Masculinities and fathering

There is a developing body of research regarding fathering, in the UK, but the experiences of African-Caribbean and white working-class fathers, and how their experiences are mediated by gender and ethnicity have been neglected. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap in research by reporting on the similarities and differences within the stories of African-Caribbean and white working-class men about fathering, and to examine the personal and structural dimensions to these experiences using Connell's theoretical framework for understanding masculinities (1995, 2005). Qualitative, semi-structured individual interviews were undertaken with seven white and six African-Caribbean fathers. Findings indicate that African-Caribbean fathers, specifically, their associated practices, regarding children's ‘behaviour’ and learning, with experiences of racism that they anticipated their children may encounter in the future. Both groups of men's stories demonstrated limited reflexivity about the unequal distribution of domestic labour within the home. The study also found that fathers’ experiences were associated with contradictory and differing forms of masculinity. The fathers’ stories provide evidence of changing forms of masculinity, for example, in ways in which fathers conceptualised fathering as enjoyable involvement with children, and the ways fathers negotiated and resisted the constraints of paid work in order to be involved with children. Findings also reinforce the importance of health and social care services reorienting their priorities to engage with fathers, and opportunities for future research, regarding the experiences of African-Caribbean fathers in particular, are also identified.     

Participation as a right to the city: Iranian children’s perspectives about their inclusion in urban decision-making

To assess children's willingness to participate in decision-making about urban environments, Iranian children were invited to tell their stories about child inclusion in city affairs. The findings demonstrate children's enthusiasm to have a say, their suggestions of how their ideas can be integrated into planning, and their competency for participation. Despite their willingness, participants indicated awareness of patriarchal cultural views of children and childhood which continue to exclude them from planning involvement. Being denied the exercise of their rights to the city generates a marginalised status, alienating children from achieving appropriate engagement.     

No regrets: Widows' stories about the last days of their husbands' lives

This article looks at the stories older women, who were participants in a study of older women's experiences of widowhood, told about their husbands' deaths. The findings are based on in-depth, narrative interviews with 28 women over 50 whose husbands had died within the previous five years. Most participants told their husbands' death stories without being asked to. There were three major parts to these death stories: finding out their husbands were dying; taking care of their husbands while coming to terms with the fact of their impending deaths; and the period immediately before and at the actual time of death. These stories appear to give meaning and comfort to widows as they recount them. They provide bridges or transition experiences through which women come to understand their own journey from wife to widow.     

A systematic review of children’s participation in child protection decision-making: Tokenistic presence or not?

This article examines children's views on and experiences with participation in the child protection system's decision-making process. The systematic review follows the PRISMA statement and includes 12 peer-reviewed articles published in academic journals from 2006 to 2017. Findings suggest that children's contact with their worker was limited or non-existent, which minimised opportunities to express views regarding their situation; child–worker contacts lacked dialogue, information about the process of intervention and trusting relationships, meaning that without a voice, children were not engaged in making decisions. Although data are limited, they suggest little or no dialogue with children by child protection workers. Furthermore, children voiced their experiences of not being informed of or understanding the process or decisions made about their lives.     

When My Mom Was a Little Girl … : Gender Differences in Adolescents' Intergenerational and Personal Stories

Narratives about parents may help adolescents navigate their own experiences. Yet, research has not examined what adolescents know about their intergenerational past. Sixty‐five 14‐ to 16‐year‐old middle‐class, racially diverse adolescents narrated two stories about each parent's childhood, and 2 positive personal stories. Narratives were coded for structure (length, elaboration), theme (affiliation, achievement), and internal states. Mothers' stories were more elaborative, affiliative, and emotionally rich than fathers', which were more achievement focused. Girls' personal narratives were longer, more elaborative, and more emotionally rich than boys' and resembled narratives about mothers but not fathers. Adolescents may be narrating parents' experiences through gendered lens of the parent but personal experiences through their own gendered lens. Implications of intergenerational narratives for adolescent identity are discussed.     

Space and place in an Urban Landscape: Learning from children's views of their social worlds

In this paper, I examine photos made by children as one part of a three‐year, ethnographic study of childhoods in different communities in California. Within this study, the children's photographs—and their talk about these and other images—illuminate distinctions between the urban spaces that outsiders might notice from particular urban places meaningful to children themselves. These images and commentaries reveal some of the ways in which the children's urban experiences are shaped by social class, gender, ethnicity, immigration, and racialization. They also confirm the importance of social relationships for the meanings that children attach to the urban landscapes in which they live.     

Aboriginal Women's Perceptions and Experiences of a Family Violence Transitional Accommodation Service

Abstract

This article presents a qualitative study of Aboriginal women's perceptions and experiences of a transitional housing program in South Australia that was established to assist long-term homelessness and family violence. The aim of the study was to explore the experiences and service outcomes for Aboriginal women and their children and to identify both facilitators and barriers to the effective operation of the program. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 13 Aboriginal women and thematic analysis was used to report their collective stories. The women's stories showed individualised, flexible, and open-ended support as well as practical outcomes of stable, safe housing for themselves and their children were particularly valued. The women reported that these features of the program augmented feelings of strengthened confidence and self-efficacy. The authors argue the domestic and family violence sector has the opportunity to learn from the perceptions and experiences of Aboriginal women, particularly allowing time and commitment to working long-term with families.     

The Human‐Environment Dialog in Award‐winning Children’s Picture Books*

Picture books often play an important role in childhood socialization. Given the seriousness of environmental problems, we ask how natural, modified, and built environments have been portrayed in children’s books. To answer this question, we analyze the 296 books receiving Caldecott awards from 1938 to 2008. Two possibilities are explored with respect to content change. Growing concern about critical environmental problems, such as decline in biodiversity and deforestation, may have led to an increase in illustrations and stories about wild animals and the natural environment. Alternatively, the increasing isolation of people from the natural world may have resulted in a decline in the perceived relevance of these environmental issues and resulted in fewer stories and depictions. Our findings support the isolation hypothesis. There have been significant declines in depictions of natural environments and animals while built environments have become much more common. These findings suggest that today’s generation of children are not being socialized, at least through this source, toward an understanding and appreciation of the natural world and the place of humans within it.     

Mesede and the Limits of Reciprocity in Fieldwork at Kamusi,Western Province,Papua New Guinea

This paper outlines some of the ways I and my research were defined by Bamu speakers living at Kamusi, the headquarters of the Wawoi Guavi logging concession in the Western Province of PNG. These definitions often involved stories about Mesede and other great Bamu ancestors. The stories about Mesede outlined Bamu experiences of colonial and post-colonial development and suggested that Mesede had the power to transform the Bamu's current poverty and marginalisation. The possibility that Mesede could institute a new epoch of development was linked to the Bamu's ability to maintain inalienable ties with Mesede despite his removal overseas. Mesede's story also required me to acknowledge, and productively respond to, past appropriations by Australians, and others, of Mesede. His history placed me in a project of im/possible reciprocity that should have involved me in returning Mesede to his rightful place.     

Exploring parent–child communication in the context of threat: immigrant families facing detention and deportation in post-9/11 USA

This paper explores whether and how documented and undocumented migrant parents communicate with their children about the threats posed by the intensified enforcement of 1996 and 2001 US immigration reforms; whether parents facing potential detention and deportation plan for the care of their children; and whether their children learn from other sources about detention and deportation. The focus of this paper emerged in the context of a multiyear participatory and action research (PAR) process as one effort to understand the multiple meanings and divergent perspectives on parental–child communication that arose among and between participants and coresearchers. The aim is to better understand, in parents' own voices, their embrace of and resistance to direct communication with their children about the threat of deportation. Data are triangulated from in-depth interviews with 18 Central American immigrant coresearchers (Study 1), responses of 132 Latino/a immigrant parents to a survey with open-ended questions (Study 2), and conversations in a series of community meetings and workshops. Findings confirm the importance for advocates, service providers, and researchers to understand migrant parents' decisions about communication within the context of family and community values; gender expectations; lived and psychological experiences of being criminalized; and strategies to manage daily challenges of living without documents while parenting US-citizen children.     

Telling and Re‐telling Stories: The Use of Narrative and Drawing in a Group Intervention with Parents and Children in a Remote Aboriginal Community

The Let's Start Parent‐Child Program is a manualised parent‐child program which aims to improve educational, social and emotional outcomes for Aboriginal parents and their four‐ to seven‐year‐old children. It has been implemented in the Northern Territory, Australia on the Tiwi Islands and in Darwin since 2005. This paper outlines the adaptation of the program to include narrative approaches, the sharing of stories and the use of expressive arts as a way to build understanding between program leaders and participating families. An example from a recent program is used to illustrate how the sharing of stories and expressive use of art engages and binds group participants together. It supports parents to tell their own stories, to speak about their lived experience, to reconsider aspects of their own and their children's experiences and to achieve an increased awareness of their personal resources and a sense of self‐empowerment. The program is designed and delivered with sensitivity to individual parents, children and families, where cultural and interpersonal differences and different developmental and family situations can be taken into account.     

Ukrainian Symbolism and the Problem of Modernism

This article explores the role of children’s literature in the formation of Stalinist identity and assembles a list of moral principles developed in the most popular early works of Arkadii Gaidar. It is not in Marxist texts nor in Pioneer slogans, but in these simple stories that the essential narrative structures of Soviet morality were created. Gaidar’s books are representative of a whole group of Soviet children’s literary classics published in the late 1920s–early 1930s and written by young people whose coming of age coincided with the years of political and social turmoil. This study argues that Gaidar’s own personal experiences as a youthful Red Army commander during the Civil War underpinned the moral vision of these popular novels. A new military-like value system, with courage (not kindness or love) as its central value, originated in Gaidar’s books and moulded several generations of Soviet children.     

Multigenerational punishments on the children of Salvadoran immigrant and deported fathers

Drawing on qualitative research conducted in the United States and in El Salvador, the author examines the experiences of the children of 40 immigrant men and 40 deported men. This study reveals the harmful effects of U.S. immigration policies and enforcement practices on the children of Salvadoran immigrant and deported fathers. Their children were found to have experienced the unintended consequences of U.S. immigration laws and enforcement practices in their own lives and relationships. These findings support Enriquez's (2015) concept of “multigenerational punishments” where children of immigrant parents share the risks and limitations associated with their parent's immigration status. They also experience the negative spill-over effects of immigration policies and enforcement practices even though they were not directly targeted by these laws. This study reveals multigenerational punishments manifested in the form of social, economic, emotional, and physical inequalities which negatively affected the children of Salvadoran immigrant and deported fathers. As a result, many of their children experienced harmful changes in their lives and relationships under the U.S. immigration enforcement regime. This study is significant in that it provides insight into the issues that immigrant families face and the need for policy interventions for immigrant and deported parents and their children.     

Exploring Parents' Experiences and Reactions to Adolescents' Hyperactivity,Impulsivity, and Attention Problems

Adolescents' hyperactivity, impulsivity, and attention problems (HIA) have been shown to make parents feel powerless. In this study, the authors examined whether these feelings were dependent on parents' experiences with their older children. Two models that offer different predictions of how parents make use of their earlier experiences when raising their later‐born children were explored: the learning‐from‐experience model and the spillover model. The authors used reports from 372 parents with 1 child (M_age = 11.92) and 198 parents with 2 children (M_age = 11.89 and 14.35) from a small town in a European country. The results did not support a learning‐from‐experience process. Instead, consistent with a spillover process, parents felt particularly powerless about their younger children with HIA if they also felt powerless about their older children. This study suggests that parents' experiences of raising their older children are important for their reactions to HIA in their younger children     

Autonomy,Fairness and Active Relationships: Children's Experiences of Well‐being in Childcare

Researchers and policy‐makers are increasingly concerned with children's well‐being in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) settings. Recent research identifies the value of using qualitative methods to understand children's experiences of well‐being in ECEC/OSHC, but there remain few such studies. This article presents findings from a child‐centric qualitative study with Australian children of nurses and police, which sought to understand their experiences of well‐being in ECEC/OSHC. Children's experiences of well‐being were shaped by parental relationships, how informed they were about the rationale for their care arrangements and the degree of age‐appropriate autonomy they experienced.     

1.5 Generation Internal Migration in the U.S.: Dispersion from States of Immigration?1

The issue of immigrant spatial concentration and the possibilities for immigrant dispersion through migration features in at least three interrelated debates about immigration. First, the ethnic enclave literature centers on the question of whether spatial concentration improves or harms the economic well‐being of immigrants. Second, spatial assimilation theory links immigrant relocation away from residential enclaves to socioeconomic gains. Although framed at an intra‐urban scale, we suggest that similar assimilation logics infuse thinking and expectations about immigrant settlement and spatial mobility at other scales. And third, immigrant clustering links to anxieties about the threats posed by non‐European origin newcomers to the traditional cultural fabric of the nation. In the current wave of immigration, research on questions of settlement geography and spatial mobility has so far been restricted to the first generation. But as the current wave of immigration matures there is a growing population of adults who are the children of immigrants. This article investigates the migration behavior of these adult children, specifically the 1.5 generation, seeking to answer the question of whether they will remain in the states in which their parent's generation settled or move on. It also assesses whether the out‐migration response of the 1.5 generation in states of immigrant concentration is similar to that of their parent's generation or the U.S.‐born population.     

“A Fear Like I've Never Felt”: Experiences of Parents Whose Adult Children Deployed to Combat Zones

Despite the increase of research with military families, less is known about the experiences of those parents who have adult children deployed overseas for military operations. This article presents parents’ experiences of having adult children deployed to combat zones. Qualitative data were gathered through an Internet-based survey during 2010. Analyses revealed important themes within the parents’ portrayals expressing strong reactions of fear, worry and concern for their children's safety and well being throughout their experiences. Parents also described frustrations communicating with their deployed children. Support from formal and informal sources was important to their coping, as was assistance from religious and military organizations. Finally, parents reported varied impacts of the adult children's deployment on the parents’ marriages. Implications for future military family research and family life education are provided.     

Refashioning one's place in time: Stories of household downsizing in later life

Older adults face a daunting task: while continuing engagements in multiple relationships, investment in their own and others' futures, and developing life interests and capacities, they also reexamine and sometimes reconfigure the place where their social lives and objects are housed. Some relocate, downsize, to a new smaller place and reducing possessions to ensure an environment supportive of their capacities and desired daily activities. This article examines how key contours of the experiences of place during residential downsizing are infused with unexpectedly heightened awareness and cultivation of one's sense of place in multiple timeframes. In a discovery mode, the downsizing stories of 40 older adults in southeast Michigan are examined. Findings indicate conflicting temporalities and the natures of cognitions related to decision-making and thinking about being leave-taking and being in place. Findings also highlight in particular how making sense of one's place is predicated on notions of its time, of being on time and downsizing on time. Further, these characterizations of the lived worlds of older adults' modes of conceptualizing the nature of downsizing show how an understanding of the meaningfulness of place in later life relocations requires a layered sense of home as places-in multiple timelines.     

An intensive perinatal mentalisation-based intervention for women at risk of child removal and the role of restorative relationships

Pregnant women with a history of child removal are at greater risk of being found unsuitable to care for their new babies. Neglect, showing a lack of capacity to provide for the child's physical and/or emotional needs, is the most frequent reason why infants are removed from their parents' care. Parents with a history of child removal have often been themselves subject to maltreatment as children and suffer the sequelae of relational trauma which then becomes a barrier to establishing nurturing relationships with their own children. Attachment, and particularly mentalisation-based, parenting interventions focus on restoring relationships by developing parents' capacity to reflect upon their own internal mental experiences as well as those of the child, helping them to better understand themselves and their children. The DAISY programme is an intensive perinatal attachment and mentalisation-based intervention for pregnant women with a history of child removal, aiming to improve mothers' mentalising capacities and care proceeding outcomes. This article uses a case study to describe the programme's model and mechanisms of change. Additionally, we present preliminary observations about the programme's delivery and impact from the perspective of one of its practitioners.     

Listening to Older Adult Parents of Adult Children With Mental Illness

This article uses qualitative research and narrative analysis to examine the experience of women age 55 and older who are parents caring for adult children with mental illness. Knowledge about the conflicts of older parents with dependent children is underdeveloped. In this study, analysis of women's stories about parenting in later life reveal that the women have two sets of feelings: wanting to be free from the responsibility of caregiving and feeling responsible to continue the support and protection of their adult vulnerable children. The women's conflicts are palpable and are found in the ideational themes of the narratives, as well as the structure of how the narratives are spoken. The discussion highlights the relevance of the theory of ambivalence for clinical practice when working with older women who are caregivers for their adult dependent children.