Design ethnography of parental disengagement in low-income urban Sri Lanka: a participatory study in Siribara Manikepura

Abstract

Siribara Manikepura, a low-income urban community in Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, faces severe poverty and overcrowding. Residents live in cramped homes with limited outdoor space for children, contributing to social issues like drug abuse and school dropouts. These conditions deeply affect family dynamics and child development. The study employed qualitative methods, including direct observation, informal conversations, semi-structured interviews, and contextual immersion over multiple visits. Daily routines, living conditions, and parent–child interactions were documented. A total of 32 participants from 14 households were interviewed. Particular attention was given to the physical environment, parenting practices, and children’s behavior. Using a participatory design approach, parents and children were engaged as active participants in identifying challenges and co-imagining solutions suited to their cultural and social realities. Constructivism guided the study, emphasizing how meaning and learning are co-created through social interaction and lived experience. Findings reveal a troubling pattern of disengaged parenting, even in households where one parent is unemployed. Children are often unsupervised, unclean, and disconnected from structured education or discipline. Parents, burdened by economic instability, focus on immediate survival rather than long-term wellbeing. Drug use among teenage boys, alcohol abuse among adult males, and early employment among girls form a common trajectory, largely unaddressed within the community. The research highlights an urgent need for culturally rooted, space-conscious, and empathetic interventions—through design, education, or policy—to strengthen parent–child relationships and break these cycles.