Health E-types?

This paper presents a simple typology of different forms of engagement with the Internet by families with children with various forms of chronic illness. The analysis is informed by ongoing debates about the nature, distribution and efficacy of reflexivity in contemporary social life, especially as it relates to the changing nature of information and knowledge. Drawing upon qualitative interviews with sixty-nine parents and sixteen children, the paper offers a nuanced account of the manner in which laypeople are engaging with e- health. It is an account that argues that any reading of the 'digital divide' that is based upon a simple homology between socio-structural location, reflexivity and differential ability to gain material purchase from information in the 'information age' is misjudged.     

Family characteristics and intergenerational conflicts over the Internet

The rapid expansion of computer use and Internet connection has the potential to change patterns of family interaction, with conflicts arising over adolescents' autonomy, parental authority and control of the computer. This study applied a conceptual framework derived from family development and human ecology theory to investigate family characteristics related to the likelihood of such conflicts. A secondary analysis was conducted of a special survey of 754 children aged 12 to 17 who used the Internet, and of their parents, performed by Pew Internet and the American Life project. Adolescent-parent conflicts over Internet use proved strongly related to the perception that the adolescent was a computer expert. Families in which adolescents were considered experts in new technologies were more likely to experience conflicts. Parents' attempt to reduce adolescent autonomy by regulating the time of Internet use increased the likelihood of family arguments over the Internet. Intergenerational conflicts over the Internet were higher in families in which parents expressed concern over the potentially negative consequences of Internet use. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Internet Risks for Foster Families Online

ABSTRACT

Foster parents and children (n = 64 families) who participated in a program to reduce the digital divide among foster children were surveyed about difficulties experienced in use of online communications. Providing Internet access to foster families increased Internet use, but was not perceived by parents or children as taking away time from other family or social relationships. A minority of parents and foster youth, however, reported a variety of problems ranging from benign arguments over access to the computer or frustration over equipment failure to serious concerns about children receiving pornography or meeting a sexual predator online. Although the majority of both parents and social workers were confident in their ability to deal with Internet-related problems, approximately one-third had low confidence in their ability to deal with foster family's Internet-related difficulties. Training foster parents on using filtering software to prevent pornography from coming into the child's experience of the Internet significantly reduced problems related to pornography when compared to foster families not in the program. Implications for social work practice are discussed.     

Teenagers’ Internet Use and Family Rules: A Research Note

The Internet poses challenges to parents who want their children to take advantage of online resources but also want to protect their children from questionable content. Using data from 749 dyads of American parents and their teenage children with Internet access, this study finds that the majority of parents report regulating their teenage children's Internet use, but parents report more monitoring (61%) than teens report (38%). Multivariate regression analyses indicate fathers, younger parents, parents who use the Internet with their children, and parents with younger teens engage in a higher level of parental monitoring. This study provides a first look at parental monitoring of children's Internet use and points to the need to study family rules from both parents’ and children's perspectives.     

Percieved Optimal Marriage Age in the Internet Era—Findings of a Nationwide Survey

Based on data from the nationwide Annual Social Survey of the CBS in Israel and in-depth interviews, the current study investigated the association between Internet use and the perceived optimal marriage age for both genders among singles aged 20–45 in Israel. Respondents of both genders who use the Internet for seeking information reported a higher perceived optimal marital age than those who do not. The effect of social media use on perceived optimal marital age for both genders was insignificant. Sifting through the great quantity and variety of possible matches on the many CMC sites may increase the period of searching and push off the prospective marital age. In light of these findings, the erosion of the digital divide may have important individual and social consequences.     

Three Types of Stepfamilies

A multidimensional typology of nonclinical stepfami- lies was developed on the basis of indepth interviews with a non-sarn- ple group of remarried couples. Competitive Learning Analysis of the data, yielded three types of stepfamilies, based on three psychosocial and four sociodemographic features: Integrated families, Invented fam- ilies and Imported families. Profiles of these types are portrayed and demonstrated. No difference in levels. of functioning and satisfaction was found. Theoretical and practical implications of the typology are discussed.     

Does the Internet matter for strong ties? Bonding social capital,Internet use,and age-based inequality

As the Internet becomes pervasive in western societies, social capital emerges as a valuable sociological tool to analyze the social effects of Internet use. Thus, a growing body of research has been looking into the relationship between social capital and Internet usage. This research has been showing a positive relationship between them; however, results are not as conclusive when we consider one of the main dimensions of social capital: bonding. Bonding relates to resources that are embedded in one’s strong ties (i.e., family members and close friends). The study of bonding is of particular sociological interest, since the discussion around the social effects of the Internet still suggests that it takes time away from strong ties and that is more useful to connect with weak ties (i.e., acquaintances). This study examines the relationship between bonding and the Internet, using representative survey data and semi-structured interviews from Portugal. Findings show that bonding is predicted positively by Internet use but negatively by age. On one hand, the Internet seems to compensate for the negative age effect because older adults who use it are more likely to have a high level of bonding. On the other hand, the Internet reinforces accumulated social advantage.     

Developing and Maintaining Foster Family Identity Through Foster Parents’ Identity Work

There are hundreds of thousands of children in foster care in the United States, nearly a majority of whom are placed with nonrelative foster parents (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015). Few scholars (e.g., Nelson, 2014) have explored the communicative process through which a sense of family is created and maintained in foster families, despite the potential positive impact that developing a foster family identity may have on foster family functioning. The purpose of the present study was to understand the communicative strategies that foster parents use to create family identity. Data from interviews with 18 current and former foster parents revealed that through their talk inside and outside of the family, foster parents engaged in integrating biological and foster families, ritualizing, explaining, labeling family roles, and reframing. I discuss the importance of these findings for foster families.     

Social networks and Internet connectivity effects

This paper explores the impact of communication media and the Internet on connectivity between people. Results from a series of social network studies of media use are used as background for exploration of these impacts. These studies explored the use of all available media among members of an academic research group and among distance learners. Asking about media use as well as about the strength of the tie between communicating pairs revealed that those more strongly tied used more media to communicate than weak ties, and that media use within groups conformed to a unidimensional scale, showing a configuration of different tiers of media use supporting social networks of different ties strengths. These results lead to a number of implications regarding media and Internet connectivity, including: how media use can be added to characteristics of social network ties; how introducing a medium can create latent tie connectivity among group members that provides the technical means for activating weak ties, and also how a change in a medium can disrupt existing weak tie networks; how the tiers of media use also suggest that certain media support different kinds of information flow; and the importance of organization-level decisions about what media to provide and promote. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for Internet effects.     

Dimensions of Internet use: amount,variety, and types

We examine the dimensions of Internet use based on a representative sample of the population of the UK, making three important contributions. First, we clarify theoretical dimensions of Internet use that have been conflated in prior work. We argue that the property space of Internet use has three main dimensions: amount of use, variety of different uses, and types of use. Second, the Oxford Internet Survey 2011 data set contains a comprehensive set of 48 activities ranging from email to online banking to gambling. Using the principal components analysis, we identify 10 distinctive types of Internet activities. This is the first typology of Internet uses to be based on such a comprehensive set of activities. We use regression analyses to validate the three dimensions and to identify the characteristics of the users of each type. Each type has a distinctive and different kind of user. The Internet is an extremely diverse medium. We cannot discuss ‘Internet use’ as a general phenomenon; instead, researchers must specify what kind of use they examine.     

Assisting A Concerned Person to Motivate Someone Experiencing Cybersex Into Treatment

Cybersex and Internet pornography addiction are new problem areas confronting couples and families. A most significant experience inducing family members to reach out to a therapist or an Interventionist for help with their addicted member is the realization that the individual they are living with has become a stranger. This article focuses on the changes in the attitude, emotions, and behaviors of the addicted individual from compulsive Internet pornography use and cybersex. Identifying these changes for the family members validates their experience of now living with a stranger. This article then presents the three‐level empirically based, manual‐driven method of Invitational Intervention, A Relational Intervention Sequence for Engagement (ARISE) as an effective tool for helping families to get their loved ones into treatment.     

Older audiences in the digital media environment

Relying on Jensen and Helles’ model for studying the Internet as a cultural forum, this study aimed to explore the extent to which traditional media are displaced by innovative communication practices within the older audience of new media. The study was based on a cross-European survey of 1039 Internet users aged 60 years and up. Results indicated that older Internet users are significantly more inclined to use traditional mass media than new social media and prefer synchronous to asynchronous mass media. This audience, however, is not homogeneous, as four subsegments were identified. These groups differed in their media repertoires, sociocultural background and leisure preferences. The findings suggest that despite the increasing percentage of older Internet users, this audience tends to adhere to familiar media practices, with only a minority making intense use of new practices. With very few cross-national differences, this tendency appears to be universal, suggesting overall media use traditionalism and a second-level digital divide among the older audience.     

The Impact of Parental Remarriage on Children

Abstract

A meta-analysis of 61 studies was undertaken to determine the impact of parental remarriage on the academic achievement and psychological well-being of children, of which the vast majority were adolescents. Separate analyses were done on studies that did and did not use sophisticated controls in their analyses. Comparisons were made between children from remarried versus intact families as well as children from remarried and divorced or widowed single-parent families. Children from remarried family structures achieved academic levels that were generally more than two-tenths of a standard deviation lower than children from intact families. Children from remarried families also achieved somewhat lower levels than children from corresponding single-parent family structures. The difference between children from remarried families and children from intact families was nearly two- tenths of a standard deviation for measures of psychological well-being, for studies that did not use sophisticated controls and was somewhat less for studies that did use sophisticated controls. The significance of these results is discussed, doi: 10.1300/J002v40n04_05     

Being a Foster-to-Adopt Parent: Experiences of (Un)certainty and Their Influence on the Sense of Being the Parent

The Mixed-Bank Program (Quebec, Canada) is based on concurrent planning principles. While the primary goal of this placement is reunification of the child with their birth parents, the low probability of this happening calls for simultaneously planning for an alternative solution, such as adoption. As a result, foster-to-adopt families have to deal with the uncertainty of the adoptability of the child and having no legal status nor control over the situation. In a qualitative study focusing on understanding how foster families from the Mixed-Bank Program develop the sense of being the parent of the child they care for, 25 semi-structured interviews with foster parents from 20 different families were conducted. As part of grounded theory methodology, a typology of profiles according to the level of uncertainty was constructed: (1) experience of certainty, (2) experience of momentary uncertainty, and (3) chronic uncertainty. This article presents these profiles and discusses the following challenges: the willingness to settle for permanence without adoption in all profiles, the link between the level of uncertainty and the assiduity of birth parents to supervised visits with the child, and the lack of power and control over the fulfillment of the goal of having or completing a family.     

Whose responsibility? Resilience in families of children with developmental disabilities

Families with children with disabilities are at higher risk of stress, financial disadvantage and breakdown. In recent decades, research and policy have shifted focus from these problems to a strengths-based approach, using concepts such as family resilience. By definition, resilience is the ability to cope in adverse circumstances, suggesting a reliance on the individual. If this is the case, then to what extent does ‘family resilience’ place another burden of responsibility onto families? Whose responsibility is family resilience? This paper begins to answer this question using interviews with parents of children with developmental disabilities based in New South Wales, Australia.     

Understanding the etiology of child abuse: A preliminary typology of cases

This paper examines various conceptual approaches to the etiology of child abuse and reports the results of an original study. Data on 99 families with children who were court adjudicated as having suffered non-accidental trauma were analyzed by means of a cluster analysis (hierarchical nearest-neighbor clustering). Four empirically-derived clusters of family/case attributes are described and then discussed as representing separate etiologies of child abuse. The implications of this typology are also discussed as they relate to clinical practice and social policy.     

NET TIME NEGOTIATIONS WITHIN THE FAMILY

Drawing on data from one-on-one and focus group interviews with high school students from schools in agricultural California, this research examines how American families negotiate what we call net time. The article explores intra-familial bargaining over time spent on the internet. Analysis pays special attention to families that prioritize capital-enhancing activities such as schoolwork and college applications. In these families, access to resources is guided by implicit social contracts between parents and children, as well as between siblings. The findings illuminate how these social contracts imply particular rights and responsibilities depending on the families' level of wiredness: highly wired, partially wired, and unwired families. Comparing the experiences of students from these three groups reveals that members of each kind of family experience a different form of net time. While youths from highly wired families enjoy individualized net time, members of partially wired families divvy up household net time. The most disadvantaged youth come from unwired families in which family members must make sacrifices for youth to obtain net time outside of the household. The examination illuminates the logics that underpin the familial negotiations over each kind of net time. Ultimately, familial social contracts over net time have the power to encourage or hinder use of net time for capital-enhancing activities.     

Exploring the deployment and reintegration experiences of active duty military families with young children

Active duty military families are experiencing increased stress as service members deploy to and return from lengthy and repeated deployments to multiple war zones. These deployments have a cumulative impact on the behavioral health and well-being of not only the service member, but also the family, particularly in families with very young children (Lester et al., 2016). Emergent research concerning families with young suggests that greater attention to the military spouse is needed to ensure effective, supportive service provision for these families. The purpose of the present study is threefold: (1) to identify the challenges faced by families with young children during and after deployment, (2) to understand resource utilization by these families, and (3) to explore the strengths and strategies used during these experiences. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 19 active duty Marine Corps family members with young children (under 5 years old) and 10 key program providers on or near a large military base in the southeast region of the United States. Findings reveal significant social isolation, which is consistent with the literature, the need for formal and informal social supports as well as self-care for the at-home parent, challenges in co-parenting and utilizing known resources, and a range of strategies used to manage deployment and reintegration. Implications for practice are discussed.     

The effects of adapting their home on the meaning of home for families with a disabled child

This article describes part of a mixed-method study investigating family and professional perspectives on home adaptations for disabled children. The methods were an online survey of staff involved in adaptations processes (n =39), semi-structured interviews with families with disabled children (n = 48) and an online survey for families (n = 16). One of the wider study’s recommendations was that families need to be enabled to engage with processes proactively. This article focuses on families’ experiences of the meaning attributed to adapting the home and highlights that, although satisfied with the completed adaptation, families were dissatisfied with the process they had been through. Thus, despite the need for the meaning of home being central to the adaptation process, families felt excluded from the process as it progressed. This had a negative impact on the continuing use of the adaptation and affected the meaning of home for families with a disabled child.