Potentials of care: The uncertain politics of social and emotional ability and difference in American childhood

This article examines middle class children's and parents' complex engagements with contemporary practices of cultivation, care and surveillance focused on children's social and emotional capacities and differences. Emblematic of a sociality and emotion-focused biopolitics of childhood, such care provokes moments of spontaneous connection and self-expression for children even as they engage dynamics of disciplining control and normalisation, an outcome that may work against and towards the objectives of care. Moreover, parental investments in social–emotional care reveal adults' conflicted implication in dynamics of child normalisation, and the potential of this form of caretaking to generate politically valuable empathic insight.     

Retrospective Paternal and Maternal Parenting Styles,Regulatory Self-Efficacy and Adolescent Risk Taking

This study aims to calculate a scaled risk-taking behavior index and to test a model in which maternal and paternal parenting styles affect risk-taking behavior with a mediation of adolescents’ regulatory self-efficacy. Participants were 816 adolescents (44% males) responding to a self-report questionnaire about their risk-taking behavior, regulatory self-efficacy, and retrospective memories of paternal and maternal parenting styles. Results suggested an item rating in the index showing that behaviors considered less risky referred to alcohol use and the unplanned first sexual intercourse, whereas behaviors considered more risky referred to the lack of use of contraceptives and the age of the first sexual intercourse. Results revealed a significant indirect effect of authoritative and authoritarian styles on risk-taking behavior. These styles shaped the adolescents’ regulatory self-efficacy, which in turn predicted adolescent risk-taking behavior. Results underline the complex interplay of relationships between parents and their children.     

Maternal responses to negative emotions and child externalizing behavior: Different relations for 5‐, 6‐, and 7‐year‐olds

Emotional and behavioral maturity expectations increase as children transition to primary school; thus, maternal responses that support and encourage children's expression of negative emotion may not benefit school‐age children as much as preschoolers. The current study explored a change in the utility of these maternal responses among 187 families (62 5‐year‐olds, 75 6‐year‐olds, and 50 7‐year‐olds). Mothers reported on their responses to children's negative emotions and children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors at two time points over 1 year. Multiple group analysis within cross‐lagged path models revealed a positive association between non‐supportive maternal responses and later child externalizing behaviors among 5‐year‐olds. However, non‐supportive responses were related to decreases in externalizing behaviors among the 7‐year‐olds. Discrepant findings between the 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds may represent a developmental shift in the function of mothers' emotion socialization practices.     

Children’s reasoning about unequal gender‐based distributions

Children ages 7 (N = 56, M_age = 7.24, SD = 0.83), 9 (N = 55, M_age = 9.25, SD = 0.52), and 11 (N = 52, M_age = 11.60, SD = 0.79), and emerging adults (N = 50, M_age = 20.76, SD = 0.87) judged distributions of different items to boys and girls, when the items distributed varied by gender valence (related or unrelated to gender norms) and equivalency (equivalent or unequal). Distributions were judged to be acceptable most when the items were consistent with gender norms, especially for participants at ages 7 and 9, indicating that in middle childhood, children judge unequal treatment as fair when it is related to gender norms. Items were judged to be more likable when they were gendered, and likability judgments predicted more positive evaluations of the distributions, even when controlling for age.     

Grandparent support and mental and behavioural health in middle childhood

This study explored the significance of grandparents in middle childhood and assessed the level of grandparental support provided to children in relation to other social network members. The association between grandparental support and grandchildren's mental and behavioural health was also examined. We conducted structured interviews with 120 grade 4 and 5 learners (mean age = 10.41 years) from four schools in Cape Town, South Africa. Results indicated that subsequent to parents, children perceived grandparents as the most important and close relationship category. Furthermore, grandparents provided the highest levels of support to grandchildren after parents. Grandmothers provided more support than grandfathers. No associations between grandparental support and children's internalizing and externalizing behaviours were found. However, results revealed that grandparental support was positively associated with children's prosocial behaviour, independent of child gender, and the amount of support provided by other relationship categories (p = .04). Findings underscore a need for research to move beyond the nuclear family when considering potential influences on children's well‐being.     

Parents’ perspectives of social support and social cohesion in urban contexts of diversity

Although provisions for young children are increasingly considered as ideal places to foster an inclusive and socially just society by embracing issues of social support and social cohesion, there is no in-depth understanding of the role these provisions can play in enabling supportive and cohesive encounters in contexts of diversity. Even more striking is the absence of parents’ voices in this discussion. Based on an analysis of qualitative interviews with 18 parents who use childcare services in urban contexts of diversity, our findings show the relevance of ephemeral contacts with diverse people that could offer bridging opportunities in terms of social connectedness to familiarise within diversity while decoding the other in urban contexts of diversity. However, neither bonding nor bridging contacts appear as self-evident. Our research shows that the role of childcare services might be vital in creating light and temporal communities as the prerequisite for social cohesion to flourish, in both individual as well as collective dimensions.     

The Hiroshima memory complex

The atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 is one of the most powerful global memories. While the literature on global memories has greatly expanded in recent decades, Hiroshima remains surprisingly understudied. In addressing this lacuna, this paper develops a new theoretical prism for the study of global memories. It argues that the Hiroshima memory cannot be understood in isolation, but rather as the hub in a broader memory complex. This complex is the result of symbolic dialogues that connect Hiroshima with such different events, situations, and memories as Nanjing, Pearl Harbor, the Cold War, and so on. The paper demonstrates how these dialogues have been forged, often in the context of substantial controversy. While distinctly sociological in orientation, the paper takes its main theoretical inspiration from cultural, literary, and history scholars such as Jan and Aleida Assmann, Sebastian Conrad, Astrid Erll, Ann Rigney, Michael Rothberg, Aby Warburg and Mikhael Bakhtin.     

The performativity of surveys: Teenagers’ meaning-making of the 'Health Behavior in School-aged Children Survey' in Sweden

The Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children survey contains scales intended to measure life satisfaction, mental health problems and socioeconomic status. This article takes inspiration from science and technology studies and analyse the survey as performative. It also examines subjective meaning-making through an analysis of interviews with 15-year-old teenagers. It shows how the survey enacts the subject position of an accountable teenager and how teenagers experience the survey as sending a message about how one should live. While some teenagers experience this as positive, others narrate feelings of shame. This could be interpreted as a way for them to be accountable for themselves.     

Child protection social workers' constructions of children and childhood: An integrative review

Social workers' constructions of children and childhood are central to how professionals interact with children and support their needs. The aim of this integrative review was to provide a comprehensive portrayal of child protection social workers' constructions of children and childhood. We analysed and synthesized 35 empirical studies with samples of social workers in the child protection domain where issues regarding the child or the child's situation were the study focus. The findings show that children and youth are constructed as a generalized group viewed in light of their parents. We see a fragmented and context‐free child produced by causal shortcuts strongly informed by specific and, at times, simplified and biased psychological knowledge. Moreover, we identify constructions of the child in need of protection and thereby position children as objects for intervention, separating that from children as subjects in their own rights. Although the participatory child is visible in the data material, the actual practice of involving children seems arbitrary.