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Issues and challenges of child rearing in an urban marginalized community in Assam, India

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Author Affiliations

  • 1School of Social Sciences, Assam Kaziranga University, Jorhat, Assam, India
  • 2School of Social Sciences, Assam Kaziranga University, Jorhat, Assam, India

Int. Res. J. Social Sci., Volume 11, Issue (1), Pages 22-26, January,14 (2022)

Abstract

A study was conducted in an urban marginalized community residing in Duliajan of Dibrugarh District, Assam to know the issues and challenges they faced on upbringing of their children. They are mixed people and earned their livelihood by engaging themselves as daily wagers in different types of jobs. Due to hike of prices of essential commodities day by day, most of the respondents expressed their feeling of inability to sustain their livelihood. Among the children, the immunization coverage was not satisfactory as a large number of respondents did not complete or continue the immunization schedule as per Government guideline and only a few completed or are continuing it. This may be the lack of awareness of the parents or may be non involvement in the process of nurturing of their children actively. As the respondents have to pass a stressful parenting process due to poverty and deprivation, these things regarding immunization of their children becomes less important. The sufferings of their children from different diseases like Anaemia due to malnutrition and helminthic infections, diarrhea and other stomach problems and different skin diseases for staying in non hygienic conditions are very common. The children of poor families have been given the opportunity to admit in government schools free of cost, but even then the rate of school dropout children seems to be high among these communities due to inadequacy of some other resources. Due to illiteracy, ignorance and clutch of poverty, the respondents were found to show some inclination towards sending their children for different small jobs for earning instead of sending their children to the school. The negligence of parents to girl child was also observed. All the respondents felt uncertainty, discouragement in every step and extreme financial hardship due to ongoing covid-19 pandemic to provide basic cares of their child. Alcoholism and other familial problems are also the reasons to lose the coordination among many families in the community; as a consequence their financial crisis tends to be worst, thereby disrupting the proper parenting process. All respondents were found ignorant about the child right. Awareness is essential among these illiterate people about the rights of child - how to explore these and to take up facilities during their childhood as government has different schemes to facilitate child development.

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