The Development of Object Construction From Infancy Through Toddlerhood

Early in development, children explore and combine objects in increasingly complex ways. One manual skill, object construction, represents a major shift in how objects are explored relative to other objects. Despite recent connections with cognitive functioning such as spatial skills, the development of object construction ability has rarely been studied and its trajectory has not been adequately described. The purpose of this study was to describe the development of three types of object construction (stacking, nesting, and affixing) across 5 monthly infant visits and 7 monthly toddler visits using a longitudinal design and a large sample size. Infants (10–14 months, n = 131) and toddlers drawn from the infant sample (18–24 months, n = 65) were given sets of age‐appropriate toys each of which elicited at least one type of constructive play. We described success at different construction tasks and identified trends for construction skill for infant and toddler development using multilevel modeling. We found that each of the three construction actions developed in unique ways across the 10‐ to 24‐month period. Infant construction skill predicted the development of toddler skill, but toddler construction skill diverged from infant trajectories. We discuss the role of combination strategies in the development of object construction skill and how object construction could be related to other domains of development.     

Immigration and internal mobility in Canada

We analyse the impact of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) and permanent immigrants on interprovincial mobility in Canada. Empirical results are analysed through the lens of a theoretical model that incorporates a job-matching framework in a migration model à la Harris and Todaro. The effect of the inflow of TFWs in interprovincial mobility is negative, substantial and significant. This is not the case for the inflow of permanent immigrants selected through the Canadian point system. The robustness of these empirical results to issues of endogeneity is assessed through a classical instrumentation approach as well as through a diff-in-diff analysis taking advantage of a pilot project facilitating the admission of TFWs in two Western provinces over the 2007–2010 period. Our paper suggests that, in general, the impact of immigration on labour market conditions depends critically on the way immigration policy is set.     

Parent–professional interviews in child protection: Comparing viewpoints

Several studies have analysed the parent–professional relationship in the field of child protection. Although social workers tend to privilege interviews when working with families and view them as a means through which to build ties, few studies have focused on these interviews. To analyse how professionals and parents position themselves, we chose to focus on the content of these interviews and on the associated interactions. To this end, we recorded 13 parent–professional interviews after receiving the consent of the concerned parties. After analysing the interviews, we asked volunteer social workers and parents to analyse their own recorded interviews. Our results confirm the asymmetric nature of the parent–professional relationship. They show that professionals' viewpoints carry more weight than those of parents. They also underscore professionals' lack of openness and the strategies parents implement to cope with this power imbalance. Lastly, our results open new avenues for reflection on the evolution of practices that may enable professionals to better take into account families' viewpoints.     

Parent-worker relationships in child welfare social work: a Belgian case study

The involvement of parents within child and family social work has become an important research topic during the past few decades. Within this research, a lot of attention is paid to partnership, which is recognised as a dominant concept in current thinking about the parent–worker relationship in present-day practice. The debate on parent–worker relationships, however, seems to be mainly focussed on the individual relationship between the parent and the social worker. Based on a historical analysis of policy documents on a Belgian child and family welfare service, this article offers a historical and sociopolitical contextualisation of the current debate on the parent–worker relationship. The analysis reveals that sociopolitical ideas about the responsibilities of the state, the community and the private family have induced a continuous reflection on which children and parents should be seen as the most appropriate clients for a particular service, as well as an ongoing development of diagnostic instruments to legitimise inclusion and exclusion of families within child and family social work. Consequences for parent–worker relationships in child and family social work are discussed, as well as some implications for future research on child and family social work practices.     

Du machisme au coparentage: pour une révolution des mentalités en Italie

Cet article décrit les processus législatifs et judiciaires complexes nécessaires pour que le droit au coparentage s'impose dans le droit du travail italien. Après avoir expliqué que le système juridique italien a jusqu'à présent assimilé la protection de la famille à la seule protection de la femme et de la maternité, l'auteur décrit l'évolution législative qui a permis de reconnaître aux pères un rôle fondamental dans l'éducation des enfants. Il montre ensuite que la jurisprudence, en retenant une interprétation moderne des principes inscrits dans la loi, contribue à vaincre la résistance à une telle évolution dans une société encore marquée par la domination masculine.     

Co-morbidity Between Gambling Problems and Depressive Symptoms: A Longitudinal Perspective of Risk and Protective Factors

In both adolescents and adults, gambling problems and depressive symptoms co-occur and share some common risk factors (e.g., impulsivity and socio-family risk). However, little is known about (1) the developmental course of the co-morbidity of these problems; (2) variables that may moderate the effect of these common risk factors on gambling problems and depressive symptoms. Of specific interest could be individuals’ social relationships with significant others such as parents and friends, because research shows that they moderate the effect of other risk factors on gambling problems and depressive symptoms. The goals of this study were to: (a) identify developmental pathways for gambling problems and depressive symptoms, with a focus on co-morbidity; (b) assess the moderating effect of relationship quality with parents and friends on the link between common risk factors and the trajectories of gambling problems and depressive symptoms. Study participants were 878 males. Predictors were assessed during childhood and adolescence and gambling problems and depressive symptoms were assessed in late adolescence and young adulthood. Latent class analysis revealed four distinct joint trajectories of gambling problems and depressive symptoms. Subsequent logistic regression revealed that impulsivity predicted membership in all pathogenic trajectories, and quality of the relationship with parents predicted membership in depressogenic trajectories. In addition, we found that the membership in the comorbid trajectory can be predicted by an interaction between friendship quality and socio-family risk.     

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.     

A Bitcoin-inspired infinite-server model with a random fluid limit

The synchronization process inherent to the Bitcoin network gives rise to an infinite-server model with the unusual feature that customers interact. Among the closed-form characteristics that we derive for this model is the busy period distribution which, counterintuitively, does not depend on the arrival rate. We explain this by exploiting the equivalence between two specific service disciplines, which is also used to derive the model’s stationary distribution. Next to these closed-form results, the second major contribution concerns an asymptotic result: a fluid limit in the presence of service delays. Since fluid limits arise under scalings of the law-of-large-numbers type, they are usually deterministic, but in the setting of the model discussed in this paper the fluid limit is random (more specifically, of growth-collapse type).     

Contagion of Anxiety Symptoms Among Adolescent Siblings: A Twin Study

This study examined whether social contagion of anxiety symptoms is present between siblings during early adolescence and whether this process is moderated by sex, relationship quality, and zygosity. Based on 634 monozygotic and dizygotic twins (336 females) assessed in Grades 6 and 7, anxiety symptoms and sibling relationship quality were measured with self‐report questionnaires. The predictive association of the co‐twin's level of anxiety with adolescents' own increased anxiety 1 year later was only observed in same‐sex twin dyads (monozygotic and dizygotic) and was higher for those who perceived a higher level of relationship quality with their co‐twin. Raising awareness of a possible sibling contagion of anxiety may be useful for preventing the development of anxiety symptoms in youth.