The first five years of a child’s life represent a crucial period for their development. That’s when they experience the most rapid cognitive and physical growth that sets the foundation for their wellbeing in later life.
The presence of positive, supporting influences during this phase is critical to a child’s ability to thrive. This fact is also highlighted in the World Health Organization’s Nurturing Care Framework which notes the importance of responsive caregiving in early childhood development.
Yet, in many parts of rural Pakistan, some of our youngest children are at risk of not achieving their potential due to widespread poverty and the prevalence of ‘parenting’ by older brothers and sisters, who are children themselves.
Dr Shelina Bhamani, an assistant professor in obstetrics and gynaecology at Aga Khan University, recently conducted a formative observation for her research project in a village in Matiari district, Sindh. She speaks about how the experience of seeing ‘children raising children’ is leading her to probe this social dynamic.
Was there a particular incident during your visit that led you to explore this ‘dynamic’ more?
My morning visit took me to a tiny, rural community of 10 dwellings: all mud huts with thatched roofs. It was school time, yet I counted over 30 children out-of-school.
One caught my eye, a short and gaunt girl who was feeding roti to a baby, barefoot, hands covered in dust and feet tar-black. She looked completely at ease holding the baby on her hip, in the crook of her right arm. For a moment, I mistook her for the infant’s mother rather than her sister. As I would find out later: this was Marvi*, an eight-year-old child looking after an eight-month-old baby. When I asked Marvi why she wasn’t in school, she replied in a matter-of-fact way that there was no one else to take care of her sibling.
As I looked around, I could see many young female children holding infants and toddlers. I also saw some boys feeding younger kids and I immediately asked my fellow observer, who is a local community mobiliser, about why this was the case. He replied that it’s common for children to take care of siblings and kids in the vicinity as their mothers must work in the fields. This really made me think, why are these kids being deprived of their golden years of development? Is sibling parenting in such villages a need or just a cultural practice?
Where was Marvi’s mother?
Like many other parents, Marvi’s mother was working in the fields weaving reeds. Weaving is a common occupation for women in the area, and the mats are used for the makeshift thatched roofs that cover the village’s huts. They earn just 30 rupees a day for the painstaking labour.
Poverty means that both parents must work and so children must ‘babysit’ siblings for the whole, long day and education is an unaffordable luxury.
Are all the girls in the village expected to look after their siblings?
It’s not just the girls, the boys are also asked to take care of their younger brothers and sisters. During my visit, I saw twelve-year-old Saleem supervising his younger sibling. Saleem said that he was doing his ‘duty’ by caring for his brother.
But gender does play a role. When I spoke to adults in the neighbourhood about whether Marvi should be in school, I only heard: “What’s the point? She’s going to grow up to be a mother anyway.” The fact that a child’s fate has been determined before they’ve had the chance to achieve their potential is something I find very sad.
Were adults from other families contributing to the care of the unattended children?
Not really. The children largely kept to themselves and some looked to Saleem, one of the older boys, for guidance. At one point, Saleem led a group of five children to a nearby well to wash their hands and so it was clear that he, rather than the adults, was the ‘grown-up’.
As a community health researcher, I’m used to seeing the harsh realities of life for Pakistan’s rural poor but meeting young Marvi and Saleem raised some new and very uncomfortable issues.
Tell us more about these issues.
At present, there is little to no research into the prevalence of children parenting children and the social consequences of this practice. The determinants of a child’s development are typically studied as separate topics such as nutrition, motor skills and learning milestones. But studying this social dynamic needs a broader approach that accounts for the interconnected needs of each child.
For example, how have Saleem and Marvi come to think of themselves as responsible adults? Don’t Marvi and Saleem have the right to go to school, and to receive the parenting, nutrition and attentive home environment that other adolescents take for granted? How can we expect Marvi to adopt the right nutritional support and sanitary practices for her sister when she’s just a child herself?
Siblings play an important role in a child’s upbringing as they can provide engaged play and learning, but their responsibilities should never extend to parenting.
At the moment, we have powerful anecdotal evidence but we need researchers to come together to study this issue in a holistic manner. We must remember that a good parent is more than just a caregiver – s/he is responsible for raising the aspirations of children. Unfortunately for Pakistan’s young parents, the act of ‘parenting’ is little more than a duty they can’t escape, and this is something that needs to be analysed so that we can come up with realistic interventions that can really work in rural communities.
As a researcher what do you now plan to do?
The UN Sustainable Development Goals provide a valuable framework that reminds us of the common ground between areas such as education, health and gender. Now researchers need to invest in more interdisciplinary work.
My colleagues from Aga Khan University, Dr Asad Ali and Dr Sheraz Ahmed, and I are looking for partners to form a consortium to first study the prevalence of this custom and then develop models and theories of change that are suited to environments where children must take on parenting roles.
This evidence base will enable us to form partnerships with other early childhood development professionals to develop multi-sectoral interventions that can provide the best start to children in the early years of their life.
*Names have been changed to protect the identities of the children.