Table 2 Thematic Network Analysis (TNA) of collected data

…a good parent provides all children’s needs

Provide all children’s needs

Caregiver perceptions of proper parental care

Caregiver experiences of Child care and parental control under child rights

…you need to educate, support and provide for them

…you have to be their life coach

...you have to be someone they can trust in everything

…You have to punish them when they go wrong

Correction by punishment

…If you spare the rod you spoil your child

…you can’t be a parent if you can’t correct your children

…a good parent owns his children and trains them

…a parent is like a leader, you need to be in charge

Maintain total control to guide them

…they are children, they need your control for their own good

…if you can’t control your children, then you can’t care for them

…out of control children are an example of bad parenting

… we have limited control over them because of child rights

Child rights take away parental control

Caregiver experiences with child rights and parental control

…how can we parent them if we can’t control them

… we can’t control them like our own children, it is against their rights

…I agree with some of it, but it doesn’t allow us much control

…child rights are not bad at all, they just don’t fit this environment

Child rights are Foreign and Incompatible with us

…child rights are simply foreign

…our children have rights here too, but not these foreign ones

…it’s completely confusing

…you feel like you can be arrested anytime in this job

Child rights threatens job loss and prosecution

…I’ve had some of my colleagues sacked because of child rights

…if you want to keep your job, just obey them

…if you try to correct a child, you can be arrested for that

…with all those rights, you can only do little for them

Lessened care under child rights

Child rights impacts on care duties and relationship with children

…if you follow those rights strictly, you can only give less care

…if I can’t punish my child, then I’m not giving enough parental care

…I just leave them alone

Caregiver ambivalence

…it is they (children) who will suffer here not me

…we dint raise them, we just serve them

…what do you do if the child does not listen to all your talk?

…we know our limits, and they know our limits too

Reinforces professional rather than parental relationship

…we are workers, not real parents so we just work

…the child doesn’t see you as a parent, just a worker

…the relationship is that of work not that of parenting