ABSTRACT
When African teenagers in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa become fathers out of wedlock, cultural practices around the acknowledgement of paternity and the payment of damages are invoked. Damage payments refer to culturally embedded compensation paid by the young father and his family to the girls’ family for premarital pregnancy. The acknowledgement of paternity is deeply connected to masculinity and the expectation of fathers, even when young, to provide, appease and pay the damages associated with the violation of virginity. In this chapter, we draw from a qualitative study of teenage fathers in KwaZulu-Natal as they address the process of negotiating non-marital fertility and the gendered and generational dynamics that underlie this process. Since teenage fathers are mainly at school, their immediate kin is involved in the negotiation of paternity and payment of damages. We report on the complexity in the process of negotiating paternity and the payment of damages, which invoke kinship, gender and generational dynamics. We demonstrate that while these practices are changing and never fixed across the experiences of fathers, they continue to remain widely valued. The payment of damages is offset by different means, including delaying payment, signing future debt or relying on kin (when resources are available) to pay the debt. Access to the child is thus a negotiated process and contextually specific to the everyday circumstances of teenage fathers. This flexibility permits new ways of thinking about teenage fathers’ involvement with their child and raising young families that are less strained by cultural norms and more sensitive to teenage fathers’ particular social location and their involvement with the child.
