Spirituality in Latino families of children with autism spectrum disorder

Research on Latino parents of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) suggests that these parents often use spirituality to conceptualize and to cope with their child’s diagnosis. However, there are no studies that examine religion among Latino parents of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The current study explores how Latino parents of children with ASD incorporate spirituality into their conceptualizations of their child’s disability. In the current study, 34 Latina mothers of children with ASD were interviewed about autism-related services, family characteristics, and cultural beliefs including spiritual beliefs. Thematic analysis of the transcribed interview data relating to spiritual beliefs was conducted for the present study. Most mothers endorsed beliefs that their child with a disability was a message from God. Within this theme, mothers reported beliefs that their child was a blessing from God, a test from God, a sign from God or that the parent was special. Other parents believed that having a child with a disability was not an act of God, but related to biomedical factors, and another group of parents was unsure about the spiritual meaning of their child with a disability. Lastly, some mothers reported that their larger cultural group believed that having a child with a disability was a punishment or a negative sign from God but they markedly rejected that conception. These findings suggest that providers working with Latino families of children with ASD should acknowledge the importance of spirituality for these families.     

Parenting groups for parents whose children are in care

Excluding very severe child abuse cases, biological parents are usually encouraged to maintain contact with their children in care. Parent‐child contact is often considered important because it can maintain the child's psychological identity and well‐being. It can also maintain parent‐child attachment and in some cases facilitate reunification. Improving parenting skills is viewed as an important method by which contact between children and their biological parents can be enhanced. However, mainstream parenting groups are often unsuitable for parents whose children are in care for a number of reasons. There is stigma involved with having children in care, such parents have very complex lives and there are reduced opportunities to practise skills learnt with their children. Groups designed specifically for parents whose children are in care appear to be a promising approach to improving the quality of contact between these parents and their children. This paper will review group‐based approaches to working with biological parents whose pre‐school‐aged children have been placed in care. The paper will also report the findings of a research project designed to identify key facilitators and barriers to parental involvement in a group‐based programme which includes contact between parents and their children who have been placed in care. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Long-term care of the disabled elderly: do children increase caregiving by spouses?

Do adult children affect the care elderly parents provide each other? We develop two models in which the anticipated behavior of adult children provides incentives for nondisabled elderly parents to increase care for their disabled spouses. The “demonstration effect” postulates that adult children learn from a parent’s example that family caregiving is appropriate behavior. The “punishment effect” postulates that adult children may punish parents who fail to provide spousal care by not providing future care for the nondisabled spouse if and when necessary. Thus, joint children act as a commitment mechanism, increasing the probability that elderly parents will provide care for their disabled spouses. We argue that stepchildren provide weaker incentives for spousal care because the attachment of a stepchild to a stepparent is likely to be weaker than the attachment of children to parents in a traditional nuclear family. Using data from the HRS, we find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that joint children provide stronger incentives than stepchildren for nondisabled elderly parents to provide care for their disabled spouse.     

The Attitudes of Australian Heterosexuals Toward Same-Sex Parents

SUMMARY

This is the first study of attitudes of Australian heterosexuals toward heterosexual, gay male, and lesbian parents and the children raised by these parents. A sample of Australian heterosexual males and females read one of six vignettes describing a family situation. Participants assessed the parents' emotional stability, responsibility, and competence; how loving, sensitive, and nurturing they were; the amount of quality time they spent with their child; and their ability to be good role models. Results indicated participants held negative attitudes toward gay male and lesbian same-sex parents. Participants believed that children raised by same-sex parents are more likely to experience confusion over their sexual orientation and gender identity, more likely to be homosexual, and more likely to experience strained peer relationships as well as stigma and teasing than children raised by heterosexual parents. Level of sexual prejudice was the key predictor of attitudes toward same-sex parents and the expected outcomes for their children. Being male, older, and having fewer children were additional predictors of attitudes towards same-sex parents, whereas being older and less religious was associated with expected negative outcomes for the children. Substantial attitudinal shifts are required before gay male and lesbian parents and their children are fully accepted into Australian communities.     

The wellbeing of foster children and their relationship with foster parents and biological parents: a child’s perspective

Most Dutch foster children live permanently in foster families. It is often assumed that foster children have ambivalent loyalties and attachments to their birth parents and foster parents and are torn between the two. In this study 59 children between 10 and 18 years placed in long term foster care completed standardised questionnaires on the relationship with their parents respectively foster parents and their wellbeing. Results show that, on average, foster children have positive feelings of loyalty and attachment towards both their foster parents and biological parents. However, their wellbeing appeared mainly related with stronger attachment representations towards their foster parents. This study found no indications for a competing position of biological parents and foster parents from the perspective of the child. Nevertheless, foster children who see their foster and biological parents as more vulnerable or experience stronger normative boundaries, feel worse compared to children who experience this feelings less.     

The schooling repayment hypothesis for private transfers: evidence from the PROGRESA/Oportunidades experiment

The schooling repayment hypothesis for private transfers predicts a positive relationship between the amount of parental investment in children’s education and the amount that adult children transfer to their parents. We provide evidence on the repayment motive using data from the Mexican conditional cash transfer program PROGRESA/Oportunidades (PO). PO pays a transfer to parents for sending their children to school. Thus, if private transfers from adult children to parents are in part repayment for parental schooling investments made in the past, then PO should decrease these transfers—parents were already exogenously compensated by the government for sending their kids to school and not to work. Exploiting the exogenous variation in the amount of cash transfers a household receives from PO for sending its children to school, we compare the private transfers received in 2007 by parental households who had children 0–16 in 1997 and started receiving the programs’ benefits in 1998 with the transfers received by similar parental households who started receiving benefits in 1999. Results suggest a repayment motive exists. That is, PO is causing adult children to transfer less resources to their parents.     

The Needs of Gender-Variant Children and Their Parents: A Parent Survey

ABSTRACT

Parents of children with gender-variant behavior, while doing their best to handle their child's preferences and needs, are forced to contend with societal bias and assumptions that allow their children to be marginalized. This exploratory investigation aims to provide a basis for supporting all children with gender variance and their parents by identifying their needs. An Internet survey was designed to elicit the experiences of parents with gender-variant children to identify the needs of both parents and children. Data were analyzed using content analysis to establish the major themes. The dominant identified needs for parents were related to finding correct information and obtaining professional support, parenting strategies, and peer support. The children's primary needs were related to discussing their feelings, being accepted, and being supported to express their gender preference.     

Why Parents Pay for College: The Good Parent,Perceptions of Advantage,and the Intergenerational Transfer of Opportunity

This article asks how parents think about the cost of a college education for their children. Based on data from more than ninety in‐depth interviews with upper‐middle‐class parents and children, it is clear that grooming children for college and then paying for their education is intimately linked with ideas about being a “good parent.” We present data on three related aspects of parents' consciousness about paying for college. First, data are presented on how parents view the benefits of college for their children. Second, data illustrate how parents think about the obligations associated with paying. Third, we report on what parents expect in return for their efforts and expenditures. Data also indicate that parents' views are contingent on their perceived ability to pay for the increasing costs of higher education. We conclude by considering how the implicit contract between upper‐middle‐class parents and children may change as new economic and structural uncertainties increase parents' anxieties and challenge their abilities to see themselves as good parents.     

“I wanted a soul mate”: Gendered Anticipation and Frameworks of Accountability in Parents' Preferences for Sons and Daughters

This article draws on qualitative interview data from a diverse sample of parents in New England to explore the preferences they recall having for sons or daughters prior to parenthood. Before their children even arrive, potential parents are not only building the foundation for the gendered interests and tendencies they expect those children to have but also sharpening their sense of themselves as gendered persons, through the connections they anticipate sharing with their future children. Applying Fenstermaker, West, and Zimmerman's (2002) approach to gender as a situated accomplishment, I argue that through their gendered anticipation, parents reproduce a framework of accountability to gendered expectations, casting as essential features of their potential children and themselves gendered tendencies that are better understood as products rather than causes of the interactions parents anticipate. I consider the significance of such anticipation not only for the children these parents eventually raised but also for reproducing the frameworks of accountability that affect other parents and children more broadly.     

Communicating with parents

It is difficult to help a child whose parents are unavailable to the professional working with the child. Parents whose children have problems tend to be fearful of being judged and criticized. Anger or expressions of guilt may mask their fears about their own inadequacies and problems. All parents need to be listened to and understood before professionals can help the children. Communicating this understanding to the parents requires more than works. Listening, enabling parents to talk and talking with parents often needs to be supplemented by actions concrete services and even by play to enable the parents to trust enough to want to learn how to be better parents. Foster parents must also be drawn into a cooperative effort to help children in their care.This is an excerpt from the bookWork With Children to be published by Human Sciences Press in February 1979. This selection deals with communicating with parents, for until that is accomplished, there is no chance to communicate with children.     

Intergenerational transfers in long term care

How are parental inter-vivos transfers to their children and children’s informal care of parents influenced by personal characteristics, family conditions and state specific long term care policies? AHEAD data from 1993 and 1995 and a two-party choice model are used to guide the estimation of OLS and binary logit models of the amount and likelihood of inter-vivos transfers to children and informal care of parents. Results suggest that both parents’ characteristics and their offspring’s characteristics affect parental gifts to children and children’s time assistance to their parents, highlighting the interdependent nature of these decisions. Furthermore, though state policies did not consistently affect parental gift giving, the availability of state respite care support -short-term “breaks” for informal family caregivers- (1 % significance level) and adult day care centers (5 % significance level) were positively related to the amount and likelihood of children’s time assistance to their parents. These findings highlight the importance of some state programs such as respite care support in encouraging intra-family support for the elderly. Support for programs that reduce the caregiving burden may encourage more children to care for their elderly parents.     

“It Was Like This,I Think”: Constructing an Adoption Narrative for Chinese Adopted Children

Using qualitative survey data from 35 adoptive parents of children from China, I explore the type of narrative parents construct about their child's “abandonment.” Parents tell the story they know best—the child's adoption story—being careful to not overly burden the child with harsh abandonment realities. Most parents opt to tell a dominant narrative, portraying the child's Chinese birth parents as parents who loved their child and struggled with the decision to give up their child pressured by outside forces to do so. Any counternarrative told seems to be for the adoptive parents themselves, not for their children.     

Is a good example the best sermon? Children’s imitation of parental reading

We use the last two waves of the Italian Time Use Survey to analyse whether children imitate the reading habits of their parents. As reading is crucial for continuous investment in human capital throughout a person’s life, it is important that children acquire the habit of reading. This habit may be developed through both cultural and educational transfers from parents to children, and through imitative behaviours. Imitation is of particular interest, as it suggests that parents can have a direct influence on the formation of their children’s preferences and habits, and that active policies promoting good parenting behaviours might therefore be desirable. We investigate the short-run imitative behaviour of children using a household fixed-effects model in which we identify the impact of the parents’ role model by exploiting the differences in the exposure of siblings to their parents’ example within the same household. We find robust evidence of the existence of an imitation effect: on the day of the survey, children were more likely to had read after seeing either their mother or their father reading.     

Care-leavers and their children placed for adoption

Young people in and leaving state care are more likely than the general population to become parents at a young age. Relatively little is known about the experiences and progress of care leaver parents and their children, but emerging evidence suggests an increased risk of intergenerational state intervention. Drawing on data from the Wales Adoption Study, this paper examines the prevalence and profiles of care leavers amongst birth parents whose children were placed for adoption. Findings showed that more than a quarter (27%) of birth mothers and a fifth (19%) of birth fathers with children placed for adoption were themselves care leavers. There were no significant differences between care leaver and non-care leaver birth parents in terms of involvement in crime or substance misuse, but carer leaver birth parents were distinguishable from other birth parents by their own experiences of abuse and neglect. Care leaver birth mothers were also more likely than their non-care leaver counterparts to have diagnosed mental health problems and were less likely to appeal the adoption plan. The profiles of children placed for adoption between care leaver and non-care leaver birth parents were similar. The findings presented in this paper strengthen the moral imperative to address the over-representation of care leavers amongst birth parents whose children are placed for adoption. There is an urgent need to revise how children and young people in state care are prepared for parenthood and supported as parents.     

Helping Adolescents With Career Development: The Active Role of Parents

This article contains suggestions for counselors and parents regarding the active role parents can play in the career development of their children. These suggestions are based on the author's research on the intentional, goal-directed action of parents in influencing the career development of their children. In the context of an increasingly important role for parents and families in the development of adolescent children, three dimensions of the active role of parents are discussed: the intentionality and meaning attributed to career influence by parents and adolescents, the use of narrative, and sources of conflict.     

Emotional Safeguarding: Exploring the Nature of Middle‐Class Parents’ School Involvement1

Although discussion of parents’ school involvement generally surrounds academic success, there are also emotional motivations for parents’ school interventions. In this exploratory analysis, based on interviews with 21 parents and teachers, I show how these middle‐class parents’ concerns for children extend beyond grades and academic success to the children’s own emotional comfort with schooling. I discuss examples of emotional safeguarding, a parental practice to protect children’s happiness at school. Results also suggest that emotional and academic concerns for children at school are interrelated, and parents often approach the emotional with the academic in mind. Parents focus on reducing children’s anxiety or discomfort at school with the ultimate goal of instilling a love of learning. The parents in this study perceive an emotional route to achieving academic success for their middle‐class children. Unlike parents, teachers in the study identify parents’ concerns as academic or a product of parents’ anxiety. This research introduces the possibility that while parents’ academic concerns are very real, they are also accompanied by equal and occasionally greater concerns for children’s happiness and well‐being at school.     

Eine Forschungsstudie zum Elternkurs des Deutschen Kinderschutzbundes e.V. „Starke Eltern — Starke Kinder®“

The course for parents organized by the German Society for the Protection of Children ?Strong parents — strong children“ offers support to parents in their methods of upbringing their children. The effects the participation in this course can have on parents, their children, the family atmosphere and the partents-child relationship were evaluated in a research study at the University of Applied Sciences Cologne.After briefly introducting the course for parents the study ist meant to show how deeply the drawing up of research parameter (i.e. dimensions of education) and the realisation of the evaluation were influenced by the anthropology and dialogical pedagogy of the Polish doctor and pedagogue Janusz Korczak (1878–1942).The contribution describes pedagogical reflections on and the relevant dimensions of the educational methods that encourage respectively inhibit development. The essay then delivers first results of the accompanying research.     

The Relationship Between Parent and Child Reports of Parental Supportiveness and Psychopathology of Sexually Abused Children

This study examined the relationship between parent and child reports of supportiveness of intrafamilially sexually abused children and levels of child psychopathology. Fifty-four intrafamilially sexually abused children completed a revised version of the Family Subscale of the Survey of Children's Social Support and the Child Assessment Schedule. Fifty-four parents completed a version of the Family Subscale of the Survey of Children's Social Support, modified for use in parental reporting of their own supportive behaviors. Satisfactory reliability levels were obtained for the revised measures. This study of 54 sexually abused children and their non-offending parents found that although most non-offending parents were supportive of their children, the children reported considerable distress. Although there was no significant difference in mean levels of support reported by parents and children, the two measures were not significantly correlated. This suggests that parents and children perceive supportive behavior differently, although both constructs are of importance. Multiple regression analysis found that both child and parent reports of parental support were predictive of levels of child psychopathology, but that child estimates were a stronger predictor.     

Groupwork for Parents whose Children are in Care: Challenges and Opportunities

Until recently, the focus for child protection in NSW has been on risk assessment, supportive measures for parents, and ‘the best interests of the child’. The needs of the birth families, once their children have been removed have not received the same attention. An emerging body of research indicates a growing awareness of the importance of the link between good outcomes for children in care and positive ongoing links with their birth parents. Biological parents of children who have been removed invariably continue to have parenting relationships, if not with the removed child, then with subsequent birth children, step children and children in their extended family. Service provision for this group of parents is critical given the complexity and scale of their emotional needs, and the implications for the children they will care for. In this paper, we describe one such intervention: Kids in Care, a group program offered at Relationships Australia NSW, and consider the arising issues and dilemmas for both parents and group workers. Developed to address the particular needs of parents whose children have been taken into care, the group creates an environment of acceptance and support. This opens up possibilities for parents to consider issues of grief, stigma and trauma, as well as to develop skills in communication, assertiveness and emotional regulation.