Father’s Day 2026: The real cost of parenting in SA

OPINION

Every June, South Africa celebrates fathers with cards, braais, WhatsApp statuses and social media posts. But behind the Father’s Day tributes lies a quieter question many dads carry: Can I still afford to be the type of parent I hoped to become?

In South Africa, women remain the primary caregivers in many households. Mothers, grandmothers, aunts and older sisters often do the daily, unpaid work that keeps children fed, clean, comforted, transported and alive.

But Father’s Day does give us a useful moment to ask what fatherhood looks like in 2026, especially in a country where parenting is expensive, jobs are scarce, and many men are still taught that their value as fathers begins and ends with money.

South Africa’s official unemployment rate rose to 32.7% in the first quarter of 2026. Youth labour market figures are even harsher: Stats SA says 4.7 million young people aged 15 to 34 were unemployed, while another 10.6 million were outside the labour force entirely.

The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group’s May 2026 household affordability index put the average household food basket at R5 479.26. It is also estimated that the average cost of a basic nutritious diet for a child was R967.08 a month, while the child support grant was R580.

The quiet pressure on dads

For Mtshali Michael, a working father of three from Johannesburg South, the biggest monthly pressure is transport.

“My transport fee to work and for my kids to school,” he told /explain/.

Asked what he has had to cut back on, he said he has stopped buying “snack-like food” and now focuses on basic food.

In many households, the first things to disappear are snacks, small treats, extras for lunchboxes, weekend comforts and the tiny things children associate with being cared for.

When his children ask for something he cannot afford, Michael said he tries to help them understand “we can’t afford to get everything we like”.

Still, he does not define fatherhood only by what he lacks. To him, being a good father means managing life with what he has and not getting stuck chasing what he cannot afford.

Young fathers meet the pressure early

Mahlomola Mofokeng Jonas, a young father from Mamafubedu in Petrus Steyn, Free State, said he had no real idea how much a baby would cost.

“No, I had no idea,” he told /explain/. “My mind was empty, but people used to say babies are expensive.”

He said the hardest financial moment came when he lost work while his baby was sick. Suddenly, he needed money for emergencies, food, baby food, and nappies, but he didn’t have a stable income.

“These things are costly, and nobody prepared me for that,” he said.

Mahlomola said balancing school, work and fatherhood is hard because he is the only one working. But when his son needs something, he said, he has to “hustle”.

When money shapes whether fathers stay

Dr Tawanda Makusha, senior research associate at the Africa Health Research Institute, told /explain/ that the decline in children living with their biological fathers since 1996 is strongly linked to structural economic pressures, especially unemployment, unstable work and circular labour migration.

The State of South Africa’s Fathers 2024 report found that between 1996 and 2023, the proportion of children living with their biological fathers decreased by 9 percentage points. In 2023, only 35.5% of children lived with their biological fathers, while 40.3% lived with adult men who were not their biological fathers.

Makusha said employment status is one of the strongest predictors of whether fathers live with their children. Men who are unemployed or in unstable work are less likely to live with their children, while migration for work can leave fathers involved but physically absent.

Absence is not always simple abandonment. Sometimes it is poverty, work migration, family conflict, shame and a society that still tells men they are not “real fathers” unless they can provide materially.

Makusha said financial inability can push men to withdraw because fatherhood is still widely defined through money. Non-financial care, such as emotional support and daily involvement, is often undervalued.

The mental cost of the provider script

Clinical psychologist Dr Tumi Mashego, founder of Reba One Wellness, said the pressure to provide can affect fathers deeply because many men have internalised provision as part of their identity.

“Society has placed the expectation on men to be providers, and most have internalised this as the truth and identity,” she told /explain/.

Sometimes, she said, “downgrading might be a necessity”. That could mean changing spending habits, cutting non-essentials or explaining to children, in age-appropriate ways, why the family cannot afford everything right now.

Fatherhood has to become bigger than money

Makusha said policies such as paid parental leave and wider labour protections could help shift fatherhood away from the idea that men are only providers. But those policies must include low-income, informal and contract workers, not only men with stable formal jobs.

That is important because many fathers are not absent from care because they do not care. They are absent because work is unstable, money is short, and society has not built enough support for men to be caregivers as well as earners.

In 2026, good parenting should mean care, honesty, support, presence, and recognising the mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and other caregivers who often shoulder the daily work of raising children. Most importantly, it should mean building a society that stops pretending parents are supposed to do this alone.