the views from relatives, community members and governmental officials.
Consequently, I was clearly on the side of the youngsters. Have my sympa-
thies biased my work? It did, but not to an extent as to make it useless.
Children and young people’s opinions continue to be underrepresented in
debates about support. The main bias in my study is that I do not consider
the reasons why relatives or neighbours do not seem to support the young-
sters sufficiently. Irrespective of their motives in not offering (more) sup-
port, I show how a lack of support influences youngster’s sense of agency
and coping negatively. In any case, my data is a product of my participa-
tion in the field rather than a mere reflection of the phenomenon of child-
headed households (Hammersley, 1992,p.2).
CONCLUSIONS
In this chapter, I described the ethical issues in my research to child-headed
households in a vulnerable community in South Africa. I anticipated that
the research would be sensitive from the start, and I therefore took the
necessary ethical precautions to prevent negative effects on the participants.
I did my best to follow these ethical guidelines in every step in my research.
However, reality is rarely as neat as a textbook. First of all, informed con-
sent from children who are either legally minors or viewed as minors by
community members is more complicated than having them sign a docu-
ment. To make sure that research participation was voluntary, I viewed
consent as an ongoing process. But did participants truly understand the
possible consequences of the research? As I appeared unable to anticipate
on some of the unwanted effects of the research, the answer to that ques-
tion seems negative.
Secondly, the issue of protection also proved complicated with (legal or
social) minors. Child counsellors were engaged as interpreters to protect
youngsters from emotional distress, but I was unable to protect youngsters
from jealous or suspicious community members. Overemphasis on protec-
tion, however, can result in excluding children from research altogether
(James et al., 1998,p. 188). Thirdly, there is the issue that participants
should benefit from the research. In my opinion, giving support to partici-
pating youngsters in need is an ethical necessity. It also appeared the only
way I was able to continue my research.
A major unanticipated effect of the research was the emotional effect on
myself. Ethnographic fieldwork requires active involvement in respondents’
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