Beginning with a look at gender-related issues, my study examines the condition of children who take care of other children: specifically, children who protect and offer assistance to younger siblings, cousins and neighbors. This is a widely common practice in the suburbs of the city of Maputo, Mozambique, which has been selected as the context of this research. Some of the questions I will address are the following: what resources can the children draw on to assist other children? What skills do they acquire? What strategies do they develop? What challenges and difficulties do they face daily? This study investigates not only the children’s own depictions of their work, but also the way they represent themselves, their rights and the world surrounding them, and shows differences pertaining to the children’s gender. The purpose of this study is to analyze the specific experience of ‘being a child’ of these children, starting from their point of view. Based on the idea of children formulated by the Sociology of Childhood, considering them as social actors with inherent rights, competent to interpret their own worlds and social realities, this research project utilizes participative methodologies that allow the voices of the children to be finally heard. Results indicate a high complexity of the phenomenon because of the multiplicity of meanings attributed to it by children and adults, the variety of ways in which it appears and finally the plurality of identifiable dimensions in everyday practices.
