Emily Miller and Dr. Charles Nuckolls, Anthropology

Identity within a social structure is easily analyzed when found in a culturally traditional setting. However, when physical and mental handicaps, parental figure transience, and varying levels of familial contact become factors the social structure and the roles within that structure are not as easily defined. Research for this study was performed at an Ecuadorian orphanage where many of the children have mental and physical handicaps and where the adults they interact with change quite frequently. Based on this study, it can be concluded that a child’s role within this society and the type of interactions that child has with others seem to be largely contingent upon the presence or absence of a handicap.

Understanding social structure in nontraditional circumstances can be complicated because nontraditional roles are filled. Other studies that have looked at behavior and child interactions have strictly looked at non-handicapped children, mainly in Romania. For this study I wanted to show what correlation exists between handicapped children and the social roles they fill in an orphanage. I assumed that the transience of adult role-models and parental figures would play a large factor in which social roles the children took upon themselves and assigned to others. In order to conduct the study I spent three months observing and taking meticulous notes on the interactions and behavior of the children between the ages of 3-6 at this Amazonian orphanage. After a few weeks it became apparent that simply observing the children wouldn’t be enough, and expanded my observations to include everyone that interacted with and influenced the children.

At this orphanage the children, foreign volunteers, and tias (local women employees) fill varying roles but they prove to be consistent with their behavior and interactions with others. Those foreign volunteers that come for short periods of time come with the mentality of being a personal savior for each child and the orphanage in general. As such they often disrupted normal day-to-day activities in order to “help” as they desired. The children, especially those with handicaps, were given special treatment by these volunteers. Long term volunteers were much more helpful and often provided a solid foundation of social interaction for the children. Through these volunteers the children were able to learn discipline and teamwork, and behaved much better when the volunteers were more prone to discipline rather than ignore behavioral outbursts. The tias were mostly caregivers and disciplinarians, though they never used their influence to teach in formal settings, as they saw that as the duty of the volunteers. All they did was cook and clean and take care of the children’s temporal needs.

After observing all of these interaction, I came to the conclusion that children that have handicaps, specifically handicaps that require special treatment (i.e. – physical therapy, additional help to get around) are treated differently than other children by the volunteers and tias. Handicapped children receive significantly more one on one attention from volunteers and tias alike. However, the volunteers tend to give them more affectionate one on one time while the tias see these children and the attention they require as a burden and a chore. I concluded that children with special needs were the most influencing factor in an orphanage’s social structure. Their needs and actions often influenced the behavior of all those around them, and held biggest sway in any interactions.

I used this research primarily as my senior thesis research project. In addition I am planning on publishing findings from this research and other experiences in Ecuador in the future. It should be noted that future research should incorporate more interviews with the tias and volunteers to better understand their perceptions of the children and how they feel regarding the care of the handicapped children and normal children. In addition, it would be important to focus more attention on familial relationships that exist between children within in the orphanage and the impact of frequent visits from family outside of the orphanage. These would be important to consider because the first scenario represents a social structure existing within a similar social structure, while the second represents one social structure interfering with the other.