Sugar-Spice-Home

Children are the future of humankind. We have been children once in our lives and like any other children of the world, the children deserve to have a meaningful childhood that they can happily relate to when they become adults. But alas, humanity is full of pride and prejudice, and the innocence of children can become an easy target of exploitations, dissimulation and unfortunate circumstances.

This report attempts to analyze some of the articles presented by the mass media reports on the misfortunes of children who have fallen prey to this “civilized world” of violence, poverty and exploitations. The sociological problems of children and childhood are immensely wide. They range from child poverty to child abuse, violence towards children and by children, and exploitations of children in more ways than one. Due to the length limit granted, this report shall focus on only three issues of childhood. They are child poverty, child labour and violence by children.

A series of articles on the issues of children have been collected for the purpose of this report. These articles are collected from the newspapers, magazines and the Internet.


We have probably heard many reports that poverty-stricken third world countries have affected many families and their children. It is, however, not common knowledge that developed countries like the United States of America has also child poverty problems. Karl and Smith and The Associated Press (1998) reported on the web-posted CNN Interactive news revealed a report by the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation that the child poverty rate of America is actually “four times the average of western European countries” (http://cnn.com/US/9803/01/erner.commission/index.html). The number may be much higher in the regions of Asia and Africa.


Child poverty exists in different forms. Some are labeled as street kids, while others are homeless children. But, all these children lack the educational and financial support from institutions. A important perspective of child poverty, as highlighted by Jamrozik and Sweeney is that, the children are related to the family and thus “child poverty” also means “family poverty” (1996:228-229). Rich families do not have starving children. Child poverty is therefore, derived from the generation of poverty cycle in a family.

Education is an important aspect of breaking the poverty cycle in a family. However, children affected by poverty are much less likely to acquire the skills they need to escape poverty as adults. In Singapore, the government has accepted the importance of education as a tool to reduce poverty. Children from poor families are given subsidies for public education to help these families “break the inter-generational poverty cycle” (Pereira 1997:43).

Poverty and economic backwardness are the main causes of the perpetuation of child labour. National and international agencies like the United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Children’s Defense Fund in the United States, Brazil’s National Movement of Street Girls and Boys, and the National Anti-Poverty Organization in Canada have made great efforts to improve the plight of children affected by poverty. But, the conditions in most countries with widespread poverty problems have not improved very much. In fact, due to the recent economic crisis, images of poverty have been projected in many of these countries that were heavily affected by the crisis. Such conditions are made worst in places like Indonesia and Malaysia, where environmental hazards caused by the El Nino effect destroys farmlands and homes. These situations can be visualized from a picture published by The Straits Times on 7th of April, 1998, which shows a little girl dressed in drapes crying amidst a pile of fire-gutted squatters in Sarawak. It reported that the fire destroyed twenty acres of land and left six hundred and fifty eight families homeless (The Straits Times 1998:1).


Blitzer mentions that the “sight of children in streets fending for themselves by selling goods, offering services, begging or engaging in prostitution is more and more frequent” (1991:22). Child labour is an issue that has become an increasing universal concern over the past decade. Poverty has an obvious relationship with child labour. Children are a source of income for families affected by poverty. Kasra Naji (1998) reported on a web-posted CNN Interactive news on the 9th of April, that about seven thousand children work full-time to manufacture soccer balls for a measly fifty cents for each ball (http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9804/08/pakistan.soccer/).

Manufacturing soccer balls is not as hazardous as some other jobs like mining and quarrying. Hence, Naji (1998) also reported there are views by the local Pakistanis that removing these children from jobs like manufacturing soccer balls may do more harm than good. Their families may loose the only source of income and these children may consequently be forced into other more hazardous jobs (http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9804/08/pakistan.soccer/).

In a more depressing situation, children were being forced into the flesh trade to earn a living. These horrifying predicaments of children were related by news story published on the web by CNN Interactive on the 26th of October, 1997 and web articles published by the World Alliance of YMCAs on the 8th April, 1998.

The former indicates that daughters of poverty-stricken families in Southeast Asia are forced into prostitution. Diseases and abuses will take many of their lives. In Kenya, daughters of poor families are send to wealthy homes to work as “slaves”. Countries such as Turkey, Colombia and India have children who work as rug weavers, coal miners and diamond cutters respectively. Some of these jobs are extremely hazardous to the children’s health, not to mention the psychological effects that may affect them (http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9710/26/child.labor.warning/).

The latter, an article entitled “The Invisible Girls”, Silvana Anania (1998) reported that the exploitation of children, particularly girls, to satisfy the economic needs of unruly capitalists, is ignoring and violating all the conventions of the rights of children. Anania also states that the International Labour Organization (ILO) has estimated that there are over one hundred and twenty million working children in the world. The majority of these children are found in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America (http://www.ymca.int/invisible.htm).

Many argued that children are placed into the workforce “because social circumstances force them to become economically active at a very young age” (Blitzer 1991:23). This notion can be corrected if society recognizes the plight of these children and their families, and extends assistance to these unfortunate souls. However, the solution is not just one of money, but of inclusive institutional arrangements based on a national consensus about the importance of children.


Child abuse is a major problem involving child violence in society, but recently there is another rising issue of child violence. Violence contrived by children is on the rise and their ages are getting younger. The shocking news of two children in Arkansas, who killed four children and a teacher in a schoolyard, are only eleven and thirteen years of age (Gegax, Adler and Pedersen 1998:21-26).

The question on everyone’s lips is: What causes these children to kill? Many have reasoned that the mass media is the main cause of such carnage by children. Cowley suggests that violent behaviours of children are caused by violence that surrounds the everyday life of children (1998:24).

Buckingham also states that the media are responsible for such violent behaviours of children, in conjunction with the murder of Jamie Bulger, a two-year old child, by two ten-year old boys (1994:79). However, he was also quick to point out that “blaming the media often seems to provide a simplistic, reassuring explanation of events that may be too painful or difficult to face” (1994:80).

This draws us to other possible issues that may have affected the behaviours of children. Research studies by The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) explains that there are other factors that can lead to violent child behaviour, besides exposure to violence in media. These factors include previous aggressive or violent behaviour; victims of physical and/or sexual abuse; exposure to violence in the home and/or community; and socio-economic factors such as poverty, severe deprivation, marital breakup and loss of support from family and/or extended family (http://www.aacap.org/factsfam/behavior.htm).

Buckingham mentions that for the case of Jamie Bulger, the media has attempted to “explain the killing in terms of poverty and economic recession, or the erosion of leisure provision for young people” (1994:79). Cowley also mentions that “Urban poverty fosters powerlessness, and the rage that goes with it” (1998:25).

There are, therefore, other perspectives to the reason for the violent nature of children. But, we must not lose sight of the fact that media, especially television, is a primary source to the socialization of children. Jamrozik and Sweeney highlight that “the images and values projected through television programs and popular mass media generally are important forces in socializing children” (1996:51) and Buckingham notes that “television is actively used by children in their attempts to make sense of their own social lives” (1994:94). Robinson cautioned that “we must recognize that children draw on and use the information available to them in many different ways” (1994:278), hence we must be able to selectively inject the “right kind” of information through the media to reduce the risk of cultivating violent behaviour in children.


The mass media has continuously presented images of children in the most depressing conditions. Many childhood are lost to grinding labour, often in dangerous and degrading circumstances and for wages that adults would not accept. Other sociological issues and structures have also affected children’s behaviour. Poverty, child labour and child violence is intertwined with each other.

We need to mobilize worldwide efforts to promote the rights of all children, especially the right to receive a free, meaningful education and to protect them from economic exploitation, especially work that is damaging the children’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development.

Jamrozik and Sweeney states that “social problems is always much higher in … the lower socio-economic areas” (1998:8). We have seen how the images presented by the mass media enforces this statement in relation to child violence, child poverty and child labour.

“Children have traditionally been objects rather than subjects of study” (Blitzer 1991:12). This notion can be slowly changed with the recognition of the importance of children to the society, not only because they are the future economic resource, but also because they are human beings and an important part of the social structure. Children must be given as much rights and protection from all the evildoers of the socio-economic forces. At the same time, they must also be enlightened with the “right kind” of information through various institutions in the nurturing process.

In saddens me to see children who have to trade their innocence with childhood violence, poverty and child labour. These social issues of children have been happening for centuries, and yet with so much social education and social policy debate in the world, we have not been able to eradicate these social problems. On the contrary, such issues seem to be on the rise. Perhaps, this world is too blinded by the social and capitalistic ego of the human race to notice the procrastinating “death” of our hope of the future.