{"id":500651,"date":"2021-06-25T17:00:41","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T15:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=500651"},"modified":"2021-06-25T23:42:47","modified_gmt":"2021-06-25T21:42:47","slug":"marriage-and-divorce-are-shifting-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/500651\/marriage-and-divorce-are-shifting-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Marriage and divorce are shifting in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africa is seeing a decline in traditional ‘nuclear’ families, with similar shifts in divorce and marriage rates being seen over the last decade.<\/p>\n

This is according to a white paper on families published by the Department of Social Development this week, which considers data collected from Home Affairs, Statistics South Africa and other government sources up until 2018.<\/p>\n

“Registered marriages have been declining over a period of ten years 2008-2017, except for a slight increase of 0.6% between 2016 and 2017. Thus, the lowest number of marriages were reported in 2017 (135,458) from a high in 2008 (186,522),” the department said.<\/p>\n

A similar decrease is seen in customary marriages, and in 2017, just 2,588 customary marriages were registered at the Home Affairs. This is a steep drop from the 16,003 customary marriages recorded 10 years earlier, in 2008.<\/p>\n

Other metrics show that there has been a steady increase in divorce rates across the country.<\/p>\n

“The total number of divorces fluctuated over the period 2008 to 2011 followed by a consistent increase from 2012 to 2017, with the highest number observed in 2009 (30,763) and the lowest in 2011 (20,980),” the department said.<\/p>\n

“In 2017, about 155 divorces were granted for same-sex couples of which 115 were female couples and 40 were male couples. The observed crude divorce rate was 0.4 divorces per 1,000 estimated resident population in 2017.”<\/p>\n

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Together, the decrease in marriage and increase in divorce has led to a sustained decline in couple-headed households for some time in South Africa, the department said.<\/p>\n

“By the year 1996, couple headed families were already low compared to the rest of the world, at 54.7%, and single-headed families constituted 47.3%.<\/p>\n

“During the short period of 18 years, a \u201ccrossover\u201d happened, with couple headed families dipping lower than single-headed families.”<\/p>\n

About a fifth (20.9%) of all children did not live with their parents in 2018. By comparison, one-third (34.4%) lived with both parents.<\/p>\n

Most children, however, lived with their mothers only (41.4%) while a far smaller percentage (3.3%) of children lived only with their fathers.<\/p>\n

“This situation has not changed much from what was recorded in 2007 when children who stayed with both parents were recorded to be 34.3%, mothers only 39.9%, fathers only were 2.8% and neither parents were 23%,” the department said.<\/p>\n

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Read: The cheapest and most expensive places to live around the world \u2013 including South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa is seeing a decline in traditional ‘nuclear’ families, with similar shifts in divorce and marriage rates being seen over the last decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":443748,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-500651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500651"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":501387,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500651\/revisions\/501387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}