Children’s responsibilities in a Brazilian community: Citizenship as care practices

Abstract

This article discusses children’s responsibility in care practices from a relational perspective. The aim is to understand how responsible action takes place and is experienced in the lives of children who reside in a community in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We interrogate the universalist sense of the notion of responsibility regarded as a juridical duty to be met in order that children’s citizenship can be validated. An ethnographic research project with children from 4 to 12 years of age was carried out over a period of 5 months. The results show that children’s actions address moral issues referring back on what they judge to be valuable to secure in relevant relationships rather than on learnt prescribed rules of behavior. The analysis points to the importance of foregrounding the affective and relation dimension of children’s citizenship illustrated here as caring practices in processes of interdependence.

Introduction

In this article we deal with the issue of child responsibility from a relational perspective. From this theoretical standpoint responsibility calls forth the relevance of the other, intersubjective dependence and care as its constitutive aspects. Here we analyse and discuss how responsibility takes place in the lives of children living in a Brazilian poor neighbourhood using an ethnographic methodology that allowed the establishment of a close relationship between children and researcher. The notion of responsibility has been often related to adults’ lives only corroborating the exclusion of children from the public and political arena. It seems, however, necessary to interrogate how the notion of responsibility interrogates conceptualizations of modern childhood and conventional intergenerational difference as well as the notion of children as citizens-to-be (Jans, 2004; Lister, 2008; Morrow, 2008; Such and Walker, 2004).

For a long time, psychological theories of human development and classical socialization theories have associated responsibility with an idea of cognitive and moral maturity indicating the relevance of the social processes that seem to contribute to the acquisition of such capacities from childhood to adult life. From this point of view children would be incapable of taking up responsibilities and/or would be regarded as irresponsible, immature and vulnerable. Adults would be charged responsible for their own and children’s lives. Nowadays the move to deconstruct the obviousness of such a paradigm that purports childhood as a natural and universal stage of life, as well as children as passive objects of socialization in an adultcentric social ordering (James and Prout, 2015 [1997]), has argued that children actively exercise responsibility and defy the social order (Qvortrup, 1994; Idem).

Although the definition of responsibility has not always been precisely conceptualized within childhood studies, we note that, in general, it is associated to the concept of duty, specially in what concerns the balance between child rights and duties.In this vein, it is argued that if children are competent enough to exercise their rights, this same competence can be deployed in the assumption of responsibilities as duties (Lockyer, 2008). In this sense, it is expected that children, in the same way as adults, can exercise their autonomy and carry out their responsibilities on the basis of their acquired competence and reflexive judgement so that their rights can be recognized. The theoretical position that associates responsibility with the notion of duties stems from the Kantian philosophical tradition which presupposes that self-regulation mechanisms, autonomy and reflexivity constitute the main attributes of the rational and responsible individual (Kant, [1785] 2004), whereas affectivity, reciprocity and intersubjective interdependence have hardly any relevance to the issue of responsibility.

Here, in this study, we agree with Cockburn (2013) that this conceptualization of responsibility associated with the fulfilling of an individual duty offers little insight about how people really live and exercise their responsibilities and what sort of moral considerations come into dispute along this process. Balagopalan (2018) also indicates that the fixing of autonomy within the exercise of responsibility hampers the exploration of relationalities unrelated to reason as far as children’s lives are concerned. For this and other authors, effective responsibilities, incarnated as relational practices, involve aspects that go beyond child autonomy, competence and independence, and include interdependence, care, reciprocity, conflicts and affective exchange with other people as important aspects in the exercise of responsibility (Balagopalan, 2018; Cockburn, 2013; Day and Evans, 2015; Evans, 2010, 2011; Francis-Chizororo, 2010; Lister, 2007, 2008).

The empirical research here allowed for a close relationship to be developed between the first researcher and children living in a poor urban neighbourhood in the city of Rio de Janeiro, a territory characterized by a very precarious social and urban infrastructure where shared help and social conviviality among neighbours remain important and significant aspects of family and community life. In the present study we use the notion of relational responsibility, once we consider that it can help us to understand the positions assumed by children as they are confronted by the demands of others in their social relationships and have to take into account the social and cultural norms of the localities where they live.

Responsibility as relational, interdependent and affective caring practices

Children’s relational responsibility is being understood here following Tronto’s feminist conception of the ethics of care, highlighting the importance of caring for those whom we worry about and who are around us. For Tronto (2013), relational responsibility requires a set of facts and concrete circumstances, which involve details of real and experienced relationships when moral judgements take place. Responsibility, from the author’s perspective, is associated with the engaged involvement with other people, with how much we care about them, highlighting the complexity of moral daily issues that affect social relationships. Under this perspective, the focus of responsibility practices is not the criteria of the caretaker’s good performance and her subjective attributes, but the fact that every human being is always in relation with other human beings and thus has the possibility of taking care and of being taken care of.

Tronto (2013) argues that attitudes of care come from care practices. Along with the author’s argument, we understand that children’s responsibilities do not derive solely from an autonomous subjective disposition, built up as a code of rules to be learnt and internalized, but rather can be the outcome of experiences shared and practiced with other people. By situating responsibility in this way, we transfer the importance given to an idealized subjectivity, to be attained according to pre-given moral standards of individual conduct, to the way that children respond to what they perceive about others’ needs, how they are affected by them and how they get along to take care and be taken care of.

Bartos (2012) pointed out that ‘the framework of care elucidates concrete ways in which children’s agency can be better understood through interrelations, particularly with their families and their physical environment, rather than solely as a move towards independence, autonomy, and individualization’ (p. 164). Some studies that have as background discussion the interwoven relation between participation, rights, responsibilities of children and caring, reveal that many activities that children already perform in their daily lives are linked directly to how they are affected and relate to the care of those around them (Bjerke, 2011; Brobbey, 2011; Colonna, 2015; Day, 2017; Dellazzana and Freitas, 2012; Francis-Chizororo, 2010; Hunleth, 2017; Morrow, 2008; Pires, 2012, 2014; Punch, 2001; Such and Walker, 2004).

In contexts and social groups where the family is seen as the basis of the moral, psychological and economic basis for individual survival and where children intensively share the activities of the community, care practices were observed as common in the daily activities of children and important for the survival of their families (Brobbey, 2011; Colonna, 2015; Francis-Chizororo, 2010; Hunleth, 2017). In these circumstances, children and young people cared for other children, cared for sick parents and relatives and actively contributed to domestic activities at home. In Ghana, Brobbey (2011) showed that in many families where communal use of resources such as land, cooking utensils and just one family house is a common feature, children’s responsibilities are inseparable from the families’ survival strategies. In Luzaka, capital of Zambia, Hunleth (2017) carried out a long ethnographic study, which revealed children’s social actorship having an essential role in caring for adult family members with tuberculosis or HIV. Colonna (2015) shows that in the neighbourhoods of the suburbs of Maputo, Mozambique, it is very common to find children who, without the supervision of an adult, are comfortable in the streets with a baby tied to their bodies or hand in hand with another child who is still very small.

In Latin America, Garcia et al. (2015) have also shown that in the indigenous communities of Mbyá, Argentina, the supervision and the care of young children is not exclusively carried out by parents, but depend on the attentive eyes of elder siblings and cousins who are children. In the village Laranjeira Ñanderu, in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, Gutierrez (2016) has noted that kaiowá children have a significant role in the household chores, such as sweeping, cleaning, searching for water, feeding the animals and caring for the younger siblings. In Catingueira, a small town in the country, Pires (2012) has shown that a baby already wanders about in town not necessarily in the hands of its parents or other adults, but in the ‘trustworthy’ hands of other children, specially girls close to the baby’s family.

These studies provide evidence about how children’s responsibilities emerge as care practices towards other people. These actions envolve feelings and are justified on the basis of the nature of children’s relationships with their adults and folk. They point at the importance of the local cultural logics and children’s sense of cultural and familiar belonging. In what follows we present our empirical study which aims at analysing how children who live in a urban community in Rio de Janeiro experience, narrate and justify their responsible actions towards others.

Tbe methodology of the empirical study

The study is based on an ethnographic research carried out with children between 4 and 12 years of age along 4 months in a poor urban neighbourhood of low income in the city of Rio de Janeiro. For many people who do not live there, especially those inhabiting the formalized spaces of public investment, the place where this research was carried out could be called a ‘favela’. In the city of Rio de Janeiro, ‘favela’ is grossly characterized as a place of lacks – urban, social and legal – and as a homogeneous landscape of very simple and rudimentary houses. A multiplicity and a variety of social networks animate life inside these communities who also have their own representations about themselves and their differential status in the city (Souza, 2009). The children in this study did not identify the place where they lived as a ‘favela’, nor did they see themselves as inhabitants of a ‘favela’. According to them, these terms are often associated with stigma and preconceptions concerning the poor population. Therefore, it seemed relevant to us that we adopted the children’s point of view concerning where they lived, as this revealed the nature of their relationship to the place where they lived and how they elaborated their own self image. We have named this locality as an urban poor community whose territory has been appropriated by homeless people to build their houses. It has a dense population whose educational, economic and social indicators are below the city’s average. It is a community whose social life is intense based on significant and valued relationships of reciprocity with neighbours and the local people. The children of this community often wander about freely, play in the areas where there are no buildings, streets and small coins, and visit their friends at their homes. The majority of these children attend the state local school.

The initial contact of the first researcher was with this school. It has about 500 students who attend in two different shifts, morning and afternoon, from pre-school to the sixth year of the Fundamental Cycle of Education. Children’s ages go from 4 to 12 years, and the vast majority is Black whose families have very low economic income. In the first 2 months the first researcher was almost daily at school at playtime, and also in two of the classrooms of the students in the different shifts. At playtime the first researcher interacted freely with children, played and chatted with them. The children were very curious with the researcher’s presence and used to invite her to play with them. This situation propitiated a closer interaction and a trustworthy relationship between the first researcher and the children, so that the latter also began to share with the researcher what they did at home, their family troubles, their secrets and also their thoughts, preferences and wishes.

In the following months some children began to invite the first researcher to accompany them from school to home. Most children went on foot, usually in a group of other children, and sometimes with a known adult. Many children looked for the others’ company to go home, so that they could walk together chatting, playing, and even, fighting. They also used to interact with the people on the streets whom they seemed to know. Along the period where the first researcher walked home together with the children in the community, she noted how often they stayed by themselves at home as parents were out working; at home they carryied out house tasks and looked after their siblings. This stood out as a significant part of these children’s daily lives.

The experience of walking with the children back home from school in the streets of this community expediently favoured a keener perception of children’s daily lives, fears, wishes and commitments. Porter et al. (2010) have remarked how sharing narratives with children as they routinely take their ways home amounts to an experience which is revealing of their own constructions and elaborations about what goes on in the community and in their daily lives. Besides, such a practice of walking together with children allowed that their actions could be captured ‘in the act’ (Goldman, 2003), as it takes place, once they can account for their actions as they occur.

The lead researcher did not take notes as they walked, but in some occasions she asked children to use the tape recorder as they walked home. All the conversations and the taped audios were eventually written down and analysed. The discussion of the results in the following section aims at highlighting some key aspects of children’s daily routines in this community as revealed by their conversations with the first researcher both at school and as they wandered about in the community streets. Children’s narratives about their daily lives have shown the dynamics of their commitments to their families, siblings and other people of this community.

Responsibilities in children’s daily life in a Brazilian community

This section discusses how children’s responses of caring for others in their daily life emerge and how children justified why they should act so. The results of the empirical research are presented under three different subsections according to the nature of the situations lived by the children, the people involved in the relationship with them and the context where these relationships took place. In the first section, we have examined children’s care practices among sisters; in the second, children’s actions in domestic life; and in the third section, children’s care practices with a non-familiar adult, in this case, the first researcher.

The practice of responsibility among sisters: ‘She is my sister . . . I take care of her as if she had come right out of me’

The practice of care among sisters called our attention as we noted how children of the same family used to come to and leave school together. We wanted to approach these children to know more about how caring among them developed, how children understood what they should do and how they justified their actions. The most noteworthy situations involved three families, which are here presented: Sisters Jaqueline, Gisele and Julia; sisters Mel and Evelyn; and sisters Adrielly, Ana and Danielle.

Jaqueline, Gisele and Julia, of 12, 9 and 6 years of age respectively, live 1 km away from school and come and leave from there together. We learnt that they were sisters when the youngest showed the first researcher a cloth doll that her older sister had helped her to make. Julia talked enthusiastically about her sister’s abilities to sew and also commented that the latter helped her with her homework. Their parents are working when the sisters get home in the afternoon, so it is Jaqueline who helps them with their homework, heats up the food that their mother has cooked and sends them to take a shower.

One day as we walked home from school, Jaqueline, who was carrying the school sac of her youngest sister on her back, answered my question about what it was like to take their sisters home. ‘Boring’, she responded promptly. After that, she laughed and as she went on talking it became clear that what was ‘boring’ was the fact that her sisters did not always obey her straying away as they walked home. She thought that could be dangerous as they could be run over. That would be ‘horrible’, she said. She would not like to see them hurt, or run risks, though she realized she could not control them totally. Jaqueline’s desire to get home safely is confronted with the eventful journey they had to make including her sisters’ capricious behaviours. Therefore, taking their sisters home is a risky activity which the caring practice seems to impose (Morrow, 2008).

Concerning the relationships between the sisters Mel and Evelyn, 8 and 6 years of age respectively, what seemed noteworthy was the position taken by the elder sister resembling a parental figure. This was evidenced 1 day as they walked home with the first researcher. Mel and the researcher were walking ahead of Evelyn who was following at a distance with her peers. As they approached home, Mel asked loudly: ‘Where is my daughter’? Questioned by the first researcher, she explained that: ‘Yes, Evelyn is my sister, but it is as if she is my daughter’, ‘cause I look after her as if she has come right out of me’.

In this situation, she told the researcher that her mother is a very loving person and that she liked to be like her. In the absence of mothers, it is common for the older sibling to assume the parental position of care and affection for the younger children in the family (Carreño and Ávila, 2002). Rather than assume a maternal position towards her sister, Mel seems to relate to her in a visceral way, a part of her own self. The very close relationship between the two sisters was immediately noticed by the researcher who also noted how they shared their clothes, negotiated which programmes they were going to watch on the tv and had secrets between them that they did not share even with their parents.

Notwithstanding the clear maternal role of Mel towards Evelyn, these positions were not crystallized and, sometimes, the younger sister made the point of being the one who took care of, when, for instance, she combed Mel’s hair or helped her in tidying up the bedroom. She also put herself in the position of her sister’s accomplice by not telling Mum what mischiefs she had been involved with at school. Both of them seemed to be concerned to ‘help’ each other, though these helping practices were not symmetrically shared and divided.

The other set of sisters’ relationship, among Adrielly, Ana and Danielle, of 6, 8 and 10 years of age also helps us to identify situations that involve care, cooperation and empathy among elder and younger sisters. In one situation that the eldest was held up at school for her misbehaviour, the other sisters did not leave school until Adrielly could go home justifying that: ‘I’ll go home when my sister can go as well’. The younger sisters also made up their minds not to tell their mother what had happened as they could see how upset their sister was. However, sisters’ demonstrations of solidarity and empathy towards one another did not hamper teasing and disagreement among them. In this family, they often called the other by provocative nicknames, besides pinching and pushing each other. This is revealing about the quality of the caring relationship among them, which is neither static as it changes from being cared of to taking care of, nor exempt of tensions or conflicts. Although in the situation above it was the eldest sister who had been protected by the younger ones, it was often her who exerted more power over the others. It was also her who had received from the parents the delegation to ‘watch over the younger ones’ thus standing in a position of authority in relation to them and being recognized as such by the family.

In relation to the caring practices carried out by the sisters, family membership seems to be a relevant factor in conditioning how these will be fulfilled (Finamori, 2015). It was shown how one’s position in the sibling relationship may affect the dynamics of power relationships among them and towards their parents. Also, it seems that children understand what they should do as they take part and experience the normative constructions of belonging to the same kinship group and one’s position in it.

Children’s responsibilities to the home environment: ‘I like to clean the house to please my mother!’

In the daily life of the children most of them took part and carried out domestic chores as it has been shown in other places as well (Brobbey, 2011; Colonna, 2012; Pires, 2012; Punch, 2001). In our study, we investigated how children developed their responsibilities towards domestic life and their parents, how they understood what was important and necessary for them to do and what moral justifications they provided for what they did.

In an informal conversation with a group of girls of 11 years of age who were trying to fix a place and date for them to meet outside school one of them explained that she was not able to come because she had to clean the bathroom and the yard. Then the first researcher asked her about her daily routines and she answered: ‘Do you know how it is that we have to bathe daily? It is the same, I have to sweep the floor everyday’. She then commented how doing that she was able to help her family, as their parents worked all day and her granny, who lives with them and is old, cannot do all by herself. She said: ‘It’s a way to help, isn’t it? We stay all day at home and my granny is getting old. If each of us does a little bit, the house gets shiny and clean very quickly’.

Ana, 8 years of age, also talked about what she did at home. Besides cooking egg, pasta and rice, she likes to clean the house, sweep the floor and leave the house very clean. She justified: ‘I like to clean the house to make a nice surprise to my mum!’ The girl told the researcher that the mother worked all day and did not have time to do the cleaning or the caring for her and her siblings who looked after themselves to please the mother and make her happy. As Brobbey (2011) pointed out about intergenerational relationships in Ghana, children doing one task or another at home give parents some time off to engage in other income generating ventures. Almost all of this author’s adult interviewees agree to the importance of their children’s contribution to them saying that children do give them some breathing space.

For Michael, a 10 years old boy, he likes to help his mum going to the baker’s shop to buy bread. He said he felt he was seen as a good member of the family as the owner of the bakery often commented on his good upbringing to his father and the latter seemed pleased about it. Michael said it was good to feel that his father was proud of him.

It seems then how the domestic chores carried out by the children, as well as the caring practices among sisters as seen above, are embedded in children’s relationships in the family to which children feel they can contribute positively. For them what the elders – parents, grannies, other siblings – think is important to them. Following Saillant and Gagnon (2001), responsibilities towards the other within the family have a strong symbolic strength since children’s actions are performed towards those others who have a great importance in their own biography.

We also argue that the responsibility taken for the other within family relationships evokes a normative aspect of the family dynamics in this group in that everyone should cooperate and contribute to the domestic maintenance and support. It is expected that children should take up activities such as the care for their siblings as well as domestic activities once their parents are out working to earn their living. Children’s responsible actions are part of the familiar negotiations and agreements in order to preserve family life, its maintenance and wellbeing.

Responsible caring for the non-familiar adult: ‘The auntie who is not from here!’

The responsibility for a non-familiar person was also object of our analysis. In this vein, along our study we could observe how children related to the first researcher who did not have a familiar relationship with them. We were interested in the sort of feelings and actions that children would show towards this non-familiar adult and how they would talk about this relationship and any demands that it posed to them. In what follows we illustrate this point in situations involving two different children.

The first child, Yasmin, 11 years of age, invited the lead researcher to her house. The girl lived in a nearby community so that we had a long walk from school to her home. On this day, other children came together. Roads had to be crossed and at one point, Yasmin suddenly pulled the researcher’s arm and shouted: ‘Auntie, do you want to die?!’ In this situation, Yasmin’s actions aimed at preventing the researcher from being hit by a car that was coming along in the street. The fact that the researcher was walking slowly was associated with being ‘rich, almost a foreigner’ by the other girl, suggesting that she did not know how to walk safely in that area. Although these adjectives are used as descriptors of status and power, in that context they were used by the girl to point out the difference between the researcher and the people who lived in the community.

Yasmin was also very concerned about the researcher as they walked along dangerous paths in the community and passed by the people involved in the drug trafficking in the area. She asked the researcher to walk holding hands and told the researcher what to do as they passed by the drug dealers. She pointed out that it was good that they could see that someone from outside the community was accompanied by some resident. The vast majority of the communities in Rio de Janeiro are dominated by groups of drug and arms traffickers or by militias who impose their own rules and restrict the free movement of people. In these cases, only a few subjects may have access to certain regions, others must keep their distance at the risk of putting their own lives at stake (Castro and Pérez, 2011). As the researcher became familiar with Yasmim’s daily life, she saw that the girl knew many things about the streets, how to act in each place, giving advice on behalf of the researcher’s safety.

Another example took place in the relationship between Fernanda, a 7 years old girl, and the lead researcher. The girl is very small in stature and frail, but cleverly shifts for herself around walking by herself and knowing very well about the places in the community. Whenever the researcher accompanied her in the way home from school, it was her who guided the researcher to the bus stop where the latter should wait. Fernanda justified her behaviour saying that the researcher should be guided because she could not know her way out and lose herself.

These examples show, first, that the children know the communities where they live well, both in terms of the distinct territories as well in terms of risks, dangers, opportunities and adventures. These children seem to map out the city from the standpoint of their participation in that territory from stories they hear and live and from the collective memories of the place (Castro and Pérez, 2011).

The fact that the researcher to be older was not interpreted by the children as her being a self-sufficient person who could look after herself and be on her own in that area. In that context, it was the researcher who was vulnerable and fragile, not the children, as the conventional representation about children leads one to expect. Rather, children’s demonstrations of protection and care for the researcher seemed to be based on their shared experiences and in the exchange of positive and trusting feelings that the researcher had with the children. Since the beginning of their relationship, a researcher took seriously or what children say and always shows a lot of interest in what they were telling, which has benefited that trusting relationships were established.

Conclusion

The presenttations of the narratives from the children in this study show how children of this community participate actively in their family and community lives. The themes that emerged included responsibility, understood from a relational perspective. This could be observed in situations where children felt interpellated and mobilized by the others’ supposed needs, specially those with whom a relationship of trust was established. Their responsible actions were shown as caring atitudes towards sisters, parents and also, towards the researcher.

Additionally, their caring attitudes seem to be associated with the affective bond with this relevant other whose relationship is valuable and needs to be secured. This was how they accounted for what they were called to do rather than the application of a rule as the right thing to do. The children in our study challenged children’s ‘proper place’ in the conventional social and spatial hierarchy, that is, to be under the tutelage of a responsible adult. Children showed that they themselves were also responsible for other people.

The children showed that the calling for responsible actions like caring is part of their everyday experiences. Their responsible positions are embedded in the way that residents of the community produce their living under the economic and social hardships, albeit regulated by cultural and moral values. In this case, it was evidenced how important it was for the children to have a positive appreciation of their family, the fact of their being recognized by the adults as important members for the maintenance of their homes and, also, the enjoyment of observing their parents’ satisfaction as they shared home activities. In this way it is within the relationships of interdependence seen as positive and worthy that children develop responsible actions towards others rather than invoking a rational judgement about how to apply a prescribed rule of behaviour for each situation. Solidarity, trust and reciprocity played an important part in the way children positioned themselves. More than acting according to the abstract discourses of legal norms, linked to the prototype of an ideal, autonomous and independent subjectivity, the children of our study have showed that they act and deal with moral issues from their learnt experiences with other people. Here, we argue that the criteria to include children in citizenship cannot be uniform, similar for all children of the globe, and these criteria cannot be modelled after the adult’s way of being. Citizenship based solely on the lens of rights and duties excludes children’s ‘experienced citizenship’ (Lister, 2008) and their participation in the familiar, social and collective world where they live is reduced to a trivial aspect. As Balagopalan (2018) noted, standardized and universalist measures only tell a partial story, sometimes decontextualized, and this story does not always correspond to the experiences and the understanding of all childhoods.

Maybe this type of alternative analysis of children’s citizenship can enhance getting closer to how children from different locations are actually living. To recognize the legitimacy of responsibility through the perspective of the care that children exercise in their daily lives seems to be a way to recognize their citizenship as a contextualized and relational practice, and not only as an accomplishment of an abstract and universal duty. Such a perspective, which softens the juridical understanding of international treaties, argues for other descriptors of children’s citizenship, like relationality and the care for the other, divergent from those of an idealized and universal childhood.

Therefore, paradigmatic notions, such as ‘responsibility’, should be questioned so that the experiences of other childhoods can be duly recognized, included and negotiated in national and international public policies. Future investigations are needed to explore how relational responsibility in childhood is acted out in more distant relationships, when the other (adult or child) is not someone who is known and familiar to the child. We believe that children’s responsibilities as care practices can help us to think about the dynamics of moral issues in family and community relationships, but also how this process may affect, and is affected, by other more encompassing relationships of democratic societies.