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Socially constructed images of motherhood suggest that a "good" mother is caring, nurturing, and selfless—the perfect maternal figure. When these standards are not met, mother blaming (i.e., assigning fault to mothers) occurs even in child sexual abuse (CSA) cases. We collected 312 open-ended responses in total from 108 community-based participants to understand contextual factors that increase and decrease in mother fault in a CSA-related vignette depicting the mother's partner as the perpetrator. Thematic analysis revealed five main themes. Three themes were associated with decreased blame: Lack of Overt Knowledge (i.e., the mother had no direct knowledge of the CSA and thus cannot be blamed), Physical Act (i.e., the mother was not the actual perpetrator; only the perpetrator is responsible for the CSA), and Trust (i.e., the mother should be able to trust her partner). Two themes were associated with increased blame: Covert Knowledge (i.e., the mother was expected to have covert, intuitive knowledge of the CSA) and Mistrust (i.e., the mother should have known better than to trust her partner). Faulting mothers for the CSA of their child may reduce reporting of, and help seeking for, CSA, due to fear of being blamed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blaming nonoffending mothers for child sexual abuse has substantial negative consequences for both the mother and child victim. Although perpetrator type has been shown to influence how much blame and responsibility is placed on nonoffending mothers in child sexual abuse cases, research to date has focused primarily on perpetrators who are strangers to the child or the child’s biological father, ignoring the effect of other father-figure perpetrators. The current study examined how differences in perpetrator’s relationship to the mother impacted blame, responsibility, cause, and prevention as separate constructs. One hundred and eight participants from an online community sample were randomly assigned to read a vignette describing a child sexual abuse situation with a female victim and one of two perpetrators: the victim’s biological father or the mother’s boyfriend. Participants assigned significantly higher levels of fault for CSA to the mother when the perpetrator was the mother’s boyfriend. Implications and future directions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this study was to examine how older people make sense of their capacity to maintain sports performance. Performance maintenance is predominantly examined from a quantitative perspective, with little attention given to how people themselves account for it. We interviewed 44 competitors (23 females, 21 males) from the 2009 Sydney World Masters Games (aged 56–90 years; mean = 72 years). The major themes were: ‘Use it or lose it’ (performance preservation required specific ‘training’ and the continuation of general physical activity); ‘Adapt’/‘modify’ (participants compensated for their decline in speed, strength and endurance so they could continue competing in sport); ‘It's in my genes’ (participants attributed their ‘family history’ and/or innate ‘determination’ to performance maintenance); and ‘I like to push myself’ (participants valued improved performance, pushing their bodies and winning which motivated them to continually train and compete). The findings are discussed within a framework of three key performance maintenance theories: (a) preserved differentiation, (b) selective maintenance and (c) compensation. Although compensation and continued training are effective ways to counter decline in later life, this study extends past research by showing how older athletes tend to combine and/or generalise stable and unstable attributes of performance preservation. In particular, this research highlights the importance individuals and Western society place on self-responsibility for health, competition and performance maintenance, which act as key motivating factors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As the number of older adults in the population increases, the rate of medical care use is expected to rise. As a result, geriatricians and gerontologists are researching predictors of medical care in later life, which includes ageism. Ageism within health care has been widely and frequently reported and it is thought to be a product of negative attitudes toward aging. The current review systematically explores the existing literature in this area and establishes seven themes within the research. From a predominantly American population of papers, themes that emerged were the following: physicians’ attitudes toward aging are complex and mixed; mixed associations among attitude, knowledge, and medical care; aging and disease symptom attributions among physicians; attitudes, knowledge, and exposure to older adults; the role of role models; the influence of the health care culture; and the influence of the health care system. These themes were considered separately and in tandem in order to explore avenues for future research that will clarify the influence that these psychosocial factors have on health care provided to older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigated the effect of acculturation on definitions and attributions towards children's school achievement. Iranian and Iranian-Canadian immigrant mothers and their upper-elementary school children were interviewed about their definitions and attributions about school success and failure. There were significant effects of acculturation on the definitions and attributions of both mothers and children. Definitions of school success and failure held by Iranian mothers and their children were product-based, whereas the immigrant mothers and their children used definitions that were more process-based. While Iranian mothers attributed their children's school performance primarily to `effort', `family' appeared to be the most frequent attribution held by Iranian-Canadian immigrant mothers. The Iranian children consistently attributed academic success and failure to `effort', whereas the immigrant children's responses were variable, demonstrating acculturation to Western belief systems. The findings demonstrate how acculturation influences mothers' and children's beliefs about school achievement through the process of immigration. Implications for theory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Despite their potential to influence treatment decisions, parents’ beliefs and attitudes regarding attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have not been widely studied. This research examined relations between parents’ beliefs and attitudes and their experiences with different treatments for their children's ADHD. Methods Canadian parents of 73, 5- to 13-year-old, boys with ADHD completed questionnaires measuring beliefs about ADHD, attributions for ADHD behaviours, and treatment experiences. Results Parents reported using primarily behaviour management and stimulant medications in treating ADHD. Approximately half of the families also used diet/vitamin therapies. Parents were knowledgeable about ADHD and held generally accurate beliefs. They saw ADHD symptoms as predominantly internal to the child and as relatively enduring and pervasive. Parents’ beliefs were related to their use of different treatments and parents who used less empirically supported treatments were more likely to see ADHD behaviours as internal to the child, enduring and pervasive. Conclusions The findings highlight the importance of assessing parents’ use of alternate treatments for ADHD and the potential role of parents’ beliefs and attributions in shaping treatment choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Previous research has shown that parent attributions for child behavior have important implications on the parent-child relationship. The current study investigates whether mothers' level of ADHD symptoms is associated with their child-responsibility attributions for positive and negative child behavior., Method: Seventy-nine mothers of 6- to 11-year-old boys participated in this online study. Mothers completed questionnaires assessing their attributions, their ADHD symptoms, and their child's behavior., Results: All mothers offered more child-responsibility attributions for positive behaviors than for negative behaviors. However, mothers with greater levels of ADHD symptoms did this to a lesser extent, blaming their child relatively more for negative behavior and giving their child relatively less credit for positive behavior., Conclusion: This is the first study demonstrating the association between mothers' ADHD symptoms and child-responsibility attributions. It is possible that these relatively more negative attributions could be underlying some of the parenting difficulties reported by parents with ADHD.