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Health care policy positions breastfeeding as an important part of the solution to household food insecurity; however, there are critical gaps in our knowledge of the relationship between breastfeeding duration (exposure variable) and household food insecurity (outcome variable). Our objective was to examine this relationship. A cross-sectional study was conducted from 2008 to 2016 of healthy urban children (N = 3838) who were 0 to 3 years old and recruited from The Applied Research Group for Kids (TARGet Kids!), a practice-based research network in Toronto, Canada. Total breastfeeding duration was collected from parent-reported questionnaires. Household food insecurity was measured using 1-item and 2-item food insecurity screens. Multivariable regression analysis was performed adjusting for prespecified covariates. The median total breastfeeding duration was 10.5 months (interquartile range, 6.0–14.0), and 14.7% of households were food insecure. After adjusting for child characteristics (age, sex), maternal characteristics (age, ethnicity, education, employment), and family characteristics (number of children, single parent family, neighborhood equity score), there was no significant association between total breastfeeding duration and household food insecurity (odds ratio, 0.99; 95% confidence interval, 0.98–1.01). Although low-income families had an increased odds of being household food insecure (P ≤.001), we found no significant association between total breastfeeding duration and household food insecurity at varying income levels. We found no association between breastfeeding duration and household food insecurity, regardless of family income. Although breastfeeding is associated with improved child health outcomes and considered to be part of the solution to household food insecurity, interventions focused on social determinants may provide more promising targets for the prevention of household food insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to improve cultural competence in pediatric hearing loss services should be informed by evidence of how culture can affect services, yet there is a paucity of research in the field of audiology. The aim of this study was to gain insight into practitioners' experiences with offering early hearing loss services to minority culture families. Specifically, the objective was to examine possible barriers and facilitators to improving cultural competence in early hearing loss services by exploring the perspectives of the providers of care from across Canada. A survey, informed by our previous studies, was disseminated to practitioners providing hearing loss services. Responses to all survey questions were analyzed descriptively. Open-ended questions were analyzed with simple content analysis. Results indicate practitioners reported barriers at each stage of service delivery: during diagnoses, amplification discussions, language assessments, and interventions. Practitioners also described various strategies used to facilitate culturally competent care. Findings stemming from this study can be used to inform practitioners seeking to provide culturally competent care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to critically examine how family literacy is promoted and represented on websites developed by family literacy program providers. Naturalistic research over the last 20 years or so demonstrates that the family is a rich site for supporting children's literacy development across socioeconomic and cultural contexts. That research suggests that families engage children in a wide array of literacy activities in their daily lives. Furthermore, significant others, in addition to parents, play important roles in children's literacy development. In this study, we examined a representative sample of family literacy websites from across Canada. Findings suggest that: family literacy programs tend to focus almost exclusively on young children, families are portrayed narrowly, deficit notions of families are still prevalent, and the promises made about the impact of family literacy programs go far beyond what the limited research evidence available suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the growing hegemony of the bourgeois family pattern among the Canadian working classes that accompanied the development of a welfare state and focuses on the legal institutionalization and regulation of childhood and sexuality in Ontario and British Columbia, particularly during the inter-war years. The discussion centers on similarities and differences between the provinces with respect to two major issues: first, the enactment of criminal and quasi-criminal legislation, ostensibly universal in application but directed primarily at poor children and the adults responsible for them, to force compliance with middle-class standards of morality and family life; and, second, the administration of many such statutes through the Toronto, Ontario and Vancouver Juvenile Courts. In Canada, as in other jurisdictions, demands for implementation and refinement of legislation aimed at upholding the norms of childhood and heterosexual marriages were accompanied by demands for new enforcement mechanisms.