FAMILIES IN SOUTH AFRICA

Abstract

Much is written and expressed about families in everyday discourses and currently a surprisingly large amount of research focusing on or directly related to South African families is undertaken.From the number of presentations at the South African Sociological Association's (SASA) 2015 annual conference as well as at the Committee of Family Research (CFR, Research Committee 06) of the International Sociological Association (ISA) and the numerous master's dissertations and doctoral theses relating to aspects of families, it is clear that many young scholars, locally and abroad, hold strong interests in the study of families.Reasons for this interest may include that it often relates to immediate experiences and challenges of everyday life.Adding to this, considerable research on people living with HIV has been undertaken in the last two decades or so (especially on the African continent) and through this much has been learned about intimate sexual and caring relationships within families (see for example Naidoo & Misra 2008).Unfortunately, in our experience, not much of the local research on families is read by public intellectuals, students or even scholars, partly because the literature is embedded in other research agendas and hence difficult to locate.The challenge is thus to make accessible research on families for wider audiences and it is our hope that this issue on families in South Africa will contribute to this undertaking.Over the past few decades there has been much public concern about extraordinarily high levels of intimate partner violence (IPV), rape and child abuse in South Africa.

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