Browsing by Author "Matee, Hopolang"

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From Fatherlessness to fatherhood: Experiences of adult Black South African men in the Gauteng Province.
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022) Senwamadi, Jacob Ramasoane Makgoane John; Matee, Hopolang
This study aimed to explore the experiences of Black South African first-time fathers who grew up without their biological fathers, as well as how these men perceive their fathers’ absence to have influenced their experiences of fatherhood. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with five Black first-time fathers between the ages of 25-30. The study followed a qualitative explorative design where the participants were recruited using purposive sampling. The findings of the study revealed that some of the first-time fathers had known their biological fathers’ identities during childhood even though they were not physically or financially present in their lives. Furthermore, they did not form any close relationship with them. The participants reported to have experienced rejection from their fathers while growing up. There was a common thread amongst the participants with regards to the need to feel accepted by their biological fathers. This appeared to be a powerful motivational basis for the men’s’ interpersonal experiences. The experience of rejection in childhood has been found to have many negative effects on an individual’s development later in life. This includes increased aggression, increased internalising of difficulties in adolescence, and psychopathological symptoms in adulthood. It has also been found that individuals with this experience are more likely to hold distorted mental representations that could lead to perceiving rejection and hostility in interpersonal relationships, and to further interpret relationships as being untrustworthy and unpredictable. What the participants experienced in this study is consistent with what has been reported in psychoanalytic literature; fatherhood is defined in connection to the father's function in the Oedipus complex where his function as an intrapsychic construct, also known as the "internal father," and their involvement in child development. It was concluded that in post-apartheid South Africa, numerous factors such as high levels of unemployment, poverty, and inequality are amongst the major determinants of family disruptions particularly among the Black people. The situation is exacerbated by the burden of HIV/AIDS and violence-related mortality. The family and parental practices have been significantly affected leaving so many children growing up without biological fathers, either through rejection or premature death.
The experience of attempting to become a present father: Perspectives of absent Black South African fathers
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Matee, Hopolang
This research investigates the experiences of Black South African fathers who have been absent from their children’s lives, who have attempted to or have reconnected with their children. It was focused on understanding what this process of reconnection entails, as well as the motivations, challenges, failures and successes these fathers experienced. The research was interested in what fathers regarded as a successful or unsuccessful reconnection according to their personal experiences. A qualitative, psychosocial approach for this study was chosen to allow for an exploration of both the social and personal psychological influences on this process of reconnection from the perspective of the seven fathers who participated in the study. These participants were recruited via social media and through purposive, snowball sampling. They were all between the ages of 30-45 years old, and all of them had previously been absent from their child/ren’s lives and had attempted to reconnect or had successfully reconnected with their child/ren. Two of the men had managed to successfully reconnect with their children, whilst the other five had tried and been unsuccessful. Hollway and Jefferson’s (2013) psychosocial approach using the Free Association Narrative Interview (FANI) was used to guide the collection and analysis of data. Two semi- structured interviews that largely offered space for their narratives were conducted with each participant. The research showcased several factors that are important for research that were novel and were found to shape and influence their subjective experiences of this reconnection, such as socio-political factors, cultural influences, socio-economic factors and the intergenerational transmission of past relational patterns to their relationships with their children. This research documents the ways in which these factors intersect in this sample reconnection experiences. Experiences of both successful and unsuccessful reconnection with their children are discussed. Particular attention is given to the participants’ understandings of their fatherhood roles and how such understanding has been reconstructed within this reconnection process. Motivations for attempting to reconnect with their children are presented, alongside the meanings they made of unsuccessful attempts at reconnection. The findings suggest that a combination of both personal and contextual factors influence which fathers manage to form positive fatherhood identities and forge successful reconnections, and which do not.