Parenting a child with Autism Spectrum disorder: parental work context

This research contributes to the literature on work-related factors for parents raising a child with a disability. Specifically, we used questionnaire methodology to compare two parent families raising a child with Autism Spectrum (AS) with similar families raising ‘typical’ children. Our findings suggested that parents raising a child with AS self-report higher parenting stress and more mental health symptomatology, as well as lower overall job satisfaction, less satisfaction with supervisors and less workplace contentment. In addition, our findings suggested that parents raising a child with a disability self-report similarly to parents raising ‘typical’ children with respect to work interest, commitment and quality, as well as time missed. In conclusion, our results appear to suggested that despite increased parental stress related to parenting a child with AS, with respect to several work-related factors, there are more similarities than differences among these parenting groups.     

Separation and Post‐Separation Parenting within Lesbian and Gay Co‐parenting (Guild Parented) Families

Gay men and lesbian women have a long history of jointly creating families and co‐parenting their children together. This qualitative study aims to explore the experiences of separation and post‐separation parenting within same‐sex parented families. This involved semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with 22 separated same‐sex parents in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and regional Victoria. An adaptive theory approach was used for the collection and analysis of the data. The paper explores data from a cohort of six participants who came from three different multi‐parent families who had experienced a separation – either their own, or that of other parents in their parenting group. The term ‘co‐parenting families’ was found to be confusing due to the different connotations within separation/divorce and same‐sex parent literature. Consequently, the term ‘guild parented families’ was created to describe these families. Participants from these multi‐parent families had very different experiences of family formation and separation compared to others within the wider separated same‐sex parent study. Separation of one or more of the parent couples within these families complicated their original plans and kinship ideals. Each of the families resolved this differently in their post‐separation arrangements. After separation, whole family narratives and/or the role of individual parents, were either questioned or revised as a way of resolving the complexity of their new kinship situation. Following separation, parents often relied on Western kinship norms that privilege biological kinship and the dual‐parent family to construct their post‐separation kinship arrangements. More awareness of families that begin with more than two parents is needed within separation research and amongst separation services and service providers.     

Creating ‘stability’ for children in step‐families: time and substance in parenting

Children are said to be in need of stability for a ‘successful’ upbringing. This article focuses on the implications of this for parenting and childrearing practices in step‐families. It addresses the ways that conceptions of stability for children in family policy are tied to a particular family form and to maintaining continuity in biological parenting obligations, while parenting research has largely been concerned with measuring the consequences of changing family forms for children. In contrast, parents and step‐parents in step‐families themselves have far more complex understandings about the creation of stability for children in their care, around issues of dis/continuity in linear time and the social and material substantive constitution of stability. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sex Differences in Parenting Behaviors in Single‐Mother and Single‐Father Households

Research on family structure has led some to claim that sex‐based parenting differences exist. But if such differences exist in single‐parent families, the absence of a second parent rather than specific sex‐typed parenting might explain them. We examine differences in mothering and fathering behavior in single‐parent households, where number of parents is held constant, and we describe individualist and structuralist perspectives for potential sex‐based parenting behaviors. We compare 3,202 single mothers and 307 single fathers in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (Kindergarten Cohort). Results suggest that, although there are small differences in the parenting behaviors of single mothers and single fathers, differences are sensitive to demographic disparities and do not translate to academic deficits for children in either family type.     

‘Riding the Wave’: Working Systemically with Traumatised Families

This paper draws on the authors’ clinical experience as family therapists, working predominantly with families who have experienced trauma such as sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect, to demonstrate that taking a systemic trauma‐informed approach is a powerful therapeutic modality that can facilitate positive outcomes for all family members. The paper discusses the impact of trauma on relationships, and then outlines a rationale for a trauma‐informed, systemic approach with those traumatised families who are, at times, challenged by excessively heightened behaviour and emotional dysregulation. Drawing from parenting research, it includes a discussion of the place of parent work and how this can be integrated with systemic family work. Key constraints and considerations are highlighted followed by a discussion of key interventions the authors have found useful in building a clinical framework for this work, including what is critical for the therapeutic process. While working with traumatised families is complex and challenging, offering a safe place for families to be in the presence of each other's pain and ‘ride the wave’ of emotions can be a powerful path to recovery.     

Developing a digital toolkit for adoptive parents

In this article, the development of a digital ‘toolkit’ for adoptive parents in the children’s social care service of a single local authority is described. A work in progress, the toolkit is to be accessed by parents online and involves a series of videos around parenting topics and the post-adoption therapeutic work undertaken in the service, as well as links to other parenting information and resources. The article combines accounts of the toolkit’s development in the authority and a piece of ‘practice research’ being carried out that makes use of a DVD version.     

Single Parent Families:

The purpose of this single parent families bookshelf is to provide potential users with a sampling of recent books that deal with various aspects of single parenting. Books are focused on the time period of 1980 to 1993. Resources include primarily North American and Canadian entries. The titles are presented in the fol- lowing categories: children and one-parent families, cross-cultural references, divorced single parents, ethnicity and single parent fami- lies, frameworks for examining single parent families, never-married biological teen mother headed families, practical guides to single parent family living, single fathers with custody following separa- tion and divorce, and special issues of journals focused on single parent families.     

A Vocabulary of Motives: Understanding How Parents Define Quality Time

Although discussions of parenting refer to quality time, parents’ views of quality time have not been explored. Using the Sloan 500 Family Study, this article examines how 220 parents from 110 dual‐parent families define the spending quality time with their families and finds 3 distinct views: Structured‐planning parents saw it as planned family activities, child‐centered parents emphasized heart‐to‐heart talks with their children, and time‐intensive parents believed that all the time they spent with their families was quality time. Mothers and fathers both valued quality time, but, particularly when parents within a household disagreed, mothers more often described having a more active parenting role and assumed greater responsibility for quality time, reflecting a gendered division of parenting within the home.     

Sent home: mapping the absent child into migration through polymedia

Migrants and their transnational families document their children and child‐rearing practices on social networking sites (SNS) to enhance their social mobility. In this article, I identify a new group of migrant children, namely those sent home to their parents’ countries of origin for an imagined ‘good childhood‘. I demonstrate that polymedia – SNS and other platforms – sustain these children and create new norms of publicness and visibility in transnational parenting. Exploring how families document child‐raising across international boundaries, I show how the trajectories of parenting relationships remain open ended. I counter the predominant focus on transnational parenting as a kind of abandonment attached to left‐behind children. Instead, I refocus the research on the opportunities polymedia give families to create and sustain intimacies, thus making the trajectories of migrant families and children increasingly dynamic. Polymedia create important shifts in global migration – a transformation that requires changes in the way scholars approach transnational families and long‐distance parenting.     

Time for work,commuting, and parenting? Commuting parents' involvement with their children

For most Australian parents, there is continuing tension between work and family commitments. This tension is exacerbated by the need not only to have sufficient time available to children in the family but also for that time to be characterized by nurturance and guidance. This article reports on a qualitative study that explored how 21 part-time or full-time working parents, who also commute 10–15 hours a week to work, manage both the quantity and quality of their time with their young children (0–5 years). The study revealed the difficult conditions of commuting and the importance of social support to parents' well-being, as well as a significant pattern of parent–child interaction which we have described as ‘attentive parenting.’ Parents felt these activities contributed to the parent–child bond and their children's well-being in spite of an acknowledged lack of interactive time.     

Single Parenting in Families of Children with Disabilities

Rearing a child with disabilities is a challenge, per- haps even more so for single parents who most often are women. Stress and negative psychological effects have been considered likely outcomes for parents of children with disabilities. With the increased family focus in the provision of services for children with disabilities, it becomes even more important to understand the sources of stress and the types of adaptations made in these families. The research literature was analyzed and similar results were found. Single mothers of children with disabilities often were younger, had less education, and lower incomes. Few studies included these socio- economic factors. Findings indicate that gross differences betweensingle- and two-parent mothers tended to become nonsignificant when maternal education and income were taken into account. Stress levels and adaptation were not pervasively different for single mothers and mothers who were parenting with a partner, after SES variables were controlled. On a few dimensions-including family harmony, integration, and cohesion-some studies found mothers in single parent families to be at a slight disadvantage relative to two parent families. Research findings indicate that other factors need to be considered in research and in provision of services to understand the interplay between stress and adaptation and to facilitate the fami- lys coping. Further study is needed on factors on two levels; task demands and emotional responses, the diversity among mothers, their life situations, and their task demands must be recognized, and socioeconomic conditions and participation by other adults in care- giving. Positive adaptation by single mothers of children who have disabilities is a reasonable expectation; services should build upon family strengths and competencies.     

Complex inequality: A contextual parenting framework for Latino infants

Latino infants and toddlers are rapidly becoming the most represented ethnic group within the overall U.S. child population, underscoring the importance of a comprehensive conceptual framework informed by the factors that affect their well-being, including their lived environments. Research that explores parenting among Latino families is limited or tends to portray a homogenized Latino experience, without accounting for within-group differences. This paper presents a contextual parenting framework for Latino infants that incorporates a more nuanced understanding of culture as well as its complex and reciprocal relationship with environment. It highlights the multi-level, multisystemic, contexts affecting these families on the present day. This framework hypothesizes that cultural beliefs around family and child rearing, as well as the environment — constituted of physical environment and social opportunities — influence parenting. Further, institutional and structural inequalities can significantly affect the environmental conditions that Latino families experience and are therefore examined in the model. The way parenting behaviors are understood and interpreted by researchers and practitioners has serious consequences for parents engaged in the child welfare system. This paper explores how vulnerable Latino families with young children engaged in this complicated system experience the factors described by the parenting framework.     

Making sense of the parenting ‘soft/hard split’

This paper explores the common parenting style tension around nurture versus limit-setting often evident when working with families with a symptomatic child. Firstly it will delve into the parenting ‘soft/hard split’ with an overview of the literature on parenting styles. Next, it summarises the appearance of this phenomenon in the family therapy literature during its formative days, noting how Bowen, Minuchin, Haley, MRI (Bateson), and the Milan associates respond to this parent presentation in their approaches. Next, the paper outlines recent iterations of these family therapy interventions. An expanded discussion follows on Bowen theory's understanding of the parenting tension triangle. The article then outlines elements of the author's qualitative research study of parents' experience of adolescents' mental health treatment where the ‘soft/hard split’ emerged as a repeating theme. Finally, a clinical intervention based on Bowen theory, the Parent Hope Project, is outlined for how it addresses the parenting ‘soft/hard split.’ The goal is to contribute to understanding this phenomenon and its implications for clinical practice.     

Intergenerational continuity in parenting: a review and theoretical integration

Abstract

Objective: This review evaluates literature on how parenting behaviors are passed from one generation to the next in families by providing a new definitional framework to organize existing work, utilizing this framework to review literature on intergenerational continuity in parenting behaviors, and proposing a new developmental framework for understanding the etiology of intergenerational continuity in parenting behaviors.

Design: The present review examines 31 studies of intergenerational continuity in parenting, summarizes the findings offered by these studies, and integrates this existing literature in a theoretical framework for considering the etiology of intergenerational continuity in parenting behaviors.

Results: Results indicate that parental warmth, hostility, and behavioral control each demonstrate intergenerational continuity, and that internalizing and externalizing behavior serve as potential mediators of intergenerational continuity across all three types of parenting behaviors.

Conclusions: Parenting behaviors falling in the warmth, hostility, and behavioral control domains each demonstrate modest continuity across generations. Internalizing and externalizing behaviors developed by children in response to parenting in their family of origin may persist and cause similar patterns of parenting when these children grow up and start their own families. Partner psychopathology and parenting styles may moderate these externalizing and internalizing pathways to intergenerational continuity in parenting.     

Shared Parenting After Divorce: A Review of Shared Residential Parenting Research

One of the most complex and compelling issues confronting policymakers, parents, and the family court system is what type of parenting plan is most beneficial for children after their parents' divorce. How much time should children live with each parent? An increasing number of children are living with each parent at least 35% of the time in shared residential parenting families: How are these children and their parents faring? In what ways, if any, do divorced parents who share the residential parenting differ from parents whose children live almost exclusively with their mother? How stable are shared residential parenting plans? By reviewing the existing studies on shared parenting families, these questions are addressed.     

Trying to Comfort the Parent: A Qualitative Study of Children Dealing With Parental Depression

In this article, we look at children’s experiences of parentification in families in which one of the parents is hospitalized for depression. Children (7–14 years old) and their parents were invited for a family interview. Using thematic analysis, we constructed a general framework of 14 children’s experiences, guided by the explorative research question: How do children experience parental depression and how do they experience their own caregiving in the family? The thematic analysis revealed eight themes. One of these themes (trying to comfort the parent) was selected for a microanalysis in one family interview. Our study illustrates the process of overt negotiating of caretaking between parent and child with an underlying moral dilemma and related emotions. The dynamic of children hiding their worry can be seen as an answer to the parent’s expressed wish to not burden her children. These dynamics are situated in ongoing debates in family therapy literature, and some suggestions for therapeutic practice are formulated.     

Adoptions by Single Parents

Adoptions by single parents are thought by the public and by adoption professionals to be a plan for children needing adoption which is less advantageous for the child than a two parent adoption. For this reason, children who are difficult to find homes for are often placed with single parents; these are usually older children whose experiences have led to emotional and behavioral problems. Single persons who wish to parent an infant often adopt a child from another country. A review of the literature concerning single parent adoptions, and examination of the findings of a longitu- dinal study, indicate that the single persons who adopt are well able to carry out the responsibilities of parenting. They handle the special issues of adoption competently. Because children placed with single parents are frequently children with complex needs, and because single parents do not have a partner to share the responsibilities of parenting, continuing support from family and friends, the commu- nity, and from the adoption agency are important. Children adopted by single parents are as well adjusted as children adopted into two parent homes. There is some evidence that single parent homes may have unique strengths and be the placement of choice for some children.     

How Does the Gender of Parents Matter?

Claims that children need both a mother and father presume that women and men parent differently in ways crucial to development but generally rely on studies that conflate gender with other family structure variables. We analyze findings from studies with designs that mitigate these problems by comparing 2‐parent families with same or different sex coparents and single‐mother with single‐father families. Strengths typically associated with married mother‐father families appear to the same extent in families with 2 mothers and potentially in those with 2 fathers. Average differences favor women over men, but parenting skills are not dichotomous or exclusive. The gender of parents correlates in novel ways with parent‐child relationships but has minor significance for children's psychological adjustment and social success.     

No place to play: Implications for the interaction of parents and children

A disproportionate number of impoverished families live in housing which does not allow easy access to safe outdoor play. This paper uses Bowlby's theory of attachment as a framework for considering the implications of a lack of outdoor access for parental strategies and for the interaction of parents and children. The situation of one family is discussed in detail in order to clarify how a lack of outdoor play opportunities may contribute to anxious and over-protective parenting, or to a fatalistic abdication of responsibility. Especially in situations of poverty where alternative opportunities are likely to be limited, the availability of outdoor play space can be a significant factor in supporting healthy development and flexible, responsive parenting, ana it should be a priority in the planning and management of low-income housing intended for families with young children     

Assessing Prejudice Toward Two-Father Parenting and Two-Mother Parenting: The Beliefs on Same-Sex Parenting Scale

This article describes two interrelated studies that investigated beliefs and stereotypes on two-father parenting and two-mother parenting through the development and validation of the Beliefs on Same-Sex Parenting (BOSSP) scale. The BOSSP captures two beliefs: (1) prejudices toward same-sex couples’ inherent inability to parent and (2) concerns about same-sex parenting that are not necessarily related to homonegativity. In Study 1 (301 heterosexual participants), exploratory factor analysis (EFA) suggested an 11-item scale for attitudes toward both two-father families and two-mother families, with two factors: parenting skills, which evaluates beliefs on same-sex couples’ ability to take care of their children; and parental adjustment, which assesses beliefs on the impact of challenges related to same-sex parenting on children’s well-being. Support for convergent validity between BOSSP factor scores and those of theoretically related measures were provided. In Study 2 (346 heterosexual participants surveyed in two time points), CFA indicated that the two-factor model provided the best fit. Test-retest reliability and longitudinal invariance were documented. Finally, results revealed that more negative attitudes toward same-sex parenting were held by men than by women and were associated with negative opinions on reproductive techniques. The innovative characteristics of the BOSSP and implications for future practice are discussed.