‘What can I do, the child is already here?’ Caregivers, gender, poverty and the contradiction of care in supporting teenage mothers at school

In the context of teenage pregnancy and early childbearing, caregivers play a vital role in facilitating teenage mothers’ return to school. Within the gendered constructions of childcare, it is mainly women who act as caregivers. In South Africa many of these women are poor and rely on government support including child support grants and old age pensions. Drawing from a project titled ‘Keeping teenage mothers in school’, we conducted in-depth interviews with 12 female caregivers in a poor African working class context to establish how care is negotiated within gendered, material and cultural realities. We argue that caregivers are indispensable in the project to support teenage mothers’ return to school. Caring for the children of teenage mothers, however, is highly gendered and located within cultural norms, exacerbated by structural inequalities and material disadvantage, thereby placing caregivers in precarious conditions as they reproduce gendered poverty.