Society and care from the perspective of children without parental care. Sociedad y cuidado desde la perspectiva de niños sin cuidado parental (NSCP)

Abstract

Objective: Understand the meanings given by children without parental care to living conditions, relationships established and how they negotiate or recreate their situation in the places where they grow, recognizing them as necessary interlocutors for the analysis of the circumstances of their place of growth.   Materials and Methods: Multi-sited research for the transitory character of their life, it is epistemologically based on perspectivism, addressing thirty street children, thirty-five children in educational institutions and twenty-one in child protection centres in cities and municipalities within the industrial corridor of Boyacá, Colombia. Qualitative strategies such as life stories, interviews (occasionally made by the participant children) were implemented for this research; also, participative strategies such as participant observation and workshops. Results: Relationships with neighbors, close relatives or friends, government officials or teachers who practice transitory care actions as an exception to the general rule of indifference, acquire for the participants other feelings regarding possibilities of emotional ties that, however, are lost due to personal or social reasons and are not favorable for them, generating open questions about the role society could play as co-responsible of their growth. Conclusions: The knowledge based on experience of children without parental care was fundamental to understand that the construction of society has abandoned care as the main focus in the growth and the training of human beings, and to find other ways of interpreting childhood regarding social status.