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.     

Marital Violence: Impact on Children's Emotional Experiences, Emotional Regulation and Behaviors in a Post-Divorce/Separation Situation

This study examined the mediating effects of children's emotional experiences and regulation strategies on the relationship between marital violence and children's behavioral problems following divorce/separation. Findings indicated marital violence as reported by the mothers was associated with children's internalizing problems as measured by the Achenbach Behavior Checklist. Marital violence was also associated with children's reported experience of negative emotions, with sadness and anger emerging as statistical predictors of children's behavioral problems. A weak relationship was found between emotional regulation strategies and children's behavioral problems, with the exception that direct intervention and the range of strategies used by children were positively associated with behavioral problems. Children's reported anger was also found to mediate the relationship between marital violence and children's total behavioral problems. Implications of findings for treatment of children and adolescents from separated, conflicted homes are discussed.     

The Relationship Between Mandatory Divorce Education and Level of Post-Divorce Parental Conflict

Abstract

This study assessed the association between conflict between divorced parents and their attendance or nonattendance at a divorce education program. A telephone interview was done with 160 individuals who participated in the education program and 59 individuals who did not. Both males and females in the nonattendance group had higher conflict scores than the attendance group. Attendance at the divorce education class was found to be associated with whether a subject will return to court or not. Those who attended were less likely to return to court related to the divorce.     

Cohesion and Adaptability in Post-Divorce Remarried and First Married Families:

Past research indicates that post-divorce remarried families report lower levels of family cohesion and adaptability than do first married families, but differences are not found in the adjustment of children or satisfaction with the marital relationship. The present study examined the possibilities that (a) lower levels of cohesion and adaptability may be optimal for remarried families, (b) cohesion and adaptability may be less important for coping and stress in stepfamilies than in first married families, and (c) patterns of relationships between the two sets of variables may be different for the two family types. A series of analyses relating cohesion and adaptability to family stress and coping styles revealed that high levels of family cohesion and adaptability are equally if not more important for stepfamilies as they are for biological families in reference to family stress and coping.     

纳西族、汉族高职学生自我意识情绪事件类型比较研究

为了探讨引发汉族和纳西族高职学生自我意识情绪的事件类型、特点及其差异。本研究以60名高职学生为参照,其中汉族30人,纳西族30人。采用Scherer、Tracy和Robins先后运用的自我意识情绪事件报告问卷采集情绪事件内容,对冯晓杭编制的事件类型编码手册略作改动,测定被试的自我意识情绪主要事件类型。研究结果显示:在羞耻方面,他人道德事件,汉族和纳西族学生差异显著;对于内疚而言,在集体、家庭、个人、他人道德事件类型上,汉族纳西族学生存在显著差异;在自豪情绪上,集体型事件中汉族和纳西族学生存在明显差异。研究结论:引发两个民族学生自我意识情绪的事件类型具有一致性,但纳西族学生更多报告他人道德型事件引发羞耻和内疚情绪;汉纳西族学生,在产生自豪的事件类型上有差异,即纳西族自豪情绪更多受到集体成就事件的影响。     

Father Involvement and Regularity of Child Support in Post-Divorce Families

The study examined the relationship between 20 divorced, non-custodial fathers and their children from the perspective of both the mother and the father. Results indicated parental agreement over the perceived consistency of child support but disagreement over the amount of influence the fathers had in the area of finanical affairs. Mothers who did not receive child support on a consistent basis considered a father's influence to be of fathers perceived changes between the father pre-and post-divorce influence with the exception of influence over financial decisions. Overall the results of the study indicate that divorced fathers are not necessarily absent parents and that both mothers and fathers consider post-divorce father involvement desirable.     

From Adaptivity to Adaptation: Examining the Career Construction Model of Adaptation

The author examined a multiple mediation model and a moderation model for the relationships among adaptivity (in terms of future work self and proactivity), career adaptability, adapting responses (in terms of career decision self-efficacy [CDSE] and career engagement), and adaptation (in the form of academic satisfaction) among 282 university students. Results showed that career adaptability, CDSE, and career engagement fully mediated the relations of future work self and proactivity with academic satisfaction. Career adaptability also had a mediation role in the relationships of future work self and proactivity with CDSE and career engagement. The relationship between career adaptability and academic satisfaction was fully mediated by CDSE and career engagement. Career adaptability did not moderate the relationships between adaptivity indices and adapting indices. These results support the serial multiple mediation model, which is introduced in the adaptation model. Career education and career coaching could improve clients' agency through working on their self-regulation resources, self-efficacy beliefs, and overt career behaviors.     

社会适应与道德适应——青年进入社会之角色转换的要素

青年适应社会是指青年独立进入社会,通过劳动或再劳动不断地在新的社会关系中合理调节自己的行为模式,以实现自身与社会和谐的角色转换过程.青年在劳动态度上的道德虚无与道德缺损表现会引发角色转换滞后、角色错位常现、角色紧张易生等适应社会不良的症状.而"立志-立业"、"唯实-务实"、"求新-创新"等道德因素的自觉内化与践履是青年克服不良症状,从而实现社会适应的必要方剂.     

A Therapeutic Model to Enhance Children's Adjustment to Divorce

Research has revealed many detrimental effects of divorce upon children often related to ongoing conflict between biological parents. A therapeutic model, demonstrated by a case example, is presented which targets the conflict between divorced parents. This therapeutic approach is based upon negotiating cooperation among custodial and nonastodial parents. This is accomplished by clarifying the changed relationships resulting from divorce between the adults and children allowing all members of the divorced families to grieve the loss of predivorce relationships. Distinct new relationships are defined between all family members which reduce the need for adults to compete in relationships with the children.     

Psychosocial Factors of Migration: Adaptation and Application of the Health Belief Model

Psychosocial factors influencing behaviour play a central role in health research but seem under‐explored in migration research. This is unfortunate because these factors, which include knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, intentions and personality traits, provide essential and potentially effective handles for linking migration and migrant‐integration policies. We demonstrate that the health belief model (HBM) conceptualization of behavioural intentions contributes constructs that can further our understanding of migration intentions, thereby broadening the foundations for migration policies. We adapt the HBM to migration behaviour and then test it empirically by using survey data on international migration from West Africa and the Mediterranean region to the European Union. The results confirm that indicators of “perceived threat to living conditions”, “perceived benefits” and “perceived barriers to migration”, “cues to action” and “self‐efficacy” contribute considerably to the explanation of migration intentions. We conclude that psychosocial factors deserve greater prominence in migration theories and empirical research, and we recommend that migration surveys consider this framework to identify relevant indicators of psychosocial factors of international migration and develop appropriate survey questions to measure them.     

Evaluation of the Stress Adjustment and Adaptation Model Among Families Reporting Economic Pressure

ABSTRACT

This research evaluates the Stress Adjustment and Adaptation Model (double ABCX model) examining the effects resiliency resources on family functioning when families experience economic pressure. Families (N = 128) with incomes at or below the poverty line from a rural area of a southern state completed measures of perceived economic pressure, family hardiness, social support, and the McMaster Family Assessment device. The family resiliency model was evaluated using regression and two path analyses. Results of the model evaluation indicate that when family resiliency resources are introduced economic pressure is not a significant stressor influencing family functioning. Family resiliency is a key to the healthy functioning of the family unit moderating distress and decreasing the negative effects associated with economic pressure. Implications for social work practice to enhance family resiliency using community and personal supports are discussed.     

Gender Differences in Stories of Violence and Caring by Preschool Children in Post-Divorce Families: Implications for Social Competence

Themes of violence and caring in the spontaneous play of preschool-aged children in response to a revised version of the Attachment Story Completion Task (Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990) were analyzed in relation to their social behavior in child-care settings. All children (n = 66, 39 boys) lived in post-divorce families, primarily in the custody of their mothers. Some story enactments of violence predicted negative social behavior in child-care for both boys and girls. Other story enactments were strongly associated with gender and did not uniformly predict social behavior, suggesting that gender socialization plays a significant role in children's play representations of violence and caring. Implications for children's development and the interpretation of children's play behavior are discussed.     

The Origins of the National Children's Bureau

SUMMARY. The gestation of the National Children's Bureau, originally the National Bureau for Cooperation in Child Care, is examined. Conference papers of 1954 give a flavour of the social concerns over children and their special needs when preparatory work on forming a Bureau was supported by the National Council of Social Service. It took a decade to reach formal inauguration and the concerns of 30 years ago are illustrated, confirming a commitment to knowledge based on information, research, and multi-disciplinary dissemination.     

The News Media in Children's Political Socialization

The research reported examines the impact of the news mediaas an agent of political socialization on children's politicalknowledge, their attitudes toward political parties and electoralsystems, and their activities relative to politics. Childrennews media use and level of political knowledge function asprimary sources of causal effects for each other. They are consistentlymore important in their effects on the attitudes and types ofparticipation studied in this research than are the parentaland educational system socialization indicators or the structuralvariables of grade and gender.     

The Double Meaning of Nationalism

Abstract  Although nationalism appears to be a kind of particularism, in fact we often find nationalist movements emerging within the trend toward universalism. For example, contemporary storms of nationalism are taking place in an era of unprecedented universalization in politics, economics and technology. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the mechanism which generates nationalism by explaining the contradictory intersection between particularism and universalism. First, the paper looks at the difficulty in defining the nation, and shows that there are two historical stages in the establishment of nation. Second. the difference between social experiences in a nation and those in pre-nation society are discovered through consideration of the fact that the novel and the nation developed contemporaneously. Thus it is established that social experiences in nation are characterized by the acquisition of special transcendent viewpoint. Third, the paper searches for the origin of nationalism in the traditional European political theory according to which the king has two bodies. Fourth, the paper attempts to integrate two excellent theories of nationalism: those of Gellner and Anderson. Fifth, the paper analyses types of nationalism so as to clarify the inner structure of the transcendence proper to nationalism. Finally, this paper explains the mechanism of nationalism by relating it to the dynamics of capitalism. The explanation will enable us to understand why the nationalism chauvinism suddenly reemerges in today's Eastern European societies when they are exposed to capitalism.     

Children's Physical Activity: The Contribution of Playing and Walking

This paper draws on research in which 200 children were fitted with motion sensors and asked to keep travel and activity diaries. The findings show that walking and playing away from home can contribute significantly to children's volume of physical activity, with consequent implications for their health. Not only do both playing and walking provide high levels of physical activity, they are linked to other behaviours which further augment the level of physical activity. Children who walk rather than use the car tend to be generally more active than other children, and children tend to be more active when they are out of their homes than when they are in them. The findings are placed in the context of other research about children's travel and physical activity, and conclusions drawn about the need to reverse current trends in children's patterns of travel and physical activity.     

文化与迁移:青年港漂的融入适应过程

迁移过程包括迁移动机和融入适应两个涵义.考察文化在香港就业的内地青年迁移动机和对流入地融入适应中的角色时发现:香港作为一种特定的文化空间为港漂群体留港工作提供了动机,此时文化作为一种价值和规范系统发挥功能.同时,港漂选择性、策略性地使用内地和香港社会的文化资源来建立界限,以锚定他们在香港社会融入中的安全位置,此时文化作为一种工具箱资源发挥功效.港漂群体的迁移过程是在两种文化观念的互动中完成的.     

The Impact of Divorce on Children's Academic Performance

The academic performance of children of divorce was studied through a retrospective longitudinal design. The school records of 234 children of divorce and 223 children from intact families were examined and grades and achievement test scores in English and mathematics were recorded for five consecutive years. The results showed that children of divorce had poorer achievement test scores in the immediate aftermath of divorce. Their grades, on the other hand, did not seem to be adversely affected. By the fifth year following divorce, sex differences were pronounced with divorce adversely affecting the grades and achievement test scores of boys but not girls. The results were discussed in terms of their implications for research on divorce and academic performance as well as research on divorce and children in general.     

Reconciling Children's Policy and Children's Rights: Barriers to Effective Government Delivery

Countries which have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, have committed to implementing its principles in law and policy. This article explores the challenges for securing children's rights through policy, drawing on a research project conducted for the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People, which sought to identify barriers to effective government delivery for children and young people from the perspective of key stakeholders. The research concluded that, while some barriers (such as delay and availability of data) are not child‐specific, they can be accentuated when children and young people are the main focus of policy development and more so when seeking to adopt a child rights‐compliant approach to policy development and implementation.     

The importance of Games in Children's English Teaching

第二语言习得理论的研究已经在全世界范围内引起广泛的重视,时代的发展对人才的培养提出了更新更高的要求,我们需要根据幼儿的特殊年龄和幼儿学习语言重要在趣味性之上的特点,不断探索和研究出一些更好的幼儿学习英语的方法。本文作者主要介绍的是游戏法在幼儿英语中的重要作用。