Crescendo em catingueira: criança, família e organização social no semiárido nordestino

Abstract

The focus of the present article is ethnographic, aiming to describe the children of the catingueira (a semiarid region in Paraíba state), highlighting their participation in social and family life. I reveal the contingencies these children face an daily life as well as adults' expectations regarding them, focusing on three ethnographic memories: an event in church involving a three year old child; the ritual presentation of new members to the community and a funeral procession for a "little angel" (a dead child). Here I propose to think of small children as laughable, of older children apprentices and of childhood as a period of work and moral learning. The text reveals a universe in which children become agents who are essential for the proper functioning of the family unit and, more generally, of the whole community.

Children; Infancy; Child labor; Socialization; Family; Peasantry