Ain’t nobody got time for dad? Racial-ethnic disproportionalities in child welfare casework practice with nonresident fathers

BackgroundGiven fathers’ potential role in bringing about desired child welfare case outcomes, researchers have begun to identify factors that impact agency efforts to identify and involve fathers. Racial-ethnic inequality and bias are not among factors studied, despite longstanding evidence that racial-ethnic minority children make up a disproportionate share of the child welfare population.ObjectiveWe set out to identify racial-ethnic patterns in initial casework activity with nonresident fathers and explore whether select factors explain racial-ethnic differentials.Participants and SettingCaseworkers of 1,754 children in foster care in four U.S. states were surveyed.MethodsBivariate and multivariate logistic regression models were used to identify factors associated with whether agencies identified, located, and contacted nonresident fathers.ResultsAgencies were less likely to identify nonresident fathers of Black, Latinx, and Multiracial children, relative to those of White children. Among fathers whom agencies identified, Black and Latinx fathers were less likely to be located. Among fathers whom agencies located, Black and Latinx fathers were less likely to be contacted. Whereas greater rates of international mobility among Latinx fathers explained agencies’ disproportionately low rates of contact, no other factor explained racial-ethnic differentials.ConclusionWe find evidence of historical racial-ethnic disproportionalities across the three initial stages of casework practice with nonresident fathers in U.S. child welfare systems. Though more recent data are needed, this research suggests that racial-ethnic minority foster children are more likely than White foster children to be denied the benefits of agency-father contact, whether due to societal or systemic racial inequalities.     

From childhood emotional maltreatment to depressive symptoms in adulthood: The roles of self-compassion and shame

BackgroundEmotional abuse is a form of maltreatment that most strongly predicts adult depressive symptoms in community samples. Introject theories suggest that some depressive symptoms stem from survivors having learned to treat themselves the way they were treated by their perpetrators.ObjectiveMalevolent introjects may undermine self-compassion, which may subsequently maintain feelings of shame. Thus, we hypothesized that self-compassion and shame would mediate the path from retrospective reports of maltreatment to concurrent depressive symptoms in adulthood.Participants and SettingParticipants were 244 adult community members and college students living in a Southwestern American metroplex.MethodWe ran a multiple mediator path model with emotional abuse as the independent variable. We specified four covariates: physical abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect, and held constant the variance they explained in self-compassion, shame, and depression.ResultsOur final model accounted for 53.1% of the variance in adult depressive symptoms. A significant indirect effect from emotional abuse passed through both mediators and ended in adult depressive symptoms. We also found an indirect path from emotional neglect to depression passing through both mediators.ConclusionsIt appears emotional abuse and emotional neglect can undermine the formation of self-compassion. Low self-compassion predicts greater shame and depressive symptoms. Our model suggests self-compassion may be a particularly effective intervention point for survivors of emotional maltreatment.     

From care to education and work? Education and employment trajectories in early adulthood by children in out-of-home care

BackgroundTemporal dynamics during the early adulthood transition among children in out-of-home care is a neglected research area, leaving the possibility of coping with childhood adversity over time a poorly understood topic.ObjectiveTo explore early adulthood education and employment trajectories among young adults who experienced out-of-home care during childhood and to examine how various care history factors predict these trajectories.ParticipantsWe use longitudinal birth cohort data comprising individual-level information from national registers of all children born in Finland in 1987 (N = 59,476, of whom 1893 were in care).Setting and methodsWe use trajectory clustering from a previous study on the 1987 birth cohort to compare trajectories between children in care and a propensity score–matched group of peers never in care. We investigated the association between care history factors and trajectories with multinomial logistic regression modeling.ResultsCompared with the matched peer group, children in care were less likely to enter trajectories characterized by education and employment (38%) and more likely to enter trajectories involving early parenthood (14%) or long periods of fragmented social assistance benefit receipt and unemployment (21%). Those on early parenthood trajectories were almost exclusively women, whereas those receiving social assistance benefits and experiencing unemployment for lengthy periods were mostly men. Entering disadvantaged trajectories was associated with, inter alia, placement as an adolescent, residential care, and aging out of care.ConclusionThe study demonstrates the relevance of examining longitudinal trajectories in children in care’s early adulthood. Many young adults with care experience need support in education and employment beyond young adult age.     

当代大学生的性现状研究

面对当前大学生呈现的各种性问题,可从生理、心理和社会等多个角度进行研究,从中揭示性的伦理学意义。对于发生在大学生身上的性问题,我们的态度应该是教育和引导,而不是逃避和漠视。     

反性骚扰立法研究——以劳动法为新视野

性骚扰已经成为一个严重的社会问题,美国、英国和我国台湾对反性骚扰的立法都有各自不同的特色,值得借鉴。美国将性骚扰定性为性别歧视,规制性骚扰以工作场所为主,范围不断扩大,并确立了雇主责任原则。我国台湾的反性骚扰立法明确界定了性骚扰的概念,特别是直接将性骚扰纳入了劳动法的调整范畴,认为工作场所性骚扰侵犯的是劳动者的工作环境权,开创了劳动立法的新篇章,并建立了完整的反性骚扰法律体系。我国应当在劳动法特别是《劳动合同法》中用工作环境权构建反性骚扰制度,以规制工作场所的性骚扰,在民法(民法典)中建立反性骚扰民事侵权制度,以之为反性骚扰的一般法。     

Educational program on evaluation of alleged sexual abuse victims

Increased awareness of the problem of child sexual abuse has resulted in increasing numbers of children presenting to professionals for the evaluation of possible sexual victimization. A multidisciplinary project to develop professionals' knowledge and skills in the identification and evaluation of possible victims is described. The program focused on the child as a victim and emphasized developmental perspectives with regard to identification, interviewing children, the medical examination, and children in the legal system. Fifty-one medical and social work professionals from ten Indiana counties attended the program and responded to questionnaires about their experience and knowledge. Of 40 (78%) respondents, 63% had had no previous training in the medical evaluation for child sexual abuse. Child protective workers referred alleged victims primarily to the child's regular physician (37%) or emergency room (31%) for medical examination. Knowledge about child sexual abuse improved significantly at two weeks postsymposium (p = .001) and remained improved at six months postsymposium (p less than .02). These original participants have subsequently organized similar multidisciplinary programs in their local communities for medical, social, law enforcement, and legal professionals; thus, they have been "seeds" for further educational and cooperative efforts throughout the state.     

儿童青少年体能发展敏感期相关热点问题

近年来,旨在提高儿童青少年体质健康的研究众多,其中儿童青少年体能发展敏感期问题的研究正成为热点研究。通过文献资料法和逻辑分析法等,对近30年来“敏感期”相关文献进行梳理。研究表明：国内外“敏感期”的界定标准不统一,难以形成科学成果;“敏感期”干预方法单一,缺乏综合干预方法;“敏感期”与“非敏感期”干预效果的研究还存在争议。研究认为：“敏感期”不仅受儿童青少年生理、心理因素的影响,同时遗传、环境、社会经济等对“敏感期”也具有重要作用。因此,未来应深入研究“敏感期”的构成因素,重视理论研究与实践研究相结合,强化“敏感期”的综合研究。     

Questioning the no-touch discourse in physical education from a children's rights perspective

In this paper we question the rationality of ‘no-touch policies’ and offer an alternative approach to the matter of physical contact between teachers and students in the context of physical education (PE) in schools. Earlier research has drawn attention to how a discourse of child protection is starting to affect how physical contact is viewed in PE practice. The avoidance of intergenerational touch is increasingly justified by referring to the children's rights agenda. Here, arguments for ‘no-touching’ are linked to children's right to be protected from harm. In the paper we explore a children's rights-based viewpoint that supports the use of and need for physical contact in PE teaching by developing theoretical and practice-based arguments. An alternative children's rights perspective, based on rights theorising, is used to formulate the theoretical argument. Interviews with 16 PE teachers about their experiences of physical contact in their pedagogical work form the practice-based arguments. The two arguments provide a way of looking at intergenerational touch in education from the vantage point of children's human right to develop to their full potential, which can support a need for physical touch in pedagogical situations.     

Emotional energy and sub-cultural politics: alternative bands in post-1997 Hong Kong

The paper attempts to work out the link between the structuring of the public domain and hegemonic masculinities in contemporary Kerala, South India. Using the debates around an incident of sexual harassment that happened in 1999, it argues for a conjunctural understanding of the contemporary where various events and moments in history are replayed through narrativization and popular memory. The paper goes on to analyse the debates around the incident that produce a ‘narrative public domain’, to foreground the various notions of masculinity that construct and structure it in relation to notions of female sexuality and changing structures of family. These notions of masculinity could be, the paper argues, a starting point for a historical inquiry into Kerala's modernity – an inquiry that would throw light on the past and the ways in which the contemporary is produced through its historical legacies.     

The ‘Non‐dit’ in the Zenana: representations of Muslim women in Islamic canonical texts,the neo‐colonial imagination and a feminist response from Bangladesh

Abstract

This essay recognizes that representations of the ‘Muslim woman’ as the Othered ‘object’ of the ‘Western’ gaze and the domesticated ‘object’ which the Islamic apologists strive hard to defend, are both constructions and false antitheses of each other. It seeks not the ‘truth’ regarding the Muslim women in the world of social reality but to examine how various representations of the women are constructed and to what effects and consequences these representations are mobilized. The essay proceeds in three stages. The first stage shows how the patriarchy mobilizes the Qur’an and the Hadith in order to construct the woman as the negative, the inessential and the abnormal of the man so as to exert complete subordination over her. However, the very act of attempting to mute the woman in Islam is the most strident proof that she is engaged in resistance against patriarchal control and the degree of resistance must be judged by the degree of patriarchal control. The second stage demonstrates how patriarchy operates in colonial and neo‐imperial landscape: it legitimizes the appropriation of Muslim woman ‘possessed’ by the Other (as exemplified by the orientalist seduction fantasy in William Dalrymple’s The White Mughals), but, haunted by the fear of rape and anxieties regarding the sexuality of the White woman possessed by the Self, it attempts to maintain strict control over her (as in the cases of Miss Wheeler in the ‘Mutiny’ of 1857 and Private Jessica Lynch in the Iraq War). This struggle over the feminine body is perfectly in line with Islam’s hyper‐anxiousness to hide the female body and rigorously ensure monopolic possession over her. The third stage shows how Taslima Nasreen, a late‐20th century feminist from Bangladesh, speaks the unspoken and thereby attempts to subvert the normative representation of the muted women in her autobiographical novella, entitled āmār Meyebelā. In thus examining the representations of the Muslim women, this essay seeks an alternative ‘third space of enunciation’ and takes a distinct political stand located outside of the axis of the dichotomy of the ‘Western’ gaze and the construction of the Islamic theologians.