Living with our Bibi “Our granny is always our hope.”
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- Children as caretakers
- Vulnerability and strength
- Suggested responses to the vulnerability of children living in elderly- headed households
- Appendix 1
- Activity 3: How comfortable are you living with granny
Each of these traits has a consequence for children.
Health and development The findings suggest that children living in elderly-headed households do not get enough food and seldom have access to protein. This must be detrimental to healthy growth and development.
It is clear that children from elderly-headed households are overworked. If one applies the South African Department of Labour 11
definition of “more than 3 hours of house work” as detrimental to a child’s health and mental well-being these children, who appear to do much more than three hours a day, are at risk.
Stress Another consequence of poverty is the stress felt by grandmothers and children and the affect this stress has on the relationship between children and their grandparents. It is clear from the findings in this report that children place strong expectations on their grandparents for food, school clothes and materials and even gifts.
It is also clear that when the grandparents cannot respond adequately to these expectations the children feel that life with parents is better than life with granny. Wangila and Akukwe 12 in their study of grandmothers in Uganda talk about how this inability to provide for their grandchildren causes deep stress for grandparents and anger over their helplessness to provide. They point out that this stress affects the relationship between the grandmother and the children.
The findings suggest that even though grandmothers and grandchildren see education as very important, children living with grandmothers do not access education easily because of poverty. In addition, if they do get to school, their progress is hampered, again largely because of poverty.
Another characteristic of the elderly-headed household is that children function as caretakers. Bauman 13 in her study on children caring for ill parents points out the consequence of this.
become parentified: that is, they assume responsibilities performed
11
Department of Labour, Republic of South Africa. p.001 12 Wangila, R. and Akukwe, C. (2006) Africa, AIDS orphans and their grandparents: benefits and preventable hidden dangers. Tsehai Publishers and Distributors: Hollywood, CA. 13
Bauman, LJ Foster G Silver EJ Berman R Gamble I Muchanetta L (2006) Children caring for their ill parents with HIV/AIDS. Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies, April 2006; 1(1): 56–70
more appropriately by an adult, including providing health and personal care, emotional support, caring for siblings and maintaining the household. If the parent is too ill to work, children may feel it is their responsibility to provide for the family. Parentification can include role reversal: that is, the child acting as parent to the parent… Inhibited development and depression are both recognised outcomes when children take on the parenting role (Wallace, 1996), as are delayed development, guilt and low self esteem (Barnett & Parker, 1998). Parentification was associated with more internalizing symptoms and some externalizing behaviors in adolescents (Stein et al. 1999).
Parentification is obvious in the descriptions of the children in this study and it seems clear that this places them at risk emotionally.
The findings suggest that even though children have the responsibilities of an adult they also have to behave like a child. Being subjected to what is sometimes a rigid demand for obedience from their grannies (often motivated by their grandmother’s wish to protect their children) on one hand and yet carrying the responsibility of an adult on the other places them in a difficult and ambiguous position that causes emotional stress.
The children are also confronted by the fact that their grannies expect them to assume the function of their own children (now dead or absent) and to take care of them in the future. The findings suggest that children see this expectation as compromising their own life plans.
A further stress that is added to the lives of children living in elderly-headed households is the uncertainty they feel about their immediate futures. They worry about what will happen to them when their grandmothers die. They have already experienced grief and dislocation and know what it is like, so this fear is even deeper for them.
The worry that a child in this situation faces is that he or she will have to move again and will likely have to live with aunts and uncles in a situation they know from experience is worse than their life with their grandmother.
Another aspect of this uncertainty is that the children fear (quite realistically) that they will not inherit property when their grandmothers die, leaving them with no means to make a living.
Another characteristic of the elderly-headed household is the gap between the grandparent’s generation and the children. It emerges in the conflict between grandmothers and children over time to play and to socialise and rest. Grandmothers seem not to see the importance of this, yet the children point out why they need time for themselves. The conflict causes stress and affects the relationship between children and grandparents.
Some of the discussion about the future also points to a generation gap. Grandmothers expect that they will be looked after but the children know that their ability to do this will be severely hampered because of the missing generation. Parents would have provided the means for further training and income generation and would have taken responsibility for the grandparents.
Each of the traits described above make children living in elderly-headed households vulnerable. They are vulnerable emotionally because of these traits. They are made additionally vulnerable by the grief of losing their parents. A grief that is, as the findings show, still close to the surface and largely not yet dealt with. They are also physically vulnerable because of poverty.
Yet, the study shows that children living with their grandmothers feel, on the whole, loved and cared for in spite of the poverty and stress. Perhaps it is this sense of being loved that results in the resilience that is obvious in what the children say about their lives and themselves.
They have a strong sense of responsibility towards their grandparents, they feel proud that they can work hard and care for their grannies. They feel they have learned skills that other children don’t have and they are clearly good survivors and adaptors.
If we but acknowledge their vulnerability and respond to it appropriately, the resilience they have learned from being a child in an elderly-headed household is very likely to enable these children to become important and valuable adult members of society. The question, then, is whether children living in elderly-headed households receive adequate external support that allows them to manage the stressors in their lives and to preserve the resilience they clearly have.
1. Predictable economic support to alleviate the poverty that children living in elderly-headed households experience. It is clear that this would address both physical and psycho-social needs. 2. Local organisational support that would allow children and grannies in elderly-headed households to support each other. This would reduce isolation and increase the capacity of the elderly and the children to manage their everyday relationships better. 3. Some kind of legal security in the future. This would reduce stress for grandparents and children. This needs to deal with both future care arrangements and land ownership.
Appendix 1 This is the research instrument used with 40 of the children in the study sample. The rest of the information emerged from discussions with children who participated in the accompanying study that looked at the impact of pensions on grandparents and children.
The focus of the research will be on:
• The relationship the children have with their elderly carer • How extended family, peers, neighbours and the broader community respond to their particular family situation • What they are, have, know and can do that other children don’t have because they live with a granny • What they see as the practical and social and psychological challenges because they live with an elderly carer • What are their expectations of a carer and how is this met or not • How the children perceive the future • The effect and impact of previous life experience of the children i.e. multiple loss on the relationship with the grandparent • To try and understand how this type of family where the child is often the ‘strong one’ (also the case with families where children look after ill adults and in child-headed households) is shifting the role and definition of childhood and adolescence. Children as researchers … 9 children from the PSS group will be trained as researchers and were asked to interview 3 or 4 children from their area who live with grandparents.
The main question they will look at is: What is it like to be a child living with a granny?
Explain what research is and give them the ‘mantle of the expert’ by making them all researchers. ‘Mtafiti’
Do you know children who have no parents and who live with grannies – not in KwaWazee? Work with them to think of questions around 3 theme: - Work - Food
- School
i) Ethics – give children a choice - a researcher listens and does not gossip etc
ii) Introductions – how to introduce yourself iii) How to explain what you are doing iv) Record basic information name
bibi’s name who lives in the house and ages school and grade v) How to ask questions
- Give people time to talk - Clarification question - Follow on question vi) Recording the information – notes and then after it do a quick Let them practice doing an interview.
Draw circles with chalk on the floor. What work are you doing in a normal day? As the children tell what they are doing let some of them draw a picture to show each work activity.
• Which work are you doing before school? • Are you ever late for school or not going because of this house work? • Who does work after school? • Are you spending time looking after your grandmother? What do you do for her everyday? • What are you doing if granny is sick? When was the last time she was sick? Is she sick often? Are you helping your granny with any other things that are for her?
Here are some flowers. Put flowers next to the nice work. • Why do you like this work? What makes it good?
Here are some stones for heavy work/difficult work. • Why is it difficult? ii) Work to earn
Ask about work to earn money if it has not come up. • Who is doing work to get money? Show with a bean if you are earning money from any of this work in the circles.
• Why do you do it? What do you need the money for?
What do you do when you have no school work, no house work, nothing that has to be done?
• Do you have enough time for yourself? Show me on a scale from 1 – 10 with your hands.
What could help you to get more time for yourself and to reduce the work load?
Talk in pairs and then share ideas. Activity 2: Who lives with you
Draw a picture of your house and all the people who live in your house. Tell us about the picture.
Give each child a scale on a piece of paper. The scale will be from 1 to 10. 1 is not comfortable at all and 10 is very comfortable. Tell them it will be anonymous. Each child must work alone and show how they would rate their life living with their granny. They then hand them in anonymously.
The papers are collected and we look at the pattern and show them on a common scale.
Most of you are close to here... Why would a child be close to 1? What happens in their life that they feel they feel uncomfortable living with granny?
What would need to happen so they could move up just one place on the scale?
What would need to happen in their life that they feel very comfortable to live with granny? Activity 4: A time line of my life – how I came to live with granny and how I think about the future.
Give each child a long piece of paper. The paper begins where they were born and ends with today. Draw all the places you have lived in. The place where you were born and then if you moved to another place show that. Then show when you came to live with granny.
Have a discussion – how did you come to live with granny? Part 2: My future
Now add a piece of paper to the end of the long piece and explain that this is about their future. They are to think where will they be in 10 years time (or more if they are younger) and draw themselves in their future.
“Imagine yourself here, now as a young boy or girl and then here you are at this place in your life in 10/20 years time.”
“Think about what you would like to be doing in 10/20 years time. “What could get in your way of getting to this place. There may be some stones that you will have to climb over. What could they be?” Draw them and talk about them. Draw how you will or can get over the stones. Activity 5: Power relations
Show the silhouette figures of a baby and a granny (1) Who is depending on who? What is the granny doing for the baby? What is the baby doing for the granny?
Show (2) young child and granny
Who is depending on who? What is the small child doing for the granny? What is the granny doing for the small child?
Who is depending on who? What is the older boy/girl doing for the granny? What is the granny doing for the child?
Who is depending on who? What is the grown up child doing for the granny? What is the granny doing for the grown up child?
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