Parental Separation and School Performance Among Children of Immigrant Mothers in Sweden

Immigration and family change are two demographic processes that have changed the face of European societies and are associated with inequalities in child outcomes. Yet there is little research outside the USA on whether the effects of family dynamics on children’s life chances vary by immigrant background. We asked whether the effect of parental separation on educational achievement varies between immigrant backgrounds (ancestries) in Sweden. We used Swedish population register data on two birth cohorts (born in 1995 and 1996) of Swedish-born children and analyzed parental separation penalties on grade sums and non-passing grades (measured at ninth grade) across ten ancestry groups, defined by the mother’s country of birth. We found that the parental separation effects vary across ancestries, being weakest among children with Chilean-born mothers and strongest among children with mothers born in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In general, the effects were weaker in groups in which parental separation was a more common experience.     

Does Living in a Fatherless Household Compromise Educational Success? A Comparative Study of Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills

This study addresses the relationship between various family forms and the level of cognitive and non-cognitive skills among 15- to 16-year-old students. We measure cognitive skills using standardized scores in mathematics; non-cognitive abilities are captured by a composite measure of internal locus of control related to mathematics. A particular focus lies on father absence although we also examine the role played by co-residence with siblings and grandparents. We use cross-nationally comparable data on students participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment’s release for 2012. By mapping inequalities by family forms across 33 developed countries, this study provides robust cross-country comparable evidence on the relationship of household structure with both cognitive and non-cognitive skills. The study produces three key results: first, the absence of fathers from the household as well as co-residence with grandparents is associated with adverse outcomes for children in virtually all developed countries. Second, this is generally true in terms of both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, although the disadvantage connected to both family forms is notably stronger in the former than in the latter domain. Finally, there is marked cross-national diversity in the effects associated with the presence in the household of siblings and especially grandparents which furthermore differs across the two outcomes considered.     

Explaining Conflicting Results in Research on the Heterogeneous Effects of Parental Separation on Children’s Educational Attainment According to Social Background

In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in how the effects of parental separation on children’s educational attainment vary with social background. On the one hand, parents with more resources might be better able to prevent possible adverse events like separation to affect their children’s outcomes. On the other hand, children from higher social backgrounds might have more resources to lose from a parental separation. A wide range of empirical studies on the issue have come to inconsistent conclusions, with support found for both perspectives. The aim of this paper is to monitor the influence of methodological and operational choices on the different results observed across studies. We focus on aspects such as the operationalization of key variables, the measurement of inequality in absolute and relative terms and the different strategies used to address endogeneity. We study the effects of parental separation on educational attainment for a cohort of British children born in 1970 and find that conclusions change depending on whether social background is measured using the mother’s or father’s characteristics and whether relative or absolute differences between groups are considered. Results are relatively insensitive to the operationalization of dependent variables and the treatment of missing data. When using data from Understanding Society instead of the British Cohort Study, results also did not change. We reflect on how these findings can explain the contradictory results from earlier studies on the topic, and how heterogeneity in the effects of parental separation by socio-economic background should be interpreted.     

Family Dynamics and Child Outcomes: An Overview of Research and Open Questions

Previous research has documented that children who do not live with both biological parents fare somewhat worse on a variety of outcomes than those who do. In this article, which is the introduction to the Special Issue on “Family dynamics and children’s well-being and life chances in Europe,” we refine this picture by identifying variation in this conclusion depending on the family transitions and subpopulations studied. We start by discussing the general evidence accumulated for parental separation and ask whether the same picture emerges from research on other family transitions and structures. Subsequently, we review studies that have aimed to deal with endogeneity and discuss whether issues of causality challenge the general picture of family transitions lowering child well-being. Finally, we discuss whether previous evidence finds effects of family transitions on child outcomes to differ between children from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, and across countries and time-periods studied. Each of the subsequent articles in this Special Issue contributes to these issues. Two articles provide evidence on how several less often studied family forms relate to child outcomes in the European context. Two other articles in this Special Issue contribute by resolving several key questions in research on variation in the consequences of parental separation by socioeconomic and immigrant background, two areas of research that have produced conflicting results so far.     

Comparing the Childrearing Lifetimes of Britain's Divorce-Revolution Men and Women

British men and women who became parents in the 1960s and 1970s were about to experience a new regime of marital instability. The effect of this on the balance between men's and women's contributions to childrearing is potentially very large. This study estimates the co-residential foundations of the new gender balance, focusing on the measurement of lifetime number of years of living with dependent-aged children. A variant of the family-status life table is used to combine two data sources: census panel observations of family status across three points ten years apart, and survey data on the years between censuses. One-quarter of women who became parents in the 1960s, and one-third of women who became parents in the 1970s, have been or will be a lone mother at some point. Lone parenthood is the main way in which women's childrearing lifetimes differ from men's, with seven and eight years respectively of lone motherhood per ever-lone-mother of the 1960s and 1970s parenting cohorts. Men's lone-father years and greater numbers of years spent in second families together provide an average of two years offset against women's lone mother years.     

农民的社会经济地位与子女数量之间关系的实证研究

长期以来,学术界对于社会经济地位和生育之间是相互促进还是相互阻碍的问题一直存在着争议,为探讨当代中国农民的社会经济地位（家境）与生育行为之间的关系,从农民的家庭社会经济地位对亲生子女数量的影响和亲生子女数量对农民后来的家庭社会经济地位的影响两个角度,构建了理论模型,在2015、2016年分别对湘中和豫东农村1418、1416个户主家庭进行了调查,以各个家庭的子女数量为因变量,自变量分别为各个家庭当前社会经济地位、户主父亲以前的家庭成分、户主性别、户主年龄、户主受教育年限等,对这些因素进行有序probit回归和研究。研究发现,无论在湖南农村还是河南农村,家境较好的家庭子女数量也较多,反之,家境较差的家庭子女数较少;假定子女数量真的影响当前家庭社会经济地位,回归分析表明,子女数量对当前社会经济地位存在着正面的影响。研究结果表明,在中国农村“越穷越生,越生越穷”的说法不符合事实,农民家庭社会经济地位和生育之间是相互促进的关系,家庭社会经济地位在某种程度上的代际转移是一股强大的力量。     

礼教对女性人生的设定及其用意

《礼记》等儒家礼学典籍,记录创制了中国礼教文化。旧时女性在娘家与婆家,人生两个阶段分别受到不同家庭文化背景、不同礼学内容的教化,承受了沉重的人性压抑;但也派生出维护封建家庭稳定、教育子女成功的正面作用。礼学教化培养出的婆母,为维护家族利益而维护礼教和宗法,进一步维护了家族稳定。礼教的设定意在对社会结构以家族为基础的宗法社会予以支撑,从而有效地维护封建社会的稳定与发展。     

Demographic change and the supply of potential family supporters in Britain, Finland and France in the period 1911–2050/Changements démographiques et disponibilité des soutiens familiaux en Grande-Bretagne, en Finlande et en France entre 1911 et 2050

We consider the contribution of changes in mortality and fertility to availability of living mothers and living children among older people in Britain, Finland and France. The proportion of people aged around 60 with a mother alive will more than double between those born in 1911 and 1970 before starting to decline slightly. Conversely, a higher proportion of elderly people are likely to have a surviving child than for any generation ever born in all three countries in the next quarter century or so, with about 85% of 80-year-old women having at least one surviving child, and about two-thirds having two or more.     

The Impact of Family Policies on Fertility Trends in Developed Countries

We examine how strongly fertility trends respond to family policies in OECD countries. In the light of the recent fertility rebound observed in several OECD countries, we empirically test the impact of different family policy instruments on fertility, using macro panel data from 18 OECD countries that spans the years 1982–2007. Our results confirm that each instrument of the family policy package (paid leave, childcare services and financial transfers) has a positive influence on average, suggesting that the combination of these forms of support for working parents during their children’s early years is likely to facilitate parents’ choice to have children. Policy levers do not all have the same weight, however: in-cash benefits covering childhood after the year of childbirth and the provision of childcare services for children under age three have a larger potential influence on fertility than leave entitlements and benefits granted around childbirth. Moreover, we find that the influence of each policy measure varies across different family policy contexts. Our findings are robust after controlling for birth postponement, endogeneity, time-lagged fertility reactions and for different aspects of national contexts, such as female labour market participation, unemployment, labour market protection and the proportion of children born out of marriage.     

单亲家庭女大学生性别角色探讨--对两位单亲母亲家庭女大学生的个案研究

本研究以双性化人格为理论依据,从性别角色的角度研究单亲家庭大学生的心理健康;研究运用质的研究方法,对两位与单亲母亲共同生活的女大学生进行深入访谈,采用主要概念或主题突出分类的方法进行编码,对父母的性别角色,特别是母亲的性别角色对她们影响做了进一步的研究。     

Racing Against the Biological Clock? Childbearing and Sterility Among Men and Women in Second Unions in France

In developed countries, rising rates of union disruption have induced an increase in the share of people experiencing several fertile partnerships during their fertile life-span. However, from the large-scale 1999 French Family Survey, in the 1939–1954 birth cohorts it appears that completed fertility of repartnered men is slightly higher than that of never-separated men while repartnered women have fertility levels similar to those who remain in a first intact partnership. Following this observation, this article aims to study whether people, and especially women, have enough time to have children in the context of second union before they become limited by the “biological clock”. Using a cure model, we find that once age-related sterility is controlled for, the decrease in risk of having children with age is not visible anymore up to age 40. This offers some evidence that people in their second partnership, especially women, are constrained in their childbearing by the decline in fecundity with age. Additionally, childless women seem to respond proactively to the decline in fecundity with age by accelerating childbearing.     

Invisible Mothers: Parenting by Homeless Women Separated from Their Children

Though surveys repeatedly demonstrate that most women who are homeless alone have minor children living apart from them, there is little information on the circumstances of their separations or whether and how they remain involved with their children. Analysis of data from in-depth interviews with mothers, relatives caring for their children, and shelter and child welfare staff highlights a tension between perspectives and aspirations of mothers and the agendas and social processes through which institutional systems manage the family life of women marginalized by homelessness and disability. Though women’s agency is evident in their efforts to maintain parenting roles, without facilitating resources and supportive structures, agency is often reduced to unpalatable choices among constraining alternatives. We consider how service systems might mitigate barriers to mothering as well as broader changes needed to genuinely support women’s aspirations for themselves and their families.

Family Trajectories and Health: A Life Course Perspective

This paper investigates the role of family trajectory, i.e., the whole sequence of family events during the life course of early adults in shaping their health outcomes. Union formation and childbearing are jointly considered, since the two life domains are highly connected and their intersections may have an effect on health outcomes. Data come from wave I and wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) in the United States. The paper is divided in two parts. The first part focuses on family transitions and investigates if changes in timing (when events happen), quantum (what and how many transitions), and ordering (in what order), have an effect on the health of young women. In the second part, life course trajectories are classified into six groups representing different ideal-types of family trajectories and the association of these trajectories with health outcomes is explored. Results suggest that family trajectories play an important role on different health outcomes. Controlling for selection and background characteristics, precocious and “non-normative” transitions are associated with lower self-reported health and higher propensity of smoking and drinking.     

特殊儿童家庭赋权增能：缘起、内涵与理念

家庭参与和家校协作是特殊教育的核心原则。在特殊教育的发展历程中,由于特殊儿童数量和类别的持续增长、家庭在特殊儿童发展中的核心作用以及法律政策的强制推动,特殊儿童家庭赋权增能逐渐成为特殊儿童家庭参与的有效路径和家校协作的坚实基础。特殊儿童家庭参与既是一种状态,又是一个过程。在特殊儿童家庭赋权增能之中,权利、融合、成长、专业伙伴、参与、支持构成了基本价值取向。     

清代戏曲家吴恒宣家世新考

对清代乾隆年间江苏戏曲家吴恒宣的家世提出不同见解，认为邓长风先生《明清戏曲家考略》对其家世的考证值得商榷。通过对吴恒宣的《关中阡表》及《云台山志》、《朐海诗存》、《海州直隶州志》等史料解析，认为吴恒宣的父亲由于考试而入籍淮安府山阳县，由于这一层缘故吴恒宣称自己的籍贯是淮阴，而事实上其家自歙县迁朐后一直居住在海州经营盐业；吴恒宣父亲的原配、继室皆程氏，吴恒宣当为其父原配所生；吴恒宣与吴用晦应为堂兄弟，并非同父异母关系。     

中国独生子女：数量、结构及风险

利用“五普”资料,从已领取独生子女证的妇女数、终身独生子女数、按政策生育独生子女数等角度分析了我国独生子女的数量,同时分析了独生子女的年龄、性别结构及其地区分布,在此基础上,讨论了独生子女家庭的风险问题。     

国外“父亲在位”理论研究新进展及启示

"父亲在位"研究正在成为父子关系研究中一个崭新的领域。从孩子的视角出发,把父亲在位定义为孩子的心理父亲在位。父亲在位由四个维度组成:孩子内心的父亲感知;孩子与父亲的关系;孩子父亲在位的其他影响;与父亲相关的文化和宗教信念对父亲在位的影响。父亲在位理论模型由孩子心理父亲在位各维度的同心圆组成。高品质的父亲在位是一种积极的心理状态,有利于孩子的心理发展。父亲在位理论对当前家庭教育和父子关系研究都有一定启示,父亲在位的进一步研究需要更多的理论思考和实证研究。     

孟河名医费伯雄传略

费伯雄,清代医学家,孟河医派奠基人,生长于世医家庭。其祖父、父亲皆以医名,传至伯雄已历七世,医术益精,以擅长治疗虚劳而驰誉江南。费氏主张"和治""缓治",师古而不泥,临证常以平淡之法而获效。主要存世医著有《医醇賸义》《医方论》《费氏食养三种》《怪疾奇方》等。     

中外动画片中的父母角色形象研究——以《大头儿子小头爸爸》和《小猪佩奇》为例

动画片中的角色形象陪伴幼儿的成长,满足幼儿的想象、审美、社会性等的发展。其中的父母角色形象的塑造具有一定的家庭教育价值,影响幼儿对父母形象、父母关系的现实认知。在跨文化视角下,中外动画片对父亲形象都存在积极期待,对母亲形象的塑造存在文化差异,对父母关系的塑造表现出现实与理想的差异。对于我国动画片中的父母形象塑造来说,应关注时代发展中的父母形象、关注动画片的儿童叙事特点、塑造良好的父母关系。