Comment on “Why do women interact with their parents more often than men? The demonstration effect vs. the biological effect”

This Comment takes issue with the inference that Taiwanese data refute the applicability of the demonstration effect in intergenerational transfers. The Comment points to proper and discriminating tests of the demonstration effect.     

How do immigrant parents of children with complex health needs manage to cope in their daily lives?

Daily life with children who have complex health needs can be stressful for parents. Immigrant parents are vulnerable to stress because they may lack language skills and knowledge about the health care system and have limited social networks. In this study, we focus on how immigrant parents of children with complex health needs use emotion‐focused and problem‐focused coping strategies to manage their daily life, and how their self‐efficacy and the immigration process may affect their coping. This qualitative study had an exploratory design with individual and focus group interviews. The sample comprised 27 parents—18 mothers and 9 fathers—from Pakistan, Poland, and Vietnam. The findings indicated that the parents' love for their child helps them to cope in their daily life. Newly arrived migrants, single mothers with a severely ill child who lacked support and migrant parents with language difficulties struggle to cope. Some of the stress is related to personal, social and structural problems, and to the insufficient resources available to meet the child's needs. The parents used both emotion‐focused and problem‐focused coping strategies. The parents noted that access to both universal and selective welfare services is an important factor that contributed to their self‐efficacy and coping.     

Why do women interact with their parents more often than men? The demonstration effect vs. the biological effect

Neuroscientists have shown that females are biologically more caring than males. In this paper, two empirical strategies are applied to examine the validity of using gender difference as the evidence for the argument. The first approach is to compare visits to parents between single females and single males. The second approach is to investigate whether females evaluate children as old-age security to render them more important in their lives. The conclusions of these two approaches do not support the position.     

Reply to comment on “Why do women interact with their parents more often than men? The demonstration effect vs. the biological effect”

In this research note, I argue that none of the claimed empirical evidence of the demonstration effect is causal. The demonstration effect is one of many unobserved motives behind intergenerational interactions. It is extremely difficult to single out the demonstration motive from these unobserved motives. In the real world, it remains a challenge to prove the demonstration effect.     

The Mexican Dream? The effect of return migrants on hometown development

Mexican migrants are returning to their homeland at record rates. Along with material goods, these former migrants may bring with them new ways of thinking about the world and envisioning the future. Still, relatively little is known about the degree to which former migrants affect the wellbeing of their local communities over time. This study evaluates the effect of return migrants on health, education, income, and political participation in Guanajuato, Mexico during the period 2000–2010. The findings imply that returnees may have positive effects within local economies, improving not only income, but also education, healthcare, electoral participation, and overall wellbeing. The results of this study have important implications for policy makers operating within emigration-prone regions of the world.     

The emergence of the modern life cycle in Britain∗

Robert Erikson and John H. Goldthorpe, The Constant Flux: A Study of Class Mobility in Industrial Societies (1992), xvi + 429 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, £48.00).     

The effect of unconditional preferences on Sen’s paradox

Theory and Decision - Sen’s Liberal paradox describes a conflict between weak Pareto, minimal liberalism, and either transitivity or a best element over a domain of individual preferences....     

Managing the flow of private information on children and parents in poverty situations: Creating a panoptic eye in interorganizational networks?

In this article, we discuss how the flow of private information about children and families in poverty situations is managed in interorganizational networks that aim to combat child poverty. Although practices for sharing information and documentation between child and family social work services are highly encouraged and recommended to create supportive features for parents and children, this development often results in undesirable forms of governmentality. Interorganizational networking also creates controlling side effects because the exchange of information in networks of child and family services may wield a holistic power over families. We theorize this issue by using the Foucauldian concepts of the panopticon and pastoral power, which allows us to grapple with the major tension between support and control in the information‐ and documentation‐sharing practices of social workers. A critical analysis of our empirical data reveals four central fields of tension in which social workers and their organizations must position themselves: (a) craving control and handling uncertainty, (b) using and misusing private information and trust, (c) constructing families as subjects and objects of intervention, and (d) including and excluding families.     

Discrimination by whom? : Unraveling the effect of experiences of discrimination on depression of multi-ethnic children and adolescents in Korea

ABSTRACT

Using the National Survey of Multicultural Families 2015, we examine the mediation effect of self-esteem and the effects of discrimination from different sources on young people’s depression, and we account for the importance of geographic area. The results indicate that peer discrimination has an adverse effect on depression among multi-ethnic children and adolescents in both urban and rural areas. Further, discrimination from neighbours affects self-esteem and depression among those in rural areas, and discrimination by strangers is strongly associated with depression among urban-residing children and adolescents. Based on such findings, implications for social work practice are provided.     

Children against parents? The politics of intergenerational recalibration in Southern Europe

Traditionally, Southern European countries displayed remarkably elderly biased social policy arrangements. This article introduces the notion of intergenerational recalibration to capture reforms aimed at rebalancing the generational profile of Southern European welfare states via the expansion of family policy and social assistance schemes—both monetary benefits and care services—and retrenchment in the field of pensions. Then, it elaborates theoretically on the political dimension of this policy strategy, focusing on the implications of the peculiar combination of expansionary and retrenchment reforms, to advance the hypotheses that domestic politics would prevent the realization of such an agenda, whereas the latter would be favored by a major role of supranational actors, especially the European Union. To test these hypotheses, we systematically analyze policy trajectories in the field of pensions and social assistance in Italy and Spain between the mid‐1990s and 2016. This allows, first, to argue that investment in “pro‐children” measures has not adequately balanced the reduction of pro‐parents expenditure and, second, to question the idea that domestic political incentives to expand “pro‐children” policies are necessarily too weak as well as the “enabling” role of external pressures in pursuing intergenerational recalibration.     

Characteristics of chinese‐american children with problems∗

Theories of Social Casework. Edited by Robert W. Roberts and Robert H. Nee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1970.

Identifying Suicide Potential. Edited by Dorothy B. Anderson and Lenora J. McLean. New York: Behavioral Publications, Inc., 1971.

Psychological Functioning of Older People (Third Edition). Edited by Helen Turner Burr. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1971.

Social Casework. Edited by Herbert Strean. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1971.     

The education of children in care and children in need: Who falls behind and when?

We seek to explain the development of the educational gap between children in “out‐of‐home care” (CLA), children deemed in social need (CIN), and other pupils. A cohort of 642,805 pupils aged 16 in 2013 was used to chart the educational progress of the full cohort, the CLA (n = 6,236), the CIN in 2012 or 2013 but not CLA (n = 20,384), and a sample individually matched with the CLA (n = 11,084). At age 7, attainment of the CLA and CIN was approximately 1 standard deviation lower than the cohort average and predicted attainment at 16. At this point, the persistent “CIN” (those with earlier and persistent needs) had the lowest attainment relative to others, and this declined further during secondary school. Those entering care before or during primary school had very low attainment at age 7, but their relative attainment did not decline. Attainment of CLA and CIN at age 16 likely reflects early environment, special educational needs, and poor relationships with secondary school. Policy, research, and intervention should focus on CIN as well as CLA, do so before entry to care, and take account of the onset of, and probable reasons for, educational difficulties.     

The unknown soldiers of foster care: Foster care as loss for the foster parents’ own children

Abstract

This paper explores the effects of the foster care experience on foster parents’ biological children. In spite of having been accepted for over 40 years as the best form of residential care for most children and adolescents requiring alternative living arrangements, very little research has been done into the foster care experience. Almost nothing is known about the effects of foster care on either the foster family as a unit or its individual members, yet one of the major concerns foster parents present is the effect of the foster care experience on their own children. This concern leads many experienced foster families to leave foster care and many potential foster families to decide not to foster. This paper discusses the losses experienced by the children of foster parents.