Retrospective Paternal and Maternal Parenting Styles,Regulatory Self-Efficacy and Adolescent Risk Taking

This study aims to calculate a scaled risk-taking behavior index and to test a model in which maternal and paternal parenting styles affect risk-taking behavior with a mediation of adolescents’ regulatory self-efficacy. Participants were 816 adolescents (44% males) responding to a self-report questionnaire about their risk-taking behavior, regulatory self-efficacy, and retrospective memories of paternal and maternal parenting styles. Results suggested an item rating in the index showing that behaviors considered less risky referred to alcohol use and the unplanned first sexual intercourse, whereas behaviors considered more risky referred to the lack of use of contraceptives and the age of the first sexual intercourse. Results revealed a significant indirect effect of authoritative and authoritarian styles on risk-taking behavior. These styles shaped the adolescents’ regulatory self-efficacy, which in turn predicted adolescent risk-taking behavior. Results underline the complex interplay of relationships between parents and their children.     

Discursive Methodologies for Couple and Family Therapy Research: Editorial to Special Section

In this article, we aim to introduce the special JMFT section on discursive research methodologies for couple and family therapy research. These are qualitative research methodologies which resonate with the systemic emphasis on the semantics and the pragmatics of therapy discourse. First, we provide a brief overview of such methodologies and their use in the family therapy field. We then introduce the context and the content of the special section, where four approaches, including conversation analysis, discursive psychology type of discourse analysis, poststructurally informed discourse analysis (subject positioning analysis), and semantic analysis, are introduced by means of analyzed extracts from a Tom Andersen consultation session with a couple in distress and their therapist. We conclude with implications for the field. For Tom and Michael     

‘What Was I Thinking?!’ Rhetorical Questions as a Technique to Identify and Explore Impasses in Therapy

Rhetorical questions emerging spontaneously in consultations can be used as a tool for developing self‐reflexivity and exploring the therapeutic alliance in the process of therapy with couples and families. This paper presents a technique based on the enunciation of rhetorical questions, which can point to an impasse in the process of therapy and contain a key to its resolution. The technique focuses on the distinctive feature of rhetorical questions as convening a paradoxical injunction: a question not intended as a question, while uttered as such. The technique in four steps is illustrated by examples from therapy, supervision, consultation, and self‐supervision. Its focus is the interlink between the therapeutic relationship and the process of therapy and it is informed by a second‐order cybernetics approach, dialogical practice, and the systemic literature on emotion. The technique can help develop curiosity in working with families, lead to unforeseen developments, and touch on prejudices not made explicit in previous therapeutic encounters. Whether we are acting as supervisors, therapists, or clients, the creation of a ‘secure enough’ context for rhetorical questions becomes critical to allow freeform exploration.     

Love in Times of Cholera: Systemic Reflections on Supporting Families Through the Journey(s) of Illness

This paper is the result of our increasing interest in the experience of illness in families and the concomitant reflections on how best to therapeutically support these families through this process. This interest led us to reflect on the nuanced way in which language establishes a play with the experience of illness, a play that can amplify or reduce its effects. Such an interplay in turn led us to consider the valuable role that family therapists have in helping families and treating practitioners to create a safe space for conversation about illness. Further questions are also explored in relation to whether there is a role for family therapists in facilitating the interface between our clinical practice with clients and the wider treating medical community. And, if so, what shape would such an interface take? Considerations at this level would include the anticipation of psychological reactions to diagnosis of chronic and life‐threatening illnesses, in particular the importance of ‘normalisation’ of the psychological reactions to such chronic and/or life threatening diagnoses; the complex dynamics emerging from the interface between the effects of illness in the subjectivity of the ill person and the grief experienced by the other family members; different family members’ narratives of the illness; relevant community contexts; and, lastly, ways to help the family members and/or the ill person navigate the medical system including the use of second opinions, cyberspace information, and other systems in their ecology, such as the spiritual dimension. Some aspects of children's narratives of illness are also identified. The paper has been organised around the dialogue that the authors had around one of their clinical cases.     

Ventriloquism,racism and the politics of decoloniality in Ecuador

ABSTRACT

This article discusses two forms of discrimination against indigenous people: ventriloquism and open racism, and argues that a transition from paternalism to open intolerance has taken place in Ecuador in the context of governmental emphasis on natural resource extraction. Ventriloquism, when non-Indians speak for indigenous people, is analysed through the Sumak Kawsay (Good Living) policies of the government of Rafael Correa (2007–2017). Public racism is examined by looking at government repression against indigenous leaders and communities and Presidential speeches. The article concludes that the state’s ventriloquist and racist discourses and practices are equally rooted in the country’s colonial past. These findings are contrasted with the writings of scholars that have called the government of Mr. Correa decolonizing. The article examines the ways in which decolonial theorists informed and promoted the policies of this regime, and argues that decolonial scholars have been insufficiently self-critical and reflective of their own complicity with the state’s repressive project vis-à-vis indigenous communities.     

On the relationship between compliance with recommendations on the audit committee of codes of good practices and financial reporting quality

Codes of good practices provide a soft alternative to the hard legislation approach to corporate governance. These codes include a set of recommendations that companies are expected to follow in order to enhance governance structures and practices. Some of these recommendations specifically aim to improve the effectiveness of the audit committee. We investigate the relationship between the level of compliance with recommendations on the audit committee of the Spanish Unified Code and financial reporting quality, as measured by discretionary accruals and by the opinion of the audit report. We use a sample of companies listed in the Spanish stock market for the years between 2007 and 2013. Results show a strong and positive relationship between the level of compliance with recommendations and the quality of financial reporting. We also report significant results for some specific recommendations. These results are robust to various checks. Therefore, the level of compliance with recommendations on the audit committee might provide a feasible and reliable indicator of the quality of financial reports released by the company.     

International coopetition for innovation: Are the benefits worth the challenges?

International coopetition has rarely been studied in relation to innovation. Further exploration of effects of international coopetition, i.e. the pursuit of simultaneous cooperation and competition, on a firm’s innovation performance is especially important as such a relationship is challenging with a high propensity to fail. This observation formed the point of departure for this study, which aims to increase the understanding of the effects of international coopetition on firm innovativeness and how these effects are conditioned on the magnitude of the organizational adjustments a firm introduces. We use an unbalanced panel of 9839 firms that participated in four waves of the Swedish Community Innovation Survey between 2008 and 2014 as our empirical base. We illustrate that firms that cooperate with competitors internationally are more likely to exhibit higher propensity to introduce radical innovations, yet this effect is conditioned upon the magnitude of organizational adjustments. Overall, our study contributes to the understanding of the implications of international coopetition and what a firm needs to benefit from it.     

“I'm Not Supporting His Kids”: Nonresident Fathers' Contributions Given Mothers' New Fertility

The authors examined whether nonresident fathers provide informal support to their children and whether support stops if their ex‐partner goes on to have a child with a new man. A logistic regression analysis of longitudinal survey and administrative data for 434 women who received welfare in Wisconsin showed that fathers are less likely to provide informal support when their ex‐partner has a child with a new partner. Alternative models that control for unobserved characteristics suggest somewhat different results, providing stronger evidence of declines in support that can be shared across family members than in support that can be directed to a particular child.     

Negotiating Languages in Immigrant Families

This study is about the multifaceted nature of language use in immigrant families. Following earlier explorations of language in the segmented assimilation framework and using adolescent and parental data from the 1995 wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, this article examines how adolescents’ use of English with their parents relates to their proficiency in English and ethnic languages, and their personal language preferences, as well as their parents’ language proficiency and use. The findings suggested that adolescent language choice in child–parent interactions reflected the family’s ways to negotiate the distinct linguistic repertoires of immigrant parents and their children. The adolescent use of English was not necessarily associated with social and emotional estrangement between generations. Even when adolescents generally preferred English, they were less likely to use English in child–parent interactions if their parents, particularly their mothers, were less proficient in English. On the other hand, adolescents were more likely to speak English to their parents if their mothers were proficient in English, regardless of what language parents used with the children. Parents who spoke to their children in English likely responded to their children’s doubts about their ethnic language proficiency and were linguistically and emotionally ready to make that transition.