After the age of five or six, children become a useful part of the house-hold’s economy, looking after smaller brothers and sisters, minding animals and helping prepare vegetables and rice to eat, thus freeing the parents for the hard work in the fields or quarries. As the children grow so does the list of tasks they will be expected to undertake until they are considered able to work along side their parents.This growing usefulness in the home or field coincides with the steady drop-out rate of pupils from schools which occurs throughout all the rural areas. By the time most of the poorer village girls have reached puberty they are no longer going to school. The drop-out rate is even faster if the girls must travel to a more distant school to do further standards, as many parents are reluctant to expose their daughters to possible harassment.