Parental Care and Support Services as Perceived by the Paniya Tribal Adolescents of Kerala: An Empirical Study

Adivasis or tribes are the poorest section of the Indian society. The Paniya tribes of the Kerala are the marginalized section of the society with low literacy (49.5%), high infant mortality and high maternal mortality rates. In general limited research is carried out in India on welfare and well-being of tribal adolescents. Less is known about the parental care and support practicestowards their adolescents in Paniya community in Kerala. Therefore, the present study made an attempt o understand the perception of Paniya adolescents about their parental care and support services and adverse childhood experiences.A specially designed Structured Interview Schedule was used for collection of information from the Paniya adolescents.A total of 361 Paniya adolescent boys and girls were covered in the study following multi-stage convenience sampling method from three different districts of Kerala. An overwhelming number of the adolescents (i.e., more than 90%) reported that their parents take care of them well in terms of love and affection, nutrition, education and medical care. However, when the issue of sharing of personal issues comes, only half of them (51.8%) reported feeling comfortable to share their personal issues with parents. In this regarding significant gender difference was found (p<.01). Significantly more number of female adolescents reported uncongenial family environment (p<.01) and not feeling safe at home (p<.01). A large number of adolescents, irrespective of gender, admitted early childhood adverse experiences like psychological (49.8%), physical (29%) and sexual violence (25.2%). About half of the adolescents reported that their parents consume alcohol. Similarly, 23.5% adolescents frankly admitted having alcohol all most on regular basis of which 7% reported to be girls. The findings of the study speak in favour of community-based activities for welfare and well-being of adolescents of Paniya community in Kerala and in this regard local community-based organizations and Panchayat should take the initiative.