Older siblings and adolescent risky behavior: does parenting play a role?

Children with older siblings are more likely to engage in risky behavior than their firstborn counterparts. Although the relationship between birth order and risky behavior may reflect the influence of older siblings, it is also possible that parents supervise later-born children less than firstborns. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we examine whether the association between birth order and risky adolescent behavior is driven by differences in the level of parental supervision. Firstborns are supervised more than their later-born siblings, but this difference does not explain the relationship between having an older sibling and risky behavior.     

Indigenous family life in Australia: A history of difference and deficit

Indigenous family life has been a key target of family and child policies in Australia since colonisation. In this paper, we identify four main policy eras that have shaped the national and state policy frameworks that have impacted Indigenous families: the protectionism, assimilation, self-determination and neoliberalism eras. Our analysis of these national and state policy frameworks reveals an enduring and negative conceptualisation of Indigenous family life. This conceptualisation continues to position Indigenous families as deficient and dysfunctional compared with a white, Anglo-Australian family ideal. This contributes to the reproduction of paternalistic policy settings and the racialised hierarchies within them that entrench Indigenous disempowerment and reproduce Indigenous disadvantage. Further, it maintains a deficit paradigm that continues to obfuscate the positive aspects of Indigenous family life that are protective of Indigenous well-being.     

Career Adaptability,Resilience, and Life Satisfaction Among Italian and Belgian Middle School Students

Youth need help with planning their future, developing positive life trajectories, and coping with socioeconomic conditions. Using a life design approach, we analyzed the relationship between career adaptability, resilience, and life satisfaction among Belgian (N = 158) and Italian (N = 158) middle school students. We hypothesized that career adaptability, directly and indirectly via resilience, would predict life satisfaction. Furthermore, we predicted that the conceptual model would be comparable between countries. Each participant completed self-report measures to assess career adaptability, resilience, and life satisfaction. The results obtained using a two-step approach to structural equation modeling suggest that career adaptability is directly and indirectly, through resilience, related to students' life satisfaction in both Italian and Belgian students. These results have important implications for supporting middle school students in their life design process.     

Adolescents’ Evaluations of Political Leaders: The Case of President Donald Trump

The current study explored youths’ views of President Donald Trump using quantitative ratings and open‐ended responses from a diverse sample of 1,432 U.S. adolescents from three geographic regions. Adolescent demographic characteristics (i.e., gender, race, geographic location) were systematically associated with their views about Trump. Open‐ended responses demonstrated substantial variability in youths’ rationales for approving or disapproving of the president. Adolescents' attitudes were informed by knowledge of the president’s leadership attributes, political views and policies, and their own experiences. Findings indicate that adolescents draw upon and synthesize a broad range of information when formulating their political views and coordinate this knowledge with their own opinions and experiences when evaluating political figures.     

Sexual Orientation–Based Depression and Suicidality Health Disparities: The Protective Role of School‐Based Health Centers

This study's purpose was to examine whether school‐based health centers (SBHCs) support mental health indicators among sexual minority youth (SMY). Data came from the 2015 Oregon Healthy Teens Survey with 13,608 11th graders in 137 public high schools in Oregon. Regression results revealed significant SBHC by SMY status interactions indicating relative reductions in likelihood of depressive episodes (30%), suicidal ideation (34%), and suicide attempts (43%) among SMY in schools with SBHCs. SMY students in SBHC schools reported lower likelihood of a past‐year depressive episode, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempt versus those attending non‐SBHC schools. Conversely, no differences in these outcomes were observed for non‐SMY by SBHC status. SBHCs may help reduce mental health disparities among SMY, a marginalized, underserved population.     

Infants’ response to a mobile phone modified still‐face paradigm: Links to maternal behaviors and beliefs regarding technoference

Interruptions to parent–child interactions due to technology, or “technoference,” have been correlated with a host of negative child developmental outcomes. Yet, the influence of technoference on parent–infant interactions and infant behaviors has received less attention and more experimental work is warranted. For this study, parent–infant dyads (n = 227) completed a modified still‐face paradigm (SFP) using a mobile phone during the still‐face phase. Infant responses were coded for positive and negative affect, object and parent orientation, self‐comforting, and escape behaviors during the task. Results showed a robust still‐face effect, with infants displaying increased negative affect, decreased positive affect, increased self‐comforting, object orientation, and escape behaviors during the “still‐face” or phone distracted phase of the paradigm and frequently failing to return to baseline during the reunion phase. Older infants (older than 9 months) likewise demonstrated higher levels of negative affect across all three phases of the paradigm relative to younger infants (less than 9 months). Parent reports of technoference behavior were related to increased object orientation for younger infants. Parental technoference behaviors were also linked to more escape behaviors for younger infants and decreased object orientation in older infants during the still‐face portion of the SFP. Higher levels of technoference also appear to attenuate the negative emotional response of infants during still face. Results are discussed in relation to infants’ increasing exposure to digital technology in the context of early relationships.     

What Are Strategies to Advance Policies Supporting Family Caregivers? Promising Approaches From a Statewide Task Force

Family caregivers are the cornerstone of the long-term supports and services infrastructure in the United States, yet they often contend with many challenges related to this role. Public policy has been slow to change, leaving many caregivers vulnerable to health and economic consequences. Using models of policy making, we identify barriers to advancing policies that support family caregivers and overcome policy drift. We draw on discussions from the California Task Force on Family Caregiving as it prepares state policy recommendations. Identified strategies include identification of caregivers in health care and workplace settings to promote political consciousness raising, collecting and reporting on data that frame caregiving as a policy problem, borrowing policies and language from overlapping fields to emulate their policy successes, and presenting supportive caregiver policies as solutions to other policy problems. By presenting specific strategic approaches to advance caregiving policies, we provide tools to address the growing gap between caregiver needs and policy responses.     

“I Was There for the Free Food”: Accidental Conversions in College

How and why do some college students have conversion experiences, while others do not? To answer this question, we inductively analyzed in‐depth interviews with 30 students at a residential college in the southeast who had varying conversion experiences: some never began a conversion (n = 16), some started toward conversion but ultimately did not convert (n = 4), and some completed a religious (n = 5) or nonreligious conversion (n = 5). We conceptualize conversion as socialization into new beliefs and practices, as evidenced by reorganizing daily behaviors. We extend conversion to experiences not generally understood as such. We find religious and nonreligious conversions follow the same process during college, facilitated by student organizations, demonstrating that religious conversions are not a unique transformation. Furthermore, we find that organizational context matters in conversion processes: the structural context of college allows some students, who share biographical ability, a desire to make new friends, and openness to new groups, to unintentionally join student organizations that seek to change their daily practices and worldviews. However, many students face constrained choices or structural barriers that prevent the conversion from being completed. Our research has important implications for conceptualizing conversion and for understanding the role of organizational context in conversions.     

“Strivers”, “doers”, and “seekers”: Social workers and their commitment to the job

Amid considerable interest in the experiences of early career professionals in social work in England and internationally, and the relationship between these and retention and progression, this article reports on the findings of one element of a larger evaluation. It reports the findings and analysis of interviews with 42 relative newcomers to social work, some 3 years following qualification, focusing on their current career orientations, and how these appear to affect their future intentions. We identified three distinct groups, designated as “strivers,” “doers,” and “seekers.” Each of these groups demonstrated a different kind and level of commitment to their social work role and identity: Strivers were oriented towards career progression and taking on senior roles; doers were committed practitioners who saw themselves as continuing in front line service delivery for the foreseeable future; and seekers, although still committed to social work in principle, tended to be more unsure about their future place in the profession. This typology appears to be reasonably robust on the basis of our investigation and has implications for career planning and supervision of social work professionals, especially at the early stages of their careers.     

‘Broad consensus across the divide’: rhetorical constructions of climate change in mainstream news media

The links between science and policy are navigated prominently in the media. The internet provides a forum for discussion of climate change, allowing lay people to enter the debate. In this paper, rhetorical analysis was used to analyse online news articles and comments from the public following two major climate-related decisions in New Zealand. This analysis demonstrates how arguments regarding climate change are built and defended. Identifying strategies invoked by those that occupy a majority or minority position within public discourse on climate change reveals how such arguments take on rhetorical force, providing the basis for establishing claims and counter-arguments. Understanding the rhetorical constructions of such positions can reveal why particular arguments might gain power, opening the way for a more knowledgeable and informed positioning of individuals, organisations, and scientific knowledge to emerge in public debates on climate change.