"The mother I was born to or the one I worked for?": An exploratory study on family separation in live-in child domestic workers in Karnataka, India.

BACKGROUND: Live-in child domestic work is a mostly exploitative informal labour sector that involves child migration and long-term, most often forced separation from family and extended family network. This is the first empirical exploration of children's lived experiences of ongoing family-child separation in the context of child domestic work. OBJECTIVE: While numerous studies conducted on childhood, child development and child health in the context of child labour argue that family separation is detrimental to children's psychosocial health, little is known about how this separation is understood by children living through ongoing separation while being employed in child domestic work. This study aimed at an empirical exploration of how child domestic workers experience the impact, meaning of, and coping with family separation in the context of child domestic work. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: 10 children (10-14 years old) working as live-in domestic help in Karnataka, India. METHODS: Data collection for this small-scale, exploratory qualitative study consisted of the administration of consecutive (2-3) task-based narrative interviews, involving graphic elicitation and doll-play techniques, with live-in child domestic workers. RESULTS: Findings from children's narrative accounts indicate how they relate ongoing family separation to cultural meaning systems regarding filial duty, family cohesion, and the role of the extended family network as a way of understanding, living and coping with family-child separation in the face of the stressors of live-in child domestic work. CONCLUSIONS: This paper generates an explorative understanding of how children make meaning of family separation, and their perspectives on re-uniting with their families. It also aims to aid organizations in designing family re-integration protocols based on perspectives gleaned from the children.

Dental age estimation in Japanese individuals combining permanent teeth and third molars.

The study aim was, firstly, to verify the Willems et al. model on a Japanese reference sample. Secondly to develop a Japanese reference model based on the Willems et al. method and to verify it. Thirdly to analyze the age prediction performance adding tooth development information of third molars to permanent teeth. Retrospectively 1877 panoramic radiographs were selected in the age range between 1 and 23 years (1248 children, 629 sub-adults). Dental development was registered applying Demirjian 's stages of the mandibular left permanent teeth in children and Köhler stages on the third molars. The children's data were, firstly, used to validate the Willems et al. model (developed a Belgian reference sample), secondly, split ino a training and a test sample. On the training sample a Japanese reference model was developed based on the Willems method. The developed model and the Willems et al; model were verified on the test sample. Regression analysis was used to detect the age prediction performance adding third molar scores to permanent tooth scores. The validated Willems et al. model provided a mean absolute error of 0.85 and 0.75 years in females and males, respectively. The mean absolute error in the verified Willems et al. and the developed Japanese reference model was 0.85, 0.77 and 0.79, 0.75 years in females and males, respectively. On average a negligible change in root mean square error values was detected adding third molar scores to permanent teeth scores. The Belgian sample could be used as a reference model to estimate the age of the Japanese individuals. Combining information from the third molars and permanent teeth was not providing clinically significant improvement of age predictions based on permanent teeth information alone.