Predictors of Use of Senior Centers by Elderly Chinese Immigrants in Canada

Abstract

This study examined the prevalence and predictors of use of senior centers by a random sample of 1,537 elderly Chinese immigrants in Canada. A service utilization model of Andersen and Newman (1973) was adopted as the theoretical framework to examine the predicting effects of predisposing, enabling, and need factors. The findings showed that 28.8% of the elderly Chinese immigrants reported using a senior center within the past year. Having a religion, living alone, having stronger Chinese ethnic identity and stronger social support were the significant predictors identified, as shown in the hierarchical logistic regression findings.     

Stabilise,balance and adjust—Framing the early years transitions of children whose parents work non-standard hours

This study examined talk by parents about the early years transitions of their children (n = 7) in the context of parental non-standard working hours and Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. Parents were interviewed at three time points: when their child was aged one, four, five or six years (a total of 21 interviews). The third interview was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article focuses on the children's ECEC transitions and the interpretative frames used by parents when talking about their work and childcare. The frames used by the parents to discuss the children's transitions were stabilising the children's lives, balancing between staying at home and attending ECEC and adjusting to norms and rules. The diversity of families' experiences and their children's transitions during the early years should be considered when developing family policy and ECEC services.     

Social care and migration policy in Australia: Emerging intersections?

Migrants are important both as providers and users of paid care services in Australia, yet migration has rarely featured in Australian strategies to grow and sustain the paid care workforce. Correspondingly, Australia is rarely mentioned in the international scholarship on care and migration that has burgeoned since the 1990s. This article shows the ways that service providers, consumer advocates, unions and scholars have begun to bring migration into debates about workforce growth in two of Australia's most significant areas of paid care: aged care and childcare. Drawing on submissions to national enquiries in both areas, we identify the actors who have sought to adjust Australia's migration settings to respond to growing demand for care, and explain the rationales – which differ between the sectors – underlying their advocacy for change.     

Attitudes towards childcare policies,policy feedback and path dependency: Czech Republic contrasted to Norway

This article explores the recent changes in mothers’ employment, childcare policies and attitudes towards gender equality in the labour market, in the Czech Republic and Norway, how these factors interact and what impact they have on the provision of childcare. Analysis suggests that there is convergence of the Czech Republic with Norway in terms of female employment, but divergence in childcare policies. The policy feedback – the mutual interrelatedness of attitudes towards mothers’ employment and childcare policies – has shaped refamilialising policies in the Czech Republic, whereas in Norway policies that support gender equality in work and family have emerged.     

Where’s dad? Exploring the low take-up of inclusive parenting policies in the UK

This research explores approaches to promoting gender equality in the workplace by highlighting barriers to take-up of statutory policies designed to increase fathers’ involvement in childcare. Specifically, the paper examines why take-up of Shared Parental Leave (SPL), designed to improve gender equality in the workplace and home, has been low in the UK. There is a dearth of academic literature in this area. Extant grey literature suggests financial barriers, maternal gatekeeping and the perceived effects of extended leave on fathers’ careers are key, but fails to explore other barriers, or the variations in take-up. We interviewed 70 men and women entitled to SPL to address these limitations. We identify new barriers, notably poor policy communication at an organizational level, perceived policy complexity and societal expectations around maternal identities, while also showing how these barriers affect different groups of parents. We find professional couples are most likely to take SPL, particularly where the mother earns more or the father’s company enhances Shared Parental Pay. The complex, multiple barriers parents face also differ, according to the couple’s educational background and the workplace culture. Finally, we offer recommendations for increasing SPL take-up and driving workplace gender equality in the UK and internationally.     

Senior Centers

Abstract

This article explores the degree of influence of the racial and linguistic characteristics of staff and the availability of culturally diverse programs on the level of minority elder participation in senior centers. Two hundred twenty senior centers, recreation clubs, nutrition sites, and local Area Agencies of Aging in New York State were surveyed and comprise the study population. The impact of factors such as the racial/ethnic backgrounds of the senior center staff, linguistic abilities of the staff/administrators, and the availability of culturally specific programs on the level of participation among non-Caucasian elderly were evaluated. The study found that increasing the representation of minority staff and diverse programming, increases the level of participation of minority elders in senior centers. These findings provide the framework for recommendations to increase the representation of non-Caucasian staff in senior centers. Doing so will lead to a greater diversity of senior center consumers and allow senior centers to reach out to traditionally under-served populations.     

Reactive Temperament and Sensitivity to Context in Childcare

Consistent with Biological Sensitivity to Context and Differential Susceptibility hypotheses, this study found that children who, as infants, were more temperamentally reactive were more sensitive to the quality of childcare they experienced as toddlers, but not to the amount of childcare with peers they had experienced since birth. Children with both highly positively and negatively reactive temperaments were more socially integrated when care quality was higher and less integrated when care quality was lower compared with moderately reactive children. Reactive temperament was not found to moderate relations between care quality or care duration and internalizing or externalizing behavior problems. These findings support the need to consider individual differences among children in evaluating the impacts of childcare.     

Dis-integrated policy: welfare-to-work participants' experiences of integrating paid work and unpaid family work

Using a critical feminist theoretical lens, we followed 17 families for one year – as they attempted to make the transition from welfare to work – eliciting narrative accounts of their day-to-day lives. We used an institutional–ethnographic methodology to analyse the data. Our study shows that the juncture at which unpaid caring work and paid employment meet may be more difficult to negotiate for low-income lone-parent families than for coupled, middle-class employed families. Findings reveal that the unpaid work that happened on the edges of a paid work day, what we refer to as ‘the work outside the work’, took considerable time and energy for participants, making it difficult for them to procure and/or sustain employment. This was due to a number of factors including their limited access to economic and non-economic resources, and the complex nature of their lives, including struggles with day-to-day functioning and childcare arrangements. These challenges, combined with the realities of the low-income labour market made it difficult, if not impossible, for most participants to effectively integrate work and family. These findings suggest that the dis-integrated nature of welfare-to-work policies, which overlooks the actualities of low-income parents’ lives, limits families’ ability to become self-sufficient.     

Everybody’s Business? A Research Review of the Informal Safeguarding of Other People’s Children in the UK

The paper reviews public discourses and research on the safeguarding of other people’s children by adults at the neighbourhood level. There is much empirical evidence pointing to the existence of thriving informal communities of support and informal childcare for parents across the social classes. There appears to be less empirical evidence related to intervening with children and young people who may be at risk. Nonetheless, the limited evidence suggests that many neighbours, acquaintances and strangers do intervene, or say that they would. The paper concludes by considering the potential negative consequences of promoting the notion that safeguarding children is ‘everybody’s business’.     

Childcare and work – exploring the views of Finnish mothers and fathers

In this study, meanings given to childcare and work by parents were explored. The aim was to shed light on what factors parents consider when they decide who is going to stay at home. Four mothers and four fathers, all of whom had been both working and stay-at-home parents, were interviewed. The data were analyzed qualitatively. Parents believed in gender equality; however, the decision who stays at home was not based on gender. Cultural beliefs in the primacy of the mother could also be seen. Expectations of good mothering contradicted the ones related to the idea of a good working citizen causing mothers to feel guilty. The mothers said that staying at home was not something they needed to make a ‘conscious decision’ about, whereas the fathers described the process of decision-making as ‘employing their tactics.’ Love for the child and a wish to be with him were talked about by both genders. Work was seen as important and being a stay-at-home parent was temporary for both mothers and fathers. When deciding how the childcare would be arranged, most spouses had discussed the issue with each other and also with significant others.