Dads Tuning in to Kids: A randomized controlled trial of an emotion socialization parenting program for fathers

Fathers play an important role in shaping their children’s emotional competence although most literature has focused on the influence of mothers. Dads Tuning in to Kids (Dads TIK) is a parenting program that teaches fathers to coach their children in learning about emotions, while also helping fathers increase awareness and regulation of their own emotions. A randomized controlled efficacy trial of Dads TIK was conducted with a community sample of 162 fathers of a 4‐year‐old child attending preschool in Melbourne, Australia. Those allocated to the intervention attended a seven‐session manualized group program. Questionnaires were completed by fathers, the fathers’ partners and the children’s teachers at baseline and 6‐month follow‐up. Results were that fathers in the intervention condition but not control condition reported significant increases in emotion socialization, parenting satisfaction and efficacy, and reductions in their children’s difficult behaviors. Partners of fathers in the intervention condition reported reductions in their own emotion dismissing parenting and improvements in psychological well‐being. Partners and teachers reported significant improvements in children’s behavior across both intervention and control conditions. These findings suggest a father‐focused program appears to lead to changes in fathers’ emotion socialization skills that may have benefits for partners’ functioning and children’s behavior.     

Longitudinal Associations Between Other‐Sex Friendships and Substance Use in Adolescence

The impact of the changes in the gender composition of friendship networks during early adolescence on substance use in late adolescence was examined. The hypothesis was that initial level and increase in the proportion of other‐sex friends in the network would be associated with higher levels of substance use among girls, but not among boys. Girls and boys (n=390) were interviewed annually from ages 12 to 18 (79% retention). For both boys and girls, initial level in the proportion of other‐sex friends predicted alcohol use in late adolescence, whereas it was predictive of drug use in girls only. Moreover, for girls only, a faster increase in the proportion of other‐sex friends in the network predicted later use of alcohol and drugs.     

‘What Does Donor Mean to a Four‐Year‐Old?’: Initial Insights into Young Children's Perspectives in Solo Mother Families

This study reports on the questions, thoughts and feelings of children aged 4–9 conceived by donor insemination to single mothers. Fifty‐one mothers and 47 children from the same families were each administered a semi‐structured interview. Mothers generally reported that while children either lack understanding, or have not yet been told, about their donor conception, they may be thinking and talking about the absence of a father. Most children did not mention either donor conception or father absence and reported positive feelings about their families and friendships. Possible explanations for the discrepancy between mothers’ and children's reports are discussed.     

'When you're trying something on you picture yourself in a place where they are playing this kind of music'– musically sponsored agency in the British clothing retail sector

Despite the philosophical tradition from Plato onward, sociologists have not yet explored in full music's role as an active ingredient in social formation. This project has been left to environmental psychologists and market researchers who are more interested in 'what' music can cause than in exploring its mechanisms of operation and the implications of these mechanisms for the constitution of social agency. This paper draws upon ethnographic research in and around High Street retail outlets to examine music's role in shaping consumer agency – in-store conduct, purchase behaviour subjectivity, identity. Exploring music in this way illuminates the interface of material culture, social action and subjectivity. Music is used by retailers to signal target clientele and brand image and to structure the temporal dimensions of the retail to environment over the day, week and year. It is also used to structure in-store conduct. It is more important in relation to younger shoppers and to 'browsers'. Some stores rely upon unacknowledged skill of sales assistants, who often act as ambassador users of store products, to make and implement local music policies. Music provides contextualization cues that may structure in-store subjectivity and clients' orientations to themselves as consumers and to goods on display. The heightened degree of aesthetic reflexivity exhibited by younger shoppers may be part of a transformation of the processes in and through which agency is produced and reproduced, one that is linked to an ascendancy of commercial control over agency's constitution.