Lewis Aptekar

Street Children in the Developing World: A Review of Their Condition

The article reviews the literature on street children and points out why there are street children in certain cultures and not in others. The reasons for their existence are related to poverty, abuse, and modernizing factors. Street children are defined and distinguished from working and refugee children. Details about the family struc ture of street children are given. How the children cope and their level of psychological functioning are discussed. The article gives reasons for why the children are treated with such violence and gives attention to methodological research problems that include the childrens ability to distort information, the researchers procliv ity to under- or overestimate the childrens emotional condition, distortions of facts created by the press and international organiza tions, and general cross-cultural research issues.

Characteristics of the street children of Colombia

Psychological characteristics of 56 Colombian male street children, aged 7 to 16, were examined from participant observations and results of three psychological tests given the children. The Kohs Block Design measured their intelligence; and the Human Figure Drawing and the Bender Gestalt measured emotional and neurological functioning. The test data showed the sample to be relatively healthy, intelligent, and emotionally intact. The childrens relatively good scores on the tests may be understood by placing their abandonment in a cultural perspective, which includes the childrens strong peer support system, their access to adult benefactors, and the fact that the children were developing in an orderly fashion from matrifocal families. The premise is made that by understanding the children more accurately more appropriate help may be given.

Conflict in the Neighborhood Street and Working Children in the Public Space

The article defines street and working children, emphasizing that the definition of street children always includes a negative moral attribute. These false perceptions of street children, when added to the inaccuracies of the way the children are presented in the press and by reports of international organizations, exaggerate their numbers and problems, and lead toward increasing the hostility children face. A three-concept taxonomy of hostility toward street children is presented. This includes penalinstructive hostility based on punishing children for inappropriate behavior; collective frustrated hostility based on ethnocentric social class attitudes toward the poor; and cultural hostility which is accounted for by differences attributed to sedentary and nomadic peripatetic cultures. Practical suggestions for using the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to reduce hostility toward street children are presented.

Street Children of Colombia

The characteristics of street children were examined from participant observational data, and from standardized psychological test scores from a sample of 56 male, Colombian street children who ranged in age from 7-16. The Kohs Block Design measured the childrens intelligence, the Goodenough-Harris Drawing Test and the Bender Gestalt were used to measure the childrens emotional and neurological functioning. The data showed the children were functioning with adequate mental health. Two different preadolescent styles of street life were presented and their peer groups were explained. The present study illustrated how street life altered the childrens developmental sequence, but provided them with adequate coping skills. The study demonstrated how child development was changed by personal and cultural circumstances.

A Comparison of the Bicoastal Disasters of 1989

The study used participant observational methodology to understand the psychological reactions to the Loma Prieta Earthquake and to Hurricane Hugo. Data was collected in two high impact areas; Watsonville, Califor nia and McClellanville, South Carolina. Comparisons were made between the two towns and between the two disasters. The results indicated four psychological phases of victim psychology: confusion, coping by cogni tive changes, displaced anger, and resolution. The first two phases lasted longer for earthquake victims than for those suffering from the hurricane. Differences in the two communities effected the phases of anger and res olution.

The Psychology of Colombian Street Children

This article calls into question the diverse perceptions of the street children in Colombia. Through the use of participant observations and the administration of the Bender-Gestalt, Kohs Block Designs, and Human Figure Drawing tests, the author explains the psychology of the street children. Their behavior on the streets is explained as being rational and appropriate to their circumstances. Since most of the children are not actively rejected by their families, and because they receive support among their peers and from private benefactors in the society, their mental health is not as bad as popularly believed. The misperceptions of them and of the way they are treated by the society are explained in the context of the family and class structure in Colombia. The dominant society consists of patrifocal families that raise children to be submissive to their fathers, whereas the lower social classes raise their children in matrifocal families, which do not have men in them, and which encourage their children to be independent at an early age. The children in their early public display of liberty symbolically threaten the mans dominance in the patrifocal family system. As a result the childrens skills are devalued.

Suggestions for providing services to the handicapped in Latin America

Abstract This paper discusses some issues involved in the transfer of models of programmes for the handicapped from the US to Latin America. It argues that different needs require a re-evaluation of criteria of efficiency and the uses of professional help in Latin-American programmes. A variety of studies by international organizations concerned with services for the handicapped (in the context of provision of general health services) as well as this authors experience indicate that such services should be more closely tied to the community, provided in places that do not cost a great deal of money to construct or maintain, and delivered by local people who are involved in the daily lives of the recipients. This paper attempts to answer the question why Latin-American countries, despite such recommendations, continue to base their programmes on inappropriate and highly professionalized models from the US.

Family Structure and Adolescence: The Case of the Colombian Street Children

The characteristics of two family structures in Colombia and their methods of childrearing were described from participant observational data. The data illustrated that street childrenz camefrompoorfamilies that were matrifocal and of indigenous orAfrican descentt. Tley raised children for early independence. The class-dominant, Spanish patrifocal families had methods of child-rearing that demanded strict obedience to paretntal authority and delaved adolescent independence. The present study illustrated that the street childrens early independence in a rapidly changing and volatile society increased the presslure on the state to exert its waning authority. The children were then described usinig ethnographic standards. The study demonstrated the difficulty of getting accurate information about a largc social problem, and illustrated that adolescence was defined itn a historical and societal context.

Factors in mortality by drug dependence among Puerto Ricans in New York City.

This paper presents data on mortality by drug dependence among Puerto Rican residents aged 15-44 of New York City. While men show death rates for drug dependence several times those of women, when deaths by drug dependence are calculated as a proportion of all deaths, the ratios are nearly the same for both sexes. Factors relevant to analyzing mortality statistics on drug dependence in this population are an undercount of Puerto Rican males and competing causes of death, particularly homicide among men. Factors influencing deaths by drugs are gender roles as they influence patterns of drug use and types of chronic use: regular and intermittent.

Group Dynamics of Children in Street Situations

This chapter is divided by street children’s and homeless youth’s interactions with the public into their intra group behavior and their relationships outside of their own subculture. This means from their intimate same sex dyads, to their behavior when they are only among themselves, to their role in their local culture given ihems historical record, and finally to their role in the global youth culture.