participants and spend time with them All the interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed In some cases translations (from isiZulu, isiXhosa and Afrikaans) were

necessary, although, in general terms, learners were sufficiently fluent in English to express themselves comfortably.

Conducting research on pregnancy and parenthood inevitably raises ethical issues These were formally handled by obtaining approval from the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s ethics committee as the primary host for the project The specific ethical challenges took a number of forms: how to identify learners, obtain their consent and, if necessary, protect their identities (confidentiality); and how to ensure that the research process did not have a negative impact on the learners’ lives as parents and

on their educational performance and school experience The latter concern meant taking into consideration the possibility that there might be stigma at the school associated with being identified as a mother

In all cases, respondents were invited to participate in the research process and were

at liberty to decline and withdraw from the process at any time Nobody chose to withdraw The process of identifying young parents was handled carefully, using existing networks to approach potential respondents (for example the relationship

of a teacher to her learners, or the long-standing research association between a researcher and a particular school) All the parent learners, teachers and schools were given pseudonyms, and this went a long way in reassuring learners

The discussion in Chapter 9 addresses the implications of our findings for policy and school practice The book concludes with a visual essay by the photographer, Cedric Nunn, who explains the ethical choices he made in the introduction to his essay For reasons of confidentiality, the photographs were not taken at any of the schools at which research was conducted

in which they mark the South African landscape, particularly as race and class are intimately connected