The quality of mother‐adolescent disclosure: Links with predictors and adolescents’ sociomoral outcomes

Previous work on adolescents’ disclosure has focused on the frequency of disclosure to parents, but not the quality of that disclosure. Therefore, there is a need to examine factors that predict the quality of adolescents’ disclosure, as well as the consequences of the quality for adolescents’ outcomes. In this study, 100 adolescents (M age = 14.27 years; 57 girls; 70.7% White, European American) disclosed to mothers a recent past event in which they felt excluded; the videotaped and transcribed conversations were rated for indices of the quality of disclosure (i.e., the quality of elaboration and emotion discussed). Adolescents completed measures of sociomoral behavior and parental warmth and mothers completed measures of their moral identity, circle of moral regard, and moral socialization. The quality of adolescents’ disclosure was related to adolescents’ sociomoral outcomes (including prosocial behaviors, empathy, and sociability). Adolescents’ disclosure quality was predicted by gender and by aspects of mothers’ moral sophistication. Findings highlight the importance of high‐quality self‐disclosure by adolescents for promoting adolescents’ moral development, potentially because such disclosure gives parents the opportunity to help adolescents cope with challenging peer experiences potentially through emotion coaching and problem‐solving. Moreover, the findings are novel because they highlight how maternal moral processes might promote adolescents’ disclosure.     

Maternal enhancing responses to adolescents’ positive affect: Associations with adolescents’ positive affect regulation and depression

Mounting evidence indicates that deficits in positive affect (PA) regulation are implicated in youth depression. Although parental responses to youths’ PA expressions have been linked to youth regulation of negative affect, no study has directly examined whether parental responses are linked with youth PA regulation strategies. The present study utilized a novel observational measure to test whether maternal active‐constructive responses to youths’ PA were uniquely associated with youth effective PA regulation strategies and, subsequently, depressive symptoms. Ninety‐two adolescents between the ages of 11 and 18 (M_age = 14.22, Girls = 62%) and their primary female caregivers (M_age = 41.40, 88% biological mothers) completed a series of questionnaires and engaged in a Plan a Day Trip interaction task. Results revealed that observed maternal active‐constructive responses to adolescents’ PA were uniquely associated with adolescents’ effective PA regulation strategies which, in turn, were related to lower depressive symptoms. These findings underscore the importance of parental responses to PA when sharing positive experiences for specifically targeting adolescents’ responses that generate and sustain PA.     

Teachers' Representations on Adoptive Families and Educational Practices: New Challenges in Teachers' Preparation

In Italy, as in Europe, the number of internationally adopted school-aged children is increasing. The school is the first place where they can meet their new context, enabling good achievement of the whole integration and adoption processes. The research uses a qualitative method to explore the representations and the strategies that guide the educational work of 268 teachers of eight primary schools in relation to the adoptive family. ATLAS.ti 7.0 software was used. The results show an ambivalent representation of the adoptive family, which is reflected in the contents and strategy used by teachers to address issues of adoption.     

Speaking With and Without Words—An Analysis of Foster Children’s Expressions and Behaviors That Are Suggestive of Prior Sexual Abuse

This exploratory study reports on foster children’s informal self-disclosures of previously unknown histories of sexual abuse. Data were collected from 40 children’s files, and an inductive thematic analysis of verbal and behavioral expressions was conducted. Findings suggest that foster children’s self-disclosures can be fragmented, spontaneous, narrative, or triggered and often occur during everyday activities in the foster family. The children disclose their past by referring to the perpetrator or the severity of the abuse or by acting out, mostly by reenacting sexual abuse experiences. In addition, some children use childish vocabulary focusing on genitals or sexual acts they were involved in or want to be involved in. Last, some foster children seem to be linguistically challenged to disclose that a female person abused them or that they were forced to reciprocate sexually. This study adds to the understanding of the complex process of child sexual abuse disclosure in the context of foster care.     

Secondary School Transition and the Use of Different Sources of Information for the Construction of the Academic Self‐concept

This study focuses on processes involved in students' academic self‐concept constructions before, during, and after secondary school transition. The study is based on a four‐wave longitudinal dataset (N = 1953). Structural equation modeling showed that during school transition, the impact of grades on students' academic self‐concepts in Math and English decreased whereas the effects of maternal competence perceptions increased. After the transition, the effects of grades increased, while the effects maternal competence beliefs decreased again. The results are interpreted in terms of differential emphasizing of sources of information for students' self‐concept construction. During school transition, elementary school grades lost informational value for self‐evaluations due to the changed frame of reference. To secure stable and valid self‐assessments, students emphasized other sources than grades; in this, case information obtained through parental competence appraisals. After transition, when valid grades were available for the students' constructions again, the temporarily heightened parental influence decreased again.     

Growing up with parental substance use disorder: The struggle with complex emotions,regulation of contact,and lack of professional support

The aim of the study was to explore young people's perceptions and reflections about growing up with parents who have substance use disorder (SUD). In qualitative interviews with 12 young people (aged 13–26) and in an interpretative phenomenological analysis, we investigated their experiences of everyday life, of the relationships with the parents with SUD, and of conversations about this, both retrospectively and at the present. The findings indicated that the relationships with the parents largely occupied the informants, even when they lived separately from the parent and were protected from the daily exposure of substance use. The informants described their mixed and contradictory emotions towards their parents and the struggle to determine regulation and type of contact. They asked for professional support in order to help them cope with this. Sociocultural discourses concerning family life and substance use were discussed in an attempt to understand the findings. The findings of the study suggest that children and young people should be offered sufficient professional support in order to cope with their mixed and contradictory emotions and to determine the regularity and type of contact with the parents.     

Someone to check in on me: social capital,social support and vulnerable parents with very young children in the Australian Capital Territory

Although knowledge of how social support can mediate stress is now well known, finding ways to enable isolated parents to access social resources that could make a positive difference for children during their critical early years remains difficult. This paper reported on the findings of a telephone survey aimed at understanding levels of social capital and social support experienced by isolated parents raising young children on their own in Canberra, Australia. Specifically, it discussed a successful methodology for reaching isolated parents, those whom services find hard to reach. The survey found that despite the relative affluence of Canberra's population, there is a significant group of parents who are isolated from both formal and informal support and the social capital that can help them cope with the stresses and demands of raising young children. These parents were unsure where to get parenting information and had a strong sense that they were judged by their local communities and services. We identified lost opportunities by general practitioners and other widely used systems such as public housing and security to take more proactive roles and connect parents to formal service support systems. Flexible, affordable child care was identified as an unmet need for these parents, not only as a source of relief from extreme isolation but also to enable them to work or prepare for work through study.