Troubling the ‘Happy Family’: US Liberalism and Narratives of Transnational Adoption and Immigration from China

This essay connects adoption and immigration from China by considering the relationship between the adoptee and the Chinese nanny hired to care for her. I examine news media alongside Wendy Lee’s 2008 novel, Happy Family, which portrays the adoptive family through the perspective of a Fujianese immigrant domestic worker. Transnational adoption from China emerged in the early 1990s as undocumented immigration from the Fujian province rose, representing a major shift in Chinese immigration. These practices have been apprehended divergently in mainstream discourses. This essay approaches the family as a site of neoliberal privatization that frames adoption in terms of inclusion into US national ideologies of race, gender, and class, while undocumented immigration from China has been framed through exclusion. I argue that the nanny destabilizes the construction of the family as a space of depoliticized inclusion through her labor, revealing the neoliberal inequalities that shape both adoption and immigration.     

Performative family: homosexuality,marriage and intergenerational dynamics in China

Using in‐depth interview data on nominal marriages – legal marriages between a gay man and a lesbian to give the appearance of heterosexuality – this paper develops the concept of performative family to explain the processes through which parents and their adult children negotiate and resolve disagreements in relation to marriage decisions in post‐socialist China. We identify three mechanisms – network pressure, a revised discourse of filial piety and resource leverage – through which parents influence their gay offspring's decision to turn to nominal marriage. We also delineate six strategies, namely minimizing network participation, changing expectations, making partial concessions, drawing the line, delaying decisions and ending the marriage, by which gay people in nominal marriages attempt to meet parental expectations while simultaneously retaining a degree of autonomy. Through these interactions, we argue that Chinese parents and their gay adult children implicitly and explicitly collaborate to perform family, emphasizing the importance of formally meeting society's expectations about marriage rather than substantively yielding to its demands. We also argue that the performative family is a pragmatic response to the tension between the persistent centrality of family and marriage and the rising tide of individualism in post‐socialist China. We believe that our findings highlight the specific predicament of homosexual people. They also shed light on the more general dynamics of intergenerational negotiation because there is evidence that the mechanisms used by parents to exert influence may well be similar between gay and non‐gay people.     

The Revenge of History – The Institutional Roots of Post‐Communist Family Policy in the Czech Republic,Hungary and Poland

The authors combine historical and sociological institutional analysis to show that despite the political and socio‐economic transformation in 1990s, the institutional development during and before the communist era provides the best explanation for current childcare policies in Central Europe. While most authors have concentrated on policy changes that have taken place in the region since 1989, this article concentrates on the historical roots of these policies and shows that today's policies are highly influenced by a certain dynamics that had already emerged under communist rule. It shows that a historical institutional approach, which analyses the ‘gendered logic of appropriateness’ and policy legacies at various critical junctures, can explain why family policies in Central Europe had already begun to differ during the communist era, why these main differences continue and why even the changes that have taken place follow logically from historical‐institutional developments.     

Family identification facilitates coping with financial stress: A social identity approach to family financial resilience

Family financial stress research has typically examined negative effects of deprivation on mental health, which in turn erode financial coping. While this work acknowledges family support’s role in buffering these effects, it has typically overlooked how family identification can act to structure the experience of, and response to, economic challenge. We adopt a Social Identity approach, arguing that family identification predicts increased social support and improved well-being, which predicts more effective coping with financial problems. We explore this in two community surveys (N = 369; N = 187). In the first we show that stronger family identification and support predict better well-being, which predicts better evaluation of economic coping. In the second we replicate these findings, and also show that the relationship between well-being and financial distress is fully mediated by perceptions of ‘Collective Family Financial Efficacy’. These findings point to a more positive understanding of how family cohesion can promote mental well-being/resilience.     

How to Perform an Ethical Risk Analysis (eRA)

Ethical analysis is often needed in the preparation of policy decisions on risk. A three‐step method is proposed for performing an ethical risk analysis (eRA). In the first step, the people concerned are identified and categorized in terms of the distinct but compatible roles of being risk‐exposed, a beneficiary, or a decisionmaker. In the second step, a more detailed classification of roles and role combinations is performed, and ethically problematic role combinations are identified. In the third step, further ethical deliberation takes place, with an emphasis on individual risk‐benefit weighing, distributional analysis, rights analysis, and power analysis. Ethical issues pertaining to subsidiary risk roles, such as those of experts and journalists, are also treated in this phase. An eRA should supplement, not replace, a traditional risk analysis that puts emphasis on the probabilities and severities of undesirable events but does not cover ethical issues such as agency, interpersonal relationships, and justice.     

我国失独家庭现状及帮扶对策研究述评

当前,中国失独家庭的数量呈现快速增长的趋势,其引发的社会问题已引起政界、传媒界和学界的广泛关注。通过梳理国内学术界关于失独家庭现状、面临的困境及帮扶对策等相关研究,认为现阶段对于失独家庭帮扶对策分析中存在重经济而轻心理、强政策而缺方法等问题,提出在未来的对策实施中应该突出社会工作者的作用,用专业的方法打开失独者的心结。     

高校马克思主义中国化教育的家庭环境问题探论

家庭环境对高校马克思主义中国化教育的影响问题还没有引起学术界的关注,但新时期家庭环境已经客观地发挥着它越来越重要的作用。我们客观地总结了目前对马克思主义中国化教育家庭环境因素认识上的偏颇,分析了家庭环境影响力增强的原因和呈现的特征,探索了借助家庭环境改进高校马克思主义中国化教育的途径。     

萨提亚家庭治疗在高校心理咨询工作中的适用性

萨提亚家庭治疗模式具有以下一些特点,使得其在高校心理咨询工作中具有相当的适用性:辩证全面的系统观增加了学生改变的可能性;基本理念同中国传统文化相适应,易被接受;积极正向的导向符合高校育人目标;形式灵活多样方便开展工作。     

亲属法伦理本质的人性之维——由婚姻法司法解释（三）引发的思考

《婚姻法解释(三)》出台至今,备受争议,而对亲属法的定性及其深层阐释则是解决此问题的前提。亲属法的正当性问题体现为其定性问题。无论从"形式"与"实质"这一范畴还是从亲属法的正当性这一角度来进行思考和认定其定性问题,伦理本质都是对亲属法性质的当然回答。从历时性角度研究亲属法伦理本质的关键在于厘清人性是亲属法与其伦理的共同的、原初的出发点和对象。人性涵盖"人的动物性"和"人的特性"两重性,统摄人的生理需要和精神需要两层次,这些构造因素经由道德评价机制转化为婚姻家庭伦理,再同构化为亲属法规范。