Among risks, protection, and lessons learned: Perspectives of Brazilian rural families about work in adolescence

Abstract

Adolescents working in the Brazilian rural contexts were investigated through participant observation and interviews, aiming at understanding the role played by work in the nurturing of adolescent in these contexts. The qualitative and longitudinal survey involved six participants who were members of two different families, as follows: four female adolescents, one adult woman, and one adult man. It was found that adolescents and their families understood work as a context for nurturing moral values, learning skills, and meeting needs. Observation, however, found that work also involved exposure to risks. The study reviews the role of work in adolescence as a cultural component in some rural contexts and how this should be taken into account to avoid an ethnocentric and universalistic interpretation that divides adolescence between “normal” and “abnormal.”

Towards a decolonial developmental science: Adolescent development in the Majority World taking center stage

“…These researchers examine adolescents' beliefs about the just world in the context of high inequality in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with its colonial history. Santana & Ristum (2024) challenge the hegemonic view of adolescence that represents what it means to be a White, cis, straight adolescent in the Minority World, and provide an alternate view by illustrating the value of work among adolescents in rural Brazil. Similarly, Tan et al (2024) discuss models of preadolescent development along with those of caregiving (specifically, grandparenting) typically grounded in EuroAmerican worldviews that fail to capture grandparenting in Malaysia.…”

“…Studies also investigate family processes including family obligation (Yang et al, 2024), role of family in adolescents' occupational choices (Pease Dreibelbis et al, 2024), grandparenting (Tan et al, 2024), and parental socialization of adolescent emotions (Shi et al, 2024). Methodologically, studies utilize a variety of qualitative approaches (Appachu & Singh, 2024;Kerai et al, 2024;Pandya & Bhangaokar, 2024;Pease Dreibelbis et al, 2024;Santana & Ristum, 2024;Zambrano et al, 2024), mixed-methods approaches (Tan et al, 2024;Mahama et al, 2024;Shaikh & Sarin, 2024), prospective longitudinal designs (Pandya & Bhangaokar, 2024;Shi et al, 2024;Thomas et al, 2024), quantitative studies with variablecentered approaches to data analysis (Shi et al, 2024;Nwafor et al, 2024) as well as person-centered approaches (Thomas et al, 2024;Zhao et al, 2024). This methodological pluralism highlights the relevance of different approaches with various adolescent communities in the Majority World.…”

“…Studies reported in the articles examine aspects of emotional (Shi et al, 2024), cognitive (Lichand et al, 2024;Thomas et al, 2024), and moral development (Pandya & Bhangaokar, 2024;Nwafor et al, 2024), prosocial behavior (Mesurado & Resett, 2024), adolescents' use of time (Kerai et al, 2024), their perceptions of work (Santana & Ristum, 2024), social identity processes (Appachu & F I G U R E 1 Timeline and decision-making process for the Special Issue. Singh, 2024), health (e.g., body image, Mahama et al, 2024), and well-being (Zambrano et al, 2024).…”