Children with Adult Hearts?: Child Headed Households of Harare Zimbabwe.

This book is about visible orphanhood in Zimbabwe which increased of late, due to the HIV and AIDS,scourge and poverty. Family life has been decimated and livelihoods destroyed leaving children in many cases as family heads, providing for the needs of their siblings. The extended family or social parenting has been weakened as modernity has institutionalised individualism. Fewer and fewer families can provide financial support to "social children", as they actually struggle to look after their own children during these harsh economic times characterised by political bickering in government and a severe economic melt- down due to deindustrialisation, leaving millions unemployed. In some cases one is reminded of Charles Dickens's Hard Times. The girl child is the most vulnerable compared to her male counterparts. This book which is Dr Ruparanganda's second one, will be most valuable to all who want to know of the social ills of underdevelopment, policy makers, humanitarian organisations as well as philanthropists of this world. His first book is titled, "Genitals Are Assets".