Poverty includes lack of basic services for children, like education, hunger, social discrimination, health, nutrition, security. The problem with the children in Bangladesh living in slums and streets are mostly involved in child labor. In 2002-03, the estimate of child labor in Bangladesh was put at about 3.2 million.
(Source: 2008 estimate of CIA World Fact Book). Most of the parents living in slums work outside. They spend less time with children, give more consideration in earning money, sending their kids for child labor, rather than sending them to the school due to large family size and expense of living in the capital city. Bangladesh is a very highly populated country. There are so many developmental resources that are unreachable for many families. Education almost don’t touch the rural areas, and those who mi
...grate from the rural areas to Dhaka, and start to live in the streets or slums, they have such large family size of 4 or more children in one family.
Bangladesh has a literacy rate of 70 percent as of 2016. At this point children leave the education part and starts to work as their parents do due to highly living expenses lead to feed the hunger by their own. Moreover, a mother’s level of education, income, and emotional risk (such as depression) all have short-term impacts on her child’s understanding of emotions, but also have long-term impacts on the quality of the time they spend together (Center for Poverty Research Affiliate Ross A. Thompson and Graduate Student Researcher Abby C. Winer). It was also mentioned that mothers with lower household income and lower levels of education were more likely to be more negative
in their play interactions with their children which later put impressions on school performances and school-readiness.
This ongoing study reveals that children in families with greater demographic and emotional risks are less able to understand emotions in others and themselves. Relatively children in slums are less likely to understand the importance of taking education and the meaning of having better life. The economical position plays a huge role for the children in slums and streets. Furthermore, children living in streets are living more dangerously than those in slums.
From the BTV news in Bangladesh, it sums up that they grow without parents, either their parents abandoned them or their parents died. Social isolation becomes their part of their development. Those children wonder around streets, and commit minor crimes, such as, thief, scamming people, or beggars, work at restaurants, dangerous jobs like mining, construction works, most get kidnapped or sold to child trafficking, prostitution. All starts from lack of education meaning their parents and the child themselves doesn’t know the value of healthier life.
Many treatable minor diseases in children, such as waterborne diseases also remain serious. In fact, because drinkable water is rare and sanitation systems are inadequate, Bangladeshi children often suffer from diarrhea. What’s more, a large number of parents forget to wash their hands leading to the spread of bacteria. Moreover, so many children are also not vaccinated. Infectious diseases such as HIV/ AIDs in adults are often left looked over. There were about 4.3 million children born in 2007 in Bangladesh, of which about 211,000 (4.8%) have died within the first 12 months after birth because of poverty.
Many low-SES children face emotional and social instability.
Typically, the weak or anxious attachments formed by infants in poverty become the basis for full-blown insecurity during the early childhood years. Very young children require healthy learning and exploration for optimal brain development. Unfortunately, in impoverished families there tends to be a higher prevalence of such adverse factors depression, and inadequate health care, all of which lead to decreased sensitivity toward the infant (van Ijzendoorn et al., 2004) and, later, poor school performance and behavior on the child's part.
