“She’s Here and I’m Not”: Parenthetical Parenting, Hegemonic Masculinity, and the Hidden Geographies of Oppression in the Gauteng City-Region, South Africa

Prevailing societal beliefs about gender constructs and fathering practices perpetuate a hidden geography of infrastructural violence and oppression in the Gauteng City-region of South Africa. Using the frames of hegemonic, failed, and respectable masculinity, we demonstrate how the notion of breadwinning, coalescing with material deficits, often pushes fathers into situations we term parenthetical parenting, in which their relationships with their families and children are relegated to the spatial and temporal margins. We found that the fathers believing they fall short of socially constructed expectations, combined with what are often “transactional” relationships between co-parents and their limited caring experiences, engender a sense of isolation and shame in fathers. Using evidence from sustained engagement with the Gauteng City-region, and with questions of mobility and gender, this article adds to the canon of understanding of masculinity and its relationship to both transit and geography in the Global South, providing insight into the matrices of hidden geographies and oppression that men face in urban contexts today.