The Impact of Child‐Parent Psychotherapy on Child Dependency Court Outcomes

Although parental compliance with court orders in child welfare cases is key to achieving physical parent‐child reunification and successful case closure, little research has examined how parent‐child relationship‐focused rehabilitative services uniquely influence case outcomes. This project fills this gap by investigating links between court ordering of and parental participation in Child‐Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) with court outcomes. Data were obtained from court records of 448 court‐involved parents. Hierarchical regressions revealed that greater participation in CPP led to reunification and successful case closure but not faster case closure. Courtroom professionals should consider parent‐child relationship‐based therapies as tools for achieving child welfare goals.     

Chinese American Adolescents’ Perceptions of the Language Brokering Experience as a Sense of Burden and Sense of Efficacy

Children of immigrants who do translations and who interpret for others using their heritage language and English are known as language brokers. Although prior research suggests that children of immigrants’ perceptions of the language brokering experience vary greatly—from feeling a sense of efficacy to feeling a sense of burden—what remains unanswered in the literature is identification of the antecedents and processes that help to explain the varying psychological experience of language brokers. Using data from a two-wave prospective longitudinal study of 256 Chinese American adolescents, the present study tested potential mechanisms that may be responsible for adolescents’ perceptions of the language brokering experience as a sense or burden or sense of efficacy. The results demonstrate that adolescents’ Chinese orientation sets in motion a family process that is linked to variations in the perceptions of adolescents’ language brokering experience. Adolescents who are more Chinese oriented have a stronger sense of familial obligation, and these adolescents are more likely to perceive that they matter to their parents. Adolescents’ perceived sense of mattering to parents, in turn, is associated positively with a sense efficacy, and negatively with a sense of burden as language brokers. Those adolescents who are less Chinese oriented have a weaker sense of familial obligation, and these adolescents are more likely to feel a sense of alienation from their parents. Adolescents’ sense of perceived alienation from parents, in turn, is associated with a sense of burden as language brokers. Implications for developing interventions for children who act as language brokers for their parents are discussed.

农村留守儿童健康成长的环境优化研究

农村留守儿童成长宏观环境可以归纳为以下四类:即国家和政府层面的有关留守儿童的法律政策环境;人口迁移流动背景下留守儿童减量化措施所构成的制度和发展规划性环境;新农村建设和"三农"问题解决背景下农村儿童工作特别是社区工作所构成的农村社区儿童工作环境;留守儿童问题及工作相关媒体宣传倡导所构成的传媒环境。针对上述4类环境及其优化进行分析并提出对策建议具有重要意义。     

Augusta Webster’s Mother and Daughter and the only child debate

The enduring debate about family size has roots in Victorian England, most notably in literary works addressing the issue of balancing motherhood and a writing career. One Victorian writer and activist, Augusta Webster (1837–1894), directly addressed the issue of family size in her uncompleted sonnet sequence Mother and Daughter (1895), which she began when her only child was a newborn. In this posthumous series of 14-line poems, Webster defends her decision to have one child and, in doing so, challenges popular assumptions that only women with multiple children could be considered ‘complete’, socially-acceptable mothers. Despite her efforts, however, and despite the rising popularity of one-child families, the results of numerous scientific studies and the lingering critiques of mommy blogs make it clear that challenges to mothers of ‘onlies’ remain.     

Feeding Mothers’ Love: Stories of Breastfeeding and Mothering in Urban China

ABSTRACT

By analysing narratives of infant feeding, this article explores how emotions are involved in the making of maternal subjectivity. The article is based on interviews with 21 Chinese middle-class mothers of small infants living in Beijing and their stories of how breastfeeding connects to intimacy and love. By merging post-structural approaches of subjectivity with affect theory, the article shows how the emotional dimension of breastfeeding promotes an ideal of mothers as primary caregivers. It finds that this ideal is challenged by practices of multiple caregiving in the mothers’ everyday lives. By exploring the performativity of emotions, the article adds another sociological perspective beyond those concerned with medical discourses of feeding infants. Also, as emotions have been neglected in much social research on Chinese mothering, it contributes to new sociological knowledge about mothering in China.     

Birth Registration and Protection for Children of Transnational Labor Migrants in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Policies on transnational labor migration do not consider workers' needs as parents or the rights and welfare of their children, including a child's right to an official identity through birth registration. A study of birth-registration decision making by migrant parents in Lombok, Indonesia underscored the need for targeted responses to uniquely challenging circumstances and priorities of migrant parents. Free birth registration through birthing and health centers and village-level leaders can overcome problems of decentralized implementation of national strategies and an exploitive registration brokerage industry, mitigating risks of de facto statelessness for children and a multigenerational pattern of undocumented and unsafe migration.     

Re-examining Social Work Roles and Tasks with Foster Care

In order to promote developmental outcomes with children and young people and to nurture their positive health and well-being in foster care, social workers and case managers are required to direct professional attention toward both the child or young person and her/his daily living environment(s)—at home, at school, and in the local neighborhoods in which they live. When viewed from an ecological perspective, foster care environments are represented conceptually as a nested cluster of settings ranging from immediate life spaces and networks of relationships in a foster home, at school, and in a neighborhood, to organizational contexts holding a statutory duty of care for children and young people assigned looked after status, along with national policies and statutes which frame foster-care environments. This article explores how social-work roles and tasks with children and young people in foster care change as Social Workers transition from case management roles within state, provincial, or local authority departments to become Supervising Social Workers, or Team Managers of Foster Carers, or Directors of foster care services.     

Not-Knowing or Knowing Naught: Revisiting the Concept of Collaboration and Expertise in Child and Youth Care Practice

This article discusses the complexities associated with adopting a not-knowing stance in Child and Youth Care practice. By highlighting some of the challenges, it also clarifies the distinctions between practitioner lack of knowing how to proceed and an intentional, uncertain attitude when working with children, youth and families. Recommendations or caveats are provided if a practitioner chooses to adopt this kind of orientation to practice.     

The Alien Child’s Best Interest Ignored: When Notions of Gendered Parenthood Meet Tightening Immigration Policies

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how arguments about the “child’s best interest” are constructed in court decisions on asylum and family reunification in Finland. The article brings together two strands of scholarship that have so far been rather separate from each other, namely that of the literature on family reunification and feminist family studies. Analysis shows that the best interest of the child is insufficiently addressed and other arguments sideline the evaluation of child’s best interest. Gender has an impact as the best interest of the child seems to play a more significant role in relation to motherhood than it does in relation to fatherhood. In general, the court did not deem motherhood or fatherhood central to the child’s development as such, but rather as something that became central if it could not be performed properly due to other reasons than separation. Considerations such as ties to either Finland or the country of origin, as well as the income requirement, can become factors that override the potential separation from a parent. Finally, the results are also compared to the child’s best interest evaluation in out-of-home placement cases from the same courts. Our analysis shows a stark contrast between these two types of cases. We show that whenever a child’s case falls under immigration law, even when simultaneously being handled within the framework of child protection, the main deciding factor is not the best interest of the child. Alien affairs are decided based on—almost solely—factors other than the child’s best interest, while the same Supreme Administrative Court rules on child welfare cases based on a very different interpretation of child’s best interest.     

Intergenerational Interactions

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine interactions between elder volunteers and children in a campus-based child care center, using the revised Interaction Analysis Instrument (Newman & Onawola, 1989). Findings from video-taped interactions suggested that intergenerational interactions may be systematically related to the nature of specific program activities. Thus it may be important for program coordinators to consider the kind of intergenerational interactions they want to facilitate when choosing among various intergenerational activities. Additional recommendations are offered to child-care and elder-care organizers who are interested in developing intergenerational programs.