Mothers, daughters and sexual agency in one low-income South African community
Section snippets
Theoretical point of departure
Social constructionism is advocated to be the theoretical perspective that accommodates and enhances the diversity of human sexuality (Tiefer, 1995; Vance, 1992; Weeks, 1986; Wyatt, 1994). Although social constructionism is not a homogeneous and singular framework, most social constructionist sexuality researchers (e.g., Kelly & Kalichman, 1995; MacPhail & Campbell, 2001; Shefer, Strebel, & Foster, 2000; Tiefer, 1995; Tolman et al., 2003; Vance, 1992; Weeks, 1986) align themselves with the
Findings and discussion
As mentioned above, one of the most important findings of the current study was that when the adolescent participants in this study talked about sex and sexuality, they included their mothers in their stories. In this article the focus is on HOW this particular group of adolescent girls represented their mothers’ impact on their sexual behaviour; i.e., what were the explicit and implicit messages that they received from their mothers about sex and sexuality, and how did they respond to these
Conclusion
In the above section it was argued that mothers can contribute in powerful ways to their daughters’ limited sexual agency. In their communications about sex, mothers’ construed sex as being dangerous for young women, something that they do not want to hear about. However, they also indicated that it is a topic they expect their daughters to talk to them about. Daughters responded to these double messages by not disclosing any aspect of their sexuality to their mothers, denying the sexual
Acknowledgements
This research was supported in part by the Human Sciences Research Council (South Africa) and the Harry Crossley Fund. The authors would also like to thank the young women who were willing to share their stories with us and who thus made this research possible.
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The authors are mindful of the fact that the use of racial categories in South African scholarship is controversial: such categories are socially constructed and carry important social meanings (Swartz, Gibson, & Gelman, 2002). Leading South African psychological researchers (see for instance Shefer et al., 2000; Swartz et al., 2002) have argued that the use of such categories in social research is important in that it serves to highlight the impact that Apartheid had on specific groups of people. In this paper the category of “black” will be used to refer to all South Africans disenfranchised under Apartheid. The category “Coloured” is used to refer to South Africans said to be of diverse and mixed racial origins.