A quiet, but alarming, trend is happening in Cambodian "orphanages." Instead of predominantly serving the needs of children whose parents have died, these institutions are increasingly being filled with children from poor families whose living parents are seeking better opportunities for their children's future. It's a phenomenon that my colleagues and I at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, together with a number of committed partners, are working to correct.
There's a long history of parents sending their children to places in the hopes that they will have a safer or better childhood. But typically those places involve the care of a relative or an adopted family, where the expectation is that the child will have a loving home life. Parents typically don't elect to send their children to live in institutions. Yet that's exactly what's been happening in Cambodia, because more and more parents see institutional care as the most direct route to social mobility.
[For more of this story, written by Lindsay Stark, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...bodia_b_9252276.html]
Comments (0)