Resilience in Non-Offending Mothers of Children Who Have Reported Experiencing Sexual Abuse

Growing evidence shows that non-offending mothers experience significant loss and trauma following their child reporting experiencing sexual abuse. Maternal support offered to sexually abused children following disclosure can be a crucial factor in children’s recovery. Although mothers are often seen as playing a central role in facilitating the recovery of their sexually abused child, there has been little focus on their own needs and profiles. This present study aimed to increase our understanding of the diversity of profiles of non-offending mothers of sexually abused children by exploring the differences in psychosocial traits of non-offending mothers (N = 68; age range 28–67 years) reporting higher and lower resilience.

The mediating role of these psychosocial factors on the relationship between resilience and psychological distress will also be explored. Results found that non-offending mothers in the higher resilience group reported higher levels of positive reappraisal, self-compassion, social support, and significantly lower levels of psychological distress compared to non-offending mothers in the lower resilience group. Additionally, multiple mediation analysis indicated positive reappraisal, self-compassion, and social support to be significant mediators of the relationship between resilience and psychological distress. Increased levels of self-compassion and social support were found to be predictive of lowered psychological distress, while increased positive reappraisal predicted increased psychological distress. The findings of the present study provide support for the targeting of the psychosocial factors such as self-compassion, social support, and positive reappraisal in interventions for non-offending mothers in an effort to promote resilience.     

Faster,harder, longer,stronger – management at the threshold between work and private life: The case of work place health promotion

This paper studies Work Place Health Promotion at two international corporations as an example of an unobtrusive control that targets employees’ lifestyles. It uses Michel Foucault's concepts of neoliberal governmentality and post-disciplinary control to show how Work Place Health Promotion breaks with the disciplinary logic of control most commonly associated with studies of unobtrusive controls in organizations. While discipline is centripetal, correcting employees’ misconduct so that they freely keep within prescribed norms, Work Place Health Promotion is centrifugal, targeting employees’ lifestyles and promoting those existing faculties and inclinations that may increase their activity, performance and their health. It hereby emerges as less restrictive than organizational discipline, but also as more discriminating. For not only does it subject employees’ lifestyles to an economic logic of investment and disinvestment, it also contributes to an exclusion of employees that fail in this regard in the name of their lack of health.     

Substance-Using Pregnant and Parenting Adolescent Girls: Considerations for Preventive Intervention Using a Resilience Lens

Evidence is needed to develop substance use prevention programs addressing the needs of adolescent mothers, yet there remains a paucity of research examining the lived experience and context of substance use among adolescent girls who report the use of substances while pregnant and parenting. This mixed-method research considers substance use and pregnancy simultaneously rather than as separate issues and suggests how findings might inform preventive intervention programming using a lens of resilience theory. Participants were pregnant and parenting adolescent girls in Grades 8 to 12 who reported the use of substances while pregnant or parenting. Fourteen participants completed an interview describing their experience of pregnancy and motherhood and the context of their substance use. Thirty-three participants completed an adapted American Drug and Alcohol Survey describing their substance use. Findings suggest potential strengths and vulnerabilities that could be addressed in preventive intervention approaches for this distinct population of girls.     

The contribution of mentoring to the life skills of youth leaving care in Israel

The goal of this study was to examine the contribution of natural mentoring to the improvement of life skills among youth in care in core areas of education, employment, and avoidance of risk behaviours while controlling for personal characteristics and placement history. The sample includes 174 adolescents in residential care in Israel. Results showed that mentoring duration and mentoring functions including mentor as “role model,” “parental figure,” and “independence promoter” significantly contributed to the prediction of the three life skills above and beyond control variables. This study highlights both the array of meaningful roles mentors play in youth's development of life skills and identifies important practice implications regarding the mechanism by which mentoring relationships contribute to the resilience of adolescents.     

心理弹性发展的研究进展及评述

心理弹性是心理学研究中的热点问题.研究者将其视为个体与环境之间相互作用的动态过程.众多的心理弹性理论模型从不同角度对心理弹性的发生发展机制作出了理论上的描述.这不仅使我们看到心理弹性,在促进个体健康快乐成长以及人类潜能开发方面具有的重大意义,而且研究者不同的研究思路和角度也为今后进一步的研究指明了方向和创造了空间.     

有机认证提高了农户市场韧性吗？——基于黄土高原苹果优势产区的实证研究

在消费端高质量农产品需求不断增长和农产品市场面临外部冲击的背景下,评估有机认证对农户市场韧性的影响具有重要的现实意义。基于“韧性小农”的内涵,运用两期苹果销售价格数据构建表征农户市场韧性的指标,系统分析有机认证对农户市场韧性的影响机理,并使用黄土高原苹果优势产区681户苹果农户的抽样调查数据和多维固定效应线性回归模型进行实证检验。研究发现：①有机认证有助于农户市场韧性的提升,在稳健性检验和内生性缓解后,这一结论仍然成立;②基于成本-收益理论进行机制分析发现,有机认证农户的成本控制能力增强,农业收益稳定性提高：前者表现为有机肥、生物农药使用概率提升,而亩均肥料和农药成本投入不变;后者表现为有机认证提升了苹果品质,进而实现溢价能力提升和销售渠道拓宽;③异质性分析发现,经济状况好、加入合作社和位于农产品区域公用品牌建设地区的农户进行有机认证后其市场韧性提升效果更加明显。据此建议持续推进有机农业的发展,以此增强农户抵御外部冲击和市场风险的能力,并为“小农户”更好地接入“大市场”提供可行方案。     

基于空间马尔科夫链的粮食生产韧性动态演进及趋势预测

提高粮食生产韧性对保障粮食安全、加快建设农业强国具有重要意义。基于2005-2021年中国省级面板数据,构建粮食生产韧性评价指标体系进行水平测度,在此基础上深入分析其时空动态演进并展开趋势预测。研究表明：第一,考察期内中国粮食生产韧性水平总体呈现逐年提升态势,但近些年增速有所放缓。第二,各省份粮食生产韧性差异明显,整体呈现“东高西低”的特征,且总体差距在考察期内逐步扩大; 总体差异主要来源于区域间差异,但2017年后区域间差异逐渐下降,区域内差异逐步成为造成总体差异的主要原因;分区之间发展不平衡问题较为严峻,区域内省际差异明显。第三,中国粮食生产韧性存在较为显著的空间相关性,表现出明显的高-高集聚和低-低集聚特征,即高水平省份多与一个或多个高水平省份相邻,而低水平省份邻域多为低水平省份。第四,各省份粮食生产韧性在短期内较难实现层级跨越;而在引入空间地理因素后,粮食生产韧性的稳定状态有动摇趋势,易表现出“强者恒强,弱者恒弱”的马太效应。     

Whose English gets paid off?—Neoliberal discourses of English and ethnic minority students’ subjectivities in China

The study traces the trajectories of Uyghur college students’ subjectivity construction and transformation from Foucault's governmentality perspective. Drawing on ethnographic data of two telling cases, it explores how minoritized students’ subjectivities were linked to neoliberal discourses of English and constituted by power techniques, self-technologies, and affective dispositions embedded in wider institutional transformations. Participants were found experiencing a shift to the individualistic subjectivity associated with academic achievement and performance in English away from the collective identity of “authentic Uyghur” symbolized by the Uyghur language. Two salient discourses of English, i.e., English as constraints, and English as academic excellence, emerging from the neoliberal-oriented institutional English language education policies and practices, shaped the participants either as incompetent English learners or elite subjects. Participants learned to responsibilitize themselves through such self-technologies as confession and preaching, and affective practices. Yet, technologies of hope and optimism became for a few the enjoyment of experiences and performance of elitism while projecting a majority disadvantaged as affectively problematic others. The self-technologies and affective responses without recognition of larger structures of inequality could further reinforce the neoliberal logic. The affective labor of sense of solidarity, commitment to community, empathy for the deprived ones with critical reflection and collective action, nevertheless, may counter neoliberal logic and point to an alternative path to meaning-making and social relations.     

The magic in the (extra)ordinary: Intensive validation to recalibrate the life-worlds of adolescents exposed to abuse

This qualitative case study aimed to explore environmental circumstances and interactional processes that appeared to be relevant for the dynamics of resilience in adolescents exposed to child abuse. Fieldwork at a learning and coping centre for children and their families was combined with semi-structured interviews with adolescent participants aged 12 to 18 years. A critical realist approach was used to unpack what has been called the ‘ordinary magic’ of resilience. We found that intensively validating qualities of both the environment and relationships seemed to be driving components for resilience. Borrowing ideas from the sociometer theory, we propose that particularly the consistent intensiveness may offer a recalibration of the adolescents' immediate life-worlds, in terms of how they perceive the people they meet and the environments they step into. In keeping with the transactional-ecological model of resilience, we suggest that such a recalibration leads to altered social agency that becomes visible through their immediate social participation.     

从风险到优势——孤儿的抗逆力研究

从社会工作优势视角出发,运用抗逆力理论,研究探讨了孤儿在经历创伤、面临风险时存在哪些外部保护因素和内在优势因素。通过对8个孤儿的质性研究发现:孤儿面临贫困、养护结构脆弱、社会歧视、缺乏稳定感和归属感等风险因素,并且这些风险具有多重性、高危性、长期性等特征。但是,外部支持因素和个体内在优势帮助他们提升其抗逆力,外部支持因素主要包括亲属网络、模拟的亲缘关系、友缘关系、学校和社区、社会福利系统;内在优势则包括自立人格、家庭责任和感恩情感、兴趣和特长,以及积极思维。