Each of these traits has a consequence for children.
Poverty
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.
Overwork
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.
Education
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.
Children as caretakers
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.
When children have responsibility for the welfare of others they may
become parentified: that is, they assume responsibilities performed
11
Department of Labour. (2003). Child Labour Action Programme for South Africa (CLAP).Pretoria:
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.
Parent and child
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.
Expectations for the future
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.
Uncertain future
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.
Generation gap
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.
Vulnerability and strength
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.
Suggested responses to the vulnerability of children living in elderly-
headed households
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.
KwaWazee
Evaluation – What is it like to be a child who lives with a granny?
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
Training
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.
Workshop outline
Activity 1: Looking at work
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.
i) Work you do
• 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?
iii) Time for yourself
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.
iv) What could help reduce the work load?
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.
Activity 3: How comfortable are you living with granny?
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.
Part 1: How I came to live with granny
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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