Why, despite massive public concern, is child trafficking on the rise? Why are unaccompanied migrant children living on the streets and routinely threatened with deportation to their countries of ...origin? Why do so many young refugees of war-ravaged and failed states end up warehoused in camps, victimized by the sex trade, or enlisted as child soldiers? This book provides the first comprehensive account of the widespread but neglected global phenomenon of child migration, exploring the complex challenges facing children and adolescents who move to join their families, those who are moved to be exploited, and those who move simply to survive.
Spanning several continents and drawing on the actual stories of young migrants, the book shows how difficult it is for children to reunite with parents who left them behind to seek work abroad. It looks at the often-insurmountable obstacles we place in the paths of adolescents fleeing war, exploitation, or destitution; the contradictory elements in our approach to international adoption; and the limited support we give to young people brutalized as child soldiers. Part history, part in-depth legal and political analysis, this powerful book challenges the prevailing wisdom that widespread protection failures are caused by our lack of awareness of the problems these children face, arguing instead that our societies have a deep-seated ambivalence to migrant children-one we need to address head-on.
Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Ageoffers a road map for doing just that, and makes a compelling and courageous case for an international ethics of children's human rights.
Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Waldfogel, Jane; Craigie, Terry-Ann; Brooks-Gunn, Jeanne
The Future of children,
09/2010, Letnik:
20, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Jane Waldfogel, Terry-Ann Craigie, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn review recent studies that use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) to examine why children who grow up in ...single-mother and cohabiting families fare worse than children born into married-couple households. They also present findings from their own new research. Analysts have investigated five key pathways through which family structure might influence child well-being: parental resources, parental mental health, parental relationship quality, parenting quality, and father involvement. It is also important to consider the role of the selection of different types of men and women into different family types, as well as family stability. But analysts remain uncertain how each of these elements shapes children's outcomes. In addition to providing an overview of findings from other studies using FFCWS, Waldfogel, Craigie, and Brooks-Gunn report their own estimates of the effect of a consistently defined set of family structure and stability categories on cognitive, behavioral, and health outcomes of children in the FFCWS study at age five. The authors find that the links between fragile families and child outcomes are not uniform. Family instability, for example, seems to matter more than family structure for cognitive and health outcomes, whereas growing up with a single mother (whether that family structure is stable or unstable over time) seems to matter more than instability for behavior problems. Overall, their results are consistent with other research findings that children raised by stable single or cohabiting parents are at less risk than those raised by unstable single or cohabiting parents. The authors conclude by pointing to three types of policy reforms that could improve outcomes for children. The first is to reduce the share of children growing up in fragile families (for example, through reducing the rate of unwed births or promoting family stability among unwed parents). The second is to address the pathways that place such children at risk (for example, through boosting resources in single-parent homes or fostering father involvement in fragile families). The third is to address directly the risks these children face (for example, through high-quality early childhood education or home-visiting policies).
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, indigenous communities in the United States and Australia suffered a common experience at the hands of state authorities: the removal of their ...children to institutions in the name of assimilating American Indians and protecting Aboriginal people. Although officially characterized as benevolent, these government policies often inflicted great trauma on indigenous families and ultimately served the settler nations’ larger goals of consolidating control over indigenous peoples and their lands.
White Mother to a Dark Race takes the study of indigenous education and acculturation in new directions in its examination of the key roles white women played in these policies of indigenous child-removal. Government officials, missionaries, and reformers justified the removal of indigenous children in particularly gendered ways by focusing on the supposed deficiencies of indigenous mothers, the alleged barbarity of indigenous men, and the lack of a patriarchal nuclear family. Often they deemed white women the most appropriate agents to carry out these child-removal policies. Inspired by the maternalist movement of the era, many white women were eager to serve as surrogate mothers to indigenous children and maneuvered to influence public policy affecting indigenous people. Although some white women developed caring relationships with indigenous children and others became critical of government policies, many became hopelessly ensnared in this insidious colonial policy.
What factors enable individuals to overcome adverse childhoods and move on to rewarding lives in adulthood? Drawing on data collected from two of Britain's richest research resources for the study of ...human development, the 1958 National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study, this 2006 book investigates the phenomenon of 'resilience' - the ability to adjust positively to adverse conditions. Comparing the experiences of over 30,000 individuals born twelve years apart, Schoon examines the transition from childhood into adulthood and the assumption of work and family related roles among individuals born in 1958 and 1970 respectively. The study focuses on academic attainment among high and low risk individuals, but also considers behavioural adjustment, health and psychological well-being, as well as the stability of adjustment patterns in times of social change. This is a major work of reference and synthesis, that makes an important contribution to the study of lifelong development.
Young children who have experienced early adversity are at risk for developing disorganized attachments. The efficacy of Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), an intervention targeting ...nurturing care among parents identified as being at risk for neglecting their young children, was evaluated through a randomized clinical trial. Attachment quality was assessed in the Strange Situation for 120 children between 11.7 and 31.9 months of age (M = 19.1, SD = 5.5). Children in the ABC intervention showed significantly lower rates of disorganized attachment (32%) and higher rates of secure attachment (52%) relative to the control intervention (57% and 33%, respectively). These results support the efficacy of the ABC intervention in enhancing attachment quality among parents at high risk for maltreatment.
As the knowledge base of child clinical and pediatric assessment continues to grow rapidly, so does the need for up-to-date information. This volume provides the ideal update and the text offers the ...depth of coverage necessary to understand the field.
The studies reported here aimed to test the proposal that mind-mindedness is a quality of personal relationships by assessing mind-mindedness in caregiver-child dyads in which the relationship has ...not spanned the child's life or in which the relationship has been judged dysfunctional. Studies 1 and 2 investigated differences in mind-mindedness between adoptive parents (ns = 89, 36) and biological parents from the general population (ns = 54, 114). Both studies found lower mind-mindedness in adoptive compared with biological parents. The results of Study 2 showed that this group difference was independent of parental mental health and could not fully be explained in terms of children's behavioral difficulties. Study 3 investigated differences in mind-mindedness in foster carers (n = 122), parents whose children had been the subject of a child protection plan (n = 172), and a community sample of biological parents (n = 128). The level of mind-mindedness in foster carers and parents who were involved with child protection services was identical and lower than that in the community sample; children's behavioral difficulties could not account for the difference between the 2 groups of biological parents. In all 3 studies, nonbiological carers' tendency to describe their children with reference to preadoption or placement experiences was negatively related to mind-mindedness. These findings are in line with mind-mindedness being a relational construct.
To describe how child maltreatment chronicity is related to negative outcomes in later childhood and early adulthood.
The study included 5994 low-income children from St Louis, including 3521 with ...child maltreatment reports, who were followed from 1993-1994 through 2009. Children were 1.5 to 11 years of age at sampling. Data include administrative and treatment records indicating substance abuse, mental health treatment, brain injury, sexually transmitted disease, suicide attempts, and violent delinquency before age 18 and child maltreatment perpetration, mental health treatment, or substance abuse in adulthood. Multivariate analysis controlled for potential confounders.
Child maltreatment chronicity predicted negative childhood outcomes in a linear fashion (eg, percentage with at least 1 negative outcome: no maltreatment = 29.7%, 1 report = 39.5%, 4 reports = 67.1%). Suicide attempts before age 18 showed the largest proportionate increase with repeated maltreatment (no report versus 4+ reports = +625%, P < .0001). The dose-response relationship was reduced once controls for other adverse child outcomes were added in multivariate models of child maltreatment perpetration and mental health issues. The relationship between adult substance abuse and maltreatment report history disappeared after controlling for adverse child outcomes.
Child maltreatment chronicity as measured by official reports is a robust indicator of future negative outcomes across a range of systems, but this relationship may desist for certain adult outcomes once childhood adverse events are controlled. Although primary and secondary prevention remain important approaches, this study suggests that enhanced tertiary prevention may pay high dividends across a range of medical and behavioral domains.
This article provides an overview and critical analysis of inquiries into historical institutional child abuse and examines their multiple functions and complex effects. The article takes a broadly ...international view but focuses primarily on Australia, the UK and Ireland, jurisdictions in which there have been major national inquiries. Drawing on sociological and other social science literature, it begins by considering the forms, functions, and purposes of inquiries. An overview of emergent concerns with institutional abuse in the 1980s and 1990s is then provided, followed by an examination of the response of many governments since that time in establishing inquiries. Key findings and recommendations are considered. The final sections of the article explore the evaluation of inquiries, both during their operation and in their aftermath. Policy change and legislative reform are discussed but the focus is on aspects often underplayed or overlooked, including an inquiry’s credibility, its role in processes of knowledge production, and the part it plays in producing social and cultural shifts. In the context of growing numbers of inquiries across Western democracies, including the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, it is argued that grasping the complexity of the inquiry mechanism, with its inherent tensions and its multiple effects, is crucial to evaluating inquiry outcomes.
Parenthood is a life transition that can be especially demanding for vulnerable individuals. Young maternal age and maternal single status have been reported to increase the risk for adverse outcomes ...for both mother and child. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of young maternal age and maternal single status on maternal and child mental health and child development at age 3.
A birth-cohort of 1723 mothers and their children were followed from birth to age 3. Sixty-one mothers (3.5%) were age 20 or younger, and 65 (4.0%) reported single status at childbirth. The mothers filled out standardized instruments and medical information was retrieved from the standardized clinical assessment of the children at Child Welfare Centers, (CWC).
Young maternal age was associated with symptoms of postpartum depression whereas single status was not. Young mothers were more prone to report internalizing and externalizing problems in their children, while there was no association between single status and child behavioral problems. No differences were seen on child development (CWC scores). School drop-out was, however, a more influential factor on depressive symptoms postpartum than maternal age.
Young mothers are at increased risk for symptoms of postpartum depression which indicates the need for attention in pre- and postnatal health care programs. Single mothers and their children were not found to be at increased risk for adverse outcomes. The importance of schooling was demonstrated, indicating the need for societal support to encourage adolescents to remain in school.
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