RELIGION AND INTERGENERATIONAL ASSISTANCE: Distinct Differences by Adult Children's Gender and Parent's Marital Status

Using data from a national and intergenerational survey in 1997, this study examines the link between religion and intergenerational assistance between parents and adult children. Two possibilities are tested. First, religion and assistance are positively associated because religion promotes general prosocial and helping beliefs and behaviors. Second, assistance is greater between parents and adult children who are religiously congruent because strong intergenerational relations are based on parent-child consensus on values and beliefs. The hypotheses are tested separately for continuously married and divorced parents, and interaction models are estimated to determine if the effect of religion varies between adult daughters and sons. Findings support the second argument—religious congruence is more important than individual religiosity in influencing intergenerational assistance. The link between religion and assistance is positive among continuously married parents and adult children, but religion has a mostly negative effect among divorced parents and adult children. Assistance is especially low when either the divorced parent or adult child or both are evangelical Protestants. The disparity in the findings may highlight the different religious and family philosophies of conservative versus mainline religions.     

Children’s Musical and Emotional Meaning Making: Dialogicality in Instructional Interaction

This study concerns children’s aesthetic meaning making in terms of how it is constituted musically, emotionally, and dialogically. We investigate how two 10-year-old children collaboratively engage in the task of teaching and learning to sing a song. The research questions concern what musical and emotional expressions the participants responsively construct and how these expressions are addressed, both explicitly and implicitly. Adopting a perspective grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogue philosophy and more recent educational research in this tradition, the study explores how children’s affective reasoning is co-constructed in the process of song sharing that is also a sense-making enterprise. Interactive talk episodes, including facial displays, are transcribed, analyzed, and discussed. We demonstrate, from moment to moment, how emotive expressivity comes into play and how it refers to double dialogicality, both at the interpersonal and activity-specific level. Finally, on the basis of our findings, we discuss conflicting artistic and educational values.     

Parent-Child Relationships,Parental Relationships and Children's Self-Esteem in Post-Divorce Families in Hong Kong

Abstract

In recent research on post-divorce families in Hong Kong, there has been a shift away from the assumption of pathology, and in favor of a trend of increasing attention to children's resilience and the benefits of a continuous parental relationship. There remains, however, a lack of empirical knowledge to guide social work practices in this area in contemporary Hong Kong. The present study is designed to examine how children's relationships with both parents and the different patterns of parental relationships impact children's self-esteem. Sixty-nine post-divorce families participated in the survey. The findings of a positive impact of quality relationship with both parents supported the promotion of active involvement of both parents. The likelihood of increased parental conflicts, however, makes the co-parental involvement a double-edged sword as far as the children are concerned, while an avoidance/low-conflict pattern of parental relationship is found to be the most beneficial pattern for the children. To enhance the well-being of children, a secure residential parent-child relationship with a noncompetitive nonresidential parent-child relationship is deemed beneficial.     

Affection and conflict in marital and parent-child relationships

In this study, we examined affection and conflict in marital and parent-child relationships, as reported by mothers, fathers, and 9- and 10-year-old children in a community sample of 87 families. Affection and conflict were inversely related within relationships, with mixed findings across relationships. Most reports showed an association between marital and parent-child conflict as well as between marital and parent-child affection. According to fathers, however, the association between marital affection and father-child affection is moderated by marital conflict. Clinical implications of the associations between positive and negative dimensions of family interaction and of the links between marital and parent-child relations are discussed.     

The Clinical Effects of Massive Psychic Trauma in Families of Holocaust Survivors*

For years we have been treating numerous concentration camp survivors in the psychiatric clinics and hospitals of Israel. In recent years we have been seeing increasing numbers of the second generation suffering from a wide spectrum of emotional disorders, personality disturbances, borderline and psychotic states which are clearly related to the long-term effects of massive traumatization in the survivor parents. These effects are manifest in four inter-related areas of disturbance within the family—the parents' mental state, the family atmosphere, inter-personal functioning in the family and specific distortions in the parent-child interaction. Excessive talking about holocaust experiences to children, or the opposite —lack of communication, avoidance and denial of these experiences—are patterns frequently found in the children of survivors who seem to be most affected by the massive traumatization of the parents. It is postulated that therapy of the survivor parents can modify the transmissions of affects to the children. Family therapy is indicated whenever possible.     

Enhancing parent-child interaction during foster care visits: experimental assessment of an intervention

Mothers of young children recently placed in foster care participated in an intervention to enhance parent-child interaction during visits. The mothers all reported substantial loss and trauma histories. Immediately prior to the visits, the mothers were coached on strategies for separating from their children at the visit's end. The mothers displayed more behavioral strategies for supporting their children when the visit was over, but were less engaged with their children during the leave-taking sequence and displayed fewer ways of maintaining the child's involvement in mother-child interaction during leave-taking than those in a comparison group. This article discusses consideration of parents' trauma history in designing interventions to enhance parent-child interaction.     

Moral problems in birth control

A review of the children who soil and whose parents were referred over the past seven years to the writer for social casework assistance with the management of these children revealed a wide range of parent-child relationships, varying from simple situations to some which were very complex. It is felt now that some of these children need not have been referred for psychiatric assessment and that social workers in medical social work departments could have given the parents all the help that was necessary, working in conjunction with the pædiatricians concerned. A review of the literature lent support to these conclusions.     

Intergenerational solidarity between parents and adult children: a qualitative research among cohabiting and married children in Italy

The objective of this article is to compare the patterns of intergenerational solidarity between adult children who cohabit or are married and their own parents or their partner's parents through the analysis of 50 in-depth interviews. The research did not reveal any different behavioural patterns between cohabiting and married couples. Financial support provided by own parents or partner's parents and the presence of small children constituted positive factors which intensified the frequency of contacts and improved the quality of the relationship. In the event of illness of a parent, both the married and cohabiting couples provided assistance, especially when the illness was not disabling and there were no other kin relatives. When this was not possible, a private caregiver was hired or close family members provided assistance. Only those respondents who cohabited with a partner awaiting divorce were less willing to maintain contacts with their partner's parents. The presence of a family formed by previously married partners and the old age of the parents of the latter compromised the quality of the relationship and the willingness to provide assistance.     

Characteristics of evidence-based child maltreatment interventions

This project summarizes, using a treatment protocol review technique, characteristics of effective interventions from nine studies of child maltreatment that examined recovery from abuse or the effects of maltreatment on child and parent outcomes. Results suggest that stronger effects are yielded by targeting parents and the parent-child interaction context in home-based settings during early childhood, designing multicomponent interventions delivered by professionals for teaching parenting competency skills, and targeting families of higher risk children.     

Consumer‐directed personal assistance and ‘care’: perspectives of workers and ventilator users

‘Consumer‐directed personal assistance’ has been a central tenet of the North American Independent Living Movement since its inception. There is, however, surprisingly little research that explores how consumer‐directed assistance gets played out in practice. We conducted a qualitative study that explored the relationships between disabled ventilator users and their personal support workers (PSWs) in supportive housing environments in Ontario, Canada. The results show that while all participants agreed that they adhered to the philosophies of ‘independent living’ embedded in ‘consumer‐directed personal assistance’, how this was understood and enacted varied considerably. Narrow interpretations focused on the task‐oriented aspects of PSWs’ work, while broader interpretations included interpersonal aspects of care, respect and mutuality. We discuss how a conceptualization of consumer‐directed personal assistance can be elaborated to accommodate a notion of ‘care’ while retaining the core tenets of the independent living philosophy.     

Nonmetropolitan Poor Children and Reliance on Public Assistance1

Abstract This research documents trends from 1970 through 1990 in the utilization and ameliorative effects of public assistance among poor children in nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) and metropolitan (metro) America. Results indicate that the families of nonmetro poor children rely more heavily on parental earnings and less so on public assistance when compared to their metro counterparts; that there was a sharp rise over the period in reliance on public assistance, especially among nonmetro children, and a corresponding decline in reliance on earnings; that the ability of public assistance to ameliorate child poverty is modest; and that while the ameliorative effects are always greater in metro than nonmetro areas, this disparity declined over the 1980s owing partially to improvement in nonmetro areas.     

Reproducing Social Conditions of Poverty: A Critical Feminist Analysis of Social Assistance Participation in Ontario,Canada

This study uses repeated Cox Proportional Hazards models to explore the characteristics significant in predicting social assistance (SA) exit rates in Ontario, Canada. The results indicate that gender, age, immigration status, family structure, and presence of children significantly affect the likelihood of SA exit. Interpreting these findings through a critical feminist lens, I highlight the structural barriers that potentially influence people’s trajectories. Social policies that might better address the lives of women and other groups are explored, and a human rights framework is discussed as one avenue to advance poverty reduction efforts.     

Parent-Child Synchrony and Adolescent Adjustment

This study of 984 children and their parents examined the correlates of adolescent psychosocial adjustment. Based on previous research, it was expected that parental involvement and limit-setting would predict conduct disorder scores and that variables associated with the parent-child relationship, particularly parent-child synchrony, would be more closely related to emotional adjustment and social relationship measures. Contrary to expectations, parenting practices were unrelated to adolescent conduct disorder, but family harmony and adult-child synchrony predicted all measures of adolescent adjustment. It is concluded that positive parenting is not something adults do to children, but a quality of the parent-child relationship characterized by family harmony and parental empathy. Implications for social work practice with adolescents and their families are identified.     

The Mediating Role of Sibling Maintenance Behavior Expectations and Perceptions in the Relationship Between Family Communication Patterns and Relationship Satisfaction

Sibling relationships are influenced both by the behaviors performed within the relationship (e.g., relational work) and by the family system as a whole. This study extends family communication patterns theory (FCP) by examining whether communicative relationship maintenance plays a role in the relationship between FCP and sibling relationship satisfaction. Data from 327 adult siblings from across the United States tested using Hayes (2013) PROCESS revealed that conversation and conformity orientation had positive indirect effects on sibling relationship satisfaction through both (a) relational maintenance expectations and (b) perceptions of sibling actual maintenance behavior in nearly all models (i.e., including positivity, openness, assurances, networks, and tasks maintenance behaviors). The results suggest that the parent-child relationship remains important long after children become adults as it continues to influence interpersonal relationships with others. Future directions for communication scholars are discussed along with theoretical implications for research on family communication patterns and the maintenance strategy framework.     

Near and Far

In this paper we distinguish between two measures of contact between children and their non-residential fathers: whether or not the children have seen their father in the previous year, and how many weeks the children stayed with their father. The distinction between the two is important because there are many aspects of a parent-child relationship, some of which may be met during shorter contacts, and others which may be nurtured during an extended visit at the father's house. Using data from the 1987-88 National Survey of Families and Households we find that having a legal agreement regarding joint custody is positively related to the number of weeks that a child stays with his/her father. Children are more likely to see their fathers if there is a legal child support agreement and the father pays child support, which indicates that paying child support and seeing the child are complementary activities. This pattern is reversed for the number of weeks the child stays with the father, which gives support to the hypothesis that non-residential fathers substitute one activity for another. This research highlights the need for careful consideration of different measurements of contact between non-residential parents and children in order to understand more fully the dynamics of families following divorce.     

Risk and Resilience Among African American Children of Incarcerated Parents

Abstract

The current literature indicates that children of incarcerated parents are negatively responding to parent-child separation and vulnerable to myriad adverse psychological, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. African American children are the most greatly impacted by this social issue as they account for over 50% of all children of incarcerated parents. Despite the risks, many of these youths appear to cope with parent-child separation. There is a paucity of literature that employs a risk and resilience conceptual model to explicate the variability in developmental trajectories. This article reviews the literature on risks and resilience among African American families. An interpersonal-ecological conceptual model that emphasizes the reciprocal interaction between the person and social context is employed. Moreover, African American resilient factors that potentially mediate the relationship between parental incarceration and environmental risks and developmental outcomes are discussed.     

Is there a (transracial) adoption achievement gap?: A national longitudinal analysis of adopted children's educational performance

In one of the first longitudinal population-based studies examining adopted children's educational achievement, we analyze whether there is a test-score gap between children in adoptive families and children in biological families. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, we find in aggregate adopted children have lower reading and math scores than their counterparts living in biological families. Yet there is significant variation among adoptive families by their race and health status. On one hand adoptive parents tend to be White and have more economic capital than their non-adoptive counterparts potentially contributing to educational advantages. However adopted children are also more likely to have special educational needs, contributing to greater educational disadvantages. Untangling these variables through a multivariate regression analysis, we find that transracially adopted children have similar test scores to White children living with biological parents. We point to the interaction between race, family resources and children's health status and how these characteristics differentially shape achievement outcomes for adopted children.     

Unmarried Coparenting in the Context of Poverty: Understanding the Relationship Between Stress,Family Resource Management,and Resilience

Due to rising rates of non-marital birth in the United States, unmarried families have been the subject of extensive research and the target of government funded interventions over the last 15 years. Despite a growing literature on this population, few studies have addressed how unmarried couples coparent in the context of poverty. In the present study we used in-depth interviews with paired mothers and fathers to explore resilience processes in unmarried coparenting. We found that unmarried couples aspired to be good coparents, but the stress of living in poverty and the challenges of parenting young children led some to experience family strain or crisis. Using family stress theory as a framework for organizing the findings, we concluded that family resource management distinguished couples that adapted successfully to the task of coparenting from those that struggled to do so. Implications for theory, future research, and practice are discussed.     

Psychological stress in adoptive parents of special-needs children

This article focuses on the nature and extent of parental stress among adoptive parents of special-needs children. In-depth face-to-face interviews of adoptive parents of 35 children were conducted, on average, four months postplacement (but before adoption). One-year follow-up interviews were conducted with parents of 15 (43%) of these children. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected, including parenting stress scores. Results indicated higher than average levels of stress, particularly on subscales related to parent-child dysfunctional interactions and to raising a difficult child. Increased stress levels were associated with poorer family adjustment and with higher levels of child behavior problems. Stress levels remained mostly unchanged over the year. Responses to open-ended questions identified five stress categories: child characteristics, parent-child interactions, family cohesion, parental adjustment, and adoptions service issues. Practice and research implications are discussed.     

Exploring commonality and difference in in-depth interviewing: a case-study of researching British Asian women

This paper draws on the experience of researching British South Asian women's lives in London as a female British Asian researcher to explore how cultural commonality and difference is shaped by agency and interaction in the research process. It examines these issues through a discussion of how the shared cultural identity of the researcher and the interviewees emerged as both a point of commonality and difference in the research process; with the researcher being ;positioned' in terms of both as a result of the interviewees' agency in interpreting their cultural commonality. In particular, issues of 'Indianness' and religion emerged as points on which interviewees exercised agency and interpreted the researcher's cultural identity. This was the basis on which they claimed commonality or difference and this assessment consequently impacted on their interaction with the researcher. The article suggests that more attention needs to be given to how assumptions made by interviewees regarding the cultural identity of the researcher through their agency and interaction in the research process shapes interview dynamics.