The use of video in research dissemination: Children as experts on their own family lives

The paper considers the use of video as a medium for the dissemination of research findings in the context of a study of children's concepts of care and their experience and contribution to family life. While the video medium was chosen to give a direct voice to children, it served other purposes. It served as an opportunity to feed back research results to children and to reflect on the ways researchers had interpreted data concerning their own views and experiences of family life. It also provided a public context in which children enacted competences namely in the articulation of expert opinions. The process of making a professional video in many respects mirrored the process of doing research.     

Adult images of childhood and research on client children

The point of departure in this article is a client study with children who had received services from child welfare, school counselling or child psychiatric clinics, compared to a cohort study targeting all children in the same community. It discusses whether parents' reservations towards letting their client children participate in the study indicates a fear of the researchers interfering in family life, and how the choice of research strategies influence the images constructed of client children and their families. A common finding in the two studies was that the children themselves provided the most positive information about their lives. It is argued that adult images of children as either vulnerable, and thus in need of protection, or competent, and thus with an ability to participate, influence access to, as well as construction of, client children's lives.     

Integrating a Family-Centered Approach into Social Work Practice with Families of Children and Adolescents with Disabilities

Abstract

This article identifies a family-centered practice construct for working with children and adolescents with disabilities and their families. The experiences of these families have shifted considerably over the past 30 years. A legislative and historical context provides the basis for an understanding of present policies and practices that influence current approaches to service delivery. Though family-centered practice is emphasized in various practice settings, there is still a need to integrate this philosophy into social work practice with children and adolescents with disabilities and their families. In order to enhance the ability of the social worker to integrate this construct into practice, a framework for exploring the experiences of children, adolescents and families is provided. This framework provides an overview of factors related to the individual child, the family and siblings for the social worker to consider when working with these families. The social worker's role as collaborator, advocate, team member and family resource is highlighted.     

Nonshared Environment Research

SUMMARY

This review focuses on conceptualizations of nonshared environment and on four areas of research that should be targeted for future growth. It is argued that there are at least two different approaches to the study of nonshared environment. “Experience-oriented” researchers center on sibling differential experiences in the family and their role in children's development. “Outcome-oriented” investigators focus on the search for environmental origins of individual differences in outcomes. Turkheimer and Waldron's (2000) concept of objective versus effective nonshared environment and Reiss and colleagues' (2000) notion of single-system versus multi-system nonshared environment processes are also discussed. Four topics for future research are outlined: (1) age-related changes and development; (2) the role of the self; (3) the role of context; and (4) the importance of extrafamilial experiences. More work in these areas will lead to useful theories of how nonshared environment processes are linked to sibling and individual differences in behavioral development and adjustment.     

Working couples and class identification

This study examines the class identification patterns of married persons with working spouses. The analysis replicates earlier research demonstrating that the subjective class position of working wives is not determined solely by the husband's occupation but is also influenced by their own position in the labor force. In addition, it is argued that the class identification of men is affected by the wife's work experience. The class positions of individuals within families appears to be affected by both an individual's own occupation as well as that of the spouse.     

Sex,Drugs, Rock ‘n’ Roll…and Children

Abstract

In this article we identify some of the challenges for gay men who desire to create more intimate relationships and more stable families in the evolving and potentially more conducive socio-political environment of the 21st century in the United States. Secondly, we delineate a multi-systemic structural model of working with male couples and families that addresses the interplay of the couple's interactional system with larger religious, civil and social systems. Finally, we demonstrate systemic interventions with a case example of a male couple and their family coping with 21st century challenges.     

Family experiences of children’s social care involvement following a social work change programme

Abstract

Social work change programmes rooted in a particular practice theory and design are increasingly a fixture of UK local authority social work and the focus of a small but developing body of research. However, in this research to date, there has been a lack of engagement with the perspectives of families. In this article, we detail findings from 23 family interviews undertaken as part of an independent evaluation of a social work change programme in a single local authority. These findings afford insight into the positive influence change programmes can have on engaging families and re-routing practitioners to work in a relationship-based way. They also illustrate the limitations for reshaping practice in the context of rising levels of need, a paucity of supportive provision, and administrative burdens remaining the same as before the introduction of a change programme. As part of the article, we offer some brief reflections on the recruitment of families for evaluative study to assist other researchers and local authority professionals who may be involved in comparable evaluations in future.     

Adolescents' Triangulation in Marital Conflict and Peer Relations

This study examined the association between youths' triangulation in marital conflict and three aspects of their peer relations in 416 families during early adolescence. A 4‐wave, longitudinal research design was used. As hypothesized, triangulation was associated negatively with perceived support from friends and positively with perceived peer rejection. Triangulation was a risk factor for both sons and daughters. Adolescent problem behavior did not mediate the significant association between triangulation and perceived friendship support. Adolescent problem behavior, particularly internalizing problems, completely me diated the association between triangulation and adolescents' perceptions of peer rejection, suggesting the important developmental role of adolescents' anxiety, depressive affect, and withdrawal. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of Bowen's multigenerational family systems theory and social learning principles.     

Expanding “Irish Family” Repertoires: Exploring Gay Men's Experiences as Parents in the Republic of Ireland

ABSTRACT

This article explores gay men's parenting experiences and practices in order to seek insight into how gay men accept or challenge heterosexual family norms and how “family” is understood in the Irish context. It is based on small-scale qualitative research (interviews) with seven gay fathers. Despite the limited routes to parenthood for gay men in Ireland, the research findings indicate that the participants enjoy parenting and that they are motivated in their parenting practices. The gay fathers in this study are participative parents who have made significant decisions in their lives in order to prioritize their children's welfare. The diversity of family constellations and care arrangements that surround gay fathering in Ireland can expand family and care repertoires beyond the traditional biparent heterosexual norm. Gay fathers in Ireland appear to enjoy some security at the private familial level and in the responses from their families and communities, but they are keenly aware that nontraditional families are given less status in Irish society. Unlike other jurisdictions, gay parenting is not articulated by the gay fathers in this research as a rights-based argument. Instead, these Irish gay fathers are de facto activists who seek to “humanize” gay parenting.     

Family Phone Therapy in University Counseling and Psychological Service Centers: A Family Systems Approach

Abstract

This paper offers family phone therapy as a method for student mental health practitioners to overcome the obstacle of geographic distance between students and their families when family therapy is the treatment of choice. The issues of confidentiality, triangulation, diversionary conversation, and mixed communication, which present unique concerns when engaging in family phone therapy, are introduced and strategies to deal with them are discussed. A case example is presented to demonstrate the utility of family phone therapy in dealing with problems that students who use university mental health services can typically experience. Finally, implications of dealing with students' developmental tasks from an individual or family systems perspective are discussed.     

The Family‐Friendly Community and Its Life Course Fit for Dual‐Earner Couples

Much is known about family‐friendly workplaces. This article examines the less understood family‐friendliness of the communities in which dual‐earner couples reside. Using data from a representative sample of dual‐earner couples (N = 727) in upstate New York, we examine how individual, couple, and neighborhood characteristics are associated with perceptions of community family‐friendliness. Using a life course perspective, we find that couples with young children rate their communities more favorably than do other couples. Findings also indicate that for couples with children of their own, living in a neighborhood with many other families with children is associated with higher ratings of family‐friendliness. We term this match, between a couple's life stage and their neighborhood's demographic structure, life stage‐neighborhood fit.     

Family Functioning as a Measure of Success in Intensive Family Preservation Services

ABSTRACT

An experimental research design was employed in evaluating intensive family preservation services to reunify families after out-of-home placement. There was a significant difference between the treatment group and control group in terms of family reunification, but there were mixed findings with regard to the difference between the two groups on measures of family functioning. Although more treatment parents than control parents felt their families were functioning better, there was no difference between scores for the two groups of parents on normed instruments designed to measure family functioning. The author describes the measures of family functioning employed in the evaluation and discusses the confusing findings along with implications for program evaluation.     

Achieving Competent Family Practice with Same-Sex Parents

Abstract

Due to the increasing recognition of same-sex marriage in different jurisdictions and growing numbers of parents raising children in the context of a same-sex relationship, it is becoming ever more important for family therapists to attain clinical competence in working with families headed by same-sex parents. This paper takes as its premise that good intentions and general acceptance of diversity are not sufficient in working with this population of families. Rather, clinical competence rests on experience working with lesbian and gay clients and knowledge of the impact of heterosexism on parenting in the context of same-sex relationships. Equally critical to competent family therapy practice is a theoretical framework that pulls together complementary concepts from different bodies of theory to analyze family structures and functions in the social context of heterosexism. To this end, this paper reviews family systems theory, structural social work, ecological systems theory and queer theory with an eye to culling complementary constructs relevant to working with same-sex parents. Specific aspects of family functioning such as maintenance of boundaries around and within families and role differentiation between parents are then explored using this theoretical framework. Finally, implications for the clinician working with families led by same-sex parents are reviewed.     

Sex roles and depression among working spouses in the rural south

Two explanations for sex differences in psychiatric impairment (depressive symptomatology) are tested on a rural sample of white respondents drawn from Middle Tennessee. Gove's notions of role strain and role overload and Radloff's ideas concerning learned helplessness are placed in the context of traditional rural values undergoing change. The results reveal that there are no overall sex differences in depressive symptom scores among these respondents except when considering employment and marital status; married working females are more depressed than their male counterparts. Multiple Classification Analyses indicate that helplessness is the most efficacious explanation of sex differences. The implications of these findings for future research on depressive symptoms are discussed.     

Family Ties and the Discontinuity of Divorce in Black and White Newlywed Couples

This paper explores the relationship of family ties to the marital happiness of husbands and wives from intact and disrupted families of origin and to the likelihood that they will divorce by the 4th year of their marriage. Respondents were 199 Black and 173 White couples interviewed as part of the “Early Years of Marriage” study. Analyses showed differences in family connectedness according to whether the family of origin was disrupted, and some variations by race were also evident. Regression analyses revealed that among all spouses, but especially among wives from divorced families, increased closeness to their husbands' families predicted increased happiness in their marriages. Hazard models showed that when husbands' or wives' parents were divorced or separated, couples' closeness to the husbands' family reduced their risk of divorce. Findings are discussed in the context of family systems theory and gender roles related to the forging of links with kin networks.     

Family size,father's education,and children's educational attainment in intact white families

One body of previous research has documented a negative relationship between family size and educational attainment (Blau and Duncan 1967; Sewell et al. 1980; Coleman 1988). Another body of research has argued that because parents are likely to act as potential equalizers of attainment gaps among their children, this relationship is likely to vary depending on the level of parental education (Johnson 1972; Zajonc 1976; Griliches 1979). In an attempt to integrate these two bodies of research, this study examines recent GSS data on white men and women from intact families and aged 25 and over. This research finds support for both arguments. The findings suggest that although there is a direct negative relationship between family size and educational attainment, it varies across levels of father's education. The effect of family size on educational attainment turns positive for men when the father's education is at least high school. For women, it is positive only when the father's education is at least a B.A. Additionally, this relationship holds for men born after 1950 and for women born before 1950. This study rationalizes that changing labor market conditions and cultural pressures to be educated have contributed to such differential impacts of father's education on children's educational attainment across cohorts.     

Kin Keeper

Abstract

Cancer mortality issues for African-American women are undeniably real. It is also apparent that to address the issue of this unequal burden, different intervention approaches are necessary. Employing a family systems approach for African-American women and their families holds benefits for both cancer prevention and cancer treatment. The Kin Keeper Modelis based on the premise that the natural ways African-American women communicate various health messages to females in their family can be used to influence their cancer prevention and screening behaviors. This paper reports empirical research that demonstrates significant familial influence on African-American women's cancer prevention screening behaviors. Findings indicated that family influence provides insight into the intersection of family altruism with cultural familial decision-making. In addition, the findings underscore the strong influence family has on African-American women's propensity to     

Researching others: epistemology,experience, standpoints and participation

This paper discusses a longitudinal, interview-based study of Australian secondary school students that explores the interaction between school ethos and forms of subjectivity. The study was designed to enable prospective and retrospective understandings of identity over time. It is suggested that this methodology encourages a reflexive self-positioning for both participants and researchers and, in the accumulation of an archive of perspectives, responds to poststructuralist critiques of contingency and construction in research interviews. Second, it is argued that the richness of longitudinal research invites more than one kind of analysis, and that working with and across conventionally divergent theoretical approaches can be fruitful. This is discussed with reference to Bourdieu's account of social field and habitus, and Hollway and Jefferson's notion of the 'defended subject'.     

Social work and technology: Challenges for social workers in practice: A case study

Abstract

Social Work is just beginning to consider the full impact of technology on practice. In this paper the experience of social workers working in Centrelink, the Australian Government's service delivery organisation, is explored in the context of Centrelink's increased reliance on technology to deliver its services to six million Australians. The results of a survey that indicated nearly one half of Centrelink's social workers have received no formal training in how to use the technologies they rely so heavily on in their work are considered, as is the role of the social workers who are working as a part of Centrelink's call centre network. It is argued that social workers need to be careful not to confuse means and ends when it comes to utilising technology as a part of their practice.