An intergenerational qualitative study of the good parenting ideal and active free play during middle childhood

ABSTRACT

This study addressed the question: How and why has the good parenting ideal changed in relation to active free play (AFP) during middle childhood? Twenty-eight middle class and predominantly white adults (14 grandparent-parent dyads) completed individual semi-structured interviews. Data were subjected to a thematic analysis. Two themes (changing expectations for parental involvement in children's lives and increasing expectations to involve children in structured activities) depicted how the good parenting ideal has changed. A further two themes (news media influence on perceptions of safety and concerns about being judged on social media) explained some of the reasons why the good parenting ideal has changed. Perceived needs for parental involvement, supervision, and organized activities appear to contradict the notion of active free play. It may be useful to develop initiatives that are consistent with the good parenting ideal, and to examine parents’ use of traditional and social media in future AFP research.     

Against Women's Suffrage: The Case of Maine and New Brunswick

In the 1890s, those opposed to women's suffrage in the borderlands of Maine and New Brunswick held a lot of the same arguments, but expressed them in different ways, and with different outcomes. In New Brunswick, the most vocal adversaries were male and represented in the Legislative Assembly. In Maine, a group of elite women, mostly from Portland, led the fight to keep women from voting. This article will explore the motivations, comparisons, and differences between the anti-suffragists of the borderlands, as well as explain some of the outcomes of the anti-suffrage movement that are still present today.     

Christopher Saxton’s Last Maps: Nichol Forest and the Debatable Land, 1607

Although it has been generally held that Saxton in his later life did not work far from home, two previously unrecognized maps in The National Archives show him surveying in 1607 for the Earl of Cumberland in the dangerous Border country. These maps throw new light onto the working methods of Saxton and his son, suggesting that by this date Robert was doing most of the work. The original map appears to have been commissioned as an estate map but was then copied to be re-used as evidence in a law suit, thus separating the maps from their context.     

Stable isotopic analysis of human and animal diets from two pre-Aksumite/Proto-Aksumite archaeological sites in northern Ethiopia

Carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis was undertaken on well-preserved human and animal skeletal remains from two sites in northern Ethiopia, both of which span the pre-Aksumite and Proto-Aksumite periods. The human remains constitute one individual collected at the site of Etchmare East which was directly radiocarbon dated to 2290 ± 50 BP. In addition 28 animal bone samples were excavated from the nearby site of Mezber, occupied from 2960 ± 60 to 1980 ± 50 BP. These results are consistent with those obtained in palaeoethnobotanical studies, which suggest that some members of pre/Proto-Aksumite society in the Horn of Africa had a diet that favoured the consumption of Near Eastern domesticates over indigenous crops.