INSTITUTIONALIZED CHILD CARE IN URBAN SOUTH AFRICA

many roles: that of caretaker, charitable organization, and legal advocate. While much of
the research on institutionalized child care has been focused on a select set of questions,
evaluating harms and benefits of different approaches, my research experience led me to
discover a number of other questions, most of which could branch out and form entirely
new research questions for separate projects.
One aspect of the children’s lived experiences that continues to interest me is the
significance of role models. Much of human behavior and development is shaped by
learning through observing models, and little research suggests how this phenomenon is
altered as a result of being institutionalized setting. It seems reasonable to assume that the
experience would remove children from exposure to most adults who would typically
occupy those roles, and would replace them with older institutionalized children or adults
from different economic and cultural backgrounds. In speaking with children who had
aged out of such a system, into a relatively stable adulthood, I learned that many of them
did hope to play a role in the lives of younger children and looked for opportunities to be
role models. Xolani, Bongi, and Maanda all looked for various ways that their childhood
experiences could give them a unique mode of access to acceptance by the children.
There is enough importance to the potential impact of role models to justify further
qualitative studies on this dynamic.
Another topic of further interest that lends itself to future research is the process of
aging out. Children on the cusp of adulthood have historically received less attention than
those in earlier stages of development, but there are a number of reasons to expect this to
shift in years ahead. Populations of OVC have overall decreased steadily since the 1980s,
and this means more and more of the population in on the older end of the age spectrum.
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