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Parenting practices are major influences on incidents of juvenile delinquency: Stress experienced by parents of children with behavioral problems is a leading contributor to parenting practices. We investigated the extent to which parental stress was reduced by participation in an established multiple group family intervention, the Family Solutions Program, developed to reduce recidivism among juvenile offenders. We also examined parent stress by gender, ethnicity, dropout rates, intervention benefits at 3-month follow-up, single-versus two-parent households, and across dimensions of family functioning and parent-adolescent communication, Parents reported greater levels of parent stress than non-clinical parents prior to intervention. Parental stress did diminish in response to intervention, but not until follow-up to intervention completion. No differences were found on initial parent stress level between completers and non-completers of the intervention or between parent stress and gender or ethnicity of the parent; however, single-parent household was associated with significantly higher levels of parent stress. Family functioning was significantly negatively correlated with parental stress. Finally, open communication between juvenile first offenders and their parents improved significantly in response to the intervention both at post-intervention and at follow-up. Keywords Family intervention * Parental stress * Juvenile delinquency

Is a woman ever morally obligated to forgo an abortion for the sake of the man who has impregnated her? In 'Fathers and Fetuses,' George Harris contends that in some situations women are so obligated. Harris argues that a woman who lies to her partner about her desire to have children, becomes pregnant, and then decides to abort, will, if she acts on this decision, violate her partner's autonomy and harm him in so far as she will harm his fetus. To avoid these wrongs, a woman must therefore carry this fetus to term. I argue that this conclusion depends on a principle for which Harris offers no argument, namely that the conditions under which a fetus is to be considered a man's are the same conditions under which a fetus is to be considered a woman's. Evaluating this principle and considering related cases leads to important conclusions about a parent's relationship with the fetus. Specifically, I challenge the notion that we should ever consider a fetus 'his' or even 'hers.'

As people with HIV are living longer, HIV-infected parents are raising children while managing the effects of chronic illness and stigma. Groups need to adapt to the changing needs of people with HIV/AIDS. The Making Positive Changes Program uses groups to enhance social support and to provide education on issues that affect families with HIV. Sessions focus on one of two major topics--self-care and parenting-with consumer involvement in planning and facilitation. Challenges included those typical to group work but also specific to HIV/AIDS, especially stigma. As the program develops, consumers will increasingly participate in and guide group implementation. doi:10.1300/J009v30n02_04 KEYWORDS. HIV/AIDS, parents, groups, psychoeducation, women, families

Parents' personality was examined as a moderator of the impact of demographic risk on parenting in a longitudinal study (N = 102 families). Parents' personality and demographic risk (i.e., education level, age, family income, and family size) were assessed when children were infants, and parents' power assertion, warmth, and positive affect were observed in naturalistic interactions 2.5 years later. Parents' personality moderated the adverse impact of demographic risk on parenting. For parents who had memories of unstable and unhappy childhood experiences and who reported low conventionality, higher risk was linked to more power assertion, but there was no such link for those parents who recalled happy childhood experiences and who embraced conventions. For both parents who lacked a sense of optimism and social trust, and for fathers who reported low conventionality, higher risk was linked to less affectively positive parenting, but there was no such link for parents who were optimistic and trusting or for fathers who were conventional. Higher risk was linked to more power assertion, but only for mothers low in Extraversion and for fathers high in Neuroticism. Keywords: personality, parenting, adversity

Objectives. We compared recent parents (married, cohabiting, not cohabiting but romantically involved, and not romantically involved) to examine the association between mental health problems and relationship status. Methods. We analyzed data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study that followed a cohort of approximately 4900 births in large US cities. Our study included a large oversample of nonmarital births (n =3700) and interviews with both mothers and fathers. We used the Composite International Diagnostic Interview Short Form to assess depression and generalized anxiety 1 year after the birth. Self reports were used to measure heavy drinking, illicit drug use, incarceration, and partner violence. Results. Unmarried parents reported more mental health and behavioral problems than did married parents, and unmarried parents whose relationships ended before the birth reported more impairment compared with other groups of unmarried parents. Conclusions. A substantial number of children are born to unmarried parents and are at risk for poor parenting and poor developmental outcomes. Government initiatives aimed at increasing marriage rates among low-income couples need to consider the mental health status of unmarried parents.

The Victorian times saw motherhood and domesticity play an important role in forming young women's lives and identities as also the fathers who were tender, caring and informal in their relations with their children. The Victorian era shows both mother and father having a complexity and diversity in their parental roles as men moved between public and private spheres and women whose identity seemed defined by the private, in practice in fact had a public aspect to their role.

What determines access to the Voksentoppen Children's Asthma and Allergy Centre, the most specialized health care facility for asthmatic children in Norway? This publicly funded national institution is mandated to serve all segments of the population equally. The paper reports from the experiences of families with children having a confirmed diagnosis of moderate to severe asthma. The study population was selected from a national register of state cash-benefit recipients, Within this register, all families with a child under the age of 9 and with the diagnosis of asthma at the end of 1997 were selected (N = 2564). Further information about the population was gathered in a postal survey. It was found that access to the facility, measured as at least one admission during the period of the disease, was primarily determined by variations in morbidity. In particular, measures of health condition that presupposed a professional's evaluation of the child's health condition were significant. In addition, access was influenced by several factors not directly related to the need for treatment. Notably, children from families in which parents had a graduate education were over-represented among those with access to the top level of the institution's medical hierarchy. Multivariate analysis was used to search for causal mechanisms. It was found that families with a doctor in their social network had greater likelihood of access, and this in part accounted for the observed association between education and access. The pattern of access was also influenced by geographical factors, but not in a way that reduced the significance of educational background. Membership of, and participation in, patient organizations also increased the families' chances of receiving top-level professional treatment. The results depart from professional norms and officially stated health policy in Norway, which assert that health condition is the only valid criterion for allocating scarce medical goods. Keywords: Inequalities in access to health care; Asthma; Children; Educational background; Social networks; Norway

Drawing largely on the literature from adult learning and development, this article presents parents as continuous learners whose critical reflections on their experiences with parenting can be rich fodder for their growth and development. Theories and models are highlighted that may suggest a wider repertoire of approaches for helping professionals who are facilitating parents in their learning and growth.

In response to the transition of the social support structure under rapid population change, this article proposes a four-layer household-based convoy to fully depict support structures. The four layers are referred to as the household type, family network, kinship network, and social network from the innermost to the outermost layer. The 2001 Taiwan Social Change Survey (Chang & Fu, 2002) is used to construct the household-based convoy. The results of this study show that the reciprocity of social support is mainly affected by support strategies that are probably because of spatial separation among family members. Different strategies are employed based on the nature of the social support. Keywords: family; network; convoy; support exchange; reciprocity

The importance of social support in reducing the impact of sudden loss on grief symptomatology and facilitating psychological adaptation has often been stressed by theorists. However, the accounts of family members, friends and work colleagues who actually have supported traumatically bereaved groups have seldom been addressed. This article describes how social networks have supported parents who lost their offspring due to traumatic deaths (suicide or SIDS) and how it has impacted them. Finally, their advice to future networks is presented. The networks' experiences and opinions are explored through qualitative and quantitative research methods. Data was gathered during 2004, through questionnaires from 100 social network members, and 21 focus group interviews (N = 69). The networks elaborate on various aspects of strain and growth from the experience, give important advice to future networks, and stress the importance of some professional guidance to prevent them from 'burn-out' in this particular straining relationship.

As women approach parity with men in their representation in the U.S. labor force, child care has become a critical concern both for families and for community development professionals. In [...]

The investigation examined the mental work associated with managing a household and raising young children and how such mental work might be associated with relationship satisfaction. Forty-five parents with young children completed questionnaires that assessed marital satisfaction and mothers' and fathers' perceptions of who did what in their household in terms of household tasks, childcare tasks, household management, and childcare management, as well as how much they worried about the completion of each of these tasks. Results indicate that fathers' marital satisfaction and mothers' marital satisfaction differed in terms of the division of labor and management of labor, doi:10.1300/J002v40n02_04 KEYWORDS. Division of labor, family work, invisible work, marital satisfaction, mental work, parenting, worry work

Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, we identify parental age as influential in the parental provision of economic resources, social capital and cultural capital to adolescents, as well as in parental educational expectations for their children. At the bivariate level, the relationship is curvilinear, suggesting that having comparatively young or old parents is disadvantageous to teenagers, at least with regard to resource allocation. With controls for socioeconomic background and family structure, however, the pattern typically becomes positive and linear: as the age of the parent rises, so too does the transmission of resources to adolescent offspring. These patterns hold for most economic, social and cultural resources, although the pattern is strongest for economic ones and weakest--albeit still significant--for more interactional ones. Although maternal age is the primary focus of this article, supplementary analyses also confirm a generally positive relationship between paternal age and parental resources. These results suggest that parental age may warrant attention similar to that given to family structure, race and gender., Introduction Sociologists, especially those coming from human capital, rational choice and status attainment traditions, increasingly direct their attention to understanding the transmission of resources from parents to children (Becker 1981; […]

This study analyzes structural forces affecting state patterns of parental presence within grandparent-grandchild coresidence by testing demographic, social change, policy environment, and social problems models. The project combines published state-level data with the 1970, 1980, and 1990 Census Public Use Microdata Samples. While factors differentially affect the proportion of children living in each household structure, coresidence seems to be encouraged by social contexts in which people are poor, the middle generation is likely to die, and which have higher rates of births to teens. State policy environment only affects proportions of children living in three generation households for 1980 and 1990. Structural variables other than social problems matter more for percent of children living in three generation households than for proportion of children living only with grandparents. Structural variables explain more variation in proportion of children living in skipped generation households than in proportion of children living with both parents and grandparents.

The impact of gender difference on parental preference, in developing countries, is examined.

In light of the deaths of parents and other adults caused by the African AIDS epidemic, a case study of north-western Tanzania is examined to demonstrate how it results in producing many orphans and affects children's primary schooling, including attendance and number of hours spent at school, due to economic or psychological reasons. The findings of the Kagera Health and Development Survey, conducted from September 1991 to January 1994, covering the entire Kagera region of Tanzania, are presented, and the policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Despite the importance of sun protection during childhood, many parents fail to adequately protect their children from the sun. The current study assessed sun-related knowledge, stage of change, and psychosocial [...]

One of the questions faced by the parents of a child who is terminally ill with a malignant disease is whether they should talk about death with their child. Parents who sense that their child is aware of his or her imminent death more often later regret not having talked with their child than do parents who do not sense this awareness in their child.

Using data from a survey in Songzi County of Hubei Province, this article analyzes the relationship between children's gender and marriage form and their provision of old-age support to their noncoresiding parents in rural China. The results show that children's gender and marriage form have significant influence on their likelihood of giving financial and housework support to their parents, but no significant influence on the amount of financial support or their likelihood of supporting their parents with agricultural labor in peak agricultural seasons. Thus, the authors find that in Songzi, where both virilocal and uxorilocal marriages have been historically accepted and commonly practiced, sons and daughters play basically the same role in providing old-age support for their noncoresiding parents, as do virilocal and uxorilocal couples. The article discusses how these findings relate to current and future problems of old-age security and son preference in rural China. Keywords: virilocal marriage; uxorilocal marriage; son preference; intergenerational transfers; old-age security

This study uses Cox regression to assess the relationships among parental drug use, drug treatment compliance, and reunification from substitute care. The study finds that drug treatment compliance is associated with faster reunification, even when accounting for ongoing drug use and three parenting measures. The findings are consistent with a conceptual framework suggesting that certain client actions, such as drug treatment compliance, may serve as markers that substantially affect client outcomes.

Listening to parents is an important part of any children's nurse's day. Sometimes nurses only give lip service to what parents are saying: Kenyon and Barnett (2001) discuss the importance [...]

This content-analytic study explores representations of male characters with HIV/AIDS in nearly four dozen feature-length narrative movies produced and released in the United States during the first two decades of the AIDS pandemic. It offers insight into the cumulative messages communicated in these works about men in relation to HIV/AIDS and the influence of such messages on the social construction of HIV/AIDS during the 1980s and 1990s. Problematic effects pertaining to gay men as well as members of various other demographic groups in American society are addressed. Key Words: gay men, feature-length movies, HIV/AIDS, 'Now No One is Free From AIDS,' shouted the July 1985 cover of Life magazine, in response to actor Rock Hudson's announcement that he had secretly been battling AIDS for [...]

Adults who continue to regularly contact with their parents contribute to feelings of well-being, self-esteem, security and inclusiveness. Most Canadian adults speak with their parents at least once a week, with women generally initiating contact.

Copyright of Journal for Sociology of Education & Socialization / Zeitschrift für Soziologie der Erziehung & Sozialisation is the property of Julius Beltz GmbH & Co. KG Beltz Juventa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Influences of prenatal androgen exposure on human sex-typical behavior have been established largely through studies of individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). However, evidence that addresses the potential confounding influence of parental socialization is limited. Parental socialization and its relationship to sex-typical toy play and spatial ability were investigated in two samples involving 137 individuals with CAH and 107 healthy controls. Females with CAH showed more boy-typical toy play and better targeting performance than control females, but did not differ in mental rotations performance. Males with CAH showed worse mental rotations performance than control males, but did not differ in sex-typical toy play or targeting. Reported parental encouragement of girl-typical toy play correlated with girl-typical toy play in all four groups. Moreover, parents reported encouraging less girl-typical, and more boy-typical, toy play in females with CAH than in control females and this reported encouragement partially mediated the relationship between CAH status and sex-typical toy play. Other evidence suggests that the reported parental encouragement of sex-atypical toy play in girls with CAH may be a response to the girls' preferences for boys' toys. Nevertheless, this encouragement could further increase boy-typical behavior in girls with CAH. In contrast to the results for toy play, we found no differential parental socialization for spatial activities and little evidence linking parental socialization to spatial ability. Overall, evidence suggests that prenatal androgen exposure and parental socialization both contribute to sex-typical toy play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an ample scholarly and popular literature describing the rise in "anxiety" among middle-class parents. This paper draws from a study of urban middle-class parents who were considering sending their children to public school. Focusing on one neighborhood and its school, it describes the impact of anxiety on the choice process. It further examines the emergence of a counter-movement among parents who saw their choice of the school as rejection of contemporary "helicopter parenting." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fourth-grade children's peer groups were identified using the Social Cognitive Mapping (SCM) procedure. Children (N = 143) and caregivers then participated in interviews in which they provided information used to [...]

This article examines the factors involved in social workers' decisions to remove children who are at risk for neglect or abuse from their homes. Findings indicate that child welfare workers are significantly influenced by their perception of parents cooperativeness and their beliefs that a child's home life will deteriorate.

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The author presents a perspective on school psychological services, beginning with the assessment process, that focuses on parent and teacher consultation. The paper outlines a focal shift from the individual child to the parental and systemic life in which the child is embedded. The role of the school psychologist is conceived as, primarily, consultative and collaborative in nature. Collaborating with parents and teachers in the assessment process involves mutual exploration and information gathering and reflects a paradigmatic shift from individual analysis to the analysis of dyadic and systemic parent-child and family-school relationships. Understanding parents' and teachers' perspectives and needs, providing a supportive, collaborative environment, and serving as a conduit between the family and the school is seen as vital to the role of the school psychologist. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, the controversy of divergent findings in research on parental socialization effects in different cultures is addressed. Three explanations intended to address divergent findings of socialization effects in different cultures, as advanced by researchers who emphasize cultural differences, are discussed. These include cultural differences in socialization values and goals of parents, parental emotional and cognitive characteristics associated with parenting styles, and adolescents' interpretations or evaluations of their parents' parenting styles. The empirical evidence for and against each of these arguments is examined and an alternative paradigm for understanding and empirical study of developmental outcomes associated with parenting styles in different cultures is suggested. Baum-rind's directive parenting style is presented as an alternative to the authoritarian parenting style in understanding the positive developmental effects associated with "strict" parenting in cultures said to have a collectivist orientation. Directions for research on the three explanations are mentioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal for Sociology of Education & Socialization / Zeitschrift für Soziologie der Erziehung & Sozialisation is the property of Julius Beltz GmbH & Co. KG Beltz Juventa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Psychologists who study children have emphasized family processes that influence children's psychological well-being and subsequent development, but gerontologists have rarely considered the impact of the family as system in adulthood. Drawing on family systems theories, we show how between- family, within-family, and within-individual differences emerge from family interactions in adulthood. Specifically, we consider how adult behavior might be understood in terms of norms sustained by the larger family system. We present three case studies of adult families to illustrate the ways in which their shared beliefs shape emotional experiences, behavior, and conceptions of self and family in adulthood. The family, as a milieu, continues to exert influence over the day-to-day life of individual members after they are grown.

The article focuses on Epstein's fifth category of parent involvement in decision making in the U.S. and South Africa which has a positive effect on student learning. It highlights the differences and similarities of parents on how they participate in decision making and public school governance in public schools. It mentions that parent involvement in school decisions develops leadership among parents.

Parents and the students themselves play a significant role in enriching the work of any learning community in several ways. Parents share their observations on the impact of teaching strategies or programs on their children, while students provide the first hand feedback. In addition, other potential members of the community of learners may contribute to building the network. They may be business owners, retired adults, school board members and other community members.

This study examines parents' decisions about educating some or all of their children beyond primary school in rural Thailand. Their strategies often involve choices between sons and daughters and between older versus younger children. We find that the more children there are in a family, the lower the proportion who are sent to secondary school. Parents send more sons than daughters and more youngest than eldest children. The decision is sometimes associated with a specific 'investment' strategy, but it may also reflect parents' ability to afford to send children beyond primary school. Important economic factors include children's perceived earning potentials, anticipated opportunity costs, and parents' poverty status. However, the issues of access to schools and the safety of children, particularly girls, are also critically important. These concerns are often weighed as heavily, or more heavily, than economic considerations.

This study examined school climate's relation to the sociodemographic composition of the school student population, school structural characteristics, parental involvement, classroom support in learning, parental satisfaction with public education, and student academic achievement all together at one time in a sample of 122 elementary schools. Parental satisfaction was best predicted by parental perceptions of a safe school and positive climate, followed by the school's informing parents of their child's educational progress and empowering parents. Student performance on a standardized achievement was best predicted by the percentage of students in the Free and Reduced Meals program, parental perceptions of a safe school, and parental involvement. Study results are discussed in terms of two general levels (school and classroom) and types (task support and interpersonal support) of the school's social environment.