CHILDREN IN NEPAL
In Nepal, there is a great emphasis on having sons and child marriages are common (See Marriage). Child grooms are as much as of an issue as child brides. Young husbands are often expected to start working and care for their families and surprisingly young ages. Siblings are often addressed by a name that refers to their age order. And cousins are often referred to in sibling terms.
According to “Countries and Their Cultures”: “Children are a valuable source of household labor. From an early age, children are expected to contribute labor to the household. The law entitles both girls and boys to schooling; however, if a family needs help at home or cannot spare the money for uniforms, books, and school fees, only the sons are sent to school. It is believed that education is wasted on girls, who will marry and take their wage-earning abilities to another household. Boys marry and stay at home, and their education is considered a wise investment. In urban areas and larger towns, children attend school; rural children may or may not, depending on the proximity of schools, the availability of teachers, and the work required of them at home.” [Source: “Countries and Their Cultures”, The Gale Group Inc., 2001]
There are a number of rituals and life cycle events associated with raising young children, Mother and child are considered polluting until the 11th day after birth when the child is formally given name. It is common for mother to massage their babies with mustard oil. The first feeding of rice, called “psani” takes place at five months for a girl and seven months for a boy. It is big event accompanied by a party in which relatives and friends give clothes, presents and money to the child. The first haircut can also be a big deal and an excuse for a party.
see Education, School
Preference for Boys and the Burden of Girls in Nepal
Parents favor boys for various reasons. A boy's value in agricultural endeavors is higher than a girl's, and after marriage a boy continues to live with his parents, ideally supporting them in their old age. The strong preference for sons is a deeply held cultural ideal based on economic roots. Sons not only assist with farm labor as they are growing up (as do daughters) but they provide labor in times of illness and unemployment and serve as their parents' only security in old age. S
In Nepal, there is no universal, government-sponsored social security. Having boys is regarded as a kind “insurance policy, unemployment policy, sickness policy and old-age pension all rolled into one." Sons are expected to live with parents, earn an income, look after property, inherits land and care for parents in their old age. They are also needed to light the funeral pyres after death to ensure a smooth trip to the afterlife. One of the primary reasons that Hindus wish for a son is that only sons can carry out funeral rites. Some Hindus believe they can not have positive things occur in the afterlife unless they are cremated by a son after they die.
In contrast to boys, girls are seen as burdens because their family must raise money for their dowry and then they leave to take care of their husband's family. A daughter’s responsibility to her family ends when she gets married. She moves in with her husband and becomes part of her husband's family, and help care of them. This is an added bonus for parents with sons. Dowries are expensive. Sometimes dowries leave the family in debt. There is a great deal of stress for parents to find a good husband for their daughter. A lot of time and energy goes into this effort. In the state of Haryana, the is an expression: raising a daughter is like watering someone else's fields."
Child Rearing in Nepal
Children are often spoiled and allowed to do what they want when they are young. When children are infants and toddlers they often accompany their mothers almost everywhere, traditionally tied to their mother’s back with a piece of cloth called a “patuka”. After a child can walk childrearing responsibilities for that child are shared with other relatives, usually an older sister if there is one. [Source: Alfred Pach III, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Hockings, 1992 |~|]
Babies are breastfed whenever the demand it and sleep with their mothers until they are displaced by the new baby or are old enough to sleep with their brothers and sisters. Babies and children often wear amulets and bracelets to protect them from evil spirits and ghosts. Parents sometimes put kohl on the baby's eyes to prevent eye infections. Toilet training and weaning is often relaxed and breast feeding may continue until a child is three. Discipline is usually in the form of threats that are rarely carried out. Children have few toys. The ones they have they often make for themselves. At around age eight children are expected to start participating in family chores. Girls generally collect water and firewood. Boys are often in charge of tending the water buffalo and herding cows, goats and sheep.
According to “Countries and Their Cultures”: “Mothers are the primary providers of child care, but children also are cared for and socialized by older siblings, cousins, and grandparents. Often children as young as five or six mind younger children. Neighbors are entitled to cuddle, instruct, and discipline children, who are in turn expected to obey and defer to senior members of the family and community. Children address their elders by using the honorific form of Nepali, while adults speak to children using more familiar language. Because authority in households depends on seniority, the relative ages of siblings is important and children are often addressed by birth order.” [Source: “Countries and Their Cultures”, The Gale Group Inc., 2001]
Rites of Passage in Nepal
Most Hindu and Buddhist groups have a number of rites of passage for children such as first rice feeding, first haircutting, puberty rites for girls, and sacred-thread or initiation ceremonies for boys. At her first menstruation a girl is taken to another house and secluded. She is kept out of sight of the men and the sun. She is sometimes given special foods and is not expected to work, but overall her seclusion is recognition of the pollution associated with female sexuality and reproduction. [Source: Alfred Pach III, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Hockings, 1992 |~|; “Countries and Their Cultures”, The Gale Group Inc., 2001]
When a Hindu boy is six or seven his head is shaved except for a tuft of hair called a “tupi”, marking his initiation into Hinduism. Only the mother’s brother or male cousin may perform the ceremony, which is known as “chudakarma” or “kshyaur”. If the boy is a Brahman or Chhetri he receives a scared thread.
David H. Holmberg wrote in the “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices”: “High-caste boys in Nepal go through an initiation known as bartaman, which usually occurs just before marriage but can be performed much earlier. It is during this ritual that they receive the sacred thread. At menarche high-caste girls from traditional families must go into seclusion in a dark room for 12 days, at the end of which time they are purified. The most auspicious and socially extensive rite of passage is marriage. [Source: David H. Holmberg,“Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices”, Thomson Gale, 2006. Holmberg is a professor of anthropology at Cornell University]
“Newar, Tamang, Gurung, Thakali, and other Tibeto-Burman-speaking Buddhist populations follow, more or less, the same rites of passage as Hindus — but with a different emphasis. Most observe rites of purification at birth, at the first rice feeding, at marriage, and at death. High-caste Buddhist Newar boys are initiated into a monastery in a rite that parallels the Hindu bartaman. Some, like the western Tamang, observe a first haircut for boys at the age of three. Among the Tibeto-Burman and culturally Tibetan populations of Nepal, death rites stand out as those having the most extensive social ramifications, whereas marriage is the most important rite of passage among Hindus.
Children Education and Protection Statistics
Under-five mortality rate: 30.8 per 1,000 births. [Source: UNICEF DATA data.unicef.org]
Child protection
Children under age 5 whose births are registered: 56 percent.
Women aged 20-24 years who were first married or in union by age 18: 40 percent.
Children aged 5-17 years engaged in child labour: 22 percent.
Children aged 1 to 14 years who experienced any violent discipline (psychological aggression and/or physical punishment): in the past month: 82 percent.
[Source: UNICEF DATA data.unicef.org]
Early Childhood
Attendance in early childhood education: 51 percent.
Early stimulation and responsive care (any adult household member); 67 percent.
Early stimulation and responsive care (father): 10 percent.
Learning materials at home – children's books: 5 percent.
Learning materials at home – playthings: 59 percent.
Children left in inadequate supervision: 21 percent.
[Source: UNICEF DATA data.unicef.org]
Education
Adjusted net attendance rate, one year before official primary entry age: 83 percent.
Adjusted net attendance rate, primary education: 74 percent.
Adjusted net attendance rate, lower secondary education: 50 percent.
Adjusted net attendance rate, upper secondary education: 47 percent.
Completion rate, primary education: 82 percent.
Youth literacy rate (15 — 24 years): 92 percent.
[Source: UNICEF DATA data.unicef.org]
Child Health
Proportion of under-five children with suspected pneumonia taken to health provider: 82 percent.
Proportion of children under five years old with diarrhoea receiving oral rehydration salts: 60 percent.
Percentage of infants who received three doses of DTP vaccine: 93 percent.
Percentage of children who received the second dose of measles containing vaccine: 76 percent.
[Source: UNICEF DATA data.unicef.org]
Child Survival
Under-five mortality rate (U5MR): 31 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Number of under-five deaths: 17,296.
Infant mortality rate (IMR): 26 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Neonatal mortality rate (NMR): 20 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Male Under-five mortality rate (U5MR): 33 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Female Under-five mortality rate (U5MR): 38 deaths per 1,000 live births.
[Source: UNICEF DATA data.unicef.org]
Maternal and Newborn Health
Proportion of women aged 15-49 who received postnatal care within 2 days after giving birth: 68 percent.
Antenatal care coverage for at least four visits: 72 percent.
Proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel: 77 percent.
Caesarean section: 15 percent.
Proportion of women 20-24 years old who gave birth before age 18: 14 percent.
Maternal mortality ratio: 186 deaths per 100,000 births.
Births who had their first postnatal checkup within the first two days after birth: 69 percent.
[Source: UNICEF DATA data.unicef.org]
Nutrition
Early initiation of breastfeeding (within one hour of birth): 55 percent.
Exclusive breastfeeding (less than six months): 65 percent.
Continued breastfeeding rate (20-23 months) at one year; 89 percent.
Prevalence of moderate and severe stunting: 36 percent.
Vitamin A supplementation (full): 76 percent.
Proportion of households consuming iodized salt: 94 percent.
[Source: UNICEF DATA data.unicef.org]
Magar Children
Magar are the third largest ethnic group in Nepal. According to the CIA Factbook in 2020 they make up 7.1 percent of the population of Nepal. They are a Hindu people who live in the middle Himalayas and Terai and west-central and southern Nepal.
According to the “Encyclopedia of World Cultures”: “Magar children are born into homes where tensions between adults are usually minimal and children are desired and liked. It is true that traditionally a boy was more wanted than a girl, yet daughters have always been highly regarded and treated with much affection. Unmarried girls of the family and lineage have high ritual value. Gifts given to them are considered to be like gifts to goddesses and are a way of obtaining religious merit. Daughters are also an important source of labor. It is hard to imagine some Magar farms operating successfully if daughters were not contributing many kinds of help. [Source: John T. Hitchcock, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Hockings, 1992 |~|]
“Parents hope for as many children as possible. Their usefulness as labor and as supports in old age outweigh their costs as additional mouths to feed and bodies to clothe. Children grow up in the center of the day-to-day life of the household. A nursing baby sleeps with the mother on a straw mat. During the day the baby spends many hours in a hammock slung between posts of the veranda. When the baby wakes or is fretful, the mother, or whoever else is nearby, gives the hammock a push. If rocking does not help, the infant is nursed and fondled. On trips away from the house, the mother carries the baby hung in a cloth across her back. Toilet training is gradual and without fuss. Weaning too is nontraumatic. A pregnant mother may try to hurry the weaning; otherwise a child is given the breast until the age of 3 or 4 years. |~|
“When a girl is about 3, her parents ceremoniously give her a new shirt, a rite of passage corresponding to the first haircutting of a 4- or 5-year-old boy. Both ceremonies honor the child and impress him or her with the parents' good wishes for the future. From the age of about 8 the child, whether girl or boy, is gradually asked to assist with Household or farm tasks, which are divided among the children following the same pattern as among the adults. By the time children are about 12, they can do almost all adult tasks and have become genuine assets to the household economy. |~|
“Although children are taught the appropriate formal gestures to show respect for their parents, for the most part relations between parents and children are quite informal. They all sit together on the house porch, or, if children alone are sitting there when their father comes into the yard or up on the porch, they do not get up. Also, if they are smoking, they do not feel obliged to stop. |~|
“Birth order is recognized terminologically among brothers and sisters. It counts in some ritual contexts and becomes politically significant in that a headman's eldest son usually inherits the office. Despite instances such as that one that favor the eldest, there is no shyness or avoidance among siblings. Brothers and sisters play together throughout childhood and remain close throughout life. Once a year their relationship is expressed ritually when a brother goes to the home of one of his married sisters and she gives him an especially good meal and paints a multicolored tika on his forehead.
Children and the Conflict with the Maoist Rebels
As of 2005, more than 8,000 children had lost one or both parents as result of the conflict with the Maoist rebels. Some were put up at orphanages that relied on donations from local businessmen. One such orphanage described by Reuters had ten children in a room, with two often sharing a bed.
According to World Bank report on the long-term health impacts of Nepal's 1996-2006 civil conflict by examining the heterogeneity in conflict intensity across villages and birth cohorts: childhood exposure to conflict and, in particular, exposure starting in infancy, negatively impacts attained adult height. Each additional month of exposure decreases a women's adult height by 1.36 millimeters. [Source: Lokendra Phadera,“Unfortunate Moms and Unfortunate Children : Impact of the Nepali Civil War on Women's Stature and Intergenerational Health”, World Bank report, June 28, 2019]
“ The impacts are not limited to first-generation. The analysis also finds that a mother's exposure to conflict in her childhood is detrimental to her child's health. Mothers exposed to conflict during their childhood have more children and live in less wealthy households, likely reducing their ability to invest during their children’s critical period of physical development. The finding points to a potential trade-off between the quantity and quality of children. The paper uses information on monthly conflict incidents at the village level, which allows identifying identify the effects of exposure to conflict more accurately than prior studies
Maoist Child Soldiers
The Maoist rebels were accused off using child soldiers and abducting children to fill their ranks. Sometimes the children they recruited simply disappeared from their villages. Other times a shoe was hung from a house, a message from that rebels that they wanted a recruit from that household.
One group estimated that the Maoist rebels forced 8,000 children to become fighters in 2004 alone. In some cases children were kidnaped at school and forced to attend three-day-long “democratic people’s education” camps. Some joined the rebels voluntarily after being promised enough to eat. Other were children who were left behind by adults who fled the rebel-controlled areas.
The children were reportedly used as porters and political workers more than as fighters. They were used to carry ammunition and other supplies. Western reporters said they saw children as young as 10 carrying rifles. Some carry knives. They were told if they remained loyal they would get to carry a gun. When they got to be old enough — 14 or 15 — they were trained to be frontline fighters.
A representative of the National Coalition for Children in a Zone of Peace told AP, “It is distressing to hear repeatedly of more and more children being shot and blown up by bombs and explosives, being taken by force from their homes and schools, and of girls being abused, raped and killed.”
Many families sent their children away to places beyond the reach of the rebels so they would not be taken by the rebels. Some were sent to monasteries in India. Some moved to towns controlled by the government security forces. The Nepalese government was not innocent. It reportedly used children as porters and messengers.
The Maoists' Use of Child Soldiers in Nepal, Human Rights Watch, February 2007 hrw.org/report
Child Soldiers Freed from Camps
Reporting from Dudhauli, Gopal Sharma of Reuters wrote: “Teary-eyed but hopeful of a bright future, more than 200 former Maoist child soldiers began leaving their jungle camp as part of a peace deal that ended a bloody insurrection four years ago. The group is the first of nearly 4,000 former Maoist soldiers, most of whom were under 18 when the peace deal was signed in 2006, to leave remote jungle camps across Nepal and try to begin a new life. The release is a move forward in the fragile peace process that has been stalled since last May after the Maoists walked out of the government in conflict with the president over their attempt to fire the army chief. [Source: Gopal Sharma, Reuters, January 7, 2010]
Wearing marigold garlands, the former child fighters left the camp, waving at former Maoist army commander Pasang, who goes by one name, at the riverside camp about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Kathmandu. The former child fighters, many in their 20s now, left in five buses for their villages, some seated on roof tops with bags in their laps and crying. “I am very sad to leave other colleagues with whom we stayed for so long,” said 22-year-old Laxmi Gautam, who joined the Maoist organization five years ago.
“Others said they were proud that the monarchy has been abolished and Nepal was now a republic. “Without struggle, that would not have been possible. I am proud of it,” said Suhana Rana, also 22, as she left the camp. The Maoists were demanding financial aid for the children but the government has so far refused. Authorities said the United Nations would support schooling for children for up to grade 12, or vocational training, micro-enterprises and training as junior health workers. “Today marks the first step in the return to civilian life for thousands of Nepalis who have been living in cantonment since 2006,” said Robert Piper, a UN resident representative in Nepal.
Nepalese Children Sold as Slaves to Circuses in India
Rhys Blakely wrote in The Times: “As many as 500 Nepalese children have been sold into slavery to Indian circuses in 2007-2008 according to a report by the Nepali Central Child Welfare Board that shines a light on the misery that lurks behind India’s dilapidated big tops and on the sub-continent’s burgeoning status as a hub for human-trafficking. Indian circus owners prize young Nepalese girls for their fair skin and “exotic looks” – features also favoured by the pimps who run prostitution rackets that span South Asia and the Middle East. [Source: Rhys Blakely, The Times of London, September 20 2008]
“Impoverished parents in Nepal are paid as little as £10 for their daughters by agents usually linked to powerful organised crime networks, activists say. When they reach India the infant circus performers live in constant fear of the exploits they are forced to perform in the ring, and of the abuse they suffer from their owners backstage. “Anything on the high wire is terrifying, but the most notorious act is the star kiss, which most girls call the dental trick,” said Philip Holmes, the head of the Esther Benjamins Trust, a charity that has rescued more than 350 Nepalese children from Indian circuses over the past four years.
“To perform the trick a young girl grips a rope with her teeth while she is twirled around at ever increasing speed, perhaps 40ft (12 meters) above the circus floor, without a safety net. Among those compelled to perform the stunt was Kumari Lama, a Nepalese girl who was sold into a small circus in the state of Kerala in south India at the age of 5. The agent who came to her family told Kumari’s desperately poor mother that her daughter would be “treated like a film star”. In fact, she was transported to a sordid life of violence and sexual abuse.
“Eleven years later, after being traded between several circus owners, Kumari’s worst fears were realised when she lost her grip during the dental trick to plunge 30ft to the floor. Despite her losing consciousness and being unable to walk for three months, Kumari’s captors, Raj Mahal, one of India’s biggest circuses, forced her back into the ring. She finally escaped in June, when Mr Holmes led a raid on the Raj Mahal that freed 17 girls. Since then it has emerged that many of them suffered repeated rapes and beatings. “The circus animals got a better deal than us,” one of the released girls told officials.
“Other children have been mauled by tigers in the ring, only to be forced to reenter the ring when their wounds have healed. Many young girls are forced to marry older men to tie them into circus life forever. Often circus owners sell unwanted children into prostitution. Mr Holmes, who is based in Kathmandu, said: “We are dealing with some major villains. Some very evil, very powerful people.” A Nepalese official told The Times that the trade in circus performers was seen as an urgent issue by policy-makers and law enforcers but that it was diminishing in seriousness. A ban on wild animals in Indian circuses has damaged their popularity, he said, and the demand for young performers is drying up gradually.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Nepal Tourism Board (ntb.gov.np), Nepal Government National Portal (nepal.gov.np), The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Wikipedia and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated February 2022