Longitudinal Pathways From Shyness in Early Childhood to Personality in Adolescence: Do Peers Matter?

Temperamental shyness in childhood is theorized to be an important contributor for adolescent personality. However, empirical evidence for such pathways is scarce. Using longitudinal data (N = 939 children, 51% boys) across 17 years, the aim of this study was to examine how shyness development throughout childhood predicted personality traits in adolescence, and the role of peers in these associations. Results from piecewise latent growth curve modeling showed early shyness levels to predict lower emotional stability and openness in adolescence, whereas early shyness levels and growth across childhood predicted lower extraversion. Peer problems in early adolescence accounted for these associations. This study is the first to demonstrate the role of childhood shyness and peer relations for adolescents’ personality development.     

Childhood Family,Ethnicity, and Drug Use Over the Life Course

Using multiply imputed data from 5 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 8,294), we investigated whether childhood family characteristics and childhood religious affiliation explain ethnic differences in marijuana and cocaine use in the last year. None of the childhood factors explained ethnic differences in drug use, though ethnicity and several childhood factors had age‐specific effects. Over the life course from young adulthood to middle age, ethnic differences in drug use changed and the effect of childhood religious affiliation declined. Having a more intellectually rich family in childhood increased the risk of drug use at younger ages but reduced it at older ages. The study demonstrates the significance of childhood family experiences for understanding adult drug use.     

Perceived consequences of hazing exposure during the first year of college: Associations with childhood victimization

Objective: This study investigates the association between histories of childhood victimization and perceived consequences of college hazing. Participants: First-year college students at four US universities (N?=?120). Method: Participants completed Web-based surveys asking about childhood victimization (eg, child maltreatment), peer victimization, and perceived consequences of hazing during college. Results: Results indicated that college students with childhood victimization histories perceived hazing to be negative. In particular, physical dating violence and a greater total number of childhood victimization exposures were related to a higher number of perceived negative consequences. Conclusion: Past victimization exposures confer risk on college students who experience hazing, in that these students are more likely to perceive negative consequences of hazing. Hazing-related policies and outreach efforts should consider these potential negative consequences, and counselors should be aware of the link between past victimization and how hazing might be experienced.     

Storytelling,organizations, and the coherent self: The chronotope of childhood in professional life histories

Professional life histories and organizational stories rarely follow the model of beginnings, middles, and ends. Most interviews end up being subjected to what Boje (2008. Storytelling organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage) refers to as the spiral of story disorder. However, some storytelling strategies are often used by interviewees to produce a coherent projection of the self and convey a unified professional ethos. This is the role the time and space of childhood – the childhood chronotope – plays in professional life histories. Childhood is often used by storytellers to bring coherence to their organizational stories – and this is no truer than in the context of interviews. Based on interviews from museum directors, this article illustrates how the childhood chronotope might be a meaningful notion for narrative analysis in organizational studies: childhood is mobilized and reinvested by the individual's self-construction in order to produce a sense of coherence and control over his or her organizational experience and professional self.     

Innocence, Perversion, and Heather's Two Mommies

This paper begins by untangling the twisted threads linking homosexuality and childhood in the mind of America, and explaining how contemporary constructions of homosexuality have become entwined with modern conceptions of childhood. The author draws on the literature on the invention of childhood and especially the pioneering work of Jonathan Silin to show how the entrenchment of capitalism and arrival of compulsory schooling have created a hegemonic form of family and produced a child at once innocent and ignorant. The author then probes the construction of the homosexual in the late 19th century and uncovers interconnections between this new social typology and representations of childhood. By examining how these linkages are historically embodied in incidents of sex panic, the author argues that the psyches of lesbians and gay men who are in relationship with children (as parents, teachers, coaches . . .) are often suffused with anxiety and self-doubt. Hence a gay movement emerges rife with hyper-traditional representations of children and youth. Contemporary queer representations of childhood are then explored through a focus on children's books designed for the offspring of lesbian and gay parents. The author suggests that contemporary gay advocacy, which attempts to dislodge perversion as the central representation of homosexuality, will be unsuccessful until activists abandon tactics that infantilize children and perpetuate a vision of childhood as vulnerable, innocent, and unknowing.     

Representations of Jewish Childhood From 1950s Communist Romania in Memoirs by Women Émigré Authors to the United States

ABSTRACT

This article examines the memoirs of three Jewish women – Marianne Hirsch, Anca Vlasopolos, and Haya Leah Molnar – to understand how they remembered childhood in 1950s communist Bucharest. I first show how Marianne Hirsch’s part-memoir, part-critical book, Family Frames, uses her personal experiences to theorize tropes of transcultural dislocation as specific features of post-World War II Jewish children’s identities in 1950s Romania. I analyze how these tropes equally permeate the memoirs by two of her generation’s peers, Anca Vlasopolos and Haya Leah Molnar, highlighting how the two authors deploy them in their narratives. Overall, I show that writings of one’s 1950s childhood experiences in Bucharest by Jewish emigrées to the US offer new alternative discourses about facing the past and the present in Eastern Europe and the US by the tropes of initial transcultural, dislocating experiences at the start of their lives.     

Student Constructions of Resilience: Understanding the Role of Childhood Adversity

Resilience is a desirable attribute for social work and human services (SWHS) graduates. A history of childhood adversity may have led students to develop resilience, which is transferable to SWHS practice. Limited research has been conducted with students as to how resilience is formed and conceptualised. This survey of 265 SWHS students is the first Australian research to survey students about their conceptualisation of resilience and childhood adversity. Within the study, students resoundingly viewed resilience as a process that occurred often due to childhood adversity but also from the protective factors of family. Students' experience of childhood adversity allowed them to develop independence and determination, which led to the development of resilience giving them greater ability to cope with the stresses of SWHS courses. Exploration of students' conceptualisation of resilience and its formation provides an insider voice as to how we can assist emerging practitioners in their development of resilience for future practice.     

Making Sense of After‐School Care Dilemmas in Mothers' Stories of After‐School Care in Finland and Sweden

The study focuses on dilemmas in storied experiences of everyday after‐school care arrangements among Swedish and Finnish mothers. Finland and Sweden, which share a history of strong labour market attachment among women, arrange institutional after‐school care in similar ways. The data consist of interviews with three Swedish and six Finnish mothers. A positioning analysis of four stories shows how decisions related to children's after‐school hours were allocated among different actors. Two reoccurring dilemmas, Competent‐dependent child stories and Unburdened‐deficient mother stories, emerged from the data analysis as related to prevailing moral discourses on childhood and motherhood.     

Parental Migration and Education of Left‐Behind Children: A Comparison of Two Settings

The out‐migration of parents has become a common childhood experience worldwide. It can confer both economic benefits and social costs on children. Despite a growing literature, the circumstances under which children benefit or suffer from parental out‐migration are not well understood. The present study examined how the relationship between parental out‐migration and children's education varies across migration streams (internal vs. international) and across 2 societies. Data are from the Mexican Family Life Survey (N = 5,719) and the Indonesian Family Life Survey (N = 2,938). The results showed that children left behind by international migrant parents are worse off in educational attainment than those living with both parents. Internal migration of parents plays a negative role in some cases, though often to a lesser degree than international migration. In addition, how the overall relationship between parental migration and education balances out varies by context: It is negative in Mexico but generally small in Indonesia.     

Controlling Anxiety Mediates the Influence of Childhood Adversities on Risky Sexual Behaviors Among Emerging Adults

Relatively little research has assessed the exposure-response relationship of childhood adversities on engaging in risky sexual behaviors. Also, no previous research has examined the interrelationship among childhood adversities, adult anxiety and depressive symptoms, and risky sexual behaviors. This study aimed to investigate their interrelationships. We used data from a multisite survey of emerging adults aged 18 to 29 studying at four universities in Hong Kong between September and December 2015. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the pathways from childhood adversities to risky sexual behaviors. Participants who had higher childhood adversity scores reported more severe adult anxiety symptoms (β = 0.20, p = 0.002); and adult anxiety symptoms were associated with significantly more risky sexual behaviors (β = 0.46, p < 0.0001). The model with adult anxiety symptoms as the mediator between childhood adversities and risky sexual behaviors showed good fit (root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = 0.04, comparative fit index [CFI] = 0.96, Tucker-Lewis index [TLI] = 0.94 and standardized root mean square residual [SRMSR] = 0.04). However, adult depressive symptoms failed to mediate between childhood adversities and risky sexual behaviors. This study demonstrates the link between childhood adversities and risky sexual behaviors via adult anxiety but not adult depressive symptoms. It is essential to reduce anxious symptoms in dealing with emerging adults who have risky sexual behaviors to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unintended pregnancy.     

Personal Network Characteristics as Predictors of Change in Obesity Risk Behaviors in Early Adolescence

The potential for peers to influence obesity risk behavior increases in adolescence, yet there are knowledge gaps of how behaviors are modified in response to peers over time. This study examined how personal friendship network characteristics were associated with obesity‐related behaviors from late childhood to early adolescence. Two waves of friendship, physical activity, screen time, and dietary recall data were collected from 11‐ to 13‐year‐old students (99% retention) in Australia (n = 308) over a five‐ to eight‐month period. Regression models identified friendship network characteristics that predicted later health behaviors which varied by gender and behavior type, such as the number of friends positively associated with physical activity intensity (males) and screen time (females). The need for considering context to influence behavior change is discussed.     

Young people's narratives of depression

This article reports on findings from a study, which aimed to gain insight into young people's depression as a part of their life course by analysing written accounts of 81 young Finnish people who self-identified as having been depressed. The participants’ accounts were seen as reflecting both their actual life and their narrative interpretations of it in relation to the prevailing normative conceptions regarding youth. The accounts can be grouped into four main story types. The story type referred to as growing up on a sidetrack depicts depression as having its origins in childhood adversities that hinder the realisation of normative goals. Falling off the track depicts how a young person's life can be derailed as a result of experiences that cause or exacerbate depression. In the story missing the track, depression is intertwined with one's experience of failure in meeting normative expectations, whereas the story questioning the track features the problematisation of such expectations. The results underscore the importance of tackling different adverse conditions in childhood, adolescence and young adulthood in a timely fashion, as well as the importance of therapy, counselling and guidance, which help young people to manage difficulties and depression in their life.     

Negotiating Inequality Among Adult Siblings: Two Case Studies

Qualitative instrumental case study analysis of adult siblings from 2 families explores how socioeconomic inequality among them affects their relationships to one another. Eight middle‐aged siblings’ observations of childhood, parental expectations, work and family history, lifestyle, and current sibling ties indicate that childhood interdependence, parallel parental treatment, similar intergenerational mobility, greater success of the younger rather than older siblings, and economic success due to other than individual effort facilitate smoother negotiations of material inequality and enhance the negotiation of sibling relationships as important sources of support. These new insights on negotiating sibling ties over time are related to various forms of capital, a life course perspective, and ambivalence, and point to fresh avenues for future research and theory.     

Metaphors we experiment with in multimodal ethnography

In this paper, we argue for a view of analysis as an embodied practice and review others’ testimonies of carrying out multimodal ethnography. This review suggests that metaphors are key for communicating what happens to us in the course of the research and our subsequent sense-making practices. We identify four metaphors for communicating data collection and analytic practices: composing, meandering, plundering and time travel. We then turn to our own multimodal fieldwork with children in middle childhood, to think about the experiences and emergent metaphors that shaped our practice on an international study looking at the relationship between childhood and public life. Children’s play was instructive in our own formation as multimodal ethnographers. We provide examples of the ways in which children recruited us into their play, the ways in which play taught us about what matters to children, and finally, how we took play into our own analytical practices.     

The Media Abuse of Children. Jake's Progress from Demonic Icon to Restored Childhood Innocent

While scholarly analysis of child protection and the media has grown substantially during the 1990s (Aldridge, 1994; Franklin and Parton, 1991; Kitzinger and Skidmore, 1995), studies have ignored a crucial dimension which forms the focus for discussion here. We wish to suggest that media reporting of children and child abuse may itself constitute an abusive activity. Media presentations of children and childhood, since press coverage of the Bulger case in 1993, have assumed a distinctive and sinister guise which, we argue, fundamentally revises the previously held perception of children and childhood. We suggest that this new understanding of childhood is damaging to children and, because of the impact of such media presentations on the public mood and policy climate, harms their interests. The discussion is in three parts. First, newspaper reporting of the Bulger case is analysed to reveal how coverage challenged the idea of childhood as a period of innocence and replaced it with a perception of childhood as essentially ‘evil’. Second, the characterization of Jake, the central figure in Alan Bleasdale's recent television dramaJake's Progress, is analysed to serve as an illustrative exemplar of this new construction of childhood. Finally, we consider the possible messages conveyed by such presentations to perpetrators and victims of abuse.     

Maternal Employment,Community Contexts,and the Child‐Care Arrangements of Diverse Groups

Integrating family and child data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort with contextual data from the census, this study examined associations among maternal employment, aspects of communities related to child‐care supply and demand, and the early care and education arrangements of 4 year olds in Mexican‐origin, Black, and White families. Children with employed mothers were more likely to be in informal care arrangements than in early childhood education, regardless of racial/ethnic background. For children in Mexican‐origin families, selection into informal care over early childhood education was more likely in zip codes with greater demand for care as measured by higher female employment. Utilization of parent care versus early childhood education was also more likely for children in Mexican‐origin and Black families in zip codes with higher female employment. Constraints associated with maternal employment thus hindered children from enrolling in early childhood education, and community contexts posed challenges for some groups.     

Brief Report: Attitudes About Responding to Survey Questions Concerning Childhood Sexual Abuse by Hispanic Female College Students

In no studies have research participants been asked how they feel about answering questions concerning childhood sexual abuse. We have performed searches from two different search engines again and have found nothing published which specifically addresses this question in the way we have. A questionnaire about childhood sexual abuse was administered to a sample of Mexican-American female college students. Over 32% reported positive histories of childhood sexual abuse before age 18. These subjects were more uncomfortable (37%) than those who did not experience childhood sexual abuse when answering questions about childhood sexual abuse (12%; p < 0.00001), but they were not more uncomfortable in answering questions about alcohol or drug use. Women who were sexually abused in childhood also readily disclosed childhood sexual abuse histories despite revealing discomfort about being asked questions concerning childhood sexual abuse. Our findings support concerns by researchers that childhood sexual abuse is neglected because researchers have an unwarranted perception about how fragile sexually abused subjects are as subjects.     

Framing the Picture of the Child

The paper studies the forms that are used in planning for a child’s early childhood education and care in Finnish day care from the perspectives of social constructionism and discourse analysis. It asks how childhood is conceptualised in these forms and what are the social functions of early childhood education and care as implied in the conceptualisations. The paper shows that the conceptions of childhood and the understanding of the functions of early childhood education and care are mostly in unison and are rooted in traditional discourses, approaches and practices of Finnish day care. Consequently, the child’s view and the child as an agent in her/his world are not present in the forms.     

Changing Sibship Size and Educational Progress During Childhood: Evidence From the Philippines

This paper investigates the association between changes in coresident sibship size and children's educational progress in the Philippines. When conceptualized at the household level, sibship size is a dynamic aspect of the family context with potentially important implications for resources needed to support a child's education. Individual‐level change models suggested that adding younger siblings in early childhood (from birth to age 9) and losing both younger and older siblings later in childhood (from age 9 to 19) were associated with less educational progress by the focal child between ages 9 and 19. These effects were additive and indicated the importance of assessing both type of change and timing in evaluating the relationship between coresident sibship size and educational progress during childhood.