Parents are the first care-givers for a child. Parents and family are the most important people in children’s life. According to [1] “children do not strive alone; their efforts to understand a world that fascinates and sometimes confuses them are embedded in a social context.” The parents of children who continually engage them in verbal dialogues and conversations and responding to their innumerable questions and other verbal comments promote their child’s language development from the primary stages of cognitive development. 

This paper presents the significant relevance of socialisation and the important role of the parents, family and the primary learning centres at the local level in matters of child care and protection. The paper relies on secondary data and analyses cases taken up by the Dept of Social Welfare, Women and Child Wing, Mizoram, and the District Child Protection Unit and statistical information under Integrated Child Development Scheme. The study therefore highlights the importance of family and parental influences for children, presenting the familial scenario in Mizo society, and especially for those children in need of care and protection, and look into the intricacies of child rearing and childhood in general.

Role of Parents in Family

Parents are the most precious, valuable and priceless gifts given to us by God in our lives. For a child, parents play an immense role in the physical, mental, social educational and financial development. 

The family is the most important social group. The family as a social institution is the basic fabric of human interactions especially for systematically unfolding the social world for children. A family is a group of persons directly linked by kin connections, the adult members of which assume responsibility for caring for children. Sociologists Burgess and Locke have defined “family as a group of persons united by ties of marriage, blood or adoption constituting a single household interacting and intercommunicating with each other in their respective social roles of husband and wife, father and mother, son and daughter, brother and sister, creating a common culture”. 

The child which is helpless at the time of birth is given the needed protection of the family. The family serves as an instrument of culture transmission wherein ideas and ideologies, folkways and mores, customs and traditions, beliefs and values are handed down from one generation to the next. The family indoctrinates the child with the values, morals beliefs and ideals of the society, preparing them for participating in larger world. The mother everywhere is normally the most important individual in the child’s early life.

The home is the first and most vital agency of socialisation, moralizing the individual. It is here that the child forms his habits of thought, emotion, action and the foundation of his character laid. The ‘right’ ways of eating, drinking, speaking and expressing emotions, etc. are learned in primary groups. The family also hands down to the child the religious beliefs of the group. The child is taught to behave differently toward equals, superiors and inferiors and also to behave differently on different occasions.  The child thus receives the training necessary for the playing of variety of roles. 

Children do observe spousal interaction and how arguments are settled in the family. It teaches them a variety of good values that are imbibed and crucial to growing up. The child learns how to behave with others, playing to a common goal, team spirit, picking the right friends and a lot more [2] 

Mizo society

In the traditional Mizo society, parents are the care-givers and guide for their children. Parents have a great control and influence over their children in the Mizo society. Mizo society is a patriarchal society wherein the father holds sole authority in the traditional Mizo household. Normally, the wields his authority in the family during mealtimes when all the family members sit together for food. At these times, the father takes this opportunity to scold and give advice to his children.

In earlier Mizo society, children were cared for and protected by their parents, mostly by mothers, and grandmothers and older siblings. In 1974, the Government of India adopted a National Policy for Children declaring the nation’s children as “supremely important assets”. The United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, which India has ratified on 2^nd December, 1992, requires the state to prepare a Plan of Action for children for their states.  In India The Juvenile Justice Act (1986) was replaced with “The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children ) Act 2000 (56 of 2000 )”, which was later amended in 2006 as The Juvenile Justice ( Care and Protection of Children ) ( Amendment) Act, 2006 ( 33 of 2006 ) dt. 22.8.2006. 

In modern societies, most early socialisation occurs within a small-scale family context. By contrast, in traditional cultures, aunts, uncles and grandparents are often part of the single household and serve as caretakers even for very young infants. In earlier Mizo society, the members of the family also consisted of grandparents, uncles and aunts, besides the parents and children. Traditionally, the mother in Mizo society besides rearing the children, took care of her home, cooking, weaving, cleaning, washing, collecting water and fire-woods and working in the fields as well. While she was busy working in the fields and elsewhere, grandmothers and older siblings often looked after the small children. 

Left to fend for themselves for most part of the day, the children quickly became more assertive and with the expectation of putting in their bit for the society/family such as collecting fire wood for the “Zawlbuk” or carrying water for the household ,the children are expected to grow up as useful, responsible adults as early on. In earlier close-knit egalitarian Mizo society, the means of livelihood was almost the same for all the villagers, and the young moved directly from a lengthy infancy into working roles within the community. The family was structured strictly around the patriarch whose role was more of an authoritarian head rather than an emotional anchor, the children were expected to obey without questioning their elders. “Zawlbuk” or the bachelor’s dormitory prominently located at the centre of the village, was the focal point where the youths were trained to become responsible members of the community. 

In the modern Mizo society, especially within the urban areas, as more and more people migrated to the cities in search of livelihood, we are now witnessing a decay of the traditional values and norms which are further compounded by poverty and alcohol and substance abuse which undermine the security and well-being of the children, especially those of the economically weaker section. For those parents and caretakers of children in nuclear and single-parent families who can barely make ends meet, they are too busy trying to generate a decent means of income  that they lose out on the time to care for and protect their children, thus often risking the lives, innocence and security of their precious little ones. 

In Mizoram, there is a growing disparity between the rich and the poor, while the better off families are able to employ housemaids to take care of their children in their absence, the poorer families of the nuclear type and single-parent type cannot afford to hire any extra help, let alone provide enough for the children’s economic and emotional nourishment due to lack of quality time.  A number of children are also at risk because of their parents being substance abusers and alcoholics which results in them being neglected, abused, abandoned and placing them in situations where they could also become drug abusers and alcoholics at such young ages themselves. 

Anganwadi Centres

A number of parents and families in Mizoram send their young children to pre-school learning centres and Anganwadi centres for caring of the children in the rural and urban areas. These Anganwadi centres provide basic healthcare and nutrition in the Indian villages and towns. to let them learn socializing skills and basic literacy to the young children.

Anganwadi in English means Umbrella. It is a type of rural child care centre in India. They were started by the Indian government in 1975 as part of the Integrated Child Development Services program to combat child hunger and malnutrition. Anganwadi means “courtyard shelter” in Indian languages (hindimeaning.com). 

Anganwadi: 

1. A typical Anganwadi centre provides basic health care in Indian villages.

2. The village has a school and an Anganwadi centre.

3. Anganwadi centres contributed a lot in the literacy. 

Anganwadi centre (AWC) are spread out across India, that deliver early education, health and nutrition services as part of the country’s Intergrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme. ICDS launched in 1975 strove to improve Indian children’s health and quality of life. So, in 1975, with the help of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) India launched ICDS with the goal of improving the nutrition, health, and development of children from birth to age six, monitoring and education pregnant and lactating mothers, and helping adolescent girls and women between 15 and 44.

ICDS services are offered through a network of more than 1.3 million Anganwadi Centres  spraed out across virtually every region in India. According to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, every urban or rural community of 400 to 800 people has at least one Anganwadi Centre (Ministry of Women and Child Development, GOI, wcd.nic.in).

ICDS in 2017 delivered an impressive services close to 33 million preschool children across the country. It also provided regular food rations to close to 95 million young children and lactating and pregnant mothers. The preschool curriculam in Anganwadi Centres is outlined by the ministry’s National Curriculum Framework for ECCE (nipccd.nic.inelearn), aiming to “promote early stimulation and play-based, experimental and child-friendly provision for early childhood education and allround development.” ICDS programming is special as it accounts for the fact that caregivers largely shape children’s early experiences [3]

From the table cited above, as of 2022, the total number of Anganwadi Centres (AWCs) in Mizoram are 2244, with the total number of 27 sanctioned projects which are all operational. The number of children from 6 months to 6 years in these Anganwadi Centres in Mizoram is 13572 and pregnant and lacatating mothers account for 24627. Regarding beneficiaries, children between 6 months - 3 years with beneficiaries for supplementary nutrition  is 54882, while children between 3 - 6 years is 55344. Pregnant and lactating mothers with supplementary nutrition is 21256. The beneficiaries for pre-school education for boys (3-6 years) is 11256, and for girls (3-6 years) is 11023, altogether totaling 22279 children in all.

Parents in Childcare and Protection

Parental responsibilities are highlighted in aplenty from the Bible to guide their children in the right path. In Proverbs 22:6, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” 

According to Kingsley Davies, there are two categories of persons from whom the child acquires the sentiments, beliefs and knowledge of his culture. The first include those who have authority over him. Persons having authority over the child are generally older than he and command obedience. They are the parents who play an important role at this stage. Second category includes those who have equality with him, his peers and age-mates who are of the same age. The child maintains equalitarian relations with those who are of the same sex, age and rank. Aspects such as folkways, manners, styles, fads-fashion, crazes, habits, secret modes of gratification and forbidden knowledge, example of sex relations are learned from their peers and age-mates.

Developmental psychology allows us to consider how children are affected by the socialisation provided by parents, and more recent research put forth by sociologists and psychologists suggests that this exchange of information may be a two-way process. studied parent-child relationships across the life course and found that parents shape their children as well as their grandchildren through parenting styles, shared genes, social status, and belief systems. asserts that while rearing children is both a public and private matter, the daily teaching of children the rules and roles in society largely falls to parents.

While we consider the family’s role in socialisation, we need to remember that children do not play a passive role. They are active agents, influencing and altering the families, schools, and communities of which they are a part Examining children’s experiences in various family forms is a useful area of current and future study. In the earlier Mizo society, women and children were never given much importance and recognition. The dismissive term, ‘naupang uite rimnam’(smelly kids or children who smell of puppies) is rarely heard of  in the present Mizo society. Children nowadays are seen as an important and valuable asset by the parents, family and the society at large. The love and affection showered upon them, parents and caretakers spending quality time with their children, and the right guidance should be the way to go therefore the need to socialise the children in the rightful manner should be the prime goal set by the Mizo society. 

Now in the recent times, children are much more valued and are considered assets of the country. Fathers are more involved in the rearing and caring of their children just as the mothers. This is indeed a positive step towards better child care and protection where both the parents, ie. fathers and mothers and the local level primary centres such as the Anganwadi Centres play an active role in the lives of the young chidren to guide them in the right path and to bravely face the world around them. Moreover, parents, family and the Anganwadi centres provide adequate services to children, both before and after birth and also through the period of growth, to ensure their full physical, mental and social development as children are an extremely important asset for the nation. 

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest

No funding sources

The study was approved by the Government Aizawl College, India.

1. Vygotsky, L. (2013). Play and its role in the mental Development of the Child, www.all-about-psychology.com (2 April 2013)

2. Prakash, Dr. Rashmi (2018), Role of Parents in Child Develoment. https://parenting.firstcry.com

3. Timsit, Annabelle (2019) Inside India’s ambitious effort to provide early care and education to 400 million kids, https://qz.com.Indis’s ICDS anganwadi, New Delhi, India.