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

Abstract

AbstractAdolescents 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.”