Father Contact Following Union Dissolution for Low-Income Children in Urban South Africa

Abstract

Black fathers in South Africa face enormous challenges remaining involved in their children’s lives as a result of very high levels of unemployment and union instability. We use data from the Birth to Twenty (Bt20) cohort study to describe trajectories of father contact in the lives of children who have experienced a parental union dissolution and examine the influence of life stage of child at time of union dissolution and mother’s entry into new union on nonresidential contact with fathers. We find that, in the first 5 years after dissolution (1) children who were in the 3 to 5 life stage at time of dissolution face substantially higher odds of having no contact compared with those who were in the 0 to 2 group and (2) children who were in the 6 to 11 group experienced lower odds of intermittent contact. Mother’s entry into a new union increases the odds of having no and intermittent contact.