Forgotten Childhoods: Investigating the Causes and Contributing Factors of Child Abandonment in District Peshawar

Childhood is a crucial stage of human development in which children require stable family relationships, care, protection, and support to ensure their well-being and healthy development. When children are deprived of parental care or abandoned, they may face significant social, emotional, economic, and developmental challenges. Child abandonment is therefore a complex social and child protection issue influenced by multiple family, socioeconomic, cultural, and structural factors. This study explored the underlying causes and contributing factors of child abandonment in District Peshawar, Pakistan. A qualitative approach was employed, using purposive sampling to select 25 participants, including 15 abandoned children, six institutional staff members, and four child protection officials. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and observations and analyzed using thematic analysis. Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory was used as the conceptual framework to examine that a child’s development and well-being are influenced by multiple interconnected environmental systems rather than by the immediate family alone and the findings demonstrated that child abandonment was not merely a family-level issue but results from the interaction of vulnerabilities operating across different ecological systems. The study found that family conflict, domestic violence, parental remarriage, property disputes, poverty, parental illness or death, substance abuse, displacement, migration, and weak family support contributed to children’s separation from parental care. The findings also highlighted care abandonment, in which children had living parents but lacked adequate care and support. The study concludes that child abandonment results from interconnected vulnerabilities rather than a single cause. It recommends a family-centered preventive approach involving socioeconomic support, family counseling, and coordinated child protection services to strengthen vulnerable families and prevent unnecessary separation.