Unity In My Community Essay

INTRODUCTION
South African townships are the most vibrant and jubilant places to walk their streets. The atmosphere is filled with a sense of belonging and unity while being one of the diverse area in the country. Like in most townships, people are still living under life threatening circumstances and still have courage to be resilient and prevail through those situations.
Most people still live in over-crowded households where there is existence of more than one generation. To be precise, the most prominent family structures are nuclear extended families. However, throughout the years the community has witnessed a hike in the number of child-headed households. There’s many factors that contribute to the structure of families and human existence

This will further explore the available support systems and coping mechanisms that families poses or practice in my community.
Nature of family life and structure in my community
Families often belong to formal or informal groupings, which meet for mutual activity and support. Such groups connect individuals and families to the larger society and buffer them from its stress (Carter, B & McGoldric, M. 2005 ;19). There are various types of families that exist in my community, those families are nuclear, extended, single-parent child-headed and even skip-generation households.
According to white paper on families (2012; 3), nuclear families are characterized by parents and their biological and adoptive children only. In my community such families are a product of cohabitation and young married couples. Cohabitation is one of the very predominant family setting. This family setting is most influenced by poverty as partners stick together to acquire financial security from their partners. Other family structures are extended once, where you find multigenerational individuals occupying one house. Most of these family are consequences of apartheid and labor