Foster fathers performing gender: the negotiation and reproduction of parenting roles in families who foster

ABSTRACT

Foster care research and social work practice tend to focus on how women look after children living in foster care. This focus has limited our understanding of what it is that men do within foster caring families and they are automatically assigned secondary or breadwinning roles. Families who foster involve some form of renegotiation of roles to care for children they foster. While foster caring arrangements are internationally diverse, foster carers often work with social workers. It would therefore seem important for social workers to understand how foster carers negotiate their parenting roles. This paper reports findings from seven main caring foster-fathers who took part in a wider study involving twentythree foster-fathers. The evidence provided by these foster-fathers demonstrate they are highly motivated to care for children and, alongside delivering traditional parenting roles, they negotiate new, non-traditional parenting roles as foster-fathers. These new roles, taken on by foster-fathers, often challenge stereotyped masculinity while they also concurrently enact parenting norms. This study applied Judith Butler’s work on performing gender to foster caring families to theorise on the process whereby foster-fathers negotiate diverse masculinities and continue to reproduce gendered relations in foster caring families.     

Urban Poverty,Ethnicity, and Personality Development

There are multiple factors which contribute to the development of the individual’s personality. Many of these factors have been amply discussed in traditional theories of personality Jonnation. An area that has been neglected in these discussions has been the role that poverty and ethnic and cultural factors may have in this regard. This paper offers a discussion of these issues with special emphasis on cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic factors which tend to characterize the lives of Latino and Black individuals. Recommendations are made for a re-evaluation of the traditional theories of personality when applied to poor and minority individuals.     

Male Juveniles with Sexual Behavior Problems: Are There Differences Among Racial Groups?

This study used archival data on a sample of 186,492 referrals from a southwestern state Juvenile Probation Commission to compare the characteristics of 5,439 male Black, Hispanic, and White juveniles with sexual behavior problems on the five most common sexual offenses in the data set. The characteristics of 181,053 juveniles of the three races without sexual behavior problems were also compared on the basis of the seven most common nonsexual offenses. The bases of comparison were the seven variables: reported incidence of sexual offenses, the primary caregivers or living arrangements, age, suspected sexual abuse, suspected emotional abuse, suspected physical abuse, and special education status, on which racial differences were found. Prevention and treatment implications of findings are discussed.     

Values,Morals, and Religion in the Social Studies

Methods for facilitating students' standards-based consumer literacy are addressed via the use of problem solving with food and product labels. Fifth graders will be able to: (1) provide detailed analysis of food and product labels; (2) understand large themes, including production, distribution, and consumption; and (3) explore consumer decision-making skills.     

Financial Abuse of Older People by Family Members: Views and Experiences of Older Australians and their Family Members

Abstract

Risk assessment in child protection services has been promoted as the most reliable way to ensure that maltreatment to children is prevented and has become central to practice with children and families. However, recent research in Australia has suggested that children are being left in unsafe situations, leading to further maltreatment, by the very agencies responsible for their protection. The present article explores the reasons why child protection has become central to child protection practice and presents a wide ranging critical appraisal of risk assessment and its application. It is argued that risk assessment is a flawed process and, as a central tenet of practice, is implicated in any problems that children's protective services face. Consequently, any future reconfiguration of services for children in need of protection needs to include a re-evaluation of the efficacy of risk assessment.     

Young People Transitioning from Out-of-Home Care: A Critical Analysis of Australian and International Policy and Practice

Abstract

Young people transitioning from out-of-home care comprise arguably one of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in society. They experience multiple disadvantages resulting from their abuse or neglect prior to entering care, their often negative experiences in care, and the lack of support provided to them as they transition from care. Compared to most young people, they face particular difficulties in accessing educational, employment, housing, and other developmental and transitional opportunities. This paper critically analyses the pathways taken by care leavers, and the Australian and international policy and practice responses. We conclude by suggesting some policy and program reforms that are likely to lead to improved outcomes for care leavers.     

Cultures of sleep: organization and the lure of dormancy

Sleep occupies us for around a third of our lives. Yet traditionally considered a period of respite and recuperation from the demands of work and its organization, little attention has been paid to the status of sleep from the perspective of management and organization studies. This article seeks to address this particular absence and, in doing so, attempts to contextualize both a growing cultural fascination with sleep as well as a more general strategy to reconstitute the dormant body as a site of organization and managerial intervention. In doing so, the article will look to contribute to the field in such a way as to raise the question of sleep as both an embodied and a culturally negotiated practice, and to consider its significance for the study of processes of social and organizational reproduction.