NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECTS AND PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT IN THE INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF EDUCATION*

ABSTRACT We analyze the intergenerational transmission of education focusing on the interplay between family and neighborhood effects. We develop a theoretical model suggesting that both neighborhood quality and parental effort are of importance for the education attained by children. This model proposes a mechanism explaining why and how they are of importance, distinguishing between high‐ and low‐educated parents. We then bring this model to the data using a longitudinal dataset in Britain. The available information on social housing in big cities allows us to identify the role of neighborhood in educational outcomes. We find that the better the quality of the neighborhood, the higher is the parents' involvement in their children's education. A novel finding with respect to previous U.S. studies is that family is of importance for children with highly educated parents while it is the community that is crucial for the educational achievement of children from low‐educated families.     

Playing,parenting and family leisure in parks: exploring emotional geographies of families in Guangzhou Children’s Park,China

ABSTRACT

Children’s leisure activities in parks have attracted increasing scholarly interest in recent decades. However, relatively little attention has been given to the emotional needs and responses of children to their activities within a park’s play spaces. Moreover, what parents perceive, and how they themselves engage within children’s playing spaces, is under-studied. Drawing on fieldwork carried out in the Guangzhou Children’s Park, China, this paper aims to explore the experiences of both children and parents within this particular playing space. Supplementing participant observations with interviews and analysis of reviews on the Internet, the paper finds that children obtain a sense of family and company from their parents’ presence, and parents recall memories of their own childhood and obtain emotional recovery by visiting parks with their children. The findings suggest that play spaces are not only places where children play, but also where family life and childhood are ‘built’. The paper contributes to the existing literature by highlighting and examining the ‘child–parent’ relationship within playing spaces. By conducting a case study of a non-Western society, the paper encourages researchers to examine ‘child–parent’ relationships in a family leisure context, and to explore the everyday and emotional geographies of family life in contemporary China.     

The Negative Effects of Insufficient Support Systems on Kuwaiti Mothers of Children with Disabilities

Parents raising a child with a physical or cognitive disability are often faced with the negative stigma against disabilities that exist in several Arab countries. This puts extra pressure on the parents and can lead to negative outcomes for the children. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of parenting stress and varying levels of support for mothers of children with disabilities and the effects of these pressures on their relationship with their disabled child. We surveyed 85 Kuwaiti mothers of children with disabilities. The participants filled out an online survey with questions regarding parenting related stress, perceived social support, feelings of social isolation, self‐efficacy, and attachment to their child. Results indicate that mothers who feel unsupported by their families, community, and government experience more parenting stress and greater social isolation. These in turn lead them to feel less competent in their parenting abilities, and ultimately they feel less emotionally connected to their child. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Study and School in the Lives of Children in Migrant Families: A View from Rural Jiangxi,China

Millions of children in China have been ‘left behind’ in the countryside while their parents work in distant places to support the social reproduction of their families. This article examines the role of study and schooling in this process. The analysis shows that family strategies to pursue socio‐economic mobility are intricately connected to state frameworks for providing support, and schools are central to this. This is because both family and state interests in the attributes and prospects of the next generation converge in schools. At the same time, on a day‐to‐day basis, the labour of children in schools and the labour of parents in the cities are intertwined. Specifically, by communicating with each other about study, and by focusing on the child's educational future as the key purpose of their daily work, both children and parents carry out their obligations towards each other, while finding ways to cope with the emotional difficulties that protracted physical separation entails.     

美国华人移民家庭的代际关系与跨文化冲突

本文旨在研究美国华人移民家庭的代际关系与跨文化冲突问题。作者通过对其本人在洛杉矶和纽约两大华人移民社区所进行的田野调查、个人访谈和实地观察所收集的实证资料的系统分析,着重探讨矛盾重重的华人移民家庭中父母与子女如何处理复杂的、不断变动的家庭关系以及移民父母如何选择轻重缓急的策略,并依靠社区的力量来确保下一代的健康成长。     

Making the emotional connection: transnational eldercare circulation within Sri Lankan-Australian transnational families

The scholarship on care for older parents within transnational families focuses mainly on the experience of unskilled migrants and is presented largely from the perspective of caregivers. Few studies consider the case of affluent, skilled migrants, and their wealthy older parents who also cross borders to visit and provide care for their migrant adult–children. Through Baldassar and Merla’s concept of ‘care circulation’ and the lens of emotional transnationalism, the article illustrates that despite affluent transnational family members’ mobility and access to resources that should facilitate successful circulation of care, care is not easily exchanged at an intimate level. Drawing upon 30 transnational family case studies of skilled migrants residing in Australia and their urban, high to middle-income older parents from Sri Lanka, I argue that older parents construct both caring across distance and in proximity as an attentiveness to their emotional care needs, and the time and effort taken to engage in emotion work; a task that is more challenging for migrant sons than daughters. The article reveals the manner in which gendered care practices both enable and inhibit care circulation between transnational migrants and their older parents.     

Travelling in your backyard: the unfamiliar places of parenting

Current theoretical understandings of family-as-activity, as suggested by the terms ‘doing family’ or ‘families we choose’, locate family practices such as parenting, within the realm of the spatial. Feminist geography particularly has been instrumental in conceptualisations of parenting as a spatial project that involves constant renegotiation of the ‘everyday’ spaces of home, work and play. However, what are less evident in the literature are the specificities of the actual places and spaces of parenting: where parents go in the course of their parenting or how they actually use particular spaces. Furthermore, most scholarly work on parenting has been based on the theoretical and material experience of heterosexual parents, with the experiences of non-heterosexual parented families under-documented. Using data from a recent study with lesbian parents, this paper seeks to address some of these conceptual and empirical gaps, suggesting that an exploration of the everyday spatialities of same-sex parenting contributes, not only to expanding current geographic understandings of family and parenting, but also understanding of the material places where these identities—familial, parental, sexual—intersect.     

Transitional geographies: making mobile children

Geographers of childhood have variously accounted for the experiences of mobile children. Less has been said about the practices of becoming mobile, including the acquisition of skills, engagement with travel technologies and the shifting child–parent relations implicated in the process. This article explores the making of mobile children through ethnographic research with 7–12-year-olds practising the journey between home and school in Helsinki, Finland. Elaborating on the work of psychoanalyst Donald Woods Winnicott, it argues that families enact flexible spatial arrangements—transitional spaces—to experiment with their attachments to urban environments. Transitional spaces foreground the diverse relations between children, parents and the world, allowing the replacement of standard notions about growing up with situated accounts of how families make space for children's expanding mobilities. Against a cultural atmosphere stressing the risks and uncertainties of childhood, this view opens an affirmative approach to children's geographies—one that emphasises the trust, play and collaboration between adults, children and environments.     

Geographies of migration and relatedness: transmigrancy in open transnational adoptive parenting

Current transnational adoptive parenting is characterized by ambiguous practices of (1) discursively distancing adoptive children from immigrants, while (2) symbolically or actually reconnecting newly constituted families to children's birth countries through charity and culture work. This ambiguity reveals the ubiquity of contradictory and essentialist understandings of categories of familial and national belonging. However, adoptive parents’ strategies for accommodating their children's sense of belonging may also open up space for rethinking care and family building in transnational contexts. Using the case of a Belgian family who adopted a 12-year-old girl from Ethiopia, decided to maintain strong connections with the child's biological family, engage in charity work in Ethiopia and forge strong ties with immigrant communities in Belgium, the article explores how the concept of ‘transmigration’ may further our understanding of identity configurations within adoptive families. Furthermore, this particular case of ‘open’ transnational adoptive parenting testifies to adoptive parents’ efforts to escape from essentialist and exclusionary frameworks and create counter-spaces of multiplicity and transmigrancy in a context of severe social and economic inequality.     

Watch out for the neighborhood trap! A case study on parental perceptions of and strategies to counter risks for children in a disadvantaged neighborhood

Neighborhood is seen as one of the many social contexts that shape children's cognitive, emotional and social development. However, the neighborhood context does not simply ‘imprint’ itself on children, but can be mediated or moderated by other social contexts, in particular the family context through parenting practices. Based on a case study in a low income neighborhood in The Hague, The Netherlands, this paper addresses the question of how living in a disadvantaged neighborhood context constitutes a risk for children and which strategies parents develop in response to the perceived negative neighborhood influences.     

Bereavement from afar: transnational grieving and the emotional geographies of migration

ABSTRACT

This exploratory article aims to contribute to scholarship on migrants’ experiences of bereavement and grief through the loss of a parent in their country of origin. It considers how transnational bereavement and grieving relate to the ever changing emotional geographies of migration and transnational families. Empirical material is drawn from a research project conducted with Latin American and Latino-British families living in the north of England, particularly from narratives presented by sons and daughters who had experienced such bereavements. Middle generation migrants may express: a continuing bond with a deceased parent as part of their emotional support network; regret at missing the death of the parent and the reinforcement of ambivalent emotions regarding their migration project; boundary ambiguity towards the transnational family; and a sense of physical distance from the family home as a geographical cure which allows working through the grieving process and troubling changes in family configurations.     

Transnational family networks in the Somali diaspora in Egypt: women's roles and differentiated experiences

Diasporic Somalis are increasingly leading a transnational life in which family members are sustained through networks of relations, obligations and resources that are located in different nation-states. These networks and relations enable diasporic Somalis to seek safety for themselves and their relatives, minimize risks and maximize family resources. In this article, I examine three key dimensions of such a way of life, namely: migration; remittances; and transnational family care. I focus on the roles that women play in this family-based support system. For instance, women move and facilitate the movement of other family members; they remit to family members; and they provide care for children and sick relatives. But these transnational households are not free from tensions. Family members are placed in hierarchical relations shaped by age; parental authority; possession of western citizenship; financial resources; and bonds of familial reciprocity and gratitude. Women gain appreciation from relatives and a sense of self-respect for their new roles. Some of the women also make use of the family network to arrange for the care of their children and sick relatives, while they engage in transnational trading activities. However, young and single female relatives often sacrifice or delay their individual dreams because of their familial obligations. I conclude that transnationalism – as a way of organizing and sustaining livelihood, resources and relations of Somali families – is not always emancipating or marginalizing for Somali women. Rather the benefits and challenges of such a way of life for women are different, mixed and uneven.     

Parents and children in Second World War Germany: an inter-generational perspective on wartime separation

This article discusses how the relationship between parents and their children were affected by the second world war in Germany. With fathers away from home for often as long as a decade, many children grew up without a father being physically present. The current historiography suggests that wartime separation caused a crisis in the family. But did the prolonged periods of time apart and the separate experiences of husbands at the Front and wives and children at home really destabilize family relationships? This article questions such a picture of families in ruin. It argues that family relationships were far more resilient in the face of wartime separation than has previously been credited. Indeed, it reveals the importance of children in keeping mothers and fathers focused on getting through the war. It further contends that, even from afar, fathers continued to play an important role in their children’s lives. And this in turn revises our understanding of the situation facing reuniting families.     

华侨留守儿童的家庭教育资源与人格、行为的关系——以温州市为例的研究

采用问卷调查方式对148名华侨留守儿童、44名国内留守儿童与187名非留守儿童进行家庭教育资源、人格和行为的调查,旨在分析探讨华侨留守儿童家庭教育资源、人格与行为的特点及其关系。结果显示,华侨留守儿童的家庭教育资源、人格、行为与国内留守儿童具有显著差异;留守儿童与非留守儿童的家庭教育资源、人格、行为也具有显著差异。得出结论,华侨留守儿童的家庭教育资源、人格与行为均不如国内留守儿童、非留守儿童;与父辈生活在一起的华侨留守儿童遭受更多的惩罚与羞辱,初中生的家庭教育资源好于小学生;华侨留守儿童女生的宜人性高于男生,男生的违纪行为和攻击行为多于女生;华侨留守儿童的家庭教育资源影响其人格,人格又影响其行为。     

The Psychometric Properties of the Arabic Version of the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS)

Strengths perspective is a relatively new approach in the field of social work. Unlike the pathological approach used earlier in assessment, strengths perspective focuses on the assessment of clients' strengths and resources that could be utilized to help them overcome problematic situations. The present study reports on the standardization of an Arabic version of the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS) and examines its factor structure, reliability and validity. A probability sample of 533 Kuwaiti parents of students from public and private schools was drawn to respond to a questionnaire designed to determine the psychometric properties of the Arabic version of the BERS. To assess its criterion, convergent, and divergent validity, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was utilized. It was found that the scale was valid and the factors appeared to be highly stable and reliable. The findings of this study provide support to the suitability of the scale to be utilized by both researchers and practitioners. Use of the pathological or disease model has been dominant in many fields of practice, such as psychiatry, education, and social work (De Jong, et al., 2002; Corcoran, et al., 2004). This type of perspective has greater emphasis on disease entities and weaknesses, and is more likely to lead to detrimental consequences. To illustrate, (Snyder, et al., 2006) point out that by amplifying clients' liabilities and shortcomings, mental health professionals tend to behave in a manner to confirm the diagnostic results, and clients apt to think and act in accord with the assigned labels. In the same vein, (Seligman, et al., 2000) state that “working exclusively on personal weaknesses and on damaged brains, however, has rendered science poorly equipped to effectively prevent illness” (p.7–8). All in all, perspectives that are risk‐focused share the inclination to encourage concentrating on what is wrong and overlooking what is right (Faller, 2000; Lafferty, et al., 2003). As a result, they fall short in the pursuit of promoting human functioning. To abate the costly consequences of the pathological model, the strengths perspective has been introduced in the arena of practice. Rather than competing with the pathological model, the strengths perspective is meant to be complementary in nature. It is based on the assumptions that even the troubled persons possess strengths and resources capable of increasing their productivity and satisfaction in life (De Jong, et al., 2002; Lopez, et al., 2003; Snyder, et al., 2006). There are voluminous studies attesting to the usefulness of the strengths perspective. (Ingram, 2005) points out that strengths can be readily infused into preventive interventions. Likewise, people who are troubled have the desire to build their strengths, and correct their weaknesses (Duckworth, et al., 2005). More importantly, incorporating the strengths dimension into the helping process is expected to enable mental health professionals to view clients through more comprehensive lenses (Snyder, et al., 2006). Unfortunately, the development of assessment tools tapping human strengths and virtues are in the early stages, and they need further validation. As an essential component of the helping process, assessment is concerned with understanding and helping people (Walsh, et al., 2001), and serves many purposes, such as problem clarification, diagnosis, intervention planning, and intervention evaluation (Merrell, 1999). It has been noted by (Lopez, et al., 2003) that most assessment tools lack investigation of strengths and success. However, a few scales have been developed recently toward this end, some of which included dimensions tapping states or trait considered assets, while others developed specifically to tap strengths (Early, 2001). (Gilgun, 1999) has developed the Clinical Assessment Package for Assessing Clients' Risks and Strengths (CASPARS) which gives equal consideration to weaknesses and strengths of the clients. This scale is meant to be clinical, so it has to be filled out by practitioners only. Unlike this scale, (Goodman, 2001) has developed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), which can be completed by parents, teachers, or youth. The utility of both scales is dubious due to the under representation of strengths items, and the limiting of their application to professionals. Choosing the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale to prepare an Arabic version is justified by the extensive research documenting its sound psychometric properties as well as its utility with regard to decision making of child placement (e.g., Epstein, 1999; Epstein, et al., 1999; Epstein, et al., 2002; Epstein, et al., 2002; Oswald, et al., 2001). Since there were two editions of the BERS, it is important to point out that the former was addressed in this investigation. The BERS is a psychometrically sound, norm‐referenced, standardized instrument that assesses the strengths of children with emotional or behavioral disorders (Epstein, et al., 2001). The scale consists of 52 items divided into five factor‐analytically derived subscales. The sub‐scales assess five major areas of functioning: 1) Interpersonal Strengths (14 items) which measures ability to control emotions and behaviors in social situations, such as reacting to disappointment in a calm manner; 2) Family Involvement (10 items) which measures participating and relations with family, such as participating in family activities; 3) Interpersonal Strengths (11) items which assesses the child's perception of competence and accomplishment, such as demonstrating a sense of humor; 4) School Functioning (9 items) which addresses competence in school and classroom tasks, such as paying attention in class; and 5) Affective Strengths (7 items) which focuses on the ability to accept affection from others and to express emotions, such as acknowledging painful feelings. Each item is rated on a scale of 0 to 3, in which 0 = not at all like the child, 1 = not much like the child, 2 = like the child, and 3 = very much like the child. According to this rating, higher scores indicate greater perceived emotional and behavioral strengths. The BERS underwent a three‐step validation process. To establish the scale's content validity, a sample of 250 parents and professionals were asked to list up to ten behaviors and emotions characteristic of child emotional and behavioral strengths, which resulted in 1200 statements. After inappropriate and redundant statements were deleted, 190 statements remained and were then rated by 396 parents and professionals, which reduced the list to 127 statements. Second, the list was tested for its ability to discriminate between children with more emotional and behavioral strengths and those with less emotional and behavioral strengths using a sample of 110 children with emotional/behavioral disorders and 148 without emotional/behavioral disorders. This test led to deleting 47 items that did not discriminate between the two groups. Finally, the remaining 80 items were then analyzed using principal components extraction and varimax rotation. The remaining 68 items were normed on a representative national sample of 2,176 children as well a second national sample of 861 children with emotional/behavioral disorders. A final factor analysis was conducted and resulted in the present 52 items. To assess t he convergent validity of the BER S, studies were conducted to compare the BERS with the Walker‐Maconnell Scale of Social Competence and School Adjustment‐Adolesent Version, the Achen‐bach's Teacher Report Form (TRF), and the Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders (SSBD) (Harniss, et al., 1999). The two studies suggested that the BERS had moderate to high correlations with all scales. In terms of reliability, inter‐rater and test‐retest reliability were evaluated in two separate studies by Epstein, et al., and Ryser (1999). In both studies, teachers or teachers' aides rated individuals with emotional/behavioral disorders. The studies suggested that the BERS possessed stability over time and demonstrated consistency between raters. Correlation in both studies was over .80, while half were over .90. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the BERS is reliable and valid with a culturally different population. This study was carried out on a relatively large national Kuwaiti sample to determine if strengths dimensions were similar across cultures or culturally specific. To gather empirical evidence on the psychometric properties of the Kuwaiti version of the scale, factor analysis reliability coefficients, convergent and criterion related validity were calculated.     

Children, ‘healthy’ food,school and family: the ‘[n]ot really’ outcome of school food messages

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on a multi-method study with 50 families in Victoria, Australia. Primary school children were asked about food knowledge from school and whether they felt motivated to bring knowledge home. Generally, children and parents felt school food messages are unclear, contradictory and not relevant to them and this reduced the likelihood of messages coming home from school. We identify a critical difference in how families thought about healthy eating and food practices at home and the framework of school messages. Families focused on children’s eating in a pragmatic way, infused with nurturance as well as concern. We argue their practices can be viewed as a form of relational consumption (Lindsay and Maher 2013. Consuming Families: Buying, Making, Producing Family Life in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Routledge.) where food is part of the everyday exchange of love and care. A disjunction exists between familial relational approaches and the regulatory framework of school food messages that impacts how messages move between these spaces. Attention to relational aspects of food consumption at school might allow for a more valuable exchange between family and schools that supports family endeavours to feed children well.     

被拐儿童生命历程变迁与原生家庭融入研究——基于寻亲成功案例的实证

被拐儿童的生命历程变迁与寻亲成功后的原生家庭融入境遇值得关注.本文通过实地调研访谈寻亲成功后的被拐儿童及其家乡社会网络成员,以生命历程理论为指导,揭示被拐儿童的生命历程变化,考察寻亲成功后的原生家庭融入情况.研究发现:被拐儿童的生命历程主要经历被拐、被收养、寻亲与寻亲成功4个重大生命事件.被拐儿童寻亲成功后的原生家庭融...     

LIVING WITH MIGRATION

In the Philippines, large-scale overseas migration has raised concerns about left-behind children, who are perceived to be most affected by the absence of fathers, mothers or both. Without their ‘real’ parents (especially mothers) to rear and guide them, left-behind children are perceived to bear the brunt of the social costs of migration. Based on data collected from a 2003 nationwide study, this article examines how left-behind children (specifically those aged 10–12 years old and adolescents) cope without their migrant parents. Three questions are explored: (1) how children are raised in the absence of one or both migrant parents; (2) how children (re)configure family, family life and family practices; and (3) what roles children have, if any, in how the family unit copes with the migration of one or both parents. Although migration creates emotional displacement for migrants and their children, it also opens up possibilities for children's agency and independence.