TY - JOUR
T1 - Children of Tribal Unwed Mothers and Their Non-Legitimate Origin
T2 - A Social Exclusion Perspective
AU - Cherayi, Shanuga
AU - Jose, Justin P.
AU - Sudhakar, Sreejith
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was a part of National Child Rights Research Fellowship (NCRRF-VII), funded by Child Rights and You (CRY), New Delhi, India.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019.
PY - 2019/4/1
Y1 - 2019/4/1
N2 - Using phenomenological design, we purposively selected 10 children of tribal unwed mothers for in-depth interview to explore children’s social identity in the context of non-legitimate origin, aspects of psychosocial disability, and exclusion. We analyzed data through open coding, progressive focusing, coding frame, summarizing, and interpreting the findings. The results reveal that tribal communities actively, though indirectly, engage in social system maintenance. The children of unwed mothers explicitly deviate and breach traditional tribal boundaries, thus victimized by socially ascribing disabling social identity of non-legitimate origin, in addition to their poorly valued social identity as tribals. As a result, non-legitimate children experience conflicts in social relationships, poor social integration, reduced support, poor peer acceptance, and exclusion that characterized everyday communal and school life. To conclude, these children internalized negative social (also non-legitimate) identities, psychosocial disabilities, and exclusion at neighborhood and schools.
AB - Using phenomenological design, we purposively selected 10 children of tribal unwed mothers for in-depth interview to explore children’s social identity in the context of non-legitimate origin, aspects of psychosocial disability, and exclusion. We analyzed data through open coding, progressive focusing, coding frame, summarizing, and interpreting the findings. The results reveal that tribal communities actively, though indirectly, engage in social system maintenance. The children of unwed mothers explicitly deviate and breach traditional tribal boundaries, thus victimized by socially ascribing disabling social identity of non-legitimate origin, in addition to their poorly valued social identity as tribals. As a result, non-legitimate children experience conflicts in social relationships, poor social integration, reduced support, poor peer acceptance, and exclusion that characterized everyday communal and school life. To conclude, these children internalized negative social (also non-legitimate) identities, psychosocial disabilities, and exclusion at neighborhood and schools.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85067029080&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85067029080&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/2158244019850041
DO - 10.1177/2158244019850041
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85067029080
SN - 2158-2440
VL - 9
JO - SAGE Open
JF - SAGE Open
IS - 2
ER -