The symptom‐carrying child as a preserver of the family unit

The aim of this study was to investigate the operational validity of the theoretical concept of the ‘symptom‐carrying child’. Its purpose was to examine whether, and to what extent, the symptom‐carrying child plays a central role in maintaining the internal balance and unity of the family, and whether he holds a focal position in ‘triangulation’. The research hypothesis was based on theories of family therapy, in particular on the concepts of the ‘identified patient’, and ‘triangulation’. Our major question was whether symptomatic children would be more likely than non‐symptomatic children to exhibit greater responsibility and involvement in their parents’ marriage, and as such act as preservers of the family unit. Subjects in each of the groups participating in this study were identified in treatment centres for children and adolescents using the Achenbach Self‐report Questionnaire. Subjects included males and females aged 10–17, who had either internalized or externalized symptoms and no history of organic or psychotic disorders. The research groups also included each child’s parents and the sibling closest in chronological age, who served as an additional control group. A total of 118 children from nuclear, two‐parent families participated in the study. It was found that symptom‐carrying children exhibited greater involvement and responsibility in their parents’ marriage than non‐symptom‐carrying children. Likewise symptomatic children reported that they had greater influence on their parents than children without symptoms.     

Children's Physiological Regulation and Sibling Conflict as Correlates of Children's Conscience Development

Children's conscience, including the ability to experience guilt and engage in rule‐compatible behavior, develops across early childhood. The current study investigated whether within‐family variation in children's baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and sibling conflict behavior were associated with individual differences in children's guilt and internalized conduct. Between‐family differences across sibling dyad gender compositions were also examined. A within‐family design that included 70 families with two siblings between the ages of 2 and 5 was utilized. Children's baseline RSA was measured while sitting quietly with their family. Mothers and fathers completed questionnaires that assessed siblings’ conflict behavior, guilt, and internalized conduct. Older siblings had higher levels of guilt and internalized conduct than younger siblings. Results from actor‐partner interdependence models indicated that there were no direct effects of children's baseline RSA. The interaction effects approached significance (p's ≤ .08) suggesting that older siblings’ conflict moderated the association between older siblings’ baseline RSA and both older and younger siblings’ guilt. In contrast, older siblings’ conflict was positively associated with older and younger siblings’ internalized conduct. Guilt and internalized conduct also differed for older and younger siblings in different dyad gender compositions. The results underscore the need for greater clarity regarding the function that siblings serve in promoting children's moral development during early childhood.     

Need and support: determinants of intra‐familial financial transfers in Sweden

Lennartsson C. Need and support: determinants of intra‐familial financial transfers in Sweden Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 66–74 © 2010 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and International Journal of Social Welfare. This study examined downward inter‐generational intra‐family financial transfers in Sweden made in the form of money transactions or gifts. The research questions focus on whether recipients of intra‐family financial transfers are children in ‘need’ of such support, and whether early family environment has any consequences for later financial transfers. Using data from a nationally representative survey, the results suggest that childhood disadvantages have long‐term consequences in connection with intra‐family financial transfers. Disadvantages and inequalities in childhood are likely to remain into adulthood, and children who experience adverse childhood conditions are less often recipients of later intra‐family financial support. Intra‐family transfers are also related to the ‘needs’ of the younger generation. Single parents and students from higher social class families are more often beneficiaries of financial support. In contrast, family support was no higher for unemployed children, for children lacking financial security in the form of a cash margin or for children reporting poor health.     

Parenting distress and parental investment of Hong Kong Chinese parents with a child having an emotional or behavioural problem: a qualitative study

This qualitative study aims to understand the parenting distress and parental investment of Hong Kong Chinese parents with a child having an emotional or behavioural problem. The parents of 24 children and adolescents who sought psychiatric consultation within the study period were interviewed using open‐ended questions. The data revealed a vicious reciprocal interaction in which the symptoms affected the parents’ psychosocial well‐being, which in turn impacted unfavourably on the identified patient. With three exceptions, the parents in this study had engaged in different activities prior to the psychiatric consultation, including information search, changes in the methods of parenting, attempts to reduce family stress, reliance on superstitious beliefs, and reaching out for professional help and social services. The parental investment indicated parents’ resilience in facing the child’s problems. Implications for service development and social work intervention are discussed.     

Spiritual education programme for primary caregiver parents to build resilience in children with acute anxiety symptoms: A multicity study

This article reports a multicity 1‐year long study on the effect of a customized spiritual education programme (SEP) on parenting and in turn its mediated effect on resilience building for children with acute anxiety symptoms. The treatment group comprised 3,689 primary caregiver parents who participated in the SEP and their children clinically diagnosed with acute anxiety symptoms, from 180 schools across 15 cities. Equal number of primary caregiver parents and children were assigned to the control group. Results showed that post‐test scores of treatment group primary caregiver parents were higher on the parenting style questionnaires, indicating an improved and authoritative parenting style. This positive effect of the SEP on parenting in turn had a mediating effect on resilience of their children, who scored higher on the outcome measures in the post‐treatment phase. Parenting and resilience outcome measures varied due to socio‐economic and SEP‐related variables. Children's perception of post‐treatment parenting influenced their resilience. Findings suggest that SEP could aid positive parenting and hence positive behavioural outcomes in children.     

Family relations, adjustment and well-being in a longitudinal study of children in care

The article reports on a longitudinal study of children placed in a children's home during the first two years of the 1980s. The 26 children placed when younger than 4 years of age and staying more than 4 weeks were followed up 3 and 9 months after leaving the children's home and 5, 10, 15 and 20 years later. The children's family relations, including early attachments and later parental relationships and the perception of who is their family, have been one of the predominant themes in the recurrent studies. None of them had lived with both parents after leaving the children's home and 20 of them had been in foster care for periods or permanently. At the time of the last study the children were young adults, aged 20–25. They are categorized in three rather distinct categories, one for those with a ‘good’ and one for those with a ‘moderate’ social adjustment and well‐being and one for those with a ‘bad’ social adjustment and well‐being insofar as involvement with drugs, criminal behaviour and legal sanctions are concerned. Their contacts and relationships with birth parents and foster parents and the perception of who is their family are analysed by use of attachment theory and developmental psychopathology.     

Children in permanent foster care in Sweden

The Swedish child welfare system has no permanency planning as we know it from, for example, the United States and Great Britain. Regardless of whether the child is placed in foster care with or without the parents’ consent, the law requires semi-annual reviews and there is no time limit set on reunion. Nevertheless, there are foster children who remain in the foster home throughout the whole of childhood, on terms similar to permanent foster care or adoption. This paper concerns a selection of findings from a research project entitled ‘Is there a difference in being a foster child?’. Foster children aged 10–11 were interviewed three times and the children’s perspective was focused on, complemented by the perspective of their foster parent(s). When interviewed about their relationship to their natural family as well as to the foster family, and about having a sense of family belonging and expectations for the future, 11 of the 22 children perceived their stay in the foster home as permanent and regarded themselves as belonging only to the foster family, although all of the children had contact with their birth parents. The study concerns the children’s views as well as those of the foster parents. The perception of permanency in the absence of a legal option of permanency is discussed.     

Mothers' Self-Reported Control of Their Preschool Children's Emotional Expressiveness: A Longitudinal Study of Associations with Infant–Mother Attachment and Children's Emotion Regulation

In the present longitudinal study we examined the associations between mothers’ self‐reported control of their preschoolers’ emotional expressiveness and two other key facets of early socioemotional development: the quality of the infant–mother attachment and children's emotion regulation. Seventy‐six white preschool‐aged children (46 boys and 30 girls) and their mothers participated. Principal assessments included the Parent Attitude Toward Child Expressiveness Scale (PACES; Saarni, 1985 ), the infant Strange Situation, and ‘Beat the Bell,’ a measure designed for this study to elicit children's emotional expression, sharing, and suppression in the presence of their mothers. Mothers’ control of their children's expressiveness was associated with both attachment and children's emotion regulation in theoretically predicted ways. First, mothers of children who had been classified insecure‐avoidant in the Strange Situation reported greater control of their children's negative expressiveness than other mothers, and mothers of children who had been classified insecure‐ambivalent reported less control of their children's negative expressiveness than other mothers. Second, mothers who reported greater control of their children's expressiveness had children who were less likely to express and share their feelings and more likely to suppress their anger in the ‘Beat the Bell’ emotion regulation assessment. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of maternal emotion socialization in children's early socioemotional development.     

Interaction between adoptive mothers’ and fathers’ depressive symptoms in risk for children’s emerging problem behavior

The effect of parental depression on children's adjustment has been well documented, with exposure during early childhood particularly detrimental. Most studies that examine links between parental depression and child behavior are confounded methodologically because they focus on parents raising children who are genetically related to them. Another limitation of most prior research is a tendency to focus only on the effects of maternal depression while ignoring the influence of fathers’ depression. The purpose of this study was to examine whether infants’ exposure to both parents’ depressive symptoms, and inherited risk from birth mother internalizing symptoms, was related to school age children's externalizing and internalizing problems. Study data come from a longitudinal adoption study of 561 adoptive parents, biological mothers, and adopted children. Adoptive fathers’ depressive symptoms during infancy contributed independent variance to the prediction of children's internalizing symptoms and also moderated associations between adoptive mothers’ depressive symptoms and child externalizing symptoms.     

Vicarious ostracism and control in young children

After observing ostracism or social exclusion, older children, adolescents and adults report decreased satisfaction of the need for control. Attempting to regain control can motivate aggression in ostracized adults. Research has shown that the onset of ostracism’s harmful effects on children’s behavior is at preschool age. We investigated whether preschoolers would exert more control after witnessing ostracism. A sample of 53 children (Mage = 5 years, 5 months) first watched priming videos either showing ostracism or not. Subsequently, they participated in two ball games. In both of the games (order counterbalanced), children could control the flow of a ball’s motion, either live between two people (i.e., social control) or between two bars on a laptop screen (i.e., non‐social control). Overall, children understood social exclusion when it was displayed in the videos. We found an effect of observed ostracism only on social control. Four‐ to five‐year‐old boys who witnessed ostracism stopped a ball game between two persons longer than boys who did not witness ostracism. Our results suggest that observing social exclusion elevates young boys’ need for control over a social situation. Girls showed a different pattern but their responses did not differ significantly between ostracism and non‐ostracism conditions.     

Families on the brink: the effectiveness of family support services

This paper presents findings from a study of the costs and effectiveness of family support services offered to 40 families with a high level of need, in two neighbouring local authorities in North Wales. It describes the level and type of services offered by different agencies in each of the authorities, estimates the costs of these services, and assesses outcomes for the families receiving them after three months. Information is also provided about families’ experience of the support they received, and the kind of help they would have liked. Parents’ well‐being and family functioning were found to improve over the intervention period in both authorities, although only to a limited extent. Improvements were greater among those who were living with partners, and less among families identified by social workers as having financial difficulties or problems with drug or alcohol abuse. Respondents who rated their problems as very severe showed less improvement. The pattern of service provision and the costs involved turned out to be similar in both authorities, so it was not possible to reach conclusions about the relationship between services and outcomes. However, a number of themes emerging from the data are discussed, including the role of day care services in supporting families with young children, the impact of poverty and deprivation on parents’ ability to provide good care for their children, and the importance of an interagency response to children's and parents’ needs. The article also includes a discussion of problems encountered in undertaking comparative outcomes‐based research and cost‐effectiveness analyses in the social welfare field.     

The influence of an older sibling on preschoolers’ lie‐telling behavior

In the present study, children’s (2‐ to 5‐years old) lie‐telling was examined in relation to theory of mind (first‐order false belief understanding), executive functioning (measuring inhibitory control in conjunction with working memory), and presence of siblings in the home (no siblings vs. siblings; younger siblings vs. older siblings).  Lie‐telling was observed using a temptation resistance paradigm. Overall, of the 152 (74.9%) children who peeked at the toy, 73 (48%) lied during the temptation resistance paradigm. Children with higher scores on measures of first‐order false belief understanding, and measures that relied on inhibitory control, were more likely to lie compared to their truthful counterparts.  Additionally, children with older siblings were more likely to lie to the research assistant, and this relationship was independent of performance on cognitive tasks. Overall, results demonstrate that having an older sibling has an independent, direct effect on the development of young children’s lie‐telling abilities, irrespective of cognitive ability. These findings support the argument that lie‐telling is a behavior that is facilitated by both cognitive and social factors.     

Examining the impact of family services on homeless children

This study examined the impact on children of services delivered through a collaborative initiative designed to provide supports to working poor families who are homeless or at immediate risk of becoming homeless. Overall, a number of positive findings can serve to inform the development of promising intervention strategies for children in homeless families and highlight areas for further research. Along with improved housing status, there was a statistically significant improvement in the economic self‐sufficiency of the families served, regardless of whether they completed the full programme cycle. In addition, youth self‐report data indicated significant improvements in externalizing and internalizing behaviour. The ability to combine programme data with school data for participating children also made it possible to explore school performance outcomes. Although these results did not indicate a change in participants’ levels of attendance or reading performance, there was a statistically significant improvement in students’ math scores. Moreover, when participating children were compared with a group of students matched on their level of academic performance at baseline who had not received housing or homeless services, no significant differences were detected between groups post‐intervention, indicating that services may help reduce the risk of homeless students’ falling further behind their peers academically.     

Black‐White Biracial Children's Social Development from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade: Links with Racial Identification,Gender, and Socioeconomic Status

In this study, we investigated trajectories of Black‐White biracial children's social development during middle childhood, their associations with parents’ racial identification of children, and the moderating effects of child gender and family socioeconomic status (SES). The study utilized data from parent and teacher reports on 293 US Black‐White biracial children enrolled in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study‐Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS‐K). Growth curve models suggested increasing trajectories of teacher‐reported internalizing and externalizing behaviors between kindergarten and fifth grade. Parents’ racial identification of children predicted child externalizing behavior trajectories such that teachers rated biracially identified children's externalizing behaviors lower relative to those of Black‐ and White‐identified children. Additionally, for White‐identified biracial children, the effect of family SES on internalizing behavior trajectories was especially pronounced. These findings suggest that in the USA, how parents racially identify their Black‐White biracial children early on has important implications for children's problem behaviors throughout the elementary school years.     

Preferentially rejected children and their development in permanent family placements

Several studies of family placements have indicated poorer outcomes for children who are placed singly in new families. In an effort to understand why this may be so, this paper explores differential outcome among a group of children who were placed singly with adoptive or long‐term foster families during middle childhood. A small number of these children were ‘only children’ at the time of placement but most had siblings living elsewhere. Particular attention is paid to preferential rejection by birth parents in the children's backgrounds. Preferential rejection indicates that one child has been rejected while siblings are accepted. This was found to be associated with poorer progress in placement. The methodological and statistical detail of the analyses are to be found in another paper. We focus here on describing the patterns which emerged and the ways in which the findings may assist practitioners in making and supporting permanent placements.     

Congruence and incongruence in the perception of ‘family’ among foster parents,birth parents and their adolescent (foster) children

Over recent decades, listening to children's voices and viewing children as competent actors has gathered momentum in research as well as in practice. Acknowledging children's perspectives requires sensitive listeners who are willing, deliberately and as realistically as possible, to reconstruct children's ways of seeing. In our study, based in Norway, we investigated the views of 22 adolescents in long‐term foster care and 15 of their birth parents and 21 of their foster parents. Using Q methodology, we explored congruence and incongruence in the perception of ‘family’ among foster parents, birth parents and their adolescent (foster) children. We found three family perspectives among the adolescents. Within two of these perspectives, there seem to be more congruent understandings of the children's perspectives among the parent groups. We discuss some main implications in light of these findings. In Norway, as in many other countries, the policy of child welfare is that children first and foremost should grow up with their birth family. When out‐of‐home placements are necessary, a basic principle is that children should remain in contact with their birth family.     

The significance of a secure base: a psychosocial model of long-term foster care

ABSTRACT Long‐term foster care has been a much neglected area of social work practice and research. Yet there are obvious challenges that need to be understood when building a family for life in foster care. Is it possible for foster families, where there are no biological or legal ties between carers and children, to provide care, concern and family membership not only through childhood but also into adult life? The study on which this paper is based set out to explore that question by investigating the experiences of 40 adults, aged 18–30, who grew up in foster families. Qualitative interviews were conducted, transcribed and analysed. Theoretical frameworks from attachment and resilience were brought together with concepts such as ‘belonging’ and ‘family membership’ to make sense of the narratives provided. An integrated and dynamic psychosocial model of long‐term foster care was developed, which emphasizes the significance of a secure base and has some important implications for practice.     

Preschoolers prefer in‐group to out‐group members,but equally condemn their immoral acts

Previous research has shown that young children robustly display in‐group favoritism; that is, they favor in‐group over out‐group members. Moreover, preschoolers also consider information on morality in their evaluations of others. In the present study, we integrated both aspects: In particular, fifty‐six 4‐ to 6‐year‐old preschoolers were assigned to minimal groups and observed either prosocial or antisocial acts conducted by either an in‐group or an out‐group member. After observing these behaviors, children's liking and sharing were significantly higher for moral compared to immoral actors. In addition, children's liking and sharing were substantially higher for in‐group compared to out‐group actors. However, when children were directly asked to morally evaluate the actor's conduct, no in‐group favoritism emerged: In particular, children evaluated immoral acts conducted by an in‐group or an out‐group agent as equally bad/wrong and similarly claimed that these acts deserve punishment. These findings demonstrate that preschoolers differentially weigh information on group membership and moral valence depending on the type of evaluation, namely sharing and liking versus explicit moral evaluations of others’ conduct.     

Helping families when child sexual abuse is suspected but not proven

This paper reports from a project investigating reactions within families when intra‐familial child sexual abuse was suspected, and family members’ responses to a therapeutic approach. Data were obtained from therapeutic sessions and follow‐up interviews with mothers, children and alleged perpetrators. Before treatment the mothers felt uncertain as to how to interpret the children’s unclear signs. The children had severe symptoms, but had seldom disclosed abuse. The alleged perpetrators were often not informed about the suspicions. The families were in a state of crisis and shock, and communication within the family was characterized by uncertainty about what to talk about and whether the suspicions should be shared. In most cases after treatment the conflicts had been reduced, the children had few symptoms, supervised contact had been established, and the clients were satisfied with the treatment. One conclusion is that therapeutic sessions, where family members share information about concerns and take part in the decisions of how to protect children, seem relevant and helpful to the clients in unclear abuse cases.