Covid, cohesion, connection, care: thoughts on Connected Lives

Abstract

is not unusual among the teenage parents themselves, as some of the other case studies suggest. The image of the caring teen father is a foreign one, even to many academic pieces on fatherhood and teenage parenting. Alison Swartz’s piece “Saving Face” (Case Study 4.2) further explores how fatherhood is important to the masculine self-image of teenaged fathers through the tale of Luyanda, who found he could perform a masculinity based on his virility through the “proof” of his child and his responsibility towards her. He contrasted this with his earlier experiences of masculinity within a gang and partying. For him, his new experience of masculinity sat as comfortably within his connection to Xhosa masculinity as his performative male strength and power as a gang member, as this essential “maleness” now came through in the shouldering of responsibility towards his child and girlfriend as a provider. When his girlfriend, Andiswa, sought the company of other men because of his inability to provide the kind of life she wanted, it was not only his masculine pride that was injured but his emotional well-being too. However, he remained determined to be a father figure for his daughter, the essence of masculinity to him (given the death of his own father). These case studies, and the accompanying theorisation, work to destabilise stereotypes which flourish inside and outside of academia. The idea of masculinity is reconceived in the plural, as masculinities, a multiplicity of affective experiences held by men as varied as their understandings of what it is to be a man. It is worth noting that not all forms of masculinity, or even its forms in Southern Africa, have been charted here, and there are some obvious omissions (such as queer, trans and gay fatherhood, so-called “upper-class” experiences of masculinity and white, Indian and other apparent racialised or cultural experiences of maleness). This is a striking gap in a conversation about masculinities. As Mkhwanazi and Manderson acknowledge, the scope of this book does not allow for a more extensive interrogation of masculinity but does reveal spaces for further academic enquiry. Connected Lives is both fascinating and well written. It is an excellent source for academics and students in the social sciences and those members of the public who are concerned with issues of public and community health, anthropology and sociology, as well as demographic studies more broadly.