Because of this, women stay in the home to complete chores like cleaning the house, cooking and taking care of the kids. Along with doing the housekeeping and child-rearing, gypsy women are often seen just hanging at home watching reruns on TV, chain-smoking and constantly cleaning their caravan.
For some of the girls and women who grow up in Gypsy society, they feel depressed and oppressed by the male-dominated society. The modern Gypsy woman may be stuck in the cultural equivalent of the modern 's; destined for a life of domesticity and tied to her husband forever. In the Gypsy culture, divorce is a rarity. If the women do need to work to help support the family you can usually find them doing some sort of textile work or simply out on the streets searching for money.
The young Traveller or Gypsy children, just as the name suggests, do a lot of moving around. Because they are often on the road moving from one place to another, education is not considered a priority. If the children do attend school, both the boys and the girls usually leave school by the time they are The boys leave around this age because their fathers want to take them out to learn life skills.
Gypsies are often illiterate as well because formal education is just not a priority for them. Many of the families instead focus on art, music, survival skills and learning about wildlife. Within the Traveller or Gypsy communities, the teenagers marry at a very young age.
The average marriageable age for girls and boys is around 15 and 17 respectively. One major rule is that they are only allowed to marry other gypsies. Boys, however, have a little bit more leeway to marry someone outside of the culture as long as they adapt quickly to the gypsy way of life. On the contrary, the girls are definitely not allowed to marry outside of the culture because the belief is that women are the guarantors for the survival of the population.
In today's world, two or at the most three kids is considered normal. In the Gypsy culture though, they believe that the more children you have, the better.
Most girls get married in their teens and early marriage means early pregnancy. For the women of this ethnic group it is common to deliver up to ten babies over the span of their lifetime. They follow the Roman Catholic faith which does not encourage family planning or contraceptives and therefore, unplanned pregnancies are way too common.
So are miscarriages and congenital abnormalities. Gypsy women are not allowed to seek medical help during their pregnancies. They do not go for check-ups and scans like regular mothers do. The health of the mother and baby is often ignored.
Since they are not allowed to marry outside the clan, getting married to first and second cousins is also a norm. Therefore congenital malformations and anomalies also are very common. Since the Gypsies do not want to interact with the "settlers" they are probably unaware of the risks and dangers of teenage pregnancies and incestuous relationships.
The average life expectancy of Gypsies and Travelers is 59 years, which is way below the national average. Lack of education and low literacy rates only adds to the problem. Once married, her husband rules the roost. The men would never allow a woman out with her friends.
Gypsy girls are often taken out of education prior to secondary school to prevent them from mingling and exposure with boys from other cultures. Until they are engaged, some teenage traveller girls are subjected to the 'grabbing' courtship ritual, where a boy grabs a girl they want to kiss or date.
Strict rules makes sure girls aren't allowed to approach boys, so it's up to the males to tempt the girl away from her friends. This bizarre custom can look demeaning and it seems the girls simply accept it as something that is part of their culture. Travelling communities believe in the principle of no intimacy before marriage and girls who break this code are singled out and is considered dirty and risk being left on the shelf.
In their culture, the mothers raise girls and fathers raise boys. Interfering in your spouse's child rearing style and technique is unheard of.
As a result, the author Mikey became a walking-wound of bruises, swollen lips and eyes and endured his father's "training" for years. Yet his horrified mother and older sister could only watch: "Women were strictly forbidden from 'mollycoddling' boys in case they compromised the tough masculinity that was expected of Gypsy men," Walsh writes.
Girls are trained to change from a child to a housewife. From a very small age, they are taught to cook clean and keep the house. There is not much else to do since they are pulled out of school by the time they are 11 or 12 years of age. Roma Gypsies trace their heritage back to Northern India while the Travellers primarily come from Ireland. Many tell me they struggle to feed their children, and have no savings or bank account. Things seem set to get worse for Traveller women. O'Roarke is expecting to be the only Traveller liaison worker in the capital before long — her funding comes from the Irish government.
Who is supposed to help them if they get rid of the bit of support they have now? If they get a letter saying they are in danger of eviction but they can't read it, what are they supposed to do? Conditions on the site are as grim as the homes are spotless. The trailers are not connected to water pipes, and the toilets, bathrooms and cooking facilities are in a small, unheated shed across the yard. But living on a site is about being part of the community.
When Traveller girls are growing up, they are only allowed to go out with other family members, and once married, her husband rules the roost. Almost immediately her children became depressed.
He would buck to get out," says Kathleen. I was on anti-depressives. The children couldn't go out because the neighbours would complain about the noise. Since moving to their site two years ago, Kathleen and her children have been far happier.
They won't let our kids mix with theirs because they say we stink and don't talk properly. Settled kids won't even play sports with ours in case they touch them. Mary, Kathleen's year-old daughter, is upset by the series too, and says that she has faced further prejudice since it hit the screens.
All my friends are asking if it's true what they show on telly, and I think they've gone different [towards me] since it was shown. In one episode the viewer was informed that young Traveller men at weddings and other social occasions use something known as "grabbing" to force a reluctant girl to kiss them.
One newspaper report called it a "secret courting ritual". It's just one nasty boy they showed. Without them guaranteeing some form of community involvement with the programme I said there's no way I could put them in touch with the finalists or allow them to film the final. The series producer Vicky Hamburger was determined to expoit the event, but I told her her film crew would be evicted if she turned up. As any pest controller will tell you, one of the best ways of getting rid of rodents is to deny them food and not let them near you.
They soon went away. But in an interview with Broadcast magazine suggests that poor Vicky has been given the cold shoulder by Gypsies and Travellers across Britain. In an interview with Broadcast magazine about the series, she moaned:. In one extreme case, a family had left their site when the director turned up to film. He never did find them. Vicky would put it down to our unpredictable culture, I'd put it down to good sense. It would seem that many Gypsies and Travellers still retain the instinct to jel on when the long tails come near.
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