Self-enhancement of Peer Acceptance: Implications for Children's Self-worth and Interpersonal Functioning

Changes in feelings of self‐worth and peer acceptance associated with self‐enhancing perceptions of their peer acceptance were examined for a normative sample and for a group of peer‐rejected children. Whether the correlates of self‐enhancement differed as a function of the way in which perceptions were assessed (i.e., general versus specific measures of self‐enhancement) or by the degree of enhancement were also studied. Using a longitudinal design, 670 students in grades 3 through 5 were assessed across an academic year. For the normative sample, general self‐enhancement of peer acceptance was associated with positive outcomes; specific self‐enhancement of peer acceptance was unrelated to changes in outcomes. Both general and specific self‐enhancement scores were associated with gains in one or more outcome measures in the rejected group. No support was found for the hypothesis that mild to moderate self‐enhancement is predictive of adjustment whereas extreme self‐enhancement is related to maladjustment.     

Temporal Discrimination and Parents with Learning Difficulties in the Child Protection System

This article shows how time works against parents with learningdifficulties in the child protection system and Children Actproceedings. The prevailing wisdom, embedded in policy and theliterature, is that delay in care cases is bad for the childand may jeopardize his or her future. This paper shows how thepressure to avoid delay might itself be harming some families,especially parents with learning difficulties. Drawing on interviewswith social work practitioners undertaken as part of a largerstudy, the authors describe the various forms of temporal discriminationthat impact on this group of disabled parents. They concludethat procedural time limits make it harder for parents withlearning difficulties to meet the standards and expectationsenforced by Children’s Services and the courts.     

Bolstering an Illusory Majority: The Effects of the Media's Portrayal of Death Penalty Support

Objective . Researchers have found a distinct difference between expressed support for the death penalty (which garners a majority of Americans) and expressed preference for the death penalty over other sentences (which attracts only a minority). Despite the strength of this finding in academic circles, the media tend to cover the death penalty as if it were indisputably favored by a majority of Americans. This article tests the effect of this disparity in coverage. Methods . Using an experimental design, respondents were placed in three groups: Condition 1 read a typical media portrayal depicting widespread support for the death penalty, Condition 2 read a realistic portrayal of the mix of preferences for the death penalty and an alternative sentence, and Condition 3 (the control group) read an article unrelated to the death penalty. Results . Compared to the control group and Condition 1, those who read a more realistic account of public opinion on the death penalty (Condition 2) were less supportive of capital punishment, more likely to think death penalty opponents would talk comfortably about their position, and believed the death penalty would become less prevalent in the future. Conclusions . These findings suggest that the unrealistic media portrayal of public opinion on the death penalty is bolstering a sense of inevitability about the issue.     

Child protection services and parental reactions to children's behaviour

A commonly used expression in child protection is the term 'physical abuse'. This paper consists of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a 100% sample of 'physical abuse' child protection cases drawn from research in an Australian state child welfare agency, which shows that about 90% of these concerned incidents in which parents used physical punishment to control children. Resulting physical harms to children (where they occurred) were generally of a very minor nature. The paper examines these results in the light of research findings in the UK and Australia on patterns of physical punishment used by parents to control children. Such findings suggest that those child rearing practices that make frequent and systematic use of physical punishment are located largely amongst lower social class parents, who believe that such practices are an essential and normal component of effective parenting behaviour. One interpretation of child protection services in respect of these cases is that they are concerned primarily with the normalization of child rearing practices. The paper concludes with a discussion of the limited impact of the Swedish anti-spanking law of 1979, which appears to have only reduced the use of physical punishment by those parents who may not necessarily have believed in such measures in the first place. However, legislation of this nature has the potential to criminalize a substantial sector of the population, but at least state intervention under the aegis of a specific criminal law provides a clearer mandate than does intervention under much looser, broader and subjectively interpreted child protection legislation.