Abstract
This article is based on a narrative study involving six adolescent heads of households and their siblings from an informal township and a rural village in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, focusing on how they construct their sense of self and family. The article explores the stories emerging from the study about the relationship between children in child-headed households and adults in the wider community. While these young people do experience networks of support, perceptions of hostile adult surveillance emerged as an unexpected competing dominant theme. Furthermore, this surveillance is particularly gendered, with girls positioned as ‘whores’ and boys as ‘thugs’. It is suggested that this pejorative policing may be indicative of high levels of anxiety about the disintegration of family and community life.
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