expected me to bring them money or food. That was the first time I realized
that my research affected the children in more ways than I anticipated.
Because neighbours were asking them for food, they probably assumed I was
supporting them sufficiently. As a result they may have been less inclined to
support the children.
This paper deals with ethical issues such as described above, experienced
in ethnographic research among children and young people living in
so-called child-headed households in a disadvantaged community in South
Africa.
For a long time, childhood research was mostly concerned with the
outcomes of socialization, particularly on its failures (Prout & James, 1990,
p.14). Children themselves have not been the focus in these studies and
their social life was given little account. In the contemporary sociology of
childhood, children themselves are the locus of concern, childhood is
viewed as socially constructed and children are viewed as social actors.
This means that children’s views and perspectives are the point of departure
or interest. They are not only viewed as ‘becoming’ adults, but as ‘beings’
in themselves. Seeing childhood as ‘socially constructed’ means that child-
hood is not merely a natural phenomenon. Rather, childhood is ‘a mode of
understanding of these facts’ (Archard, 2004, p. 25). Although physical
immaturity may be a common feature of all children, the ways in which
childhood is ‘interpreted, understood, and socially institutionalised’ varies
a great deal between cultures (James & James, 2001, p. 26). And lastly,
children are believed to have considerable influence on their own lives.
Children are thus not simply vulnerable or powerless. Particularly majority
of the world’s children living in difficult circumstances are often portrayed
as such in minority world literature.
For my research to child-headed households in South Africa, I departed
fromthe view that children living in child-headed households are social
actors, who are taking control of their lives and may be very capable of
running their own households. From the start of this study I expected that
children living in child-headed households would live in difficult situations
but during my fieldwork these difficulties sometimes overwhelmed me. The
difficulties of the children made me question the purpose of my research.
Although the findings of this research project would possibly benefit
children in similar situations in the future, the participating children did
not benefit immediately. However, their problems were often that severe
that immediate support was required in my view. As a result, I struggled
with my role as an ‘objective researcher’, who, I assumed, is supposed to
keep a certain distance and not become emotionally involved. At the start
of the fieldwork, I therefore tried to keep a certain emotional distance from
Mission Impossible 63