We cannot understand changes in the ideologies and practices of mothering and motherhood without recognizing that such changes must be connected to changes in the nature and experience of childhood. Anthropologists and historians have long pointed to the culturally and historically variable nature of childhood. The different conditions of children’s lives generate different definitions of childhood, and individual children’s subjective experiences of childhood will vary according to the specific understandings and ideals prevalent in any one context. The roles and tasks of children around the world differ, as do views about what is reasonable to expect from a child. This becomes particularly apparent when we look at children in the labour force, and the related problem of children on the street.
Unicef estimates that around the world over 100 million children work, and this figure does not include farm and domestic workers. Twenty-five per cent of children between the ages of 6 and 11 in low — income countries are working and not in school, and of those between the ages of 12 and 16, approximately 60 per cent are working. Over 100 million school-aged children receive no education and over 100 million children live on the street. About 150 million children in the world are malnourished (Unicef 1990). In India, it has been estimated that 22 per cent of male working children start full-time jobs at 8 years or younger, and another 25 per cent by the age of 10. Girls start their working lives earlier, either as maidservants in middle-class households or as housekeepers and care-givers to younger children in their own household. Those in the latter category are surrogate mothers and not remunerated. Over 50 per cent of employed girls receive no cash payment for their work, while only 7 per cent of boys are unpaid. Where girls do receive payment, 96 per cent hand over all their salary to the family, as compared to 52 per cent of working boys (Schlachter 1993).
Two things keep these children working: the economic necessity of parents and the economic advantage of employers. The two are connected. Low levels of wages in the informal and formal sectors of the economy for the urban poor, and especially for adult women, make child labour a necessity in order to bring in enough income to support the family. As the need for an educated work-force grows, children who have been pulled out of school to work, particularly girls who start to substitute for their mothers very young, will be at a particular disadvantage in the labour market. Employers find child labour attractive because children are paid less than adults, they are easier to control and lay off, and they are unable to insist on their rights.
The large numbers of working children in urban environments are related to the problem of children on the street. The available data show that children are on the street in increasing numbers, and it is often assumed that these children are without families and involved in crime and drugs. Recent work on children in urban environments has emphasized the importance of distinguishing between children who simply work on the streets and those who may be working on the streets but are without families or homes.
Among homeless working children, there are different degrees of connection to the family and of marginalization. Some visit their families frequently, preferring to live closer to their place of work with other children, while others do not have the money to travel home. There are also children who have run away or been abandoned. A recent five-country (Kenya, Brazil, Philippines, Italy and India) study by Unicef found that these children had often left home to avoid cruel treatment by a parent or step-parent or because the family had suffered a tragedy such as a parent’s death (Szanton Blanc 1994). The heavy obligation of bringing in money, combined with strict parental control and beatings for the slightest misdemeanour, led many children to flee home. Sometimes such children were lured away from home by another child who could point out the advantages of being independent of parental interference and not having to work under impossible conditions to help support younger siblings. Children from female-headed households were not significantly more likely to be among the homeless, but dislike of step-parents who failed to provide support and affection in return for the child’s contribution to home life was an important factor for many children. In the case of Brazil and Kenya, households that were notionally female headed often had resident adult males in them, compounding the difficulty of correlating female headship with child homelessness. What the study did find was that poverty was the major factor forcing children into work, often at as young as 6 years, and that being in work and being very poor provided the context in which children were forced away from their families. Most of the homeless children interviewed, albeit in the rather different contexts provided by the five countries, expressed a great deal of sadness at having moved away from their families and retained a strong sense of the family as a potentially supportive and loving unit. Many of them had left home because of a lack of support and affection, not surprising in the context of poor families where both parents are working very long hours themselves for very little money.
Children on the streets are vulnerable to exploitation from adults and they are easily drawn into prostitution, drug, alcohol and solvent abuse, gambling and crime. Children are exposed to rough-handling and sometimes brutal treatment by security guards and the police. In Brazil, the killing of street children has been attributed to various so — called ‘justice committees’ said to be made up of off-duty policemen and security guards (Swift 1993), and there have been reports from Colombia of shopkeepers and other civilians killing homeless children and child beggars (Buchanan 1994). Children often move around in gangs, which give some protection and offer a sense of belonging and commitment. The Unicef report on Italy pointed out that children who cannot acquire prestige, recognition and a sense of self at home or in school are particularly vulnerable to the lure of participation in petty crime, gambling, stealing handbags and motor scooters, and handling drugs. There is a strong sense of self at work in being able to manage the hostile urban environment and escape control and/or detection by adults and the authorities. The net result is that children often identify strongly with the violence they experience and subsequently engage in violence themselves (Lorenzo 1993).
Prostitution is a common way to make money for boys and girls. In Nairobi, where strong links between the street children have been observed, girls may be selling sexual services during the day and returning to their ‘community’ at night. These alternative communities or families may involve pairing between girls and boys who consider themselves ‘husbands’ and ‘wives’. However, sexually transmitted diseases are a major health problem. A recent study in Brazil reported that street children engaged in sexual activity with peers and adults from inside and outside their circle. Sex was a means of acquiring money, food, clothes or shelter, but within the peer group it was used for entertainment, pleasure and comfort, as well as to exert power and establish dominance. Of the children interviewed, 42.9 per cent reported having sex under the influence of drugs or alcohol, 39.4 per cent had sexually transmitted diseases, 69 per cent of girls said their friends had been pregnant, 43.4 per cent that their friends had had abortions and 60 per cent of boys reported experience of anal intercourse. Sexual initiation occurred at an early age: averages of 10.8 years for boys and 12.4 years for girls, Many of the sexual encounters street youths described were exploitative or coercive, and girls were particularly vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation. The findings revealed that street youths were more vulnerable than children living at home to sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, and that street girls were more likely to get pregnant and/ or have an abortion (Raffaelli et al. 1993).
Once children are on the street they are vulnerable in all sorts of ways, and this applies whether children are genuinely homeless or not, although those who are homeless are even more vulnerable.
Children on the street are particularly vulnerable to exploitation by adults. The inculcation of some into a ‘culture’ of violence, petty crime and substance abuse reflects the harshness and brutality of their circumstances, as well as the necessity to make ends meet. These children do suffer from emotional deprivation and from a brutal reduction in their life chances, primarily because of their lack of education. However, there is very little direct evidence to suggest that the plight of these children is the result of incomplete or dysfunctional families. Poverty and low wage levels force families into a situation where they must substitute or augment adult labour with child labour, and once that process is established the route to a street existence becomes possible.