Bibliografía

This section presents the findings from interviews undertaken with social workers, with responses from a small number of parents. In-depth interviews were conducted with all four

24 _{Ritual killing is a common practice in Nigeria where some human parts, such as the breast, tongue, and sexual}

organs are required by witchdoctors, traditional medicine men, for some forms of sacrifices or magical potions assumed to make people rich and/or powerful (Igwe, 2004).

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of the social workers recruited for the study. However, prior to discussing the different sub- themes generated from the findings, Table 11 below provides brief background information of the social work participants in the study. There were four social workers selected for the in- depth interview. Their selection was based on their role as social workers in the family and children unit of the Department of Child Development. Their age, gender, level of education and the years of experience in the department of child development are tabulated below.

Table 11: Social Work Participants’ background information

Social work participants

Age Gender Level of Education Years of experience in dept. of child development SWP1 34 Female University graduate (1st _{degree) 5 years}

SWP2 30 Female University graduate (1st _{degree) 3 years}

SWP3 41 Male University graduate (1st _{degree) 7 years}

SWP4 38 Male University graduate (2nd _{degree) 8 years}

Social workers’ and parents’ have different perceptions of the reasons behind why parents send their children to trade. It is not my intention in this thesis to determine which are the correct interpretations, just to make it clear that the distinctions between the parents’ and the social workers’ perceptions are noticeable. For example, parents highlight the fact that they feel compelled by socio-economic factors to send their children to trade. This could be interpreted in different ways. On the one hand it could be understood as a rational decision because of their economic status, while on the other hand social workers could see it as socio- cultural values possibly influencing them to resort to child trading, rather than seeking other solutions to their economic plight.

Social workers referred to the dilemma that emerges when government adopts children’s rights in its legislation but undermines these rights by supporting a more traditional approach to childhood trading and fails to enforce or support the legislation. While on the one hand it appears that government genuinely wants to reduce if not eradicate child labour with the adoption of child rights, social workers suggested that this can only be possible if government adopts a careful approach to the issue.

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5.5.1 The Family as a Socio-economic Unit

Social workers referred to behaviours that exacerbate child trading as most often influenced by the importance that the community ascribes to gender and roles within the family. For example, participants referred to male children as more valued than females because male children continue the family name throughout their life, while female children resort to their husband’s family name once they are married.

‘Especially because of the issue of this family that must continue. Women, once they are married, their father’s name is dead, because they will start answering their husband’s name; but the men continue to retain their fathers’ name. So, for that name to continue, they will prefer male children than female’ (SWP1).

Participants acknowledge that the cultural pressure to have male children makes some mothers have more children than they can afford to support, which leads to some households having large families. The cause of looking for a particular gender creates pressure on mothers and contributes to the proliferation of large families. Most of the participants said that when these children become too many and beyond the parents’ capacity of care due to lack of adequate funds, their mothers resort to sending the children to trade. While lack of adequate funds which reflects the social status of parents may be the reason for children being sent to trade, the social workers’ social construction is that the lack of funds is directly linked to having a large family which is due to the cultural preference for the boy child rather than girl.

‘The problem is that the culture has allowed them to have as many children as they want. Assuming a woman has girls, she will want a boy because pressure will be on her from the extended family members demanding male children from her because of the fear that if the man dies without the woman having a male child, there will be no continuity of the family name. Because of this perception, the woman will keep reproducing and they will then have many children. She will be unable to care for all the children, so the children are then turned to the streets and markets to start trading’ (SWP4).

‘Sometimes you see these women having a lot of children because they are afraid that if they don’t have the gender their husband and his family need (at least one male child), it will affect their marriage. Because of that fear, they will not stop … sometimes they will have up to six, seven, eight, nine children they never planned for because they are looking for a male child. Sometimes the pressure to have at least one male child

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does not come from the man and his family alone, even the woman’s family contribute to the woman’s decision to have more children’(SWP3).

‘You just feel that you will have many children for you to end up using them for farm work or for labour or something, when you know you cannot take care of them. That is the problem. I think they don’t even think of the fact that they can’t take care of the children, they are sometimes more concerned about the fact that they don’t have a male child and which she may feel does not make her marriage safe’ (SWP2).

Social workers’ construct of the reasons behind a parent’s decision to send their children to trade, (similar to some of the parents’ perceptions)25 points to the cultural value placed on the importance of male children as against females. Parents’ ways of rationalising this cultural value overrides the reality that they may be unable to care for the number of children they eventually have, which can affect the family’s economic condition.

Most of the participants referred to the culture of communal living where parents give their children to extended family members or relations that are more economically fortunate to help take care of their children. Other participants referred to the culture of dependence on members of the extended family to assist in the care of the children when parents have unplanned large families. Participants said that members of the extended family , however, also send the children to trade in order to be able to afford to give adequate care to the children.

‘It is something that has always been part of our society, a kind of communal living, where if a parent happens not to have enough to take care of his family, he can give out some of the children to relatives that they think may be economically comfortable, so that these children can help to care for them, but most times such relatives also send the children to trade’ (SWP3).

‘Having had more children than they were originally prepared for, because of our culture where our relations can also help us take care of our children especially if they live in the city, most parents will give their children to their relations in the city, and the relations will be using these children by sending them to trade in exchange for the care they will receive from these relatives’ (SWP4).

Just like some of the parents, social workers made the link between parents’ own experience of working as children in markets and on farms, and what their expectations were of their own children.

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‘People decide to have many children, having it in mind that, for example, the children will help them in their farm. It is the same mind-set they have when they send their children to trade for them. You just feel like in the past, when many children were born for farm work or for labour or something, you can also have many children now, they will trade’ (SWP2).

Some of the participants said that parents referred to their cultural traditions as an explanation for polygamy and large families, which can adversely affect them as they may not have enough funds to care for their children. This may result in a cycle of transfer in trading.

‘That is the problem, you cannot limit the man because of the culture, they will tell you that their forefathers married as many wives as they wanted because culture demands it, so that is the problem. As the baby is growing the trade is passed on to the baby, it becomes a kind of chain reaction’ (SWP4).

Participants stressed parents’ high level expectation that their children would do what they did when they themselves were young, especially in terms of daily activities. Some of the participants suggested the need to raise awareness so that parents could understand that their children do not need to do what they did when they were young.

‘That is why we are trying to create awareness that for the fact that you sell in the market doesn’t mean that your child must also do the same thing, or your child must also sell in the market’ (SWP3).

‘Because these parents are ignorant, they don’t know that their children have rights, because that is how they grew up, so they feel that just as they grew up, their children should also grow up the same way. That is why I continue to say that they are very, very ignorant’ (SWP1).

SWP1 emphasised this issue by giving the example of a parent she has been sensitising against sending her children to trade, even though the parent had gone through the same experience she is putting her children through.

‘I have a family that I have been talking to for some time now. I told the woman, I said, madam you should not allow your child to do this. She actually went through that situation when she was growing up, she sells in the market, and she now has her own children and she still asks her children to be selling in the market’ (SWP1).

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Some of the participants mentioned that there are members of the family other than the children’s parents (mothers) who also send the children to trade:

‘Both mothers and grandmothers send their children to trade. They do it. It’s not limited to their biological mothers alone’ (SWP3).

‘Because of the extended family system, some parents will give one or two of their children to their mothers, so that their children can also help their mother’ (SWP4). 5.5.2 The Economic Status of Parents

All participants agreed that the socio-economic status of parents plays a significant role in parents’ decisions to send their children to trade. Participants referred to the problem of being unable to earn enough to take care of the basic needs of their family, which affects their ability to care for the needs of their children due to some parents’ unemployed status, or for others who were employed, low wages. Participants acknowledged that parents were forced to rely on their children’s trading activity to provide for the family.

‘Because parents that are doing well will not go and buy a bag of pure water to give to her child to sell, so sometimes you have to look at that area of poverty. They send them out to go and hawk because there is no money. Basically it is an economic problem, where some of these parents don’t even have a decent job’ (SWP3).

‘Parents ought to take care of their children, but they cannot, because they are poor, they don’t have the money, so instead of the parents taking care of the children, it is the children that are taking care of them, because they feel it is their right’ (SWP4). A number of participants referred to efforts made by the government, through free enrolment of children in school, to stop children being able to justify trading by using the excuse of not being able to pay their school fees.

‘Some may say we don’t have money to go to school, that’s why we are trading. Government at times tries to put them in school and care for them, especially government schools, which most of these children are often enrolled in’ (SWP2). There was some discussion about the prevention of trading through poverty alleviation, employment opportunities and financially supporting parents through the provision of loans. All the participants agreed that wherever parents are gainfully employed and/or provided with

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enough funds in the form of a loan, there is poverty reduction. This, they felt, might be a help in reducing the rate at which children are sent to trade by their parents.

‘The government can fully employ them (the parents), so that if they have money, they won’t send their children out to go and sell for them’ (SWP2).

‘If you ask some of these parents, they will tell you they don’t have a job and they also don’t have enough money to start off their own business. So, the little money they have, they are using it to send their children to trade’ (SWP3).

‘Some parents capitalise on the fact that they did it when they were young to send their children to trade. Assuming government is able to provide loans for them to start a reasonable business they may stop sending their children. The government can even deal with them more appropriately if their children are found trading, because they are being financially supported by the government, so they will have no reason to send their children’ (SWP1).

However, participants were also of the notion that child trading is exacerbated because parents believe that they have full rights over their children and they are ignorant of their children’s rights.

5.5.3 Awareness of Rights within the Family

Participants reported that children’s inability to refuse doing what they are told to do by adults, especially their parents, is because parents have prioritised their own rights over their children’s. They said that one of the reasons parents do not always seek their children’s opinion on matters that concerned them was because the children’s feelings are never considered, neither are the children given the opportunity to make choices. They emphasised parents’ beliefs that they have all the right to send their children to trade, despite the children’s feelings.

‘Parents think that their children are too young to have a choice. I don’t think it ever occurs to them that they should ask their children what they feel about what they are doing, especially as children, because they think that they are giving their children the opportunity to become spoilt children’ (SWP2).

‘They even feel that yes, because I gave birth to this child, it means that this child should sell from here to there, do this, do that. This is very wrong as they don’t allow the children to choose whether to sell or not’ (SWP3).

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‘You know, in this part of the world where we come from, parents, not only parents even, every adult is always right where children are. Adults don’t ever think about what the children think or feel when they are ordering the children to do what they demand them to do. In short, a child has nothing to say where adults are concerned; they are not given that opportunity because adults feel that the children don’t know anything. And even if they do, they are too young to take decisions’ (SWP4).

A few of the participants identified ignorance as one of the reasons parents send their children to trade. They referred to parents being uninformed about the rights of their children in matters that concerned the children. Some of the participants felt that the parents’ ignorance affects the children.

‘I continue to say that it is ignorance on the part of the parents that is making them send their children to trade. They feel it is their right, overlooking the right of the child’ (SWP1).

‘Children are not in school. When they are not in school, they are not educated, ignorance continues. The ignorance of their parents, the illiteracy of their parents is continuously manifested by the children as they are sent to trade’ (SWP4).

‘It has affected them because a child that is supposed to be in school at a particular hour, and you send that child to go and sell for you, he has missed that day’s lesson and will not get it back. That is pure ignorance on the part of the parent to have deprived that child’ (SWP2).

Some of the parents participants stated that it is not considered that their children should have any rights as this will affect their moral behaviour to their parents as they may become disrespectful and disobedient.

‘They are my children and they are supposed to do what I say and what I send them to do. I don’t know the type of right you are saying that children have, which means they will not listen to us their parents then when we talk to them’ (FGP2).

‘If you give this children too much freedom, before you know, they will not respect you again, they will start talking to you as if you are their mate. That is why I don’t tolerate any nonsense from them’ (PP3).

The parent participants are of the view that children’s attitudes should be managed, otherwise the children become disrespectful and uncontrollable if not restricted. This indicates that

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parents are less aware or not aware at all of the rights of their children. The parents’ perception is that children are not in a position to decide nor are they to be put in such a position.

5.5.4 Social Workers’ Perception of the Impact of Child Trading