The following dissertation explores the experience and representations of child abandonment
in urban Johannesburg, South Africa. I examine this complex social behaviour through a
number of perspectives specifically: how it is portrayed in the media; how it is represented
and managed by child protection officers; the lived experience of the abandoning mother and
the abandoned child; and finally how it is understood in the context of Western biomedical
principles and those of indigenous African ancestral beliefs. I suggest that child
abandonment has been individualised and medicalised in South Africa. Individualised, in
that it has been termed a problem that falls entirely within the domain of poor women, and
frequently that these women are young teenagers. Medicalised in that a social behaviour that
is not new, is increasingly being defined in medical terms through the portrayal and labelling
of the abandoning mother as emotionally unstable and criminally insane. I argue that this has
been done in an attempt to motivate for stricter surveillance and control over women’s sexual
reproductive health and to divert attention from the state’s role in addressing this growing
social challenge.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/17064 |
| Date | 02 March 2015 |
| Creators | Blackie, Deirdre Elizabeth |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
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