Publications
Partners
- As of 2021, 42% of children in surveyed households reported living only with their mothers.
- We asked single mothers what led to the end of their relationships with the fathers of their children.
- Four women open up about why their relationships ended, how their families reacted and what life has been like since.
A single mother of three recently set social media platform X alight when she publicly took on the father of her children for withholding financial support for his children ahead of the new school year.
She alleges that he was withholding funds because she would not comply with his demands.
She was mostly met with support, but there were a significant number of comments chastising both her and the children's father for breaking up when they had that many children together.
The single-parent household is South Africa's most common familial configuration with 42% of children in surveyed households living only with their mothers as of 2021. In contrast, just 4% of children surveyed by Statistics South Africa lived only with their fathers.
In rural areas, most children are raised by their grandparents or other relatives while their parents work in urban areas far from home.
To get a first-person account of why South African families are configured the way they are, News24 reached out to single mothers for the first in a series of stories about families.
This week, four South African mothers share why they broke up with the fathers of their children.
'I woke up one day and didn’t go back'
*Nkanyezi begins by saying that she had been deeply unhappy for months and that they were no longer even staying in the same room.
"I woke up one day and didn’t go back, I just drove to my parents' house. I couldn’t take the misery any longer. I also didn’t want my kids to grow up thinking that us living like that was normal."
At the time of her break up, Nkanyezi's stepdaughter was seven and her son was three.
"It was very challenging explaining it to my stepdaughter. My son was too young to understand. Now he doesn’t even remember his father and I ever living together."
She praises her family for rallying around her after the break-up.
"I am truly blessed. My family has been an absolutely supportive pillar. My father was my biggest advocate. When I returned home, he said that I don’t have to talk until I’m ready, and he really held my hand through the most difficult part of my life."
The same can be said for her friends whom she describes as "phenomenal.
READ MORE | Black single fathers: a forgotten, but ever-present phenomenon
"One even went to pack my clothes for me when I left. They stood up for me and never shamed me."
Once she found her feet, she began dating but her experience did not get off to a great start.
"What a joke! Initially, I was just seeing guys, I guess you could call it a roster. It was just for sex to be honest, but then I met someone special. So it has taken time but he’s been very kind and patient with me."
Speaking about how the break-up impacted her view on dating, she said: "I don’t know if I can trust my decision-making via dating, as I was 'certain' about my ex-husband but look how that went. My mom says I need to give myself more grace and try again. Which is comforting. So it is more difficult."
She also admits that she wonders what life would have been like had she stayed with her ex.
"Especially when I go through challenges and when I have to deal with life things alone. But, then I have to remind myself of how utterly miserable I was with him and how far I’ve come. The mind will play tricks on you and make you forget the reality of situations. I would rather cry alone than cry because of that man."
Like most parents living through this family configuration, Nkanyezi and her ex do co-parent.
"We do, very well at that. He is a sh** partner but a loving parent, shame. Also, now that he has no power or control over me, we get along very well."
- Do not ever stay in a situation that doesn’t serve you. The old school "what will people say?" doesn’t matter anymore, you will die a miserable death because you are doing things because of other people.
- The kids always come first, don’t punish each other by using them. They deserve love and nurturing.
- When you date, I strongly recommend introducing your partner to your child/ children early on. It is critical that your child/children have chemistry with your partner, no point in investing time with someone who can’t gel with your kid/ kids down the line.
'He disappeared when I was 6 months pregnant'
The father of Neo's child left her when she was six months pregnant and impregnated someone else during that time.
"That is when I decided to cut my ties," she tells News24.
"I officially cut him off for good when the baby was a year old. After he disappeared when I was six months pregnant, he then re-emerged when the baby was a few months old. I tried fixing the relationship, but it was too broken and it could not be fixed."
She has not yet let her 11-year-old child know what happened between her and her father because she believes she is still too young to understand.
Neo says that her family's reaction to the break-up made the situation worse for her "because in the black community most elders believe that if a man leaves or cheats on you while you have a baby with him, he will sooner or later return. It was hard for my parents to understand that I did not want anything to do with him."
Luckily, her dating experience has not mirrored her experience with her family's reaction to the end of her relationship.
"Dating has been great. Obviously, there are some bad apples and some good apples, but it is about learning from your experiences as you grow."
She also has more freedom to go out with potential partners now that her child is older and able to stay with family while she goes to dinner or grabs a drink before heading home.
I ask if she thinks about what life would have been like if she stayed with the father of her child and she doesn't miss a beat when she says "Oh my God yes! I would have been depressed, he would have hindered my progress in life. He would have been a liability."
"We do not co-parent," she says. "He wanted to use the baby to get back with me, but when I refused to get back with him – and he saw that I had moved on – he disappeared. Until today, I have no clue where he is and his family did not bother to know or take care of the baby, so I used that to my advantage and left the situation as is. They do not know her and she does not know them."
READ MORE | Going solo: How to navigate your pregnancy alone
On a parting note, she assures parents in a similar situation that it is going to be ok.
"The baby will grow with or without the absent parent. Give the baby as much warm love as possible because everything else will automatically fall into place. And be gentle with yourself because you are doing the best you can and that is ok."
'Be mindful of who you choose to have kids with'
*Elaine has two children - a daughter, 16 and a son, 10 - but shared her experience with the father of her teen daughter. "I found out that her dad was cheating on me while I was pregnant. I found out when she was two months old and then left him for a few weeks and went back because I wanted her to grow up in a two-parent home," begins Elaine.
She says the cheating got worse when they tried to save the relationship and she ended things with him when the baby was six months old.
Elaine's family and friends were relieved when she left the father of her child and embraced her when she turned to them for support in the aftermath of her break-up.
"I wasn't very happy, our relationship wasn't a healthy one. They completely supported my decision and I moved back into my mother's home. They were on hand to help with my daughter so it made my decision to leave a lot easier."
"Dating life back then, while trying to raise a little girl on my own was difficult and it did make dating difficult. I didn't want to bring just anybody into my child's life, especially because she's a little girl. I was very protective of who I let come into her life, especially mine."
"I have two children now and they are still my number one priority and I still am cautious about who I bring into their lives and how that person will fit in with everything but it's a lot easier now."
She says she doesn't even imagine what life would have turned out like if she stayed with him because "I don't think we would have stayed together very long. We were engaged to be married but I called that off and I left him. We would have just ended up getting divorced a year or two after that."
Elaine and her daughter's father do not co-parent at all.
"When she was 10 months old, he came to me and said it was my choice to leave him, so he was not going to support her anymore and I had to do it on my own. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. As she was getting older, he came to fetch her a few times to spend some time at his place. That never really worked, he would bring her back shortly after taking her claiming that she was too much to handle and too spoilt."
Though she feels sad for her child, she accepts the situation for what it is because the memories her child has with her father aren't very good ones.
"She has tried to have a relationship with him but he's not a very good dad so he's not in her life anymore."
She advises people who have not yet had children to try their best to be mindful of who they choose to have kids with.
"I know that we can't always choose that and sometimes mistakes happen, and our children are little bundles of joy that surprise us but if you are in a relationship that is not healthy for you, mentally or physically, and your children are being affected by it, I would advise that you leave."
"There is nothing worse than staying in a relationship for the sake of your kids thinking that that is what they need and they grow up in an environment that is toxic. Being a single parent will come with its challenges but, I think that your child seeing you less stressed and happier will benefit them."
'My mother-in-law hated me'
*Mpho says there was a lot of outside influence affecting her marriage.
"Family was involved from my husband's side. Especially my mother-in-law who hated me. Even today, she can't stand the sight of me. She treats her grandchild as an outsider. She has never once gotten involved in the life of my daughter."
"To cut a long story short, she is just not interested in her - she spends time with all other grandchildren even raising other people's kids except for her own son's daughter."
She says her daughter has since accepted the situation after seeing how her father treats her mother. Mpho says her daughter believes "it's no use us even being together 'cause he doesn't even care about his own child's life. She learned to see and grew with the circumstances surrounding her."
She believes going through this can be hard for mothers "because society can blame you if they don't even know the side of the story."
"My family was supportive and some members of society got to understand and actually see who the main problem was."
Dating has been hard for Mpho.
"I just can't heal from the hurt I encountered, I am even afraid because men can no longer be trusted. I fail to trust men and just picture myself ending up with the wrong person again," she said.
When asked if she ever wonders what life would have been like if she and her husband didn't split up, she says "I sometimes wish and pray that things were different for the sake of our daughter because growing [up] in a home with both parents, kids get support and things are easier than being only with one parent."
READ MORE | How common is parental alienation in South Africa, and why does it happen?
Mpho and her ex are not co-parenting because he does not believe he is her child's biological father.
"I can't say we are [co-parenting], he is just involved because he denied his daughter's paternity and is afraid that I might end up taking him to court for what we both went through but I am not the kind of person who would do that."
"He puts other kids before his own so it's clear it's just that we [are] actually just being at peace for the sake of my daughter. I try very hard to please my daughter and not cause her any harm. I don't want her to grow up a bitter person but rather learn from her experience to be a better version of herself. Though we don't take pain the same I want peace for her at all costs."
Mpho advises people in a similar situation to "try hard to make your relationships work for the sake of the kids. I sometimes break down seeing other families being involved in the lives of their children and also giving their kids the best. It's not nice to see our kids feeling all alone in a cruel world and there is nothing you can do as a parent."
*Names have been changed.
