Relatives in Residence: Relatedness of Household Members Drives Schooling Differentials in Mozambique

Children typically receive investments from their fathers, but absent fathers often invest at low levels. In a father's absence, what types of nonfathers invest heavily in children? This article investigates educational participation as a reflection of childhood investments on Ibo Island, Mozambique, where only one third of school‐aged children live with their biological fathers. Father‐present children generally attended school at the highest rates. Stepchildren and father‐absent relatives (e.g., grandchildren, nieces) attended school at comparably high rates if any coresiding children were father‐present. This may signal high altruism among present fathers toward some nonoffspring. Consistent with this result, a fixed effects model indicates that, within the same household, adult males invested equally in their own children, relatives, and stepchildren. Prejudicially lower investments were made in children who were unrelated to the household's adult males, however; this result has strong negative implications for the well‐being of African children fostered by nonrelatives.     

The Palestinian Family in Israel: Simultaneous Trends

In this article, I seek to present the spectrum of contemporary family structures in Palestinian society in Israel, focusing on those that emerge in various contexts of changes in education, employment and place of residence. To enable attention to the multiplicity of identities engendered by intersection of the positions of gender/class/nationality and to assess the family patterns that maintain them and are shaped by them, I evaluate relations between two concepts: Connectivity, as proposed by Joseph (1999) and translocational positionality conceived by Anthias (2008). The former relates to the development of a feminine identity that develops in a patriarchal gender context, while the latter refers to the constant negotiation that women conduct with the contexts of their sense of belonging and the manner in which they use various resources. Those concepts help determine whether the process that Palestinian in Israel have been undergoing are accompanied by a greater variety of family patterns.

The article will be based on a study in which I conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Palestinian mothers in Israel. The data were subjected to intersectional analysis from a feminist perspective, enabling study of the group under examination families of Palestinian women –separately from its surrounding society and also revealing the various subgroups comprising this social category.     

Homosexuality,Religion, and the Family: The Effects of Religion on Americans’ Appraisals of the Parenting Abilities of Same-Sex Couples

Although a growing body of research focuses on Americans’ attitudes toward same-sex couples as parents, very few include measures of religion, and those that do fail to capture its multidimensional nature. Furthermore, many past studies relied on convenience samples of college students, or samples gathered outside the United States. Multivariate analyses of the 2012 General Social Survey—a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States—reveal that a slim majority of Americans still do not believe same-sex couples can parent as well as male-female couples, and the religious beliefs, behaviors, and affiliations of Americans are significantly and at times differentially associated with appraisals of same-sex couples’ parenting abilities. It appears that although religion is generally associated with more negative appraisals of the parenting abilities of same-sex couples, it is not uniformly so. Americans’ immediate religious and cultural context can shape their appraisals of homosexuality in diverse ways.     

Investigating the differential mobility experiences of Chinese cross-border students

Recent migration studies have adopted the lens of mobility to examine the stratifying effects of border policies, but few investigate the differential mobility of migrant families and children. This paper aims to contribute to the migration literature by considering the interplay between border policies, family configurations, and differential mobility. We apply the lens of differential mobility to the experiences of Chinese cross-border pupils – young child migrants with Hong Kong permanent residency who reside in Shenzhen, China, and cross the border to attend school. We begin by describing shifts in Hong Kong’s border and immigration policies since 1997, which have created a typology of families differentiated by mixed status, citizenship rights, and mobility. We then turn to four case studies of students with unequal border-crossing experiences to elucidate how border control constrains or promotes family mobility and perpetuates inequalities.     

Family support: A review of the literature on families of adolescents with disabilities

ABSTRACT

For all youth, adolescence is a time of great change, marked by multiple transitions. For those with disabilities, these transitions can be especially challenging for the youth and their families. Although families of adolescents with disabilities often require support, it is unclear what types of assistance are most helpful. To understand the responsibilities of and, correspondingly, supports needed for parents and siblings, the authors conducted a comprehensive literature review. Specifically, the authors examined the literature to identify the supports that families provide to their adolescent relatives with disabilities, the impacts of caring for an adolescent relative with a disability, and the assistance that families receive. The authors conclude by discussing implications for future research about family support.     

A Social Network Comparison of Low‐Income Black and White Newlywed Couples

Relative to White families, Black families have been described as relying on extended social networks to compensate for other social and economic disadvantages. The presence or absence of supportive social networks should be especially relevant to young couples entering marriage, but to date there has been little effort to describe the social networks of comparable Black and White newlyweds. The current study addressed this gap by drawing on interviews with 57 first‐married newlyweds from low‐income communities to compare the composition and structure of Black and White couples' duocentric social networks. The results indicated that low‐income Black couples entered marriage at a social disadvantage relative to White couples, with more family relationships but fewer positive relationships and fewer sources of emotional support (for wives), fewer connections to married individuals, and fewer shared relationships between spouses. Black couples' relative social disadvantages persisted even when various economic and demographic variables were controlled.     

Disaster response on September 11, 2001 through the lens of statistical network analysis

The rescue and relief operations triggered by the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City demanded collaboration among hundreds of organisations. To shed light on the response to the September 11, 2001 attacks and help to plan and prepare the response to future disasters, we study the inter-organisational network that emerged in response to the attacks. Studying the inter-organisational network can help to shed light on (1) whether some organisations dominated the inter-organisational network and facilitated communication and coordination of the disaster response; (2) whether the dominating organisations were supposed to coordinate disaster response or emerged as coordinators in the wake of the disaster; and (3) the degree of network redundancy and sensitivity of the inter-organisational network to disturbances following the initial disaster. We introduce a Bayesian framework which can answer the substantive questions of interest while being as simple and parsimonious as possible. The framework allows organisations to have varying propensities to collaborate, while taking covariates into account, and allows to assess whether the inter-organisational network had network redundancy—in the form of transitivity—by using a test which may be regarded as a Bayesian score test. We discuss implications in terms of disaster management.     

Too sick to move: distant ‘crisis’ care in transnational families

This paper examines the crisis of acute and chronic illness, death, and dying in transnational families. These are the stages in the family life-course when physical co-presence is required to deliver hands-on care and intimate emotional support for the sick family member. It is a time when distant kin feel they need ‘to be there’, including for their own sense of well-being. This period of ‘crisis’ (in the anthropological sense) makes visible all of the impediments to transnational family caregiving that often remain hidden during those periods when ‘routine’ forms of distant care are adequate. Of particular relevance are the macro-level factors generated by national borders and the policies that define them, including those that govern employment, travel, visa, health, and aged care provisions. It is in these family life phases of crisis that nation-state structures can work to constrain individual agency and rights, making compellingly evident the growing need for transnational structures and policy. At issue are the largely invisible (in a policy sense) but increasingly common micro-level responses of family and individuals that characterize ‘crisis distant care’, which are characterized by the urgent need to visit and to intensify use of ICTs. The paper examines the experiences of migrants living in Australia who are trying to care for acutely unwell family members abroad.     

The Intergenerational Continuity of Fathers' Absence in a Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Sample

Fathers' absence is a pattern that shows intergenerational continuity, most notably within disadvantaged populations. The process whereby this pattern is repeated across generations is not well understood. Using data from the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project, the authors investigated pathways between fathers' absence in 1 generation and the experience of fathers' absence by their children. The current sample included 386 socioeconomically at‐risk individuals across 2 waves of data collection: (a) when they were children and (b) when they were adults with their own children. Analyses based on structural equation modeling revealed that men whose fathers were absent when they were children were more likely to become absent fathers, and women whose fathers were absent when they were children were more likely to have children with absent partners. Indirect pathways between fathers' absence in 2 generations through aggression, education, and substance abuse were illustrated for women. These findings add to the literature suggesting that fathers' absence during childhood has intergenerational effects.