The focus of the present article is ethnographic, aiming to describe the children of the catingueira (a semiarid region in Paraíba state), highlighting their participation in social and family life. I reveal the contingencies these children face an daily life as well as adults' expectations regarding them, focusing on three ethnographic memories: an event in church involving a three year old child; the ritual presentation of new members to the community and a funeral procession for a "little angel" (a dead child). Here I propose to think of small children as laughable, of older children apprentices and of childhood as a period of work and moral learning. The text reveals a universe in which children become agents who are essential for the proper functioning of the family unit and, more generally, of the whole community.
Children; Infancy; Child labor; Socialization; Family; Peasantry