The understanding heart: aging parents and their favorite children

This paper compares the characteristics of adult children who provide comfort and sympathy and serve as confidants to parents with those whom parents perceive as disappointing. Interview information from 117 couples having children who had left home was analyzed using aggregate and intrafamilial strategies. The latter analyses compared the characteristics of the selected child with those of her or his sibs instead of comparing the aggregate of selected children with the aggregate of their siblings. Differences in the findings from the 2 techniques are discussed. The findings confirmed the importance of daughters who live nearby as understanding children. More important than proximity among the factors influencing parental judgments on disappointing and understanding children were intergenerational shared interests and values.     

Changes in early adolescents' sense of responsibility to their parents in the United States and China: implications for academic functioning

This research examined American and Chinese children's sense of responsibility to their parents during early adolescence, with a focus on its implications for children's academic functioning. Four times over the seventh and eighth grades, 825 children (mean age = 12.73 years) in the United States and China reported on their sense of responsibility to their parents. Information on children's academic functioning was also collected from children as well as school records. Although children's sense of responsibility to their parents declined over the seventh and eighth grades in the United States, this was not the case in China. In both countries, children's sense of responsibility was predictive of enhanced academic functioning among children over time.     

Criminal Parental Responsibility: Blaming parents on the basis of their duty to control versus their duty to morally educate their children

Several states in the United States of America and countries in Europe punish parents when their minor child commits a crime. When parents are being punished for the crimes committed by their children, it should be presumed that parents might be held responsible for the deeds of their children. This article addresses the question whether or not this presumption can be sustained. We argue that parents can be blamed for the crimes of their children, not because they have the duty to control their children as is often maintained, but because they have the duty to assist their child to develop in such a way that s/he becomes a morally competent agent.     

Perceived family functioning, marital status, and depression in parents of boys with attention deficit disorder

The present study examined the perceptions of parents of children with attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity (ADD/H) regarding their family environment and depression in comparison with a clinical and a nondisabled control group. Parents of children with ADD/H perceived their family environment as less supportive and more stressful than did either the clinical or the nondisabled controls. Specifically, ADD/H parents viewed their families as having lower levels of interpersonal relationships than did either of the control groups. Ratings of depression for each of the parent groups indicated a greater frequency of depressive symptomatology among the parents of children with ADD/H. In addition, more parents of ADD/H children were separated or divorced. Correlation coefficients computed for the entire sample suggest differences between mothers' and fathers' depression and differences in their perceptions of the family. Recommendations are made for future research as well as the development of treatment programs to incorporate work with the parents of children with ADD/H.     

Encouraging conversing: trying to change what parents do when their children read with them

This paper is concerned with the kind of support given by parents when their children read school books at home with them. The paper reports the findings of two research studies on this issue. In the first study, we found distinct differences between parents and teachers, and amongst the parents themselves, in an activity we called ‘conversing’– where the adult discusses the text with the child. A report of this research can also be found in Greenhough and Hughes (1998). In the second study which is published here for the first time, we looked at different ways of encouraging parents to engage in more ‘conversing’ with their children.     

Recognising the needs of gender-variant children and their parents

Gender variance confronts widely held assumptions that children born as males will act like ‘boys’ and children born as females will act like ‘girls’. This imposed binary has the effect of perpetuating negativity towards people who express themselves with gendered variations in attire, behaviour or preferences. Despite the existence of gender-variant individuals in every culture and throughout time, many people are unaware that diversity in gender expression and sexual formation is a naturally occurring phenomenon. This qualitative study aimed to establish the needs of gender-variant children and their parents in order to inform education programmes, policies and clinical approaches to gender variance. Three Internet surveys were conducted to explore the experiences of parents raising gender-variant children, the childhood experiences of transgender adults and the views of professionals who work with the transgender community. The needs of gender-variant children emerged in terms of the need for information, peer contact, personal gender expression, safety, and to be heard and accepted by their parents. The most common needs for parents were for information (stories from other parents, research and guidelines; peer support) and educational resources for schools, professionals and local communities. The paper provides comparisons between the three participant groups and recommendations for future research.     

Writing and writers: the perceptions of young children and their parents

Over the past three decades early writing research has focused on the processes involved as children learn to write. There is now a powerful evidence base to show that children’s earliest discoveries about written language are learned through active engagement with their social and cultural worlds. In addition, the idea of writing development as an emergent process is well established. The study reported in this paper adopted case study methodology combined with an age-appropriate data collection technique in order to explore children’s perceptions of themselves as writers. A focused task using a hand puppet called Baby Bear was used to elicit children’s perceptions. The children’s parents were interviewed to elicit their perceptions of their children as writers. This small-scale exploratory study found that the children had clear perceptions about themselves as writers. There were important links between parents’ perceptions of their children as writers and the ethos for writing they created in the home. It was found that, overall, more positive parental perceptions were linked with more attention to the meaning of children’s writing. It is concluded that early years settings could usefully identify and compare children’s and parents’ perceptions of writing in order to enhance children’s writing development.     

Fostering the academic success of their children: Voices of Mexican immigrant parents

Latinos, particularly Mexican immigrants, are the fastest-growing population in the United States but lag behind others in educational attainment. Parent involvement in their child's education has been linked to positive student academic outcomes, but few studies have focused specifically on Latino/a parents. To identify and promote culturally salient parent involvement approaches for Mexican immigrant parents, this qualitative strength-based study investigated motivations, actions, and culture of 11 Mexican immigrant parents of students who attended a selective college preparatory high school. The study found that a parent's effort to help their children succeed is not dependent on high levels of parent education or income. Rather, the home-based strategies, many of which are rooted in the Latino culture, and specific outreach by educators influenced parent involvement.     

Empowerment and cultural conflict: Navajo parents and the schooling of their children

This article is about contemporary Navajo parents caught between the traditional Navajo world of their elders and the dominant world of their Anglo neighbors. Ethnohistorical and current sociocultural factors influencing the attitudes of Navajo parents toward their children's schools are viewed in light of current arguments suggesting that one means of changing the school failure rates of some minority groups is through parent and student “empowerment.” Differences between Navajos and Anglos are particularly evident in interactions over schoolrelated issues and parenting. Through an analysis of power and cultural differences, the current practices are seen to be ineffective, indeed, “disabling” rather than “empowering” these parents.     

Development of mutual responsiveness between parents and their young children

This comprehensive study of mutual responsiveness examined 102 mothers and 102 fathers interacting with their children at 7 and 15 months. Responsiveness was studied from developmental and individual differences perspectives, and assessed using macroscopic ratings and microscopic event coding. The latter captured parents' reactions to children's negative, positive, and physical bids, and children's reactions to parents' social-interactive bids, mood regulation attempts, and influence attempts. Responsiveness depended on bid type and child age, and reflected developmental changes in children, parents, and relationships. Mothers were more responsive than fathers; children were equally responsive to both parents and coherent in their responsiveness. Ratings revealed dyadic mutuality and longitudinal continuity of responsiveness. Parent-child responsiveness from 7 to 15 months was consistent with assumptions of a parent-driven process.     

Family unity objectives of parents who teach their children: Ideological and pedagogical orientations to home schooling

This article examines parents who teach their children at home. Using the results from two qualitative studies the article suggests, while families have complex motives for teaching their children at home, an important commonality underlies their decision. Regardless of their orientation to home schooling the parents in these two studies felt that establishing a home school would allow them to maintain or further develop unity within the family. The article suggests a family's decision to home school is often made in an attempt to resist the effects on the family unit of urbanization and modernization. The policy implications of this finding are discussed.     

Child development in rural China: children left behind by their migrant parents and children of nonmigrant families

Using recent cross-sectional data of rural children aged from 8 to 18 in Hunan Province of China, this article examines psychological, behavioral, and educational outcomes and the psychosocial contexts of these outcomes among children left behind by one or both of their rural-to-urban migrant parents compared to those living in nonmigrant families. The results showed that left-behind children were disadvantaged in health behavior and school engagement but not in perceived satisfaction. The child's psychosocial environment, captured by family socioeconomic status, socializing processes, peer and school support, and psychological traits, were associated with, to varying extent, child developmental outcomes in rural China. These influences largely remain constant for the sampled children regardless of their parents' migrant status.     

Helping parents to read with their children: evaluation of an individual and group reading motivation programme

Twenty‐two primary school children, aged 6–12 years, who were experiencing significant reading difficulties, were allocated to one of two parent‐instruction treatment conditions according to the parent’s preference. The treatments were based upon learning‐theory principles, and were aimed at teaching the parents optimal ways of helping their child learn to read. One condition involved the parent and child being seen individually by the therapist twice a week over five weeks. The other condition involved the parents meeting as a group for three weekly sessions, and then as a group with their children for the final two sessions. The same learning‐theory principles were taught in both treatment conditions. Seven children who were awaiting treatment provided waiting‐list control data over a five‐week period. Outcome measures of the children’s reading level and reading self‐concept, and the parents’ stress levels during reading‐time showed significant improvements for those in the individual treatment condition, and this improvement was maintained at a follow‐up after two months. While there were some gains for those in the group treatment condition, these were not maintained by the two‐month follow‐up.     

Making it work for their children: white middle-class parents and working-class schools

The white middle-class parents who chose to send their children to urban comprehensives largely rejected engaging in the usual competitiveness for educational success. Nevertheless the parents in our study still found themselves wittingly or otherwise captured by that same discourse. Their children are high achievers and are regarded as a valuable resource for their comprehensive schools generating high volume capital. However, in spite of this, the parents do not leave such success to chance. Drawing on an ESRC-funded research project (Educational Choices and the White Urban Middle-Classes RES-148-25-0023) we analyse how middle-class parental involvement is part of the age old process of social reproduction and the transmission of parents’ middle-class privilege to their children, almost regardless of their intentions. Not only are the parents interventionist in their children’s schooling, they draw on and dispose their own privileged capitals to prepare and position their children for educational success.