Judgments regarding parental alienation when parental hostility or child sexual abuse is alleged

Abstract

Allegations of Parental Alienation (PA), the systematic disparaging of one parent by the other parent aimed at alienating their child’s affections, as a basis for child custody decisions are highly controversial. Claims of parental hostility or allegations of child sexual abuse in custody cases may trigger concerns about PA. Family court professionals (N?=?280) rated young children’s accuracy of report (e.g., suggestibility, honesty) in general and also read three custody scenarios varying as to whether or not they included allegations of parental hostility or child sexual abuse, or no such allegations. For each scenario, the alleged alienating parent’s gender was experimentally varied between subjects. Participants rated the likelihood that each case involved PA. For the scenario that included allegations of child sexual abuse, professionals who viewed young children as more inaccurate reporters or who read about the mother (rather than a father) as the alleged alienator were more likely to rate the scenario as involving PA. For the scenario that described parental hostility but no child sexual abuse allegations, professionals who were older or female were more likely to judge the scenario as involving parental alienation when a mother (rather than a father) was the alleged alienator, whereas there were no significant predictors of responses to the no-allegation scenarios. Findings are discussed in relation to the difficult task of evaluating custody cases for PA when parental hostility or child sexual abuse is alleged.     

The labour division of Italian couples after a birth: assessing the effect of unobserved heterogeneity

The results of previous studies on the effect of childbearing on both parents’ paid and unpaid work suffer from the difficulty related to the specification of latent variables that influence the relationship between reproductive behaviour of the couple and working activity. The aim of this study is to estimate the effect of transition to parenthood on the partners’ division of labour by accounting for latent variables, such as the bargaining process between partners and endogenous fertility decisions. In particular, this is the first time that our specific estimation strategy has been applied to determine the impact of childbearing on the division of household labour between partners taking into account the reverse causality effect between labour and fertility decisions. We use longitudinal data on married or cohabiting Italian couples provided by the Italian panel survey of the Generation and Gender Program. Our results are consistent with previous studies, and show that the birth of a child affects a woman’s unpaid labour strongly and positively and her paid labour negatively, while men’s work is mostly unaffected. Moreover, when partners hold traditional attitudes regarding gender roles and the family, the female partner is even more strongly affected by childbearing in terms of total amount of labour (paid plus unpaid). However, our sensitivity analysis shows that these results appear only when our correction strategy for the misspecification of latent variables is applied.

     

Highly‐skilled Migration from China and India to Canada and the United States

Using publicly available data, this article aims to understand how immigration policies in Canada and the United States have affected the flow and utilization of highly‐skilled migrants from China and India. Reviewing existing literature on the policies about, and utilization of, human capital among highly‐skilled migrants, and describing the policy contexts in both receiving countries, we present detailed empirical evidence to show that in spite of their higher education attainment than the general population and the total foreign‐born population, China‐ and India‐born migrants are not immune from the brain waste phenomenon. This is especially so among the India‐born. We end the article with policy implications for both countries.     

The management of participatory cultural initiatives: learning from the discourse on intellectual capital

Based on previous research that highlights some gaps in the study of the new phenomena of Participatory Cultural Initiatives (PCIs), this paper addresses the need to understand how the relevance of those initiatives is perceived, tentatively measured and communicated to strategic stakeholders. With this, we want to investigate a possible contribution of the discourse on Intellectual Capital (IC) and Intangible Assets for the cultural sector in general and PCIs in detail. The IC perspective is adopted as a boundary object to analyse the key actors’ behaviours concerning PCIs, following a performative approach. In doing so, this field research applies a case study method of analysis by investigating two PCIs in Italy: Big City Life, a street art district in Tor Marancia (Rome) and the project of Matera as European Capital of Culture 2019. Data have been gathered through both primary (interviews) and secondary (official documents, social media, websites and press releases) sources of evidence. The analysis is mainly developed at a micro (single organisation) and meso (district/city) level. Given the originality of the topic whose research is still at an infancy stage and without a well-grounded theory, we seek to gain significant insights into this new issue by applying an exploratory approach. Through the IC lens, it is possible to gain a better understanding of how the PCIs’ impact is assessed and communicated to its stakeholders. Evidence shows that narratives and visualisations play a crucial role by supporting comprehension of the PCIs’ key aspects and their interwoven relations. A condition for narratives and visualisations to be accepted as legitimation tools is the development of a trust relationship among stakeholders. As a result, the impact of PCIs has dimensions and interwoven aspects which are not amenable for traditional performance measures. In summary, it is possible to state that PCIs trigger a focus on talking and showing to understand, instead of a focus on measuring to understand. The paper discusses how the understanding and management of PCIs can improve with lessons learnt from the discourse on IC and with reference to Habermas’ theory of communicative action. Primarily, we focus on the use of narrative and visual representations by key actors to communicate with strategic stakeholders to gain trust and legitimation.

     

A Note on the Prior Distributions of Weibull Parameters for the Reliability Function

In Bayesian Inference it is often desirable to have a posterior density reflecting mainly the information from sample data. To achieve this purpose it is important to employ prior densities which add little information to the sample. We have in the literature many such prior densities, for example, Jeffreys (1967 Jeffreys , H. ( 1967 ). Theory of Probability , 3rd rev. ed. . London : Oxford University Press . [Google Scholar]), Lindley (1956 Lindley , D. V. ( 1956 ). On a measure of the information provided by an experiment . Ann. Mathemat. Statist. 27 : 986 – 1005 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]); (1961 Lindley , D. V. ( 1961 ). The use of prior probability distributions in statistical inference and decisions . In: Neyman , J. , ed. Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability . Vol. 1. Berkeley : University of California Press , pp. 453 – 468 . [Google Scholar]), Hartigan (1964 Hartigan , J. ( 1964 ). Invariant priors distributions . Ann. Mathemat. Statist. 35 : 836 – 845 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Bernardo (1979 Bernardo , J. M. ( 1979 ). Reference posterior distributions for Bayesian inference . J. Roy. Statist. Soc. 41 ( 2 ): 113 – 147 . [Google Scholar]), Zellner (1984 Zellner , A. ( 1984 ). Maximal Data Information Prior Distributions, Basic Issues in Econometrics . Chicago : University of Chicago Press . [Google Scholar]), Tibshirani (1989 Tibshirani , R. ( 1989 ). Noninformative priors for one parameters of many . Biometrika 76 : 604 – 608 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), etc. In the present article, we compare the posterior densities of the reliability function by using Jeffreys, the maximal data information (Zellner, 1984 Zellner , A. ( 1984 ). Maximal Data Information Prior Distributions, Basic Issues in Econometrics . Chicago : University of Chicago Press . [Google Scholar]), Tibshirani's, and reference priors for the reliability function R(t) in a Weibull distribution.     

The Wild Bootstrap for Multilevel Models

In this paper, we study the performance of the most popular bootstrap schemes for multilevel data. Also, we propose a modified version of the wild bootstrap procedure for hierarchical data structures. The wild bootstrap does not require homoscedasticity or assumptions on the distribution of the error processes. Hence, it is a valuable tool for robust inference in a multilevel framework. We assess the finite size performances of the schemes through a Monte Carlo study. The results show that for big sample sizes it always pays off to adopt an agnostic approach as the wild bootstrap outperforms other techniques.     

Dynamic model-based clustering for spatio-temporal data

In many research fields, scientific questions are investigated by analyzing data collected over space and time, usually at fixed spatial locations and time steps and resulting in geo-referenced time series. In this context, it is of interest to identify potential partitions of the space and study their evolution over time. A finite space-time mixture model is proposed to identify level-based clusters in spatio-temporal data and study their temporal evolution along the time frame. We anticipate space-time dependence by introducing spatio-temporally varying mixing weights to allocate observations at nearby locations and consecutive time points with similar cluster’s membership probabilities. As a result, a clustering varying over time and space is accomplished. Conditionally on the cluster’s membership, a state-space model is deployed to describe the temporal evolution of the sites belonging to each group. Fully posterior inference is provided under a Bayesian framework through Monte Carlo Markov chain algorithms. Also, a strategy to select the suitable number of clusters based upon the posterior temporal patterns of the clusters is offered. We evaluate our approach through simulation experiments, and we illustrate using air quality data collected across Europe from 2001 to 2012, showing the benefit of borrowing strength of information across space and time.     

The Making of a Narcissist

In discussing the etiology of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, faulty parenting or disturbed object relations is a common causal theme in most writings. However, the question remains as to its specificity. In this author's experience, faulty parenting is ubiquitous in all psychological disturbance. This paper postulates that the specific fault lies in the caretaker's failure to provide optimal frustrating experiences necessary to enable the child to develop a more realistic self-image. Clinical case examples reveal some common personality characteristics in the parents and parenting styles conducive to the child's development of a narcissistic disorder. A brief, informal comparison is made between these cases and over 100 other cases of poor, welfare children who were seen in psychoanalytic treatment by this author.     

Beyond Division: Convergences Between Postmodern Qualitative Research and Family Therapy

Starting from examples of postmodern research and therapeutic practice, we raise the question on the role of the research-therapy dichotomy within these approaches. The article aims to show the profound convergence between postmodern ethnographic research and constructionist, collaborative therapeutic approaches on a double, epistemological and practice level. First, we point out their converging development toward narrative and constructionist epistemologies. Second, an inquiry into the core features of these disciplinary activities' goal, process, and expert role reveals their profound convergence into a dialogical practice in which the boundaries between research and therapy are radically transgressed. We conclude by questioning the implications and acceptability of this convergence for researchers' and therapists' understanding of their practices.     

Bootstrap inference in local polynomial regression of time series

In this paper we consider the inferential aspect of the nonparametric estimation of a conditional function , where X _t,m represents the vector containing the m conditioning lagged values of the series. Here is an arbitrary measurable function. The local polynomial estimator of order p is used for the estimation of the function g, and of its partial derivatives up to a total order p. We consider α-mixing processes, and we propose the use of a particular resampling method, the local polynomial bootstrap, for the approximation of the sampling distribution of the estimator. After analyzing the consistency of the proposed method, we present a simulation study which gives evidence of its finite sample behaviour.