Culture of poverty or ghetto underclass? Women and children on the streets of Honduras
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Description
In the streets of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras the official unemployment rate nears 30 percent and women and children support themselves by selling produce, sweeping and hauling trash, or picking garbage. Many children work alongside their mothers 'in' the streets while increasing numbers, known as children 'of' the street, are alone and homeless. Although cross-cultural studies of children and third-world poverty examine structural causes, recent culture-of-poverty explanations suggest that matrifocal families produce street children This case study of over 1200 children in and of the street, by far the largest sample of street children ever available for research purposes, provides an extensive description of this population. A subsample of mothers broadens the scope of analysis to reveal differences among them and their mothers' ability to protect them. Regression analyses test the hypothesis of cultural versus structural causes of poverty Borrowing Wilson's (1987) theory of the ghetto underclass, I examine the premise that social isolation and weak attachments to the labor force, result in an urban underclass. I find that the major distinction among street children is their access to better jobs available in the street markets. Those children having mothers employed in the market, or some other adult mentor, are more likely to have such access and less likely to sleep in the streets, use drugs, or to steal. Further analysis of dual-parent families shows that where fathers contribute more to the family, both in time and money, the children's welfare is improved. In families where the mother contributes more than half of the total expenses, fathers are more likely to use threats and violence to maintain control Children who report poor family relationships are more likely to abandon their family for street life, gangs, and drugs; they are also evaluated to have more physical and mental health problems. Comparing the health problems of Honduran street children with those of homeless children in the United States, I find surprising similarities. Further, the differences found are largely explained by structural variances in the two countries, reinforcing Wilson's argument for social reform rather than individual rehabilitation in both contexts