Faith, Fatherhood, and the Ethics of Care: Exploring Father–Daughter Relationships in South Africa

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis examines how fathers and daughters in contemporary South Africa experience and express care, faith, and emotional intimacy in everyday life. Drawing on qualitative research, it explores the moral and affective dimensions of fatherhood within Christian households, focusing on how love, guidance, discipline, and tenderness coexist in relationships shaped by faith and social change. Rather than approaching fatherhood through dominant narratives of absence or crisis, the study centres fathers who are present and relationally engaged, and it analyses presence as an ongoing moral and emotional practice. The central argument is that emotionally present fatherhood operates as a form of moral formation within father–daughter relationships. Through prayer, conversation, correction, apology, and forgiveness, fathers and daughters participate in shared processes of listening, accountability, and repair. These everyday interactions reveal care as something continually negotiated rather than assumed. Authority and tenderness, autonomy and guidance, are not opposites but tensions that require ongoing recalibration. Faith functions as both an emotional resource and a moral framework within these relationships. It provides shared language for interpreting love, conflict, responsibility, and forgiveness, while also shaping gendered expectations of leadership and respect. Within this moral and affective economy, fatherhood emerges as a relational practice grounded in attentiveness, vulnerability, and ethical striving. Care is not presented as perfection or dominance, but as sustained commitment enacted through presence, reflection, and responsiveness. By centring fathers who are emotionally expressive and spiritually engaged, the thesis challenges deficit-based framings of South African fatherhood. At the same time, it acknowledges the fragility and unevenness of care within families navigating structural pressures and shifting gender norms. Ultimately, the study argues that fatherhood is not a fixed identity but a lived relationship sustained through faith-informed moral reasoning and ongoing emotional labour. Through acts of listening, apology, and renewal, fathers and daughters participate in shaping relational futures grounded in accountability, compassion, and mutual recognition.

Grantor dc:publisher

Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Swartz, Jesme Eugenie

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Majombozi, Ziyanda

Language dc:language.iso

en

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/135791

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/135791