Advantages And Disadvantages Of Street Children Essay

The ethnography in “With No Direction Home” by Marni Finkelstein was quite astounding. The group Finkelstein studied were street kids no older than the age of 20. Finkelstein did not interview kids over 20 because he said kids under the age of 21 rely on their families for social and financial support. He studied kids under 20 because those groups are most vulnerable to the lack of familial support and wanted to determine whether it will affect their self behaviour. These interviews and observations were constructed in the East Village of New York. The kids interviewed were from all over the place like New Jersey, Northeastern states, Southwest, Midwest, Southwest..etc. This study took place in the year 2005. Finkelstein tried to answer

When people hear the words “child poverty” some assume that this term may refer to homeless children who are living on the streets. This isn’t necessarily true, in fact some children who go to bed every night with a roof above their head still suffer from some form poverty. According to National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), 21% of children throughout the United States live in families who are considered poor. It is crucial for society to be more aware of this issue and to take part in contributing to help reduce child poverty within our country.

The book “With No Direction Home: Homeless Youth on the Road and in the Streets” written by Marni Finkelstein refers to the homeless youth. This book describes the lifestyle of the teenagers with no home and explains with detail about what consist in their everyday lives in the streets of New York City. The purpose of this book is to explain to people who these kids are and to see life in their point of view. It explains the difference between street kids and the kids that live on the street. We need to understand that the kids that live on the streets have their own culture and their own way of surviving. Learning their point of view would be a great eye opening experience for everyone and to also understand their struggle. This book explains a study that was done to 50 street kids and life on the streets.

A child living in poverty will not have the same access to a good education, a balanced diet and opportunities to play as a child with a well-provided background. Their diet and housing may mean that the child becomes ill often because of nutritional issues and living in cold, damp conditions. As a result, the child will lack energy and concentration for development. The deprived child’s chances of a good education appear slim and don’t have the opportunity to use books, equipment or the internet. Lack of encouragement and motivation from parents because of their situation is a factor that can affect child development also; as their opportunities are limited, the child’s holistic development is very likely to be

In every community, boys and girls are left to find their own recreation and companionship in the streets. An

Regarding the film and associated reading, they both are related and embraces a specific way in which a person or group lives. The film directly wavers between middle-class values and street values in the way it portrays the value of hard work and ambition versus the unrest of poverty and street surviving. For example, Mookie was criticized by his boss and girlfriend for being lazy and lacking ambition. Actually, he was never given a chance by the boss' son who didn't like blacks. In the excerpt, There Are No Children Here, the children were exposed to so much unrest at a young age that most fell victim to life in the streets and therefore followed the street values that correlate with it. However, the story embraced the desire for the children in those circumstances to be rewarded with an education, a good job and to leave the poverty stricken atmosphere (Kotlowitz, 17). The theme was racial imbalance which promoted the dislike of police

In every city there are neighborhoods that struggle with the issue of violence, crime and aggression. These neighborhoods have also taken on the names of slums and ghettos. The same areas where children are faced with growing up too fast because of the violence, crime and drug trafficking that has taken over these communities. Not only do these children and young adult face with these issues, they are also faced with the reality that in these disorganized neighborhoods, there is a breakdown of the traditional family therefore they must learn and master the code of conduct and or the rules of the streets in order to survive. Not to mention learning the demands of socially regarding displaying appropriate behavior when they are outside of the disorganized community.

The ethnography With No Direction Home: Homeless Youth on the Road and in the Streets by Marni Finkelstein, describes the life of street youth in New York City. The ethnography attempts to debunk myths that prior studies have formed of these street youths. The author, Marni Finkelstein is an Anthropologist renowned for her work on urban populations at risk. She graduated from the New School of Social Research in New York City with her PhD in Anthropology. Finkelstein has also conducted studies on substance abuse, sexual assaults and drug use of youths in New York City. Finkelstein achieves her goals, by using a scientific approach when observing the street youths. A few methods she utilizes are similar to that have been previous used but

Alone and troubled, surving the hardship of the world all by yourself. Youth are unfortunate to have life experience on how to survive the world, many youth don’t have job experience or money to support themselves to get back in school and live a normal life style. Becoming homeless at a young age puts a great deal of damage on teenagers, the longer time period a person is homeless can cause long term emotional and psychical harm considering the distant they have to go to just to survive. Living on the streets, youth doesn’t get three square meals a day like a average teenager would, they live off poor diets and lack of malnutrition causing the effects of having a

Throughout numerous areas around the globe, the reality of children living on the street has become a significant issue. This problem is mainly due to the family’s inability to provide adequate care and resources for their child, “Children end up on the streets for a number of reasons, many of which are rooted in family instability and poverty,” (The Children of the Street). Instead of worrying about what games to play or who to play with, these adolescents have to worry about what they will eat for the day or where they will sleep for the night. Children who have ended up on the streets are forced to fend for

Homeless kids in Orange County, who live in a motel in Orange County, where most don’t even know what the word ‘home’ means. Showing how some children can live like in one of the richest countries in the nation. A known fact that is stated in the film is when it says in the text, “One in 50 children experience homelessness in America each year”. This film gave another view on the lives of those who are homeless and can’t afford certain necessities. Gave a view on the way children who grow up being homeless feel about being homeless in general, what they hope for in their future. Many different perspectives could be viewed in this film from the narrator to those homeless kids to then society as a whole and how it functions in these types of

The psychological health of children around the world is detrimental to their abilities to cope, succeed and be able to function normally within social settings. According to Evans and Shamberg ( 2009), “Chronically elevated physiological stress is a plausible model for how poverty could get into the brain and eventually interfere with achievement” (p. 6545- 6549). Children residing in poverty stricken neighborhoods and families tend to experience environmental stressors as well as physical stressors such as educational setbacks, lack of resources and physical demands that are not being met. These stressors can cause a problem in the psychological health of children because of the need to continually adjust to changes and setbacks that stem from poverty.

In Brazil, street children are those children who are not supervised by their parents or other protective guardians. They live in abandoned buildings, cardboard boxes, parks, on the streets, or anywhere they can find. Street children are deprived of family care and protection. Most children on the streets are between the ages of about 5 to 18 years old. Unprotected and unsupervised, this children are often targets of death squads, vigilante groups and police brutality. Government has made little effort to alleviate their conditions.

Imagine if a city has a rise in the homeless population there may not be enough beds for the night, which will result with some individuals being turned away. Many of the homeless youth are on the street not choice, and they normally have begged on the street for food just to live. Did you know that unstable homes can vary from couch hoping to extremes like children/youth having sex for shelter for the night? This is the situation that many homeless children on the street must face, if there is no room in the shelters or if they did not get enough food to survive for the day. Understandably, this can happen to homeless adults, but they have more strength to fight back, whereas children/youth who are smaller in structure may not be able to fight back. As a result, there are many individuals out in the world who would love to exploit the weakness of these children. Homeless children can easily be sex trafficked because most of the time they need food or shelter.

On our way, we came up to a small town where the streets were full of people buying and selling food, clothing, shoes, and business services like hairstyling. We stopped to explore together to see what the market place had to offer. When we noticed a large group of children instead of playing and being like regular kids, they were busy carry large tub containers on top of theirs head selling what they had to people. I went over to ask a couple of them why they weren’t in school and where were their parents. They all answered me saying that their families couldn’t afford to send them to school and that they sell in the street to help and support their mothers. This broke my heart cause no child should have to take on those responsible at a tender age, the youngest child was eight and the oldest was fifteen years old. In American children those ages are required by the government to be in some schooling, whether that is home-schooling or public/private school. There are child labour laws against children under the age of sixteen working and having a job. But because this is a cultural norm so no-one sees it has a