Adult Children's Relationships With Married Parents,Divorced Parents,and Stepparents: Biology,Marriage, or Residence?

The author compared the strength of the relationships that adult children have with different types of parents: biological parents who remained married, stepparents, and biological parents who divorced. He analyzed Dutch life history data containing detailed measures of living arrangements and used multilevel models to make comparisons both between and within children (N = 4,454). The results revealed large differences in the strength of ties across parent types, but these were strongly reduced when differences in the length of shared residence during childhood were taken into account. Nonetheless, even after differences in investment opportunities were considered, there were negative effects of divorce and positive effects of biological relatedness. The “marriage protection” effect was stronger, especially for fathers, than the biological relatedness effect, pointing to the primacy of marriage over biology for parent–child relations in adulthood.     

Mid- and Late-Life Divorce and Parents’ Perceptions of Emerging Adult Children’s Emotional Reactions

A paucity of research exists pertaining to the experiences of emerging adult children in the context of parental divorce. This study uses Paul R. Amato’s divorce-stress-adjustment framework to organize a set of predictors that potentially influence parents’ perceptions of their emerging adult children’s emotional reactions to a divorce. Data come from a nationally representative AARP study, from which we analyzed a sample of 283 parents who experienced a divorce at age 40 years or older. Results indicate that parental gender, nature of contact with the ex-partner, divorce timing, time spent contemplating divorce, a history of parental divorce, and the reason for divorce influence parents’ perceptions of their emerging adult children’s reaction to the divorce. Implications, limitations, and future direction for research are discussed.     

Just the Two of Us? How Parents Influence Adult Children's Marital Quality

We work from a life-course perspective to explore how relationships with parents affect adult children's marital quality. We further ask whether the effects of parents on adult children's marital quality depend on the adult child's gender, age, marital duration, and childhood family experiences. Growth-curve analysis of national, longitudinal data (Americans' Changing Lives) indicated that relationships with fathers (n = 336) and mothers (n = 520) differentially affected the marital quality of adult children over time. Findings suggest that the effects of the parent - adult child relationship on adult children's marriages depend on age, marital duration, and levels of family stress experienced in childhood.     

Parents’ Health and Adult Children’s Subsequent Working Status: A Perspective of Intergenerational Transfer and Time Allocation

This paper frames how parents’ health problems may affect a child’s subsequent working status. Parental health problems occurring in their prime working years undermine an adult child’s resources and tend to affect the child’s preferences over time-allocations among leisure, market- and non-market-labor. Empirical applications in this paper focus on a situation with pervasive health problems, lack of social safety network, and a substantial gender gap in labor market return. Exploiting Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) for the period 1994–2004, empirical results indicate that a father’s poor health status is a significant predictor of lowering a daughter’s educational attainment and working probability during her subsequent, adulthood years.     

Parents’ Beliefs about Emotions and Children’s Recognition of Parents’ Emotions

This study investigated parents’ emotion-related beliefs, experience, and expression, and children’s recognition of their parents’ emotions with 40 parent-child dyads. Parents reported beliefs about danger and guidance of children’s emotions. While viewing emotion-eliciting film clips, parents self-reported their emotional experience and masking of emotion. Children and observers rated videos of parents watching emotion-eliciting film clips. Fathers reported more masking than mothers and their emotional expressions were more difficult for both observers and children to recognize compared with mothers’ emotional expressions. For fathers, but not mothers, showing clearer expressions was related to children’s general skill at recognizing emotional expressions. Parents who believe emotions are dangerous reported greater masking of emotional expression. Contrary to hypothesis, when parents strongly believe in guiding their child’s emotion socialization, children showed less accurate recognition of their parents’ emotions.

‘Gutsy’ Decisions and Passive Processes

Abstract

The Obama administration has positioned itself against the militarized discourse of the Bush-era Global War on Terror (GWOT) by articulating a ‘return to the rule of law’. And yet, the figure of the US decision-maker remains as masculinized and militarily-oriented as ever. I demonstrate this seeming incongruity through an analysis of: first, the decision to render the Christmas Day (would-be) bomber of 2009 to the criminal justice system, a decision for which Obama was labelled ‘weak’ (hence feminine) on terrorism; and second, the killing of Osama bin Laden by the US Navy SEALs special operations team, a decision which reaffirmed Obama's warrior credentials, since it proved that he was the ‘strong’ (hence masculine) commander-in-chief. Both cases demonstrate that the hegemony of the masculine ‘warrior decision-maker’ remains privileged and facilitates the re-emergence of the GWOT ‘war machine’, despite the Obama administration's commitment to change.     

Foster Parents’ Nutritional Strategies and Children’s Well-Being

Among their many responsibilities, foster parents are tasked with providing healthy food and proper nutrition to children with a variety of physical, psychological, and emotional needs. Using the lens of symbolic interactionism, this exploratory mixed methods study examined how foster parents attend to the nutritional needs of abused and neglected children. Methods used included both quantitative surveys and qualitative follow-up interviews. Surveys were completed by 23 foster parents in a large, Midwest metropolitan area. Parents reported they provided their children balanced meals, although one-third of households reported instances of food insecurity. During qualitative interviews, foster parents (N = 9) described how children arrived at their home with a variety of unhealthy eating habits, some severe in nature. Parents discussed strategies used to modify and improve eating patterns, including offering healthy food choices, having children plan meals, and gathering as a family for daily dinners. In general, parents understood the link between unhealthy eating and past childhood trauma, but also reported being unprepared for more serious eating problems like hoarding. Findings indicate that foster parents need food assistance to increase food security as well as training in assessing and responding a variety of unhealthy child eating behaviors.     

Vygotsky’s Warning: General Science and the Need for Metalevel Research

Over ninety years ago Lev Vygotsky warned of a growing crisis in psychology and social science research. Vygotsky’s warning has been echoed on many occasions but his solution to the problem has not been widely acknowledged. He advocated for a form of meta-science which he called “general science”, an integrative science that could connect and guide the development of specialised disciplines and schools of research. In this paper I explore the parallels between Vygotsky’s general science and contemporary forms of meta-level research and discuss their relevance and implications for addressing global challenges.     

Married Couples’ Time Allocation Decisions and Marital Stability

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), 1985–1992, are the data used to simultaneously examine the role of family stability to both market and household time allocation for both spouses and the role of couples’ time allocation in their probability of divorce. The study found that increases in the probabilities of divorce were only significantly correlated with decreases in wife’s housework time. It was also found by the study that increases in the husband’s market work hours and increases in the wife’s household work hours had negative effects on the probability of divorce.

Older Parents Providing Child Care for Adult Children: Does It Pay Off?

This study examined whether past grandparental child care is related to present support from adult children. On the basis of social exchange theory, the authors expected that grandparental child care creates a debt that is repaid in the form of receiving support later in life. Using data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (N = 349 parents, N = 812 adult children), the authors found that grandparents who frequently provided child care for sons in the past more often received instrumental and emotional support from these sons approximately 13 years later than grandparents who less frequently provided child care. Investments in daughters did not pay off. Instrumental support other than child‐care provision did not predict receiving support from either sons or daughters, but emotional support did. These results support the notion of long‐term reciprocity in parent–child relationships, but its importance depends on the child's gender and the type of earlier investment.     

Parents’ Decision Making and Their Information Needs Concerning Treatments for Child Anxiety: Implications for Family-Centered Practice

Collaborative decision making is a central feature of family-centered practice and is important to families in treatment planning. This study explored parents’ preferences for decision making involvement and their information needs regarding treatment for child anxiety. Qualitative interviews conducted with 19 parents revealed four main themes: (1) parents regard themselves as protectors, (2) parents desire involvement in decision making, (3) information is key in decision making, and (4) not all treatments are perceived as equal. Parents reported a strong desire to maintain control over the final treatment decision. They preferred a wide range of information about treatment and the health-care provider. Implications for implementing family-centered practice are discussed.     

Adult dyslexia and the ‘conundrum of failure’

While there is a wealth of literature about childhood dyslexia, adult dyslexia remains relatively undocumented, particularly from a lived perspective. This paper focuses on the ‘deficit perspective of failure’, as highlighted in current literature, which addresses issues confronting adults with dyslexia. Within this theme of failure a number of subtypes have been identified. This paper contextualises these subtypes around the perceptions of individuals involved in a tertiary course for adults with dyslexia. The paper demonstrates what the author has identified as a ‘conundrum of failure’ that has influenced the perceptions of many adults with dyslexia, including their life choices. Its prevalence in the literature and the lived experiences of the research subjects highlight the need for societal, institutional and attitudinal change.     

Why Adoption? Gay,Lesbian, and Heterosexual Adoptive Parents’ Reproductive Experiences and Reasons for Adoption

This study aimed to explore the experiences of gay, lesbian, and heterosexual adoptive parents from 130 families. Parents’ reproductive experiences prior to adoption and their reasons for choosing to adopt were compared. Heterosexual couples were more likely to have experienced infertility than same-sex couples. Same-sex couples were more likely to prefer adoption over other routes to parenthood. Parents in all three family types selected their route to parenthood according to normative expectations, attitudes to biogenetic parenthood, ease of access, and moral reasoning. Same-sex couples’ decisions were enabled by the non-discriminatory sociolegal context of the United Kingdom.     

Decisions About the “If,” “When,” and “How” of Moving Home: Can a Relocation Service Help? A Welsh Case Study

This small-scale, Welsh qualitative study explores how a new “moving on” service empowered older people to move voluntarily from their home to an extra-care facility. Eighteen older people were interviewed about their experiences of the service, which offered in-person, bespoke information, advice, financial, practical, brokerage, and emotional support about moving. Findings indicate three service use patterns: continuous, partial, and discontinued. It was instrumental in empowering clients to exercise decisional, executional, delegated, and/or consumer autonomies. Recommendations for future developments of a prototype “moving on” service include a multipartner approach and caseworker case management training modeled on social work practice.     

A Qualitative Study of Parents’ and Children’s Views on Mediation

This qualitative study examined the benefits to children of family mediation for divorcing couples and the limitations of such mediation. To capture the perspectives of parents and their children, we invited 40 parents and 10 children to participate in the study. The parent informants reported that mediation improved the efficacy of their parenting and alleviated their children’s stress about their divorce. In contrast, the child informants felt they were powerless when involved in the mediation process and that they received limited support from the mediators. Strategies are proposed for improving the cultural applicability of mediation services for children in a Chinese society.     

What Narrows the Stepgap? Closeness Between Parents and Adult (Step)Children in Germany

Using data from the German Family Panel (pairfam) based on 11,746 intergenerational family relationships, the present study examined differences in parental closeness across relations with multiple, coresidential, and non‐coresidential adolescent and adult children. Replicating previous research in a multilevel analysis across families, the authors found a strong positive effect of biological descent on closeness in comparison to adoptive and steprelations; this parental favoritism toward biological offspring was partly explained by selection via parental resources and attitudes. Supplemental within‐parent fixed effect analyses suggested that the relative disadvantage of stepchildren was offset by longer duration of the stepparent–stepchild relationship, lower household income, fewer children in the household, and high parental affirmation of familism.     

Searching for the Self: Adult International Adoptees’ Narratives of Their Search for and Reunion With Their Birth Families

In this case study, five international adoptees from Finland were interviewed about their search and reunion experiences to find out what meanings they ascribed to their identities and family relations. The thematic analysis yielded three themes: search and reunion in significant periods of life, meaning of reunion for identity, and belonging and relatedness within family. The first theme was characterized by the changing interest in birth family from the inability in childhood to fully understand the meaning of adoption and the growing interest in adolescence to adulthood where participants’ own parenthood intensified their interest. The second theme was characterized by the sense of coherence and sense of continuity that the adoptees, despite the conflicting emotions of reunion, felt they had achieved through reunion. In the third theme, reunion with their birth family appeared significant, even though belonging to a family was interpreted more as an outcome of attachment and nurture than biology. Particular for all themes was the meaning of communicating about adoption-related issues for the adoptee–adoptive parent relationship. Future research is needed to concentrate in more detail on the broad themes and to investigate how the meanings of the birth family for adoptive identity change over life courses.     

Young People’s Reactions Change Elderly People’s Generativity and Narratives: The Effects of Intergenerational Interaction on the Elderly

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the young listener’s reaction on the development of generativity and narratives of elderly people. Thirty-four males between the ages of 60 and 82 participated in this experiment in which the listener generations (young/elderly) and listener reactions (empathic/neutral) were controlled. The participants shared and taught their wisdom gained from their past experiences through narratives. Results showed that many elderly people spoke about “lessons from experiences of failure” when there was an empathic reaction from young people, and such narratives were promoted by an increase of generativity. These results suggested the impact of the younger people’s reaction on the elderly people’s psychological development and behavior.