Out-of-home care among immigrant children in Sweden: a national cohort study

We used data from several national registers for ten entire birth cohorts ( n  > 1 million) to examine the representation of first generation immigrant children among first time entries into out-of-home care (foster or residential care) at ages 7–12 and 13–17. Logistic regression models were used to adjust results for socioeconomic background factors. Immigrant children were categorised in six groups relating to birth country/continent. Compared with Swedish-born peers, immigrant children from non-European countries had between two- and three-fold sex and birth-year adjusted odds for being placed in care for the first time at ages 7–12. After adjustments for five socioeconomic background variables, none of these overrisks remained. Instead there was a tendency towards immigrant background being associated with reduced risks, statistically significant for immigrant children born in non-Nordic European countries. Immigrant children had between two- and six-fold age and birth-year adjusted odds for entering care for the first time during adolescence. After adjusting the results for socioeconomic background, only immigrant children born in Sub-Saharan Africa or in Asia outside the Middle East had significant overrisks for care entries at ages 13–17 (odds ratio = 1.5).     

Drinking patterns and attitudes about alcohol among New Zealand adolescents

ABSTRACT

Questionnaires about alcohol use were administered to consenting Year 10 students at 10 secondary schools located in regions of Southland, Otago and Hawkes Bay (n?=?579) to examine drinking patterns and attitudes about alcohol of 14–15-year-olds. The average age of first drink was 12.6 years, two years younger than previously reported, with no difference in age of first drink for different socioeconomic statuses or ethnicities. Fifty-four per cent self-reported having consumed alcohol, and 23% had done so at least once within the last four weeks, with 13% reported regularly drinking more than five drinks in one session. While almost half of the 14–15-year-olds in this study reported never drinking alcohol, 75 individuals reported regular binge drinking. This was more common for students in lower socioeconomic schools; almost a third of students in the lowest socioeconomic group reported drinking five or more drinks every time they drink. There may be benefits of alcohol education resources for children as young as 12 years.     

Social services provided for physically abused children in Sweden: background factors and interventions

This study aims at describing and analysing what kinds of social services are provided for physically abused children in Sweden. The social services files were examined for 113 children under 15 years of age (67 boys and 46 girls) who had been reported to the police as having been physically abused by a parent or equivalent caretaker in a particular police district. The children's social services files indicated an increased risk of a parental abusive behaviour prior to the abuse incident. There had been former interventions in 81 per cent of the families and previous reports on neglect or abuse in 44 per cent of the 113 families. After the abuse incident, investiga-tions were opened in 80 per cent of the cases. The three most common interventions were placement in foster care, referrals to Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Service and Social Services support contacts. The study shows that there was a tendency towards more proactive work with injured children, children of immigrant parents and children of mentally ill parents.     

Attachment and Social Functioning: A Longitudinal Study from Infancy to Middle Childhood

A longitudinal sample of 96 children was followed from 15 months of age to 8–9 years. Attachment relationships were studied in infancy with the Strange Situation and at school age with the Separation Anxiety Test. Social functioning was studied at school age through mother and teacher ratings, observations at school, and in children's self-reports. Predictive results showed that infants who had been secure as infants were more socially active, positive and popular at school age, and tended to report less social anxiety than children who had been insecure. Outcomes did not differentiate between children who had been anxious-avoidant and anxious-ambivalent. In spite of nonsignificant continuity between attachment security at infancy and school age, the associations to social functioning were similar.     

Indirect effects of the Family Check‐Up on youth extracurricular involvement at school‐age through improvements in maternal positive behavior support in early childhood

Extracurricular involvement in the school‐age years has widespread potential benefits for children's subsequent socioemotional development, especially for low‐income youth. However, there is a dearth of research on interventions aimed at increasing school‐age extracurricular involvement in low‐income youth. Thus, the present study aimed to test the collateral effect of a brief, family‐focused intervention for low‐income families, the Family Check‐Up, on children's school‐age extracurricular involvement via improvements in maternal positive behavior support (PBS) in early childhood. The sample (n = 630, 50% female, 50% White, 28% Black/African American) represented a subsample of families from the Early Steps Multisite Study. At the age of two, families were randomly assigned to the Family Check‐Up or Women, Infants, and Children Nutritional Supplement Services as usual. Mother‐child dyads participated in observed interaction tasks at child ages 2 and 3 that were subsequently coded to assess PBS. Primary caregivers reported on children's school‐age extracurricular involvement at ages 7.5, 8.5, and 9.5. Results indicated that although there was not a direct path between intervention status and children's school‐age extracurricular involvement, a significant indirect path emerged from intervention group to changes in PBS between ages 2 to 3 to children's school‐age extracurricular involvement. The results are discussed in terms of implications for designing preventive interventions in early childhood that promote extracurricular involvement at school‐age, particularly for children at risk for maladaptive outcomes.     

The changing social profile of mothers whose children are admitted into institutional care in Greece

The study sample consisted of 69 mothers in Greece whose children had been admitted into institutional care at an age of less than 7 years. These mothers were divided into two groups, 32 whose children were aged 2.5–5.5 years and 37 whose children were aged 15.5–17.5 years at the time of study. The mean age of the first group of mothers was 27 years and the second 42 years. Corresponding control groups consisted of 65 mothers, 24 younger and 37 older, in intact families. All the mothers were interviewed using a semistructured interview schedule. Study mothers of both groups were from a lower social class (occupation, education) than controls, had experienced more adversity in childhood and had more health problems. They had left their parental homes and given birth at a younger age and faced more difficulties (financial, housing problems, marital discord and/or divorce). The older group of study mothers more often had their children admitted into care because of financial difficulties or illegitimacy, in contrast with the younger mothers who more often gave the reason of marital breakdown. There were indications that the same kind of adversity that they had experienced themselves as children was the main reason for admission of their children into institutional care.     

Mortality after care among young adult foster children in Sweden

This exploratory study looks at mortality after care among 13,100 former Swedish foster children, placed before their teens. Sources used are two national databases, on child welfare interventions and causes of death. Risk ratios of death for foster children are compared with those of their peers in the general population and with a comparison group, consisting of 10,668 young adults from adverse home backgrounds, who never entered foster family care before their teens. Both ex-foster children and the comparison group were young adults (19–26 years old) at time of follow-up. Results show a moderately elevated risk ratio for both groups compared with peers in the general population, mainly due to more frequent unnatural deaths, especially suicides. Time at first placement was not related to mortality among men, but there was a weak tendency of a higher risk ratio for girls placed at age 7–12. Information on time spent in care is used with caution, due to possible problems with reliability. Almost all comparisons between the foster care and the comparison group fell short of statistical significance. For foster children who had spent more than five years in care, the risk ratio tended to be higher than for foster children with shorter care experience, and similar to that of the comparison group. Foster children who had been in care for less then six years thus tended to have a lower risk ratio than the comparison group.     

Exploring Children's Stereotypes Through Drawings: The Case of Musical Performance

Drawings of 'a person' and of 'a person playing music' were collected from children aged seven to eight years and 10–11 years to discover whether children's musical representations would reflect gender differences evident in musical learning and performance, and the increased gender rigidity with age found in instrument preferences. As in previous drawing studies, same sex figures were overwhelmingly portrayed, although older girls drew more opposite sex figures than the other children. All except the older girls overwhelmingly drew same sex musicians irrespective of the gender stereotype of the instrument portrayed. The older girls drew similar numbers of male and female figures playing masculine instruments. Fewer feminine instruments were drawn by older than by younger boys. The increased gender rigidity with age accords with the results of the preference studies, but gender stereotyping was much weaker. This is discussed in relation to what the different methodologies measure.     

Social-Cognitive Factors in Childhood Social Anxiety: A Preliminary Investigation

The present study addresses the social cognition of socially anxious children, with particular emphasis on their ability to understand others' mental states in interpersonal situations. The heterogeneous sample used in this preliminary investigation consisted of 63 primary school children in England and the USA. The English children were from a mainstream classroom of 8- to 9-year-olds, while the children from the USA ranged in age from 6 to 11 years and had been selected by school district officials for a variety of social interaction difficulties. All children completed measures of social anxiety, shy negative affect, and various social-cognitive abilities, and teacher ratings of social skills were additionally available for the USA subgroup. Results showed that feelings of social anxiety are not associated with any basic deficit in the understanding of recursive mental states which concern facts about the physical world. However, there was evidence that socially anxious children—particularly those with high levels of shy negative affect—do experience specific social-cognitive difficulties in understanding the links between emotions, intentions, and beliefs in social situations. Providing further support for this link, socially anxious children were rated by their teachers as poorer than non-anxious children only on social skills that require insight into others' mental states. Directions for further examination of this complex interplay between cognitive and emotional factors in the development of social anxiety are discussed.     

Managing Work and Care: A Difficult Challenge for Immigrant Families

This paper explores the strategies used by immigrant families to reconcile work and care for young children in Finland, France, Italy and Portugal. Drawing upon interviews with couples or lone parents who have children below age ten, it shows that immigrant families rely on a diversity of work/care strategies. These strategies include extensive delegation of care (mostly to formal or non‐familial informal care), negotiation of care within the nuclear family (both partners sharing the care responsibilities as well as older child care), mother‐centredness (mothers cutting back on working hours), child negligence (leaving children alone) and the superimposition of care upon work (taking children to work). Almost all immigrant families, but especially first‐generation ones, suffer from the absence of close kin networks to support childcare, strong pressure to work and from work (long or atypical hours) and various integration problems such as social isolation, lack of information on services, and problems with housing. However, our findings show that migration patterns, among other factors, have a significant impact on work/care strategies. Highly qualified “professional migration” is more associated with extensive paid delegation (often private and high‐cost), “marriage migration” with mother‐centredness, and “unskilled worker migration” with low‐cost solutions supplemented by workplace care, older child care and negligence. First‐generation unskilled worker migrant families are more exposed to occupational and residential segregation, atypical working hours, low earnings and difficulties in managing work and care for young children. Findings point to the still weak regulatory function of the different welfare states in the protection of these families.     

Children's participation in reviews and planning meetings when they are 'looked after' in middle childhood

This paper is based on a study of participation by children aged 8–12 in decisions when they are 'looked after' by local authorities. The research established that more children in this age group are attending reviews and planning meetings, but that the likelihood of their attendance varies with age and other factors. The paper explores reasons why some children are more likely to attend meetings than others, and uses material from interviews with children and adults to understand the part which children take in meetings when they do attend. The attendance of children at review meetings has exposed some ambiguity in their purpose, and the paper argues for a re-evaluation of the place of reviews in relation to other processes. It concludes by calling for a combination of rights-based and relationship-based approaches to empowering children.     

Peer relationships during late childhood in internationally adopted and institutionalized children

The aim of this study was to analyse the interpersonal relationships in the school context of children living in different care settings (adoptive families, residential care centres, birth families). Participants were 76 children between eight and fourteen years of age (M = 10.78, SD = 1.38), belonging to one of three groups: international adoptees, children living in residential care in Spanish institutions, and a comparison sample of Spanish children living with their birth families with no connection with child protection. Sociometric information was collected in the classroom of each child during school hours. Internationally adopted children from Russia showed considerable difficulties in their relationships with peers; they were more likely to be rejected and their peers described them as less prosocial and somewhat more aggressive. With a better sociometric position than the adoptees, children in residential care were rated by their peers as more aggressive and less prosocial than the normative population. Coordination and integrated work between the family, protection centres, schools, and other social services should be a strategic priority in the promotion of healthy social development in these groups of children.     

Public policies in the decade of the 1990's: the case of nutrition

In Venezuela, mortality related to nutritional deficiencies was low with a total of 178 cases in 1973 and 391 cases in 1981, affecting mainly children under the age of 12 months. In 1988 the System of Nutritional Surveillance (SISVAN) reported that the majority of hospital admissions with serious nutritional deficit were those with inadequate weight-height ratio: 37.0% of children under 1 year of age in 1988 and 46.4% in 1989. In 1988 SISVAN reported a decrease in the weight-height deficit in children under 10 years of age: 28,609 children in 1988 and 28,548 in 1989; whereas the age group from 2 to 6 years was the most affected by such deficit. Overall, however, there had been a slowdown in the improvement in child nutrition with the increase of grave malnutrition according to 1988 and 1989 data. 1990 and 1991 data showed an improved situation as a result of better use of state medical services by families and the milk program, indicating a decrease of the weight-height ratio deficit in children under 10 years of age: 18.0% in the first trimester of 1990 and 14.0% in 1991, along with the reduction of grave deficit from 0.9% in 1990 to 0.6% in 1991. Feeding as a determinant aspect of nutrition deals with the precarious nature of existing supplies, the diminution of acquisitive capacity, and the habits of consumption. The initiatives of the state for overcoming the situation include the basic basket of foodstuffs, direct subsidies to the low income population, and programs that fight nutritional deficiencies of children, such as the Expanded Maternal-Child Nutrition Program (PAMI). Households of daily care constitute the regional initiatives and the ability of the state to maintain these programs. The responses of urban centers before this initiative included a successful experiment, the center of education and nutritional recovery, and the child survival program.     

Children's gender- and age-based categorization in similarity and induction tasks

The present studies examined children's and adults' preferences for gender- or age-based categorization using similarity and inductive inference tasks. Four-year-olds, 6-year-olds, and adults looked at pictures of people and decided which of two was more like a target (similarity condition) or which shared a novel age- or gender-related property with the target (inference condition). Age or gender-based matches were possible. The results are consistent with previous findings that gender-based classification decreases with age. However, they also demonstrate that children use gender more for judging similarity than for making inferences about novel properties. Distinct patterns emerge from the two tasks: 6-year-olds and adults in both conditions categorize more by age than gender; 4-year-olds categorize by gender more than age in the similarity task, but by age more in the induction task. Only adults differentiated by property in the inference condition. These findings suggest that the salience of gender categories cannot entirely be attributed to their inductive potential. Gender has a salience beyond what would be predicted by its power for directing novel generalizations.     

A Person‐Oriented Analysis of Social Withdrawal in Chinese Children

The goal of this study was to compare the socio‐emotional and academic adjustment of different subtypes of socially withdrawn (shy, unsociable, avoidant) school‐age children in mainland China. Participants were N = 1344 children ages 10–12 years from public elementary schools in Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Multi‐source assessment included: child self‐reports of social withdrawal subtypes and internalizing difficulties (e.g., depression, social anxiety); peer nominations of children's peer relations (e.g., peer victimization, peer preference); and teacher ratings of children's school adjustment (e.g., academic success, internalizing problems). Results from person‐oriented analyses indicated that socially avoidant (i.e., shy‐unsociable) children reported the most pervasive internalizing difficulties compared to other groups. However, in contrast to findings among Western samples, unsociable children were as likely to have peer and academic difficulties as their shy and socially avoidant peers. Findings are discussed in terms of the implications of different subtypes of social withdrawal among children in collectivistic societies such as China.     

Preschool and Academic School Readiness Among Young Children of Asian and Hispanic Immigrant Mothers

ABSTRACT

Preschool is an important developmental context for children of immigrants that can help them succeed in later life. In this study, we examine the association between preschool and academic school readiness among young children of Asian or Hispanic immigrant mothers. A secondary data analysis was conducted using data (n ≈ 1,550) collected in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort. Results show that attending preschool (mostly prekindergarten or other center-based care) was associated with better academic school readiness at the year of participation among children of both Asian and Hispanic immigrant mothers; such beneficial associations were found at kindergarten entry among Asian children, but not Hispanic children. Furthermore, more-pronounced beneficial influences of preschool on academic school readiness were found at the year of participation among children of home language mothers in both groups, but such more-pronounced benefits were gone at kindergarten entry in both groups. These findings suggest that the differences between the two groups in maintaining the benefits from preschool may be associated with different home environments. Future research is needed to look specifically at the mechanisms of how attending preschool is related to academic school readiness among children of immigrants.     

The long-lasting effects of school entry age: Evidence from Italian students

Using data for 9, 13 and 15-year-old students from three different datasets (PIRLS-2006, TIMSS-2007 and PISA-2009), we investigate whether the age at school entry affects children school performance at the fourth, eighth and tenth grade levels. Since student's age in a grade may be endogenous, we use an instrumental variable estimation strategy exploiting the exogenous variations in the month of birth coupled with the entry school cut-off date. We find that younger children score substantially lower than older peers at the fourth, the eighth and the tenth grade. The advantage of older students does not dissipate as they grow older. We do not find any significant effect of the relative age of a child with respect to the classmates’ age. Finally, we show that secondary school students are more likely to be tracked in more academic schools rather than in vocational schools if they are born in the early months of the year. From a policy point of view our results suggest that it might be useful to postpone the entry at school of children, or at least pupils should be prevented to anticipate the age of their entry at school. Tracking should also be delayed.     

Child and Family Policies in the United States at the Opening of the Twenty-first Century

A repeated theme, characterizing US social policies toward children and their families, is that the US has no explicit family policy, nor does it have a coherent package of social policies that are targeted on children and their families. Nonetheless, there is general agreement that the US does have policies that have consequences for children and their families, and that many of these might constitute 'implicit' family policies. However, these policies tend to be limited in scale, coverage, and generosity and are usually categorical and narrowly focused. They lack the comprehensiveness and universality of policies in other advanced industrialized countries. Furthermore, the US has consistently invested a significantly smaller share of GDP in children and their families than almost all the other such countries. One consequence is that the situation of children in the US seems to be much worse than that of children in other advanced industrialized countries. In more recent years, however, there have been some efforts at improving child and family policies and the story now is a mixed one—but there remain major deficits in our policies and programs. Fortunately, children's issues are emerging on the national policy agenda. In this article, we describe current US child and family policies, touch on earlier history for context, and discuss the issues facing the US as we enter the twenty-first century. Ultimately, we need to confront the question of what can be done now to advance the children's cause on the national agenda.     

The status of women in rural India: a village study

This paper examines the status of rural Indian women and how their status has been affected by progressive legislation designed to remove previous inequalities. A socio-demographic survey of women and adolescent girls was conducted in a Maharashtrian village of 2100 people in 1975-76. The village economy was based on subsistence agriculture with 94% of females and 84% of males engaged in farming. Data were collected by means of participant observation and questionnaire interviews. Overall levels of education were low, with only 5% of females and 15% of males having any high school education. Over 50% of females had received no education, 28% of males. Inequalities between males and females persisted throughout all age groups but were less obvious at younger ages. 97% of women felt that boys should attend school beyond the primary level, 75% said that girls should. Many adolescent girls said they would like to continue their education but admitted that they would soon marry and advanced education was unnecessary. 62% of women favored modern medicine but 57% still felt that smallpox was a punishment from the gods; fewer educated women than illiterate women answered this way. Average age of marriage was 14.1 years; 69% of the women felt that girls should be married by age 16, but 70% believed that boys should not marry until age 18 so that they can complete their studies. 62% of women who had discussed family size with their husbands also approved of eating together and 55% felt that joint discussion was preferable. Only 25% felt that large families meant greater happiness and on the average 3.4 children (2 sons, 1.4 daughters) were preferred; over 75% said that they would exceed their ideal family size if they had borne only daughters. The local family planning program was approved by 90% of the women and use has increased from 13-43% from 1966-76. Low caste was related to low levels of education for women, but there is little difference in the number of children ever born; the disparity is mainly in regard to living children with mortality highest among lower castes. Age differences existed such as: 52% of the youngest group can read and write compared to only 14% of older women, age at marriage is rising, and older women had more communication with their husbands, but also had larger families. It was found in this study that: 1) attitudes were more modern than behavior, and 2) modern practices most practical to apply to their daily lives were more easily accepted. What is needed is a broad-based educational program to demonstrate current failures to observe the legislation favoring greater equality for women. Rural schools should help to transmit modern concepts by way of organizing school trips to outside areas. For these women, modern ideas must be proven relevant and acceptable within the village milieu. Also included is a list of social reforms and legislation affecting women's status in India from 1795-present.