The role of child and parent savings in promoting expectations for university education among middle school students in Ghana: A propensity score analysis

The volume of research on high educational expectations among young people is increasing. Yet, there are still research gaps in what we know about the key predictors of young people's educational expectations, especially in the Sub-Saharan African context. This study aims to complement existing research on asset effects by testing two related propositions about how child and parent savings relate independently to children's expectations for university education. We use propensity score analysis with data from a random sample of junior high school students in Ghana. Findings reveal that parent savings are positively associated with higher probability of children having higher educational expectation. We also find that parents' savings have stronger effect on children's educational expectations compared to children's savings. We discuss implications for early exposure of young people to savings opportunities and its potential to ensure educational progression and optimum psychological and economic benefits to students.     

Parenting Supports for Early Vocabulary Development: Specific Effects of Sensitivity and Stimulation through Infancy

Growing recognition of disparities in early childhood language environments prompts examination of parent–child interactions, which support vocabulary. Research links parental sensitivity and cognitive stimulation to child language, but has not explicitly contrasted their effects, nor examined how effects may change over time. We examined maternal sensitivity and stimulation throughout infancy using two observational methods—ratings of parents’ interaction qualities and coding of discrete parenting behaviors—to assess the relative importance of these qualities to child vocabulary over time and determine whether mothers make related changes in response to children's development. Participants were 146 infants and mothers, assessed when infants were 14, 24, and 36 months. At 14 months, sensitivity had a stronger effect on vocabulary than did stimulation, but the effect of stimulation grew throughout toddlerhood. Mothers’ cognitive stimulation grew over time, whereas sensitivity remained stable. While discrete parenting behaviors changed with child age, there was no evidence of trade‐offs between sensitive and stimulating behaviors, and no evidence that sensitivity moderated the effect of stimulation on child vocabulary. Findings demonstrate specificity of timing in the link between parenting qualities and child vocabulary, which could inform early parent interventions, and support a reconceptualization of the nature and measurement of parental sensitivity.     

Parent—Child Interaction in the Context of a Chronic Disease

The parent—child relationship plays a crucial role in every chronic disease and especially in the course of childhood diabetes type 1. The present study explores the characteristics of parent—child interaction in Greek families in which one child suffers from diabetes, and the way that this relationship has affected the family's capacity to deal with the psychosocial aspects of the disease. Our extended research employed qualitative methods (observation and in‐depth interview), using criteria based on the structural model of the ‘psychosomatic family’. We provide a typology of the parent—child relationship in these families: enmeshment, mother—patient coalition, parental splitting, over‐protectiveness, lack of limits, the patient's involvement in marital crisis, parentification of a non‐symptomatic child, and ambiguity of roles and rules. These characteristics seem to typify the parent—child relationship in various chronic diseases.     

Child Development Accounts,parental savings,and parental educational expectations: A path model

Parents' expectations for their children's education, and efforts to foster suitably positive expectations, are worthy of policy attention. Previous research indicates that early saving for a child's postsecondary education can foster and sustain high parental expectations, yet little is known about the operative mechanisms. This study presents analyses from a randomized experiment with Child Development Accounts (CDAs), a policy to encourage early financial investments for education and to shape parents' expectations concerning their young children's educational goals. Our research provides key evidence on whether parental account holding for children's college (a) has a positive impact on parents' expectations for their children's educational attainment and (b) mediates the CDA's effect on their educational expectations at an early stage in their child's development. We employ data from the SEED for Oklahoma Kids (SEED OK) experiment, the first randomized social experiment to test universal and progressive CDAs. We conduct a path analysis and a supplemental analysis with marginal structural models (n = 2160). We find that holding a college-savings account has a significant effect on parents' educational expectations for their children and that whether one holds an account mediates the effect of CDAs on such expectations. Findings suggest that CDAs may promote early parental financial investment and high expectations. Research and policy implications are discussed.     

Psychologists' Practices Compared to the Expectations of Family Law Judges and Attorneys in Child Custody Cases

Abstract

Three recent studies have explored the practices of psychologists (Ackerman & Ackerman, 1997), family law judges' expectations (Ackerman & Steffen, 2001), and family law attorneys' expectations (Ackerman & Kelley-Poulos, 2001) in child custody cases. This study compares psychologists' practices with judges' and attorneys' expectations as previously reported in the above studies. Similarities and differences among the groups are analyzed and discussed. Psychologists, judges, and attorneys are more alike than different in their practices, with notable exceptions reported. Implications for interpretation and recommendations in child custody cases are discussed.     

The Role of Youth Problem Behaviors in the Path From Child Abuse and Neglect to Prostitution: A Prospective Examination

Behaviors beginning in childhood or adolescence may mediate the relationship between childhood maltreatment and involvement in prostitution. This paper examines 5 potential mediators: early sexual initiation, running away, juvenile crime, school problems, and early drug use. Using a prospective cohort design, abused and neglected children (ages 0–11) with cases processed during 1967–1971 were matched with nonabused, nonneglected children and followed into young adulthood. Data are from in-person interviews at approximately age 29 and arrest records through 1994. Structural equation modeling tested path models. Results indicated that victims of child abuse and neglect were at increased risk for all problem behaviors except drug use. In the full model, only early sexual initiation remained significant as a mediator in the pathway from child abuse and neglect to prostitution. Findings were generally consistent for physical and sexual abuse and neglect. These findings suggest that interventions to reduce problem behaviors among maltreated children may also reduce their risk for prostitution later in life.     

Parents' Affect,Adolescent Cognitive Representations,and Adolescent Social Development

Prior research regarding the role of parent‐child relationships in children's social development generally has been limited to concurrent or short‐term longitudinal data and has focused primarily on mothers' influence in the early or middle childhood years. Using a multimethod, multiinformant design, the present study extends previous findings by examining whether maternal and paternal affect predicted adolescent social behavior and peer acceptance 2 years later. Both maternal and paternal affect had significant direct and indirect effects (via adolescent cognitive representations of parents) on adolescent negative social behavior as reported by siblings, which in turn predicted decreased peer acceptance as rated by teachers. Findings suggest that both mothers and fathers shape adolescent social development and attest to the importance of exploring multiple pathways that may account for continuity in parent‐child and peer relationships.     

Social work and Nordic welfare policies for children—present challenges in the light of the past1

The aim of this article is to explore welfare policies for children in five Nordic countries—Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden—and in that context identify what kinds of issues and challenges social work is currently facing. The data reviewed consist of policy documents, law texts, official reports, statistics, professional texts, and previous research. Policies and laws on children's protection; provisions, including policies on state benefits and care for children; and the autonomous integrity of children in terms of the norms and policies concerning their participation, in particular in public everyday life, are analysed from a historical perspective. Hence, future challenges for social work are analysed in light of the past. Our conclusion is that social workers have a unique opportunity, based on their close encounters with children as clients, to work for the realisation of children's rights. Furthermore, by applying a holistic perspective to issues of childhood and parenthood, social workers can contribute to the development of knowledge on how welfare systems can meet the challenges brought about by the new ideas of children's rights, social changes, globalisation, and the new ideological concepts of risk that have arisen in child welfare.

Artikkeli tarkastelee lasten hyvinvointipolitiikan kehitystä viidessä Pohjoismaassa—Tanskassa, Suomessa, Islannissa, Norjassa ja Ruotsissa—ja sen valossa sitä millaisia kysymyksiä ja haasteita tämän päivän lasten hyvinvoinnin parissa tehtävä sosiaalityö kohtaa. Artikkelissa on käytetty aineistona erilaisia politiikkadokumentteja, lakeja, julkisia raportteja,tilastoja, professionaalisia kirjoituksia sekä aiempaa tutkimusta. Artikkelissa analysoidaan historiallisesta näkökulmasta lastensuojelun, sosiaalipalvelujen, lapsille suunnattujen sosiaalisten tukien sekä lasten osallistumista koskevia normeja ja toimintapolitiikkaa. Sosiaalityön tulevaisuushaasteita analysoidaan menneisyyden valossa. Johtopäätöksemme on, että sosiaalityöntekijöillä on ainutlaatuinen mahdollisuus, joka perustuu heidän läheisiin työskentelysuhteisiinsa vaikeissa elämäntilanteissa olevien lasten kanssa, olla lasten oikeuksien todellisia toimeenpanijoita. Lisäksi lapsuuden ja vanhemmuuden näkökulmat yhdistävästä toimintapaikastaan käsin juuri sosiaalityöntekijät voivat vaikuttaa tutkimukseen ja kehittämiseen niin, että hyvinvointipalvelut ja –etuudet kohtaisivat nykyistä joustavammin lasten oikeuksien, yleisen yhteiskuntamuutoksen, globalisaation ja kovin ideologisena pitämämme riskiajattelun haasteet.     

Complicating the Duality: Reconceptualising the Construction of Children in Victorian Child Protection Law

This article seeks to challenge the prevailing view that child protection legislation introduced in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods was characterised by a victim/threat duality. An examination of the parliamentary debates leading to the passage of major reforming Acts leads to a more complex construction of children. While the classic duality was present in respect of some issues earlier in the period under examination, it gave way to a view which placed greater emphasis on the child as a victim. At the same time, the law began, in an admittedly limited sense, to recognise children as agents with individual stories capable of contributing to the legal process, especially through increased capability to participate at trials. This conclusion can add significantly to our understanding of how the law understood childhood before the development of the modern children's rights movement.     

Child protection policy perspectives and reform of Australian legislation

Legislative responsibility for child protection has become a major theme in the international human rights arena and a major policy issue within early childhood education and care. This paper examines child protection policy and legislation in Australia and measures that are being employed to safeguard children and childhood within contexts that are seen as increasingly risky. Juxtaposing perspectives on child protection and child liberation, it examines the protective responsibilities speci?ed in legislation in the context of predominantly adult agendas. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Child Care as a Human Right: A New Perspective on an Old Debate

SUMMARY

A range of international human rights documents recognize the importance of child care for both parents and children, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. While domestic advocates within the United States have long argued for an expansion of government-supported child care, the significance of child care's status as an international human right has not been explored. In other nations, international law has played an important role in spurring governments to expand childcare services. Reframing the child care issue in the United States as a question of international human rights could be an effective way to enlist new allies, posit new paradigms, re-energize the child care debate and shift the domestic focus toward more progressive models.     

14 to 18 Year Olds as “Children” by Law?

SUMMARY

The European Union Council Framework Decision 2004/68/JI of 22.12.2003 “on combating the sexual exploitation of children and child pornography” defines as “child” any person below the age of 18. Under Austrian law there are no children between the ages of 7 and 18. The author criticizes that, up to now, the development of age limits in legal history has taken a clearly different way in the various fields of law of the Austrian legal order. The Austrian legislator's tendency, which has evolved in the course of legal history, to grant rights and permits to young people between 14 and 18 years earlier but, at the same time, to impose on them more and more obligations arising from private and public law, to give them the opportunity to grow into adult life with full powers and responsibilities step by step, totally contradicts the Council Framework Decision.

Today, adolescents live in a cultural environment characterized by globalized pop culture and world-wide communication technology. Access to “extreme ideas” is offered everywhere and anytime. It is highly difficult to grow up without any interference and develop one's own personality and sexual orientation according to one's inherent nature under such circumstances of a world society, and this process may be seriously disturbed or even prevented by inappropriate prohibitions imposed by criminal law. However, the aim of any education is to accompany adolescents while they are growing up so that they become self-assured, self-responsible citizens with an understanding of how to work for peace and common welfare who know “how to walk upright” and do so, and who are informed about their civil rights and are able to exercise the same decidedly. We do not need only consumers but also citizens of the world! Repatriarchalization and criminalization are the wrong answers to the urgent questions of world society. The question how to combat child pornography commerce is certainly one of the most important concerns because it is abused children and adolescents for whom it is most difficult to develop their personalities and become citizens of the world.

Legally useful answers can only be expected by those who address precise questions to the law. In this respect Europe failed. Given the fundamental right to respect for one's private life and the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of age the creation of new offencesinvolving a definition of the child as a person up to the age of 18, which contradicts well established law and is unrealistic-shoots past the mark in the author's opinion. Such provisions miss the target group of potential offenders, and infantilize and criminalize society instead. With the proposed legal means it will not be possible to attain the actual aims, i.e., to finally destroy the market for child pornography, and to punish its organizers, “wire-pullers” and users as offenders, and to eliminate them once and for all. The legal status of adolescents is weakened or at least serious curtailment of their claims arising from the fact that they have fundamental rights depending on personality and age; and the Council Framework Decision contradicts the equality guarantees in primary law of the European Union that they must not be discriminated on the grounds of age.     

Child welfare caseworkers' perspectives on the challenges of addressing mental health problems in early childhood

Although nearly half of child maltreatment victims are under the age of five and at high risk for developing serious emotional or behavioral problems, few young children involved in the child welfare system receive treatment. As the first point of service contact, child welfare caseworkers can play a key role in quickly identifying children with mental health problems and linking them to services. This study examines caseworkers' perspectives on the challenges of addressing mental health problems in early childhood. Based on five focus groups conducted with 50 caseworkers from an urban, public child welfare agency, results suggest that although workers acknowledge the importance of early intervention, difficulty identifying mental health needs in early childhood and workplace barriers impede linkage to services. Given the lasting impacts of early experiences on children's development, it is imperative that these challenges be addressed. Implications for systematic mental health screening and caseworker training are discussed.     

IMPLICATIONS OF INTERNET TECHNOLOGY FOR MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM

This research examines how parental heterosexism—negative attitudes toward homosexuals and homosexuality—and other family characteristics relate to the development of children's attitudes toward people with HIV/AIDS (PWA). Attention is directed to the overall relationship between parents’ and children's attitudes and to the potential mechanisms through which these linkages are manifested. Based on social learning theories of childhood socialization, a range of mechanisms is considered, focusing on heterosexist attitudes in parents and communication with children about AIDS. Findings indicate that parental attitudes concerning homosexuals influence children's attitudes toward PWA, implying that there can be negative as well as positive consequences of parents’ beliefs on children's attitudes. The possibility of negative parental effects on children's prejudices toward PWA suggests that in-school HIV/AIDS education at younger ages is more important than previously thought.     

American Indian Perceptions of Paternal Responsibility

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, this study examined the issue of American Indian nonresident father rights and obligations. Findings revealed that both American Indian mothers and fathers supported visitation rights, but decision-making rights were not highly supported unless the father was paying child support. Both American Indian parents were similar in their views regarding paternal responsibilities. Therefore, while general father involvement intervention strategies may work for American Indians, it is important for practitioners to explore how American Indians define paternal involvement and to what extent they are willing to allow the nonresident father to participate in all aspects of the child's life.     

Life after Growing Up in Care: Informing Policy and Practice through Research

Abstract

Existing research on the impact of growing up in care focuses upon either the care experience itself or the period of transition from care to independence. Our knowledge of outcomes largely ceases when former residents of the care system reach their early twenties. There are strong social justice reasons for extending research into the older adult lives of such young people. We know a great deal about the multiple disadvantages that such individuals face as children. But research is largely silent about their subsequent adult lives. While we must be cautious in drawing causal links to the childhood care experience as the time period since life in care extends, we know that early experiences can affect care-leavers across their life course—just as childhood experience affects all adults in a variety of ways. In this review, we highlight evidence drawn from research in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, and the United States, with particular attention paid to the first two of those countries. We use a wide range of sources and identify areas for further consideration, including access to personal records, mental health, education, and parenting. By doing so, we seek to open up this area for further research with the hope that such research will lead to an increasing recognition of care-leavers' needs and thus to improvements in social policy and service provision.     

The role of child care social work in supporting families with children in need and providing protective services—past,present and future

This article examines the way in which child care social work with deprived families has changed and developed since the inception of Children's Departments in 1948. It is argued that between 1948 and 1970 child care social workers enjoyed a fair measure of social support. A variety of reasons are considered for explaining this—specialization, smallness of size, privacy and a consensus about the needs of children. From the early 1970s it is argued that broader societal changes, including a shift away from social solidarity towards individualism, organizational changes and the advent of child abuse as a public concern, resulted in con?icting demands on child care social workers and a subsequent loss of credibility and con?dence. The 1990s have seen a return to emphasis on family support policies which has been further accelerated in the new millennium by New Labour's stated commitment to eliminating child poverty and creating better life opportunities for all children. The implications of these new developments for child care social workers engaged in meeting the needs of children living in highly disadvantaged families are considered. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Decolonising and decriminalising child marriage in Africa

Child marriages, often attributed to culture and gender inequality, are prevalent across Africa. Several countries have moved to criminalise the practice. At the core of the criminalisation debate are the fundamental tensions between statutory (state) law on the one hand, and religious and customary law on the other. The growing momentum towards punishment, targeted almost invariably at male offenders, is meant to address the conflict between cultural practices that lead to child marriage and the protection of children's rights. However, some countries have not criminalised child marriage. Thus, the outlawry of child marriages is not universal on the continent. The agitation towards criminalisation—I describe this as ‘popular punitvism’ - as a panacea, is animated by Western penological justifications, principally, deterrence. However, Western criminological and penological theories may not fully account for a phenomenon in other social and geographical spaces. The paper argues for decolonising and decriminalising child marriages in Africa but not legalising it.     

The relationship among childhood risk and protective factors,racial microaggression and ethnic identity,and academic self-efficacy and antisocial behavior in young adulthood

We examined how childhood and adolescent risk and protective factors and perceptions of racial microaggression and ethnic identity during young adulthood contributed to academic self-efficacy, substance abuse, and criminal intentions of 409 undergraduate students enrolled in a public urban university. Participants (mean age — 24) completed a web-based survey subsequent to a stratified, random sampling procedure. Findings from structural equation models revealed that risk factors reflecting problem behavior during childhood were associated with higher levels of substance use and criminal intentions during adulthood. The early protective factor of school engagement was positively related to academic self-efficacy and negatively related to criminal intentions in young adults. Racial microaggression was inversely related, while ethnic identity was positively associated, with academic self-efficacy among young adults after controlling for the influence of child and adolescent risk and protective factors. Implications for advancing interventions that address the influence of child and adolescent risk and protective factors, racial microaggression, and ethnic identity on academic and behavioral outcomes for young adults are noted.     

Coparenting and Nonresident Fathers' Monetary Contributions to Their Children

The percentage of children in the United States living apart from their biological father has increased, while public assistance for single mothers has diminished. This has resulted in a need to better understand and promote nonresident fathers' economic support of their children. In the present study the author used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 1,752) to examine how coparenting—the degree to which parents are mutually supportive and cooperative in raising their child—is related to nonresident fathers' monetary contributions. Results from pooled regression and fixed effects models indicate that coparenting is positively associated with fathers' likelihood of paying formal and informal child support and the amount of these payments. Findings from cross‐lagged structural equation models suggest that the association between coparenting and fathers' payments is reciprocal but that coparenting has a stronger effect on fathers' payments than fathers' payments do on coparenting.