Tolerance of Infant Distress Among Working Parents: Examining the Roles of Attachment Anxiety and Work–Family Conflict

SYNOPSIS

Objective. Working parents of young children often face work–family conflict, but little is known about the impact of this stressor on distress tolerance in the parenting role. We examined whether work–family conflict is associated with heightened work–family guilt and reduced infant distress tolerance, and we tested whether these effects are strongest among parents high in attachment anxiety. Design. In an experimental study of 233 parents of children ages 1–3 years, parents first reported their attachment anxiety, then were randomly assigned to read a vignette depicting a subtype of work–family conflict—work-interfering-with-family (WIF) conflict—or to an attention control condition. Finally, parents reported their feelings of WIF-guilt and completed an infant distress tolerance paradigm. Results. Attachment anxiety predicted greater WIF-guilt and less distress tolerance cry task persistence and moderated associations between experimental condition and outcomes: Parents with low attachment anxiety reported less WIF-guilt when primed with WIF-conflict than parents with average or high attachment anxiety, and parents with high attachment anxiety displayed less distress tolerance when primed compared to parents with low or average attachment anxiety. Conclusions. Working parents with low attachment anxiety may fare better emotionally in the face of WIF-conflict than their peers with higher attachment anxiety. High attachment anxiety may represent a risk factor for the negative effects of WIF-conflict on distress tolerance in response to infant crying. Future work should explore interventions to support working parents with high attachment anxiety.     

西部农村留守儿童学业心理特点及其学校管理对策研究

引导和帮助留守儿童获得良好的发展是我国农村教育与学校管理的重要任务。对西部10个省市自治区的8627名农村小学生进行调查,重点考察留守儿童的学业自我概念、师生关系和学校态度等学业心理特点,并以此为依据探讨学校管理对策。研究结果发现:非留守儿童的学业心理状况表现最好;父母都外出留守儿童的学业心理状况好于父母单方外出的留守儿童;父母单方外出留守儿童的学业心理状况表现不佳,尤其是仅母亲外出留守儿童的学业心理状况最为不佳,值得关注。     

幼儿教师与祖辈家长沟通“难”现象探究

随着祖辈家长出镜率的日益提高,如何做好与祖辈家长的沟通工作是幼儿教师需要面对和思考的问题。目前,在幼儿教师群体中存在着"与祖辈家长沟通难"的现象。研究者通过对N市四所省级示范园的10位"工作年限十年以上、家长工作经验丰富、口语表达能力强"的一线教师进行个别访谈,在进一步验证这一现象存在与否的基础上,总结出了"幼儿教师与祖辈家长沟通难"现象的几种表现形式与应对策略。     

Discourses of the good parent in attributing school success

Recent education policy places a heavy emphasis on parents in relation to students' success at school. This paper explores how parents and teachers account for school success. Using membership categorisation analysis, it interrogates data collected in different interview situations across sites over a period of 20 years. The analysis shows how parents and teachers use talk as moral work to conversationally constitute particular agreed versions of the category ‘parent’. This category is interactively assembled through the use of category-bound attributes that construct deficit discourses of parents that explain student achievement. The analysis demonstrates that parents are complicit with teachers in producing versions of being a good parent wherein they are held responsible for their children's school success and that minimises the responsibility of the school. These findings raise questions both about who is responsible for schooling and about current contradictory policy emphases on parent and teacher responsibility for school success.     

Parental perceptions of child labour and human rights: A comparative study of rural and urban Ghana

Considering the inherently hazardous nature of some artisanal fishing and farm work in Ghana, there is sometimes a thin line between what is considered child work and child labour. I drew on literature exploring cultural relativism and human rights and the concept of the margin of appreciation in considering whether child labour violates human rights. I aimed to establish parental perceptions of child labour and human rights in rural and urban Ghana amongst 60 government officials, NGO representatives, and both parents whose children were/were not involved in child labour. The average age of participants was 31 years. Semistructured interviews were conducted with parents (10), stakeholders (10), focus groups (30); and participant observation techniques (10) utilised to gather the needed data and purposively sampled across rural areas (Ankaase, Anwiankwanta and Kensere), and urban areas (Jamestown, Korle Gonno and Chorkor) in Ghana. Interviews were recorded, transcribed utilising a framework approach as the main data analysis method. The paper finds that children are engaged in work to teach them work ethics as most parents consider work socialisation as beneficial for children and society. The paper also finds that knowledge of human rights makes parents more committed to children's welfare. Overall, the paper finds that sensitivity to the economic and cultural context is important in understanding the issue of child labour and, more generally, in applying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and working out the parenting policies and practices that are in the best interests of the child.     

Disability and the restructuring of welfare: the problem of partnership with parents

Parent Partnership Services are now required in every local education authority (LEA) in England and Wales. Research has documented parents' experience of dissatisfaction when engaging with services responsible for providing for children's special educational needs, and differences in priorities and assumptions between parents and professionals. Analysis suggests that Parent Partnership Services have the potential to make the system work in a more understandable, friendly, respecting and involving way for parents. Evidence is drawn from interviews in Newby LEA with 24 parents and both LEA and voluntary agency Parent Partnership Officers. However, tensions and assumptions were identified that suggest a limit to authentic partnership possibilities. The political nature of the discourse of partnership continues to be ignored. There remains little awareness of the need to negotiate the meaning of partnership. Partnership was assumed to be ‘good’, with little understanding of the need to work in ways that avoided its potentially disempowering effects. Parent Partnership Officers represent a further tier of ‘professionals’, which for some parents remove them from those who are the decision-makers. Parent Partnership Services remove from schools the arena of parent partnership when a child is undergoing statutory special needs assessment. Such services move this area of partnership into a space between schools and the LEA—which may distance responsibility of schools to take seriously the need to engage with parents as partners.     

The Parent-Student-University Relationship:

The importance of a widely understood and accepted institutional ethos which informs the endeavors of all who work with students and their parents can hardly be overstated. Student affairs professional must work to ensure that the values, goals, and expectations of the institution are evaluated in light of information about student development needs, clarified for everyone involved in the educational venture, and widely promulgated within the institution and to students and their parents. Ongoing consultation among student affairs staff is necessary to ensure equitable and timely delivery of services and the manifestation of established values at every level of the institution.     

Wizards and witches: parent advocates and contention in special education in the USA

Drawing on interviews with parents of children with significant disabilities, as well as administrators and special education consultants, between the early 1990s and 2008 in a mid‐Atlantic US state, this paper examines the work of parental advocates as they translate special education policies to negotiate concessions for parents, bring issues into public debate, or attempt to incite other parents to activism. Advocates, we suggest, act as bridging agents in generating networks, connecting parents with others, articulating their knowledge with other parents’ knowledge, and bringing additional communicative resources to encounters. The paper illuminates approaches to advocacy work and traces the tensions and shifts from adversarial/participatory constructions of advocacy work toward more professionalizing/meditational constructions as the articulations of local institutional arrangements and national disability law and politics evolve.     

Preservice teachers and parents: using a reading course to change perceptions and practice

The authors sought to understand preservice teachers’ views about parents of students who struggle with reading and about their own preparedness to deal with such parents. Research, including surveys, student evaluation and tutoring intervention, indicates that before their work with parents and students, preservice teachers held strong beliefs about parents’ role and responsibilities with respect to their children who find reading daunting. After a semester‐long reading course which provided opportunities to work with struggling readers and their parents, the preservice teachers in this study expressed beliefs that were contrary to the ones they offered at the beginning of the course.     

Inclusion – the heart of the matter: trainee teachers' perceptions of a parent's journey

The importance of parental choice, and parents' participation in educational processes, continue to be highlighted in strategies, acts and policies around the world. Partnership with parents is given an even higher profile in relation to educational opportunities for children with special needs. Yet many trainee teachers have only limited understandings of the impact on family life of a child with special needs; are uncertain how best to work with parents; and are not confident about the choices that parents may wish to make for their children.
In this article, Chris Forlin, Visiting Professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, and Treena Hopewell, MEd student at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia, report the responses of a group of fourth year trainee teachers after listening to the story of a mother of a child with high support needs. Their discussion focuses on three themes emerging from the reflective comments written by the trainee teachers after the session: empathy, understanding and personal growth. Chris Forlin and Treena Hopewell review the value of this approach as a means of establishing in trainee teachers a greater desire to work more collaboratively with parents and family members. They also provide excerpts from the mother's story to enable readers to experience the passionate spirit of the storyteller; to further appreciate the needs of parents; and to understand their desire for greater participation in decisions regarding their children.     

中、重度弱智者适应性语言需求的调查报告

通过自编问卷调查中度弱智者适应性语言的需求,上海市部分辅读学校教师及管理人员以及中、重度弱智儿童家长与亲友共计339人参与了本次调查。结果显示:教师和家长对于中度以上弱智者未来的适应性语言需求有着不同的期望。总体而言,教师的期望高于家长的期望。     

Autism: Working with parents,and discourses in experience,expertise and learning

This study emanated from the formal re-assessment of a 7-year-old boy described as autistic-Tom. It has been co-authored with his parents in order that we might each articulate our experience and also enhance our own expertise and learning through the assessment process. The educational psychologist argues that professionals should reflect more upon their own theoretical first principles as part of their work with children, their parents and their teachers. The parents touch on just a few of their experiences of living with Tom and his autism, particularly their contact with professionals. In relating these very personal experiences, they are in no way attempting to speak for other parents.     

The impact of the computerization of a high school's pedagogical administration on homeroom teacher–parents interrelations: A case study

The introduction of a school management information system (SMIS) in an urban vocational high school, located in a middle-class socio-economic neighborhood, notably affected the learning, behavior and attendance (LBA) interrelations between homeroom teachers (HRTs) and parents. HRT–parents interrelations in general, but those involving parents whose children were having LBA problems in particular, became in most parents’ opinion more frequent, more intensive and more formative. Better communication, understanding and trust between parents and the HRTs were observed. Cooperation between home and HRT increased. Implications for the HRT's work are discussed, including a recommendation that HRTs should be trained to use SMIS as a tool for developing and monitoring their interrelations with parents.     

Parents and school communities in Japan and Scotland: contrasts in policy and practice in primary schools

In this paper Japanese and Scottish cultural and ideological expectations about the role of parents and communities in schools are examined. Findings from three case studies of a Japanese school, a Scottish school and a group of Japanese parents sending their children to a Scottish school show that there are clear policy differences between the two countries. These differences reflect each country's problems and the purposes of the educational reforms that have been introduced and the different strengths and weaknesses of the two systems. The policy differences in the two systems and how these are translated into practice are examined from the perspective of parents and the wider school community. It is argued that what is missing from the policy and practice context in both countries are the resources to enable teachers, parents and other members of the community to work as equal partners.     

Non-finite loss and challenges to communication between parents and professionals

Elizabeth Bruce PhD, a psychologist in private practice, and Cynthia Schultz PhD, honorary associate at LaTrobe University, both live and work in Australia. Their work on supporting parents who have children with special needs, however, has been published around the world. In this article Bruce and Schultz explore the notion of 'non-finite loss', defined as the ongoing sense of grief experienced by parents caring for children with severe disabilities. The authors discuss the issues that professionals need to consider when working with parents in these circumstances. The article closes with a set of recommendations for promoting more effective partnerships between parents and professionals.     

Approaches to Early Intervention on the Navajo Reservation

This article describes a research and early intervention project that involves parents and Head Start teachers who live and work in geographically isolated areas of the Navajo Reservation. Social and environmental characteristics of life in remote areas are considered as "risk factors" that impact upon the child's probable success in school. Two promising lines of intervention are reported comprehensive instruction in child development for Head Start teachers and working with parents as children's "first teachers." The teacher education approach involves innovative methods that build upon the Native American oral tradition. The approach to parents as "first teachers" involves Navajo parents in a structured reading approach with culturally relevant materials, where children are encouraged to reconstruct story content in a variety of representational media. Preliminary results include a dramatic rise in the number of CDA credentialed teachers and major improvements in teaching skills and satisfaction with teaching.     

家庭教育中的中国式问题

家庭教育是家庭生活的重要内容,家长实施家庭教育的水平不仅影响孩子的未来,也与家庭生活的幸福感息息相关。目前我国家庭教育具有一些与社会经济、文化相联系的特点,主要表现在:隔代教养、父教缺失、亲子交流时间少、"乖"孩子情结、攀比心理、性教育缺乏、家长缺乏学习与反思意识等方面,为了孩子的健康成长,父母亲需要齐心协力,共同承担教养责任,提升实施家庭教育的水平。     

家校共育现状及可能的改变:来自家长的声音

家校共育为孩子的健康成长提供了必需的合力,然而在实践中存在许多困境。家长作为家校共育中的核心人物,对学校开展的家校共育工作有重要话语权。研究采用实证研究方法,以北京市某区的120名小学家长为访谈对象,研究结果显示家长对家校共育现状基本满意。他们认为学校对孩子的培养起了关键作用,但是孩子在学习行为与习惯、合作与交往等方面发展不尽人意。为了更好地促进家校共育,应提高家长参与家校共育活动的有效性,同时增强家长的自我反思意识。