Comparing Gender Expression,Gender Nonconformity,and Parents' Responses of Female-to-Male and Male-to-Female Transgender Youth

Abstract

Twenty-four female-to-male (FTM) and 31 male-to-female (MTF) transgender youth reported on their gender development and expression, and parental responses to their gender nonconformity. Both groups of youth felt different from others of their same birth sex at a mean age of seven and one-half years. The age when parents suggested they were different was younger for the MTF than the FTM youth. The MTF youth were called “sissy” at an earlier age than the FTM were called “tomboy.” Parents of FTM youth encouraged them to act in more traditional gender typical ways at a younger age than the MTF. The MTF youth considered themselves transgender two years earlier than the FTM youth. More parents of MTF youth felt that their children needed counseling than the parents of the FTM youth. While the majority of both groups reported past verbal victimization, comparatively more MTF youth reported being physically victimized. Implications of the developmental trajectories and experiences of transgender youth for school and family counselors are discussed.     

The construction of intellectual disability by parents and teachers

This study examines how disability is constructed by significant adults in the lives of young people with intellectual disability. Specifically, we are examined how parents of those affected by intellectual disability and teachers in special schools construct intellectual disability in talk. Using focus group interviews, we examined whether stigma might be recreated or sustained within the family and school settings of those affected by intellectual disability. Parents and school staff constructed disability as negative, articulating difference from ‘the norm’, which was claimed to drive social isolation for affected young people. There was also evidence that parents and teachers attributed less agency to young people affected by intellectual disability. Discussion orients to how parents and teachers, see themselves as advocates for those with intellectual disability highlight, whilst at the same time recreating pervasive and subtle distinctions between children with and without intellectual disability.     

The schooling repayment hypothesis for private transfers: evidence from the PROGRESA/Oportunidades experiment

The schooling repayment hypothesis for private transfers predicts a positive relationship between the amount of parental investment in children’s education and the amount that adult children transfer to their parents. We provide evidence on the repayment motive using data from the Mexican conditional cash transfer program PROGRESA/Oportunidades (PO). PO pays a transfer to parents for sending their children to school. Thus, if private transfers from adult children to parents are in part repayment for parental schooling investments made in the past, then PO should decrease these transfers—parents were already exogenously compensated by the government for sending their kids to school and not to work. Exploiting the exogenous variation in the amount of cash transfers a household receives from PO for sending its children to school, we compare the private transfers received in 2007 by parental households who had children 0–16 in 1997 and started receiving the programs’ benefits in 1998 with the transfers received by similar parental households who started receiving benefits in 1999. Results suggest a repayment motive exists. That is, PO is causing adult children to transfer less resources to their parents.     

Social Exclusion and Parental Incarceration Impacts on Adolescents' Networks and School Engagement

Although prior research links parental incarceration to deleterious outcomes for children during the life course, few studies have examined whether such incarceration affects the social exclusion of children during adolescence. Drawing on several lines of scholarship, the authors examined whether adolescents with incarcerated parents have fewer or lower quality relationships, participate in more antisocial peer networks, and feel less integrated or engaged in school. The study applies propensity score matching to survey and network data from a national sample of youth. Analyses indicated that children with incarcerated parents have more antisocial peers; the authors found limited evidence that parental incarceration adversely impacts peer networks and school integration domains. The results suggest that the impacts of parental incarceration on adolescents' social lives have less to do with isolation than with the types of peers adolescents befriend. Findings provide support for the idea that parental incarceration may adversely affect children's social exclusion.     

Coping with parental loss because of termination of parental rights

This article addresses the process by which children and adolescents cope with severe acute stress of parental loss from causes other than divorce or death. Participants were 60 children and adolescents from a residential treatment facility. Most had experienced neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse, and their parents had their parential rights terminated. Measures of symptomatology indicated that children reported low levels of depressive symptoms, whereas caregivers reported the children were experiencing significant psychological problems. Children used avoidant coping strategies more often than emotion-focused coping strategies, which, in turn, were used more than problem-focused coping strategies. Results are discussed in terms of helping children cope with parental loss.     

Social support needs of families adopting special needs children

A grounded theory begins to explain parental practices in seeking social support. Interviews with 20 parents who had adopted children with special needs and 5 health care providers indicated that parents lacked awareness of available resources; preferred informal support systems; sought help only when "failing" to solve problems; and perceived that health care providers lacked knowledge of adoption issues, family dynamics, and common health issues. Parents preferred informal to formal supports, and felt upset when formal supports were judged ineffective or non-existent.     

Effects of foster care placement on biological children in the home

This project used questionnaires to investigate the effects of foster care on biological children in the foster home setting. In southeast Iowa, 52 foster parents and 51 biological children voluntarily responded. Approximately 77% of the foster parents were concerned about the effects of foster care on their biological children—in particular, that biological children felt left out of the family unit. The majority of the foster parents stated that sharing of parental attention should be discussed with biological children before beginning, and both parents and children felt that pretraining sessions for biological children would help their adjustment to foster care.     

Expectations,education, and opportunity

Using a long panel of youths, we establish a causal link between parental expectations regarding education and educational attainment. In particular, we use an instrumental variables approach to find that the child’s chances of obtaining a high school or college degree are increasing in the parent’s expectations of the likelihood of these events. We then use differences between the objective likelihood of a child’s educational attainment and the parents’ subjective probabilities to consider the hypothesis that lower educational outcomes among certain groups are driven by a “culture of despair,” where children are low-achieving because they are expected to underachieve. While we do find that children from households with lower levels of income, wealth, and parental education are less likely to attain high school and college degrees, we reject the hypothesis that this is driven by low subjective expectations of educational success. Rather, we find that parents from disadvantaged groups have expectations for the educational outcomes of their children that differ more from the statistical likelihood of these outcomes than do parents of children from advantaged households. That is, we find that parents in more disadvantaged households are more optimistic about the educational outcomes of their children than those from more advantaged households.     

Hong Kong Parents’ Perceptions and Experiences of Involvement in Homework: A Family Capital and Resource Management Perspective

This qualitative study examines Hong Kong Chinese parents’ perceptions and experiences of involving in their primary school children’s homework process. It draws upon the theoretical frameworks of family capital theory and family resource management perspective to explicate the role of parents in enhancing children’s homework outcomes. Information was collected through individual and focus-group interviews with 52 parents who had at least one child attending primary school. Findings of this study provide a glimpse into the range of homework-involvement strategies used by Chinese parents, and reveal parental goals and cultural values embedded in the generation of family capital. Such understanding on parental involvement is helpful for schools and policy-makers in cultivating parents’ participation in home-based learning processes for children.     

Parental perceptions of risks with older teenagers who have severe learning difficulties contrasted with the young people's views and experiences

The majority of school leavers over two years from two special schools for pupils with severe learning disabilities were individually interviewed (N = 34), as were their parents (N = 38). Parental reports stressed the amount of care and supervision required by these young people. They viewed them as vulnerable to various different hazards such as crossing roads and only a minority were prepared to take the risk of teaching them. However more of the young people felt they were capable of certain tasks. Parents had a particular fear that their son or daughter may be taken advantage of sexually even though the bigger risk—going by the young people's reports—is verbal abuse and bullying from peers. A model is proposed of the influences on parental assessments of risks. This might be used in arriving at ‘shared risk‐taking’ strategies with professionals and the young people during the later years of schooling.     

‘You have to choose your childcare to fit your work’: Childcare decision-making among low-income working families

Regardless of their economic background, most working parents face the task of arranging childcare at some point. The decision-making process they experience is often complex, and this complexity is intensified for particular groups of families with limited financial and social resources. In this paper, we present findings from a three-year qualitative study of the childcare choices of low-income working families, many of whom were immigrants, had limited English proficiency, were parents of children with special needs, or represented some combination of these factors. The study explored families' current care arrangements, their reasons for selecting a particular form of childcare, and the characteristics of their ideal arrangements. Data were coded to identify themes in parental preferences, decision factors, and the barriers families faced in accessing their preferred care arrangements. Most significantly, the parents studied described their preferences for an environment where their children could learn and be in the presence of caring and trustworthy caregivers. About a third of the families said they preferred relatives as caregivers, and selected relatives to provide childcare. Other parents selected care according to cost, location, and availability of the provider; they described the challenges of locating affordable, high-quality care that met their nonstandard schedules. These findings have important implications for childcare policy.     

Time and exclusion

Drawing on interviews with parents of children with complex disabilities in several school systems in a US state, this paper examines how temporal units such as the school day and school year and practices organized around artifacts like clocks and calendars work as ‘devices of temporal distanciation’ to separate children with disabilities from other children and exclude their families from critical relations with schools. The paper focuses on two kinds of effects: the ways differentiated timetables separate children and the ways constructing school time in bounded, discrete units limits the ability of parents and children to make key elements of their lives visible to the school.     

Parental After‐School Stress and Psychological Well‐Being

The mismatch between employed parents’ work schedules and their children's school schedules creates the structural underpinning for an as‐yet‐unstudied stressor, namely, parental after‐school stress, or the degree of parents’ concern about their children's welfare after school. We estimate the relationship between parental after‐school stress and psychological well‐being in a sample of 243 employed parents of children in grades K–12. Parental after‐school stress is related to psychological well‐being. This relationship did not differ by parent gender or child age but was significantly stronger for parents of girls versus boys. Our results suggest that parental after‐school stress is an important stressor that affects the well‐being of a large segment of the work force and warrants further research.     

Family Stress and Organization Following Parental Divorce or Death

This study examines whether children of separation/divorce experience more associated family disorganization and stress than those from homes broken by parental death or from intact families. Ratings of childrens' levels and types of parental attention, family problems, and economic hardship were obtained on three independent samples. The findings indicate that divorce per se, and not the more general case of family dissolution, is significantly related to increased levels of family stressors for the child. Children with histories of parental separation/divorce were seen to be experiencing significantly lower levels of educational stimulation from parents, as well as greater parental rejection, economic stress, and general family problems than those from homes broken by parental death or from intact families. This relationship was consistent across independent year samples, referred and normal populations, and urban/suburban and rural samples. The implications of these findings for previously demonstrated differences in the school adjustment patterns of children with parental separation/divorce or death histories are elaborated, and the importance of considering stressors for the child which are associated with divorce in the planning of preventive interventions is discussed.     

The effect of active parental consent on the ability to generalize the results of an alcohol,tobacco, and other drug prevention trial to rural adolescents

The authors report the effect of active parental consent on sample bias among rural seventh graders participating in a drug abuse prevention trial. Students obtaining active consent from their parents to complete the survey were of higher academic standing, missed fewer days of school, and were less likely to participate in the special education program at their school as compared to students who did not return a parental consent form. However, students with consent were not significantly different from students whose parents actively declined. The sample obtained under active parental consent represents students less at risk for problem behaviors than would have been obtained under passive consent procedures.     

Children Caught in the Middle

Children from divorced homes are caught in the middle of parental conflict significantly more often and are experiencing more resulting stress than children from intact homes. Our intention was to use a brief educational intervention to reduce the number of times divorced parents put their children in the middle. Participants were 45 high school students with divorced parents (male = 22, female = 23; Mage = 15.8). These subjects rated the frequency and stressfulness of 32 such situations. The parents of the intervention group were mailed the subjects' averaged responses on the 32 items and an explanatory letter. The same 32-item questionnaire was given about 1 month after the mailing as the intervention evaluation. Subjects in the intervention group improved more than the two control groups combined, F(1,42) = 3.45, p < .10. These results imply that having divorced parents read some brief information is sufficient to produce behavior changes in the majority of those parents.     

Refocusing on the Parent: What are the social issues of concern for parents of disabled children?

A questionnaire was constructed to analyse the efficacy of service provision for disabled children from the parents' perspective, as well as the needs and issues pertinent to parents (Middleton, 1998, 1992). The familial and personal data identified deep parental concerns and fears regarding professional attitudes and dominance, neglect of parental knowledge, lack of counselling and therapy, coping in the future, support, and the child's aesthetics and body (Brown, 1998). Results indicate that professionals continue to control the parent-professional relationship, assuming the role of 'expert', rather than integrating and consulting parents in a negotiate decision-making process. Parental needs and issues are prescribed by professionals (Oliver & Barnes, 1998), thus marginalising and disempowering the parent (Appleton & Minchom 1991), and reducing opportunity for parental involvement and participation in an equitable 'partnership' relationship with professionals (Dale, 1996).     

Looking at engagement and outcome from the perspectives of child protection workers and parents

This paper reports a study that sought to understand what facilitates engagement between parents and child protection workers and to ascertain the relationship between such engagement and intervention outcome. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered through personal interviews with 131 worker-parent dyads (workers and corresponding parents receiving service) from 11 child protection agencies in Ontario, Canada. Measures included scales for engagement, parental well-being (depression and stress), and worker well-being (burnout, job satisfaction, stress). Outcome measures included perception of child safety, changed parenting practices and satisfaction. A relationship was found between workers' perception of parent engagement and parents' perception of their own engagement, as well as between the perceptions that workers and parents had around their own respective engagement. Workers who were satisfied with service outcomes were significantly more engaged than those who were unsatisfied. Parents thinking that their children were safer as a result of intervention were significantly more engaged than parents who thought that their children were less safe. The strongest reason given by parents for positive change was being able to trust their worker (p < .001) and believing that their worker was knowledgeable about parenting (p < .01). Qualitative data suggested that parents valued experienced workers because they thought such workers could better understand their problems and how to deal with them. Correspondingly, workers felt that experience enabled them to better understand clients' problems and provide more effective support. No relationship was found between parent engagement and parental depression or stress, but the mean depression score for parents placed them at risk of clinical depression. There was a negative correlation between worker stress and engagement. The study demonstrates that engagement between clients and workers is related to positive outcomes (as reported by workers and parents) and supports the contention that promoting engagement is integral to a successful child protection intervention.     

Adolescents' Physiological Reactions to Their Parents' Negative Disclosures About the Other Parent in Divorced and Nondivorced Families

The purpose of this study was to determine how adolescents in divorced and nondivorced families respond psychologically and physiologically to their parents' negative disclosures when talking about their parents' relationship. The study also investigated how parents respond to their own disclosures about their relationship with the other parent. In general, the results illustrate the important role that adolescents' feelings of being caught can contribute to their well-being. The findings also supported the hypothesis that the valence of parental disclosures was a more important consideration than its frequency in the understanding of adolescents' reactions to their parents' disclosures, especially for adolescents from divorced families. Disclosure valence was also associated with parental anxiety, such that disclosure negativity predicted elevations in parents' anxiety during the discussion. Ultimately, children from divorced families who already felt caught between their parents and whose parents tended to disclose negative information about the other parent to them were more likely than other adolescents to report feeling anxious during that conversation. The results for changes in physiological arousal were not significant and were not consistent with the results for self-reported anxiety.     

THE ROLE OF PARENTAL RELIGIOSITY IN HIGH SCHOOL COMPLETION

Scientists have produced a modest literature documenting the associations between individual religious behaviors and educational outcomes. Most scholars hypothesize that religion provides a context of social capital in which students reap educational benefit (or detriment) from the adults in the religious community. Despite the intergenerational influence inherent in the various social capital explanations, few studies have directly examined the role of parental religiosity in the educational outcomes of adolescents. In this study, I begin to address this gap by investigating whether and how parental religiosity is associated with a student's chances of graduating from high school. I seek to answer three questions related to parental religiosity and students’ high school graduation. First, does parental religiosity affect a student's chances of graduating from high school? Second, if parental religiosity is associated with high school graduation, does it operate primarily through the student's own religiosity or is there an independent effect? Third, if parental religiosity is independently associated with a student's high school graduation, what are the mechanisms by which it is associated? Using data from the first and third waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), I find that students whose parents attend religious services more often have greater odds of completing high school, and students who attend religious services with parents are almost 40% more likely to finish high school, net of a number of other religious and sociodemographic factors.