|
Main Page Elastic Family Market Children versus Street Children Drug Use Support Networks Health Organizations Pictures Other Countries |
Market Children vs. Street Children Because of the great poverty of Honduras, it is very difficult to distinguish
street children from non-street children. Anything with four poles and a roof can be a home. Those living in any type of house might not
be better off than those living in the street. Specifically, street children can be categorized in two groups:
· The children working on the streets Market children are children who work in the street. They live with their family in some type of housing. Some attend school if they can. They do errands for their mothers and help care for their siblings. In a common situation, the mother has a stand in a market. Her children will normally wander through the market with small bags of their mother's merchandise. When they make a sale, they return to their mother, give her the money, and get another bag. The whole process continues. · The children living in the streets According to the UN's definition, a street child is: "Any girl or boy...for whom the street (in the widest sense of the word, including unoccupied dwellings, wasteland, etc.) has become his or her abode and/or source of livelihood; and who is inadequately protected, supervised, or directed by responsible adults" (Wittig, Wright, and Kaminsky 1997: p. 810). Street children are children who are no longer in contact with their family. They live, eat, and sleep in the street. No one looks after them. They beg or steal to get money or food. None go to school. Most of the time, these children are runaways, orphans, or abandoned children who either chose or had no choice but to live in the streets. · Girls or Boys? The majority of street children are boys, while there is an almost equal amount of boys and girls as market children. Based on a study by Martha Wittig, James Wright, and Donald Kaminsky (1997) in Tegucigalpa, they found 95%of interviewed street children were boys while 53% of market children were boys. Information for this page came from the following sources: Wittig, Martha. 1994. "Culture of Poverty or Ghetto Underclass?: Women and Children on the Streets of Honduras." Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Sociology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA. Wittig, Martha, James D. Wright, and Donald C. Kaminsky. 1997. "Substance Use among Street Children in Honduras." Substance Use and Misuse 32: 805-827. Wright, James D., Donald C. Kaminsky, and Martha Wittig. 1993. "Health and Social Conditions of Street Children in Honduras." American Journal of Diseases of Children 147: 279-283. Wright, James D., Martha Wittig, and Donald C. Kaminsky. 1993. "Street Children in North and Latin America: Preliminary Data from the Proyecto Alternativos in Tegucigalpa and Some Comparisons with the U.S. Case." Studies in Comparative International Development 28, 2: 81-92. Wright, James D., Martha Wittig, and Donald C. Kaminsky.1995. "Acute and Chronic Morbidity among Street Children in Honduras and the United States". Presented at Nobody's Children: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on Child Abandonment, September 28-30, University of Durham, England.
This website was created by Chrystelle Zweidler, Jeremy Hall, and Michael Lewis. This is a project for Prof. April Brayfield’s Children and Society, a first year English writing seminar at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. We are not, nor claim to be, experts on Honduras. This project was completed with limited resources and in a limited time frame. |