Family Complexity in Rural South Africa: Examining Dynamism in Children’s Living Arrangement and the Role of Kin

Abstract

It is well established that Black African children in South Africa live in complex living arrangements. Far less, however, is known about the dynamism in children’s living arrangements over the life course or the extent to which kin group characteristics influence the intensity of change in these arrangements. In this article, we draw on data collected on 337 children aged 0-21 embedded in 13 kin groups in Mpumalanga, South Africa to (a) describe the types of living arrangements that children are in at the time of birth and in 2002; (b) examine the extent of change and stability in living arrangements over two points in time; (c) describe the variation in the intensity of change in living arrangements over the life course; and (d) analyze the extent to which kin group characteristics help explain this variation. Our analysis shows that most children are in the same living arrangement at birth and in 2002 but that those born into a nuclear arrangement are most likely to change. Moreover, we also found considerable variation in the number of changes in living arrangements that children experience over the life course. The proportion of dependents in the kin group and the living arrangement at the time of birth explained some of this variation controlling for age and parental attributes.