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Background: On August 5th, 2006, the third meeting of the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual Disabilities (IASSID) Special Interest Research Group (SIRG) on Parents and Parenting with Intellectual Disabilities was convened in Maastricht, The Netherlands, coinciding with the 2nd International Congress of IASSID-Europe. The SIRG Parents and Parenting with Intellectual Disabilities membership includes scholars from a number of countries including the United States, Canada, England, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. These scholars come from a range of academic and professional disciplines, including sociology, psychology, education, nursing, social work and occupational therapy. Method: This position paper developed by the Parenting SIRG brings into sharp relief the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities adopted by the General Assembly in December 2006. The convention affirms the right of persons with disabilities to marry and found a family (Article 23, (1)(a)). Further, states parties are bound to "take effective action and appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against persons with disabilities in all matters relating to marriage, family, parenthood and relationships..." (Article 23 (1)), and "...render appropriate assistance to persons with disabilities in the performance of their child-rearing responsibilities" (Article 23 (2)). Results: This position paper synthesizes messages from research about the challenges that parents labelled with intellectual disability face, and how they can be assisted in their parenting role.

Klaus Mollenhauer (1928-1998) is one of the most important German theorists of education in the postwar era. Mollenhauer is often remembered in Germany today for his first book titled "Education and Emancipation: Polemical Sketches," but he received international renown for his final monograph, "Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Upbringing." Although Mollenhauer characterized Forgotten Connections as actually working to move towards a more "substantial conception of emancipation," many of his followers and colleagues such as Kaufmann et al. saw it as nothing less than an act of "infidelity to those who had taken on his emancipatory pedagogy" (Kaufmann et al., 1991: 86). In the light of these differences in emphasis and interpretation, this paper provides an overview of "Forgotten Connections" that (following Wivestad and Saevi) sees it as presenting six main questions and themes--ranging from "Why do we have children" to "How can we respect and draw out a child's inherent character?" However, in doing so, this paper simultaneously traces Mollenhauer's own efforts to develop a more substantial concept of personal and political emancipation in this text.

Based on the concept of educational quality of the home learning environment, stimulating and responsive family time is crucial for children's development. In turn, time use depends on the developmental stages in childhood. International studies indicate that family patterns of time use are associated with a family's resources (i.e. level of education) and age of the children. To detect assumed time use patterns, this paper distinguishes between caring activities (basic care) and educational activities (play and teaching) of daily family life with children of various age groups (infants, preschool aged children, and primary school aged children). Data are drawn from the Time Use Survey in 2012/2013 conducted by the German Federal Statistical Office (N = 560). Tobit regression analyses show that time use for each activity differs between families with low and families with high level of education, referring to various child age groups. The results indicate that a 'developmental gradient' for time use in the home learning environment is evident.

This paper considers migrant parenting as a dynamic project that entails interactions between social class, migration experiences, individual and collective beliefs, and transnational attachments. Previous research has examined migrant parenting predominantly concerning children's social mobility in the immigration country by using the acculturation framework or by comparing migrants with non-migrants. Recently, research has accounted for child rearing in transnational families with an emphasis on gendered parenting and role reversal among parents who take care of their children from a distance. This paper analyses parenting orientations among settled migrants who maintain close connections to their country of origin. Findings from in-depth interviews with mothers from Poland with different class backgrounds who raise their children in Germany highlight their varying migration experiences and structural conditions for child rearing. The analyses show how these mothers engage in building successful migration projects for themselves and their children, albeit with very diverse socio-cultural and economic resources that shape their child rearing, navigating between support of children's accommodation, transnational connections and ethnic identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is aimed at analyzing verbal and nonverbal strategies in terms of body contact, face-to-face contact, and discourse style during the first three months of life in two cultural communities that have been characterized as embodying different cultural models of parenting: German middle-class, and Nso farmer families. It can be demonstrated that the Nso mothers have significantly higher rates of body contact during the assessments of free-play interactions during the first 12 weeks than the German women. The German women on the other hand demonstrate the expected increase of face-to-face contact, whereas the Nso women demonstrate a significantly lower and stable pattern of face-to-face contact over the assessments. The German mothers use an agentic discourse style, whereas the Nso mothers use a relational discourse style. Moreover, body contact and a relational discourse style form one parenting strategy, whereas face-to-face contact and the agentic discourse style form another parenting strategy. The results demonstrate culture-specific parenting strategies that not only differ with respect to the amount of behaviors expressed, but also the developmental course of particular behaviors. It is also evident that socialization strategies are expressed in different behavioral channels. The role of sociodemographic variables is particularly discussed with respect to their impact for defining sociocultural environments. (Contains 2 tables and 4 figures.)

This paper explores a range of perceived similarities and differences between male and female academics in the context of contemporary European Union "gender mainstreaming" policy. It concentrates upon the higher education systems of Germany and the United Kingdom, and is based upon questionnaire responses. A large majority of respondents believe that more needs to be done to remedy inequalities arising from maternity leave and child rearing, and that their universities are still gendered organisations with too few women at the top. Many females regard themselves as less strategic than males in managing their careers, and believe that they need to behave the same as men to succeed. They think that men have historically dominated in their subject area and still do so. Relatively small percentages of men endorse these opinions in relation to women, and their responses are often positive in their perception of female academics. It is almost universally agreed that women are doing a good professional job, and very few employees (either male or female) experience gross forms of bullying and harassment at work. A certain convergence between the genders in some respects may indicate the erosion of binary gender hierarchies in the current policy environment.

Reviews history and content of recent U.S. child care and family legislation comparing it to that of four European nations on five policy objectives: increasing supply, supporting maternal employment, easing burdens of child rearing, permitting parental choice, and raising quality of programs. Recent legislation brings United States slightly closer to Europe. (Author/CRR)

In many developed countries lone parent families face high rates of child poverty. Among those lone parents who do get child maintenance there is a hidden problem. States may retain all, or a proportion, of the maintenance that is paid in order to offset other fiscal costs. Thus, the potential of child maintenance to alleviate poverty among lone parent families may not be fully realized, especially if the families are also in receipt of social assistance benefits. This paper provides an original comparative analysis exploring the effectiveness of child maintenance to reduce child poverty among lone parent families in receipt of social assistance. It addresses the question of whether effectiveness is compromised once interaction effects (such as the operation of a child maintenance disregard) are taken into account in four countries Australia, Finland, Germany and the UK using the LIS dataset (2013). It raises important policy considerations and provides evidence to show that if policy makers are serious about reducing child poverty, they must understand how hidden mechanisms within interactions between child maintenance and social security systems can work as effective cost recovery tools for the state, but have no poverty reduction impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the central themes running through the collection of papers in this special issue of Childhood, which were all given as papers at the XVI Durban World Congress of Sociology, 23-29 July 2006. These themes encompass the ways in which global processes of social change combining modernity with tradition have become important for both the perception of childhood and for childrens real lives. They also include the ways in which those processes intertwined with social inequalities — of gender, generation and socioeconomic status — among children and between children and other age groups. The article goes on to provide an outline of the ways in which more general theoretical concerns in the sociology of childhood globally are related to local situations, to a variety of practical settings, to the conceptual concerns in different sociological fields and other social science disciplines in South Africa, Ethiopia, Taiwan, Germany, Sweden, and Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides a detailed description of different aspects of family policy in Germany, including descriptions of financial and employment supports for families in their caregiving role. Family policy in Germany provides strong financial and social support for children. Law and policy, however, are specifically formulated to encourage child rearing to take place in the home, with one of the parents focusing extensively on child rearing and family responsibilities. The paper also examines whether equality for women can be achieved within the framework of a corporatist welfare state regime such as Germany's. It develops the argument that the German route to equality may be a different one from that pursued by countries with liberal or social democratic welfare regimes. This scenario also implies that when and if equality does occur, the structures and meaning of this equality are also likely to differ. Finally, the paper argues that the corporatist welfare state regime cannot be dismissed as incompatible with the achievement of future equality for women. Instead such a model can be viewed as providing the potential of increasing choices for women with children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the results of the study on "Family-friendliness of the Medical Studies in Baden-Württemberg" carried out in 2009-2011 by the working group "Family, Time policy and E-Learning" of the University Hospital of Ulm, supported by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of Baden-Württemberg. This state-wide survey of the studying conditions and personal circumstances of medical students with children at the five medical schools in Baden-Württemberg aims to describe existing and necessary factors of family-friendliness. A total of 238 students with children participated in the quantitative online survey conducted during the summer semester 2010 which was based on topics from previous qualitative interviews with student parents.The data shows that even though founding a family while at university is usually planned, student parents are faced with significant compatibility issues, demonstrating the need for additional measures to individualise course organisation and to make the curriculum more flexible. At the same time, the need to significantly increase information and advisory services alongside the establishment of additional support services for student parents is discernable. The study contributes to the debate on the family-friendliness of universities and university hospitals and adds practice-oriented approaches to solutions.

Based on the pilot study carried out by the Office of the Dean of the Medical University of Ulm on the family-friendliness of the organisation of medical education in Ulm, this paper describes concrete measures that were designed at the university or have been partly implemented already. More flexibility and customization are essential characteristics and prerequisites of a family-friendly medical school as part of university education structures. Flexibility and customization can be achieved by designing lesson plans and study regulations so that both childcare is assured and that in emergencies, help can be quickly offered with a minimum of bureaucracy. More flexibility includes, amongst other things, adequate means for the individual to compensate for missed compulsory attendances and examination dates. The necessary shift in thinking and the willingness to cooperate on behalf of the management and teaching staff can be supported through the audit for family-friendliness "berufundfamilie" (job and family) or "familiengerechte hochschule" (family-friendly university), as well as strategic management tools of family-friendly corporate policies. Supporting mechanisms such as effectively networked advice services, course progression monitoring based on data, providing a parents' passport with a cross-semester training contract, creating more interaction between student-parents or other students through a parent community or by study pairings and finally, reliable information on and compliance with the maternity leave rules for pregnant and breastfeeding medical students can help safeguard successful studying with children.

This paper aims to describe the wide range of compatibility issues between work in the medical profession and the family. Several topics are intertwined and overlap in some areas. Family friendliness in curative medicine, healthcare, medical studies and the training, specialisation and CPD of doctors is a key theme in the current debate on the future of health and family policies. The rising proportion of women and changes in the medical community characterise the future of medicine. Topics such as working hours and organisation of work, as well as family support and maternity leave, must be discussed further and in particular regarding employees in the health services. This overview will describe where Germany has issues, what is already being done well in the hospitals but could still be improved.

Underage parents are caught in a legal contradiction between their status as parents and their status as minors. As parents, they are responsible for protecting, rearing and representing their children; as minors, they lack the rights required to fulfil parental duties. This paper takes a look at the different ways in which legal systems deal with the contradiction. The position of underage parents in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands is studied. In Belgium, there is no explicit statutory solution for the problem, and a reconciliation of the two roles has to be looked for in re-interpretations of general rules of legal capability and contractual liability. In Germany and the Netherlands, quite different statutory solutions have been developed, the German one generating legal contradictions of its own, the Dutch one probably in violation of the right to respect of family life guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights. On the basis of the analysis of these laws, the contradiction in the position of underage parents looks unresolvable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines some of the effects of East and West German family policy on women's economic position by analyzing intrahousehold bargaining power, defined here as based on co-resident partners' relative fall-back positions, which in turn depend on the individuals' access to income in the event that the partnership ends. East German policy sought to integrate women into the labor force through programs such as free public child care and liberal maternity leave. West Germany based its family policy on the assumption of a stark gender division of labor, with one lifetime bread-winner per family and a second parent who temporarily leaves the labor force to raise children. On the basis of her findings and analysis, the author argues that while East German institutions increased women's bargaining power, gender-specific policies interfered with women's ability to use this power to bring about changes in the household division of labor. West German family policy did not assign gender roles, but it offered women less bargaining power with which to negotiate. The author maintains that society's refusal to address women's greater child-rearing costs is not based on an assessment of such costs and the costs of redistributive government programs, but on the assumption that women should absorb the risks and burdens of reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-national comparisons represent for the social scientist a combination of challenging opportunities and of tricky methodological pitfalls. The opportunities lie in the chance such comparisons provide of shaking hypotheses free from particular sets of cultural entanglements and for catching strategic variables in new ranges and combinations. The pitfalls lie not only in the problems to be faced in the cross-national translation of variables, but also in the fact that most such comparisons involve the reconciliation of basically non-comparable data, gathered by diverse investigators with diverse methods and for diverse purposes. The present paper deals with a set of data which permit some direct cross-national comparisons of child-rearing practices in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany. The data for both samples were collected by the same investigators, employing nearly identical methods and procedures, and the subjects employed in the comparisons have been carefully matched with respect to a number of possibly contaminating demographic variables.

The term 'social pedagogy' was coined in Germany, a country which also provided fertile ground for the early development of social work. This article reconstructs the evolution of the two disciplines, which existed alongside one another for much of the twentieth century. It starts with their identities at the time of their early emergence, and then focuses on two formative periods: the early twentieth century, when both disciplines were in the nascent stages of independent development; and the late twentieth century, when they appeared to be in a state of amalgamation. In the course of this examination, Hämäläinen's recent suggestion that social pedagogy can be regarded as a science, as a profession and in terms of its education is investigated. So too is Lorenz's framework for considering a nation's social professions in terms of social policy, civil society and academic discourse elements. Those academic discourses tied to the identity of the two professions offer an opportunity to pin down the slippery German concept of social pedagogy, demarcate it from social work and consider the path dependencies of each profession. This is carried out with particular reference to the early figures who shaped the disciplines, specifically Paul Natorp, Herman Nohl and Alice Salomon. The case of Germany reveals not only few uncontested definitions of the two professions, but also a clear formal separation for much of the twentieth century, which is best understood by considering historical, not contemporary arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When estimating the determinants of child care participation, the simultaneity in mothers' decision to work and in the decision to use child care is a major challenge. We provide first evidence on the determinants of institutional child care use addressing the endogeneity of mothers' labor supply by applying an instrumental variables approach. This endogeneity has often been neglected in studies on child care choice, even though the decision to use child care outside the home is strongly connected to mothers' decision to work after childbirth and vice versa. Based on the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) from 1989 to 2006 we show that children living in West Germany have a higher probability to attend institutional care if their mothers increase their actual weekly working time. Estimating the determining factors of child care participation without addressing the simultaneity issue substantially underestimates the influence of maternal working time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following retirement, older immigrants increasingly tend to engage in circular migration. This back-and-forth movement introduces a variety of challenges affecting the nature of grandparenthood as well as grandparental involvement in the upbringing of grandchildren. For circular migrant grandparents, maintaining intergenerational relationships requires them to overcome not only geographic distances, but also linguistic and cultural differences. In families with circular migrant grandparents, intergenerational conflict often springs from disparate generational exposure to acculturation processes, producing divergent aspirations within the first and second generations regarding the upbringing of the third generation. This study explores how first-generation Turkish circular migrant grandparents attempt to raise grandchildren who reside in Germany by implementing 'cultural and instrumental transfers'. This study undertakes a qualitative approach: semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of first-generation Turkish circular migrant grandparents (N = 40). The analysis finds that child-care assistance is characterised by intergenerational conflict – rather than solidarity or altruistic support – between the first and second generations. Moreover, through transnational arranged marriages, as a cultural transfer, and inter vivos gifts, as an instrumental transfer, grandparents encourage their grandchildren to return to Turkey permanently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study, which aims to improve the parental attitudes of Turkish immigrants living in Germany, is designed as an action research. During the study, the managers of the Turkish School-Parents Unions and 37 teachers giving courses to Turkish students living in Germany were interviewed, and the needs of immigrant Turkish parents for child rearing were determined. In line with these needs, a family education program was revised. The program was applied to 602 parents in 34 different group studies. Research data were collected through the letters of the participants of an eight-session program and from a group of 26 people via a focus group interview held 2 years later than the training. Data were analyzed through content analysis and descriptive analysis. According to data obtained after the completion of the family education program, the parents stated that they acquired valuable information on dealing with negative behaviors of their children, on becoming prepared for conflict resolution, anger control, and on getting effective behavior in planning their children's future. During the monitoring phase of the study, the participants stated that they continued to display their acquired behavior in terms of autonomy, communication skills, interpersonal parental communication and of democratic parental attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a position paper of Germany's Free Democratic Party (FDP) presenting concrete proposals for social pension insurance. Key elements included the strengthening of the administrative self-government of social security, partial pensions for those employed past age 60, and women's pension premium credits for years spent in child-rearing.

After the fall of the BerlinWall, East Germany experienced an unprecedented temporary drop in fertility driven by economic uncertainty. We show that the children born during this transition period performed worse on a range of educational outcomes from an early age onward. The mothers of these children exhibit personal characteristics and family structures consistent with negative parental selection. Investigating the underlying mechanisms reveals that parental educational input and emotional attachment were also lower for these children. Finally, our ability to compare siblings means that we can reject that our results stem from a time of birth effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1934, the physician Johanna Haarer published a babycare manual entitled Die deutsche Mutter und ihr erstes Kind (The German Mother and her First Child). Published by Julius Friedrich Lehmanns, a prolific publisher of Nazi literature, the book went through numerous editions and by 1945 had sold nearly 600,000 copies. In 1936, Lehmanns published a follow-up, Unsere kleinen Kinder (Our Little Children), which gave advice on raising children between the ages of two and six. Haarer’s advice manuals have recently elicited interest from a range of scholars from different disciplines, raising questions about the relationship between Haarer’s childcare guidance and Nazism. This article explores what was specifically National Socialist about Haarer’s manuals by comparing her writings to childrearing advice popular in Britain at the time: advice based on Frederic Truby King’s ‘mothercraft’ movement, first advocated in the 1920s, but common into the early 1950s. Paying attention to the cultural contexts in which the advice manuals were written and disseminated, the article provides comparison of the most important instructions they contained concerning the mother–child relationship, feeding, sleep, crying, and the overall ‘training’ of the infant, to provide a historically nuanced assessment of Johanna Haarer’s manuals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Aim: The study evaluates a community-based intervention programme, using a peer approach. The programme's objective is to improve life opportunities for children from disadvantaged families in a poor district of Berlin by empowering their mothers. Women of varying cultural backgrounds-most of them from immigrant families-are educated in subjects like child development, early education and health in order to work as community mothers (CMs). Their major task is to obtain access to the families, strengthen the mothers' parenting and personal skills, and promote early nursery school attendance and access to social support systems. Community settings are integrated in the programme through the establishment of family cafés in nursery and primary schools. Methods: The evaluation analyses the organisational structure and process determinants of the programme, and its impact on the CMs as well as on the visited family mothers (FMs), identifying the supporting and inhibiting factors. To match the comprehensive programme design, a mixed method approach was chosen, combining primarily qualitative methods with quantitative methods and participatory observation. Target groups for the investigation are the CMs, the FMs, and professionals directly or indirectly involved in the programme. Results: According to preliminary results, the programme has been successful in recruiting women from the community for training as CMs ( n = 67) and in reaching disadvantaged families of German and migrant backgrounds through home visits ( n = 86) as well as in single contacts in various settings ( n = 170). Access to families by home visits and sometimes in family cafés, however, has turned out to be more difficult than expected. The FMs interviewed qualitatively ( n = 15) within the first year after the start of home visits and with a semi-structured questionnaire ( n = 44) after 2.5 years, report increased self-esteem, improved relationships with their children, better access to public services, emotional support and practical assistance. The results also demonstrate a significant gain for the CMs themselves as part of the target group. Professionals ( n = 42) assess the project primarily positively; co-operation with the CMs sometimes presents barriers. Conclusion: Peer-based home visitation programmes are successful in reaching otherwise hard-to-reach populations but also have limits in access to some of the families. The combination of home visits with other forms of activities located in various settings seems promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approaching culture as a set of practices that help cope with problems, I explore the emergence of the "Schnullerfee," a fairy that helps wean children from pacifiers (Br., dummies) in German-speaking areas. I analyze how parents invoke the dummy fairy in order to deal with their own needs and those of their child, especially as they navigate conflicting medical recommendations. Drawing on my ethnographic research on German family culture, and analyzing contemporary medicalization discourses, I consider practical strategies of risk management in childrearing and the question of shifting authorities in family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we investigated the role of childbearing history in later-life health and mortality, paying particular attention to possible differences by sex and region. Higher parity is associated with better self-rated health in West German mothers and fathers aged 50+, but its relationship with East German women's physical health and survival is negative. Early motherhood is paralleled by poorer physical health in West Germany, whereas late motherhood is associated with lower psychological well-being in Eastern Germany. Moreover, among West German women, having had a non-marital first birth is weakly correlated with poorer physical health. Our findings support the notion of biosocial pathways playing an important role in shaping the fertility-health nexus. Specifically, the West German 'male-breadwinner' model of specialization appears to have buffered the stresses associated with childrearing, whereas fertility off the 'normative' life-course track appears to have had adverse effects on women's health in West Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study addresses sociohistorical changes in parenting in a prototypical independent society: Germany. In Germany, a distinct societal increase in individualisation has been described as beginning with the mid-1980s. It is assumed that these changes not only affect children and adolescents, but also the first formative developmental period: infancy. Mothers' interactions with 3-month-old babies belonging to two cohorts (cohort 1: 1977/1978; cohort 2: 2000) show significant changes with respect to parenting behaviours that have been related to independence as a socialisation goal: increase of face-to-face contingency and object play and decrease of bodily and facial/vocal warmth. The results are interpreted as supporting the view that sociohistorical times form distinct cultural environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study which examined how attitudes to maternal employment at different stages of child rearing vary across and within eight nations in the European Union: Great Britain, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Italy and Spain, using data from the 1994 International Social Survey Programme. The prevalence of married women in the labor force undermines the traditional gender division of labor, whereby men are responsible for the public sphere of paid work and women are confined to the private sphere of home life. Increasingly women, even those with small children, are in paid employment. Women are now expected to contribute to the family income, but they are also expected to place family needs first. Based on the results of the study, cohort, education and women's labor force participation all have a marked effect on attitudes to maternal employment, with support for mothers working associated with more recent cohorts, higher education and the labor force participation of women or the wives/partners of men. Women's employment status has a stronger effect on the attitudes of men than of women. One unexpected and interesting finding was the dramatic effect that the labor force participation of women has on women's attitudes to maternal employment in the Netherlands. Austria is the only country where endorsement of maternal employment is consistently suppressed by its relatively conservative gender-role attitudes. Meanwhile, Ireland and Spain are very comparable with Germany in having low support of mothers working when the youngest child is of school age.

Examines the childrearing attitudes of mothers in Germany and in the U.S. Comparison of childrearing practices in two countries; Factors influencing the child rearing practices of mothers; Characteristics of German and American mothers.

In the years following German reunification, East and West German parents (282 mothers and 207 fathers) were interviewed about attitudes to the rearing of their 7- to 13-year-old children and about their social networks. Path analyses show that East German parents engage in more protective and less permissive parenting, and that East German fathers raise their children in a more traditional and authoritarian manner than their West German counterparts. In part, these differences can be attributed to the strong family orientation of East German parents (many and intensive kinship relations, few friends). Further analyses show that corollaries of the social upheavals in East Germany, namely closer cohesion of the immediate family and a decrease in the social support provided by the extrafamilial environment, are associated with protective attitudes to parenting and hence with the tendency to limit children's freedom of decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]