(Richter & Desmond, 2008,p. 1022). Circumstances leading to households
becoming ‘child-headed’ in sub-Saharan Africa are believed to be related to
the HIV-epidemic. With an estimated 5.6 million people infected, South
Africa’s epidemic is the largest in the world (UNAIDS, 2010, p. 28).
Double orphanhood in particular is generally linked with HIV/AIDS. In
2008, the percentage of double orphans more than doubled since 2000
(from 2% to 4.6%) (Meintjes & Hall, 2010, pp. 102103).
Children in child-headed households are often poorer than children in
adult-headed households (Donald & Clacherty, 2005),have emotional pro-
blems related to the death of caregivers (MacLellan, 2005), and have diffi-
culty accessing social services (Luzze & Ssedyabule, 2004). Although many
of these problems are similar to those of orphaned children, the problems
of children in child-headed households are perceived of as more extreme
and unrelenting (Foster, 2004, p. 72). They also experience unique pro-
blems due to the absence of an adult caregiver such as the responsibility for
younger siblings. This may involve a great deal of stress and anxiety in
children’s lives. Children in child-headed households are further viewed as
‘deprived’ of parental guidance, support and protection (van Dijk, 2008).
In my study, only a few households received some form of support from
relatives. Most children did not receive any noteworthy support from
family or community members. (For information on support from rela-
tives, community members and state support to child-headed households,
see van Dijk & van Driel, 2009, 2012.)
The overall aim of the study was to provide more insights into coping in
child-headed households from children and young people’s own perspec-
tives. These insights are vital in developing suitable support for such
households. As child-headed households are a relatively unexplored
phenomenon, my fieldwork had an ethnographic nature. The fieldwork
involved three periods for a total of one and a half years (between
December 2003 and May 2006) in the area of Ibhayi, one of the former
black townships in Port Elizabeth. Port Elizabeth is situated in the Eastern
Cape, which is one of the poorest provinces, with 7 million inhabitants,
who are primarily Xhosa-speaking (Butler, 2004,p. 42). The Eastern Cape
further has among the highest percentages of orphaned children and child-
headed households. Twenty households participated in this study, in which
most household members had been under the age of 18 when the household
became child-headed.
In locating child-headed households, I was dependent on people who
knew the area well. At the start of my fieldwork, some people working for
community based organisations (CBOs) or non-governmental organiza-
tions (NGOs) in the area were sceptical about my research; they said that
Mission Impossible 65