Public discourse on Asian parenting tends to fixate on ethnic culture as a static value set, disguising the fluidity and diversity of Chinese parenting. Such stereotypes also fail to account for the ...challenges of raising children in a rapidly modernizing world, full of globalizing values. In Raising Global Families Pei-Chia Lan examines how ethnic Chinese parents in Taiwan and the United States negotiate cultural differences and class inequality to raise children in the contexts of globalization and immigration. She draws on a uniquely comparative, multisited research model with four groups of parents: middle-class and working-class parents in Taiwan, and middle-class and working-class Chinese immigrants in the Boston area. Despite sharing a similar ethnic cultural background, these parents develop class-specific, context- sensitive strategies for arranging their children's education, care, and discipline, and for coping with uncertainties provoked by their changing surroundings. Lan's cross-Pacific comparison demonstrates that class inequality permeates the fabric of family life, even as it takes shape in different ways across national contexts.
Objectives:
To estimate household exposure to COVID-19 related stress and the association with parent report of neglectful, harsh, and positive discipline practices.
Methods:
Cross sectional survey ...data was collected from 2,068 parents in the Northeastern US. Parents reported personal and household experiences of COVID-19 stressors, their level of distress, and use of neglectful parenting and discipline practices for a randomly selected child in their home. Analyses estimated rates of COVID-19 related stress and parenting practices. Logistic regression was used to assess the relation of COVID-19 stress to parenting behaviors.
Results:
Individual and household stressor level, as well as distress were each positively associated with likelihood of neglect. Personal exposure to stressors was minimally related to discipline, but household stressor level and parents’ distress were positively associated with harsh and positive discipline.
Discussion:
Indicators of COVID-19 stress (e.g., exposure to stressors and distress) each uniquely predicted parents’ use of neglect, particularly physical and family-based sub-types, and use of harsh and positive discipline practices. Results suggest that parents may require additional support to provide appropriate care for their children while coping with the increased rates of stress associated with the pandemic and the resulting public health response.
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a dramatic shift in the role of children in American society and families. No longer necessary for labor, children became economic liabilities and ...twentieth-century parents exhibited a new level of anxiety concerning the welfare of their children and their own ability to parent effectively. What caused this shift in the ways parenting and childhood were experienced and perceived? Why, at a time of relative ease and prosperity, do parents continue to grapple with uncertainty and with unreasonable expectations of both themselves and their children?
Peter N. Stearns explains this phenomenon by examining the new issues the twentieth century brought to bear on families. Surveying popular media, *#8220;expert” childrearing manuals, and newspapers and journals published throughout the century, Stearns shows how schooling, physical and emotional vulnerability, and the rise in influence of commercialism became primary concerns for parents. The result, Stearns shows, is that contemporary parents have come to believe that they are participating in a culture of neglect and diminishing standards. Anxious Parents: A Modern History of Childrearing in America shows the reasons for this belief through an historic examination of modern parenting.
Objective The aim of this study was to identify the status regarding childcare and housework performed by fathers with infants (one and two years old, first child), as well as related factors.Method ...An online survey of fathers with infants across Japan was administered in October 2020. The survey items encompassed basic attributes, work conditions, and child-rearing information, as well as items from the Quality of Marriage Index (QMI), Work-Family Conflict Scale (WFCS), and a Japanese version of the K6 screening tool. The frequency of performing childcare and housework was divided into two groups, frequent and infrequent, and furthers into four groups based on the combination of frequent and infrequent childcare and housework. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed with the frequent/infrequent childcare group, the frequent/infrequent housework group, and the four groups by childcare and housework each as dependent variables.Results Responses were obtained from subjects in 44 prefectures, with 406 responses used for analysis. Frequently performed items for childcare and housework were hugging, playing together, and taking out trash. Infrequent performed items were making hospital visits, ensuring children's regular medical examinations and vaccinations, preparing meals, and sleeping. The results of the multiple logistic regression analyses demonstrated that the groups citing the frequent performance of childcare tasks were correlated with participation in parenting/father-directed classes, the use of parental leave, wives engaged in formal employment, work requiring less than 10 hours of overtime per month, the highest level of education (junior high school, high school, junior college, vocational school, or technical school: non-university graduate), low WFCS scores, and high QMI scores. The groups citing the frequent performance of housework were associated with not living with grandparents, shift work, participation in parenting/father-directed classes, household yearly income of 6 million yen or more, highest level of education (non-university graduate), wife engaged in formal employment, wife's health condition (normal, poor, very poor), and high QMI scores. The subjects were divided into four groups: frequent childcare-frequent housework (38.4%), frequent childcare-infrequent housework (14.0%), infrequent childcare-frequent housework (19.5%), and infrequent childcare-infrequent housework (28.1%). Among the four groups, the highest correlation was observed for participation in parenting/father-directed classes, overtime hours, wife's work status, and QMI scores.Conclusion To promote participation in parenting, fathers should be encouraged to care for children more frequently and help with housework. As such, introducing support methods in classes for fathers is a necessary step toward this objective.
In this timely book Lyn Craig provides the first comprehensive account of how parents divide their time between caring for children, housework, paid work and leisure. Using large-scale quantitative ...time-use data , the book provides a detailed analysis of the impact of children upon adult time. This research reveals a unique picture of how parenthood affects daily life within households, and how people's (paid and unpaid) workload is affected by parenthood. By looking at how the costs and benefits of children are currently conceptualized and apportioned, Contemporary Motherhood shows what becoming a mother entails and why it is so challenging to raise children. Suggesting an explanation for why fertility rates are dramatically dropping, the book makes a significant contribution to the debate on contemporary motherhood and will interest scholars and students in sociology and social policy with an interest in the sociology of the family, gender and sexuality, and the sociology of youth.
Love's Uncertaintyexplores the hopes and anxieties of urban, middle-class parents in contemporary China. Combining long-term ethnographic research with analyses of popular child-rearing manuals, ...television dramas, and government documents, Teresa Kuan bears witness to the dilemmas of ordinary Chinese parents, who struggle to reconcile new definitions of good parenting with the reality of limited resources. Situating these parents' experiences in the historical context of state efforts to improve "population quality,"Love's Uncertaintyreveals how global transformations are expressed in the most intimate of human experiences. Ultimately, the book offers a meditation on the nature of moral agency, examining how people discern, amid the myriad contingencies of life, the boundary between what can and cannot be controlled.
Objective The aim of this study was to identify the status regarding childcare and housework performed by fathers with infants (one and two years old, first child), as well as related factors.Method ...An online survey of fathers with infants across Japan was administered in October 2020. The survey items encompassed basic attributes, work conditions, and child-rearing information, as well as items from the Quality of Marriage Index (QMI), Work-Family Conflict Scale (WFCS), and a Japanese version of the K6 screening tool. The frequency of performing childcare and housework was divided into two groups, frequent and infrequent, and furthers into four groups based on the combination of frequent and infrequent childcare and housework. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed with the frequent/infrequent childcare group, the frequent/infrequent housework group, and the four groups by childcare and housework each as dependent variables.Results Responses were obtained from subjects in 44 prefectures, with 406 responses used for analysis. Frequently performed items for childcare and housework were hugging, playing together, and taking out trash. Infrequent performed items were making hospital visits, ensuring children's regular medical examinations and vaccinations, preparing meals, and sleeping.The results of the multiple logistic regression analyses demonstrated that the groups citing the frequent performance of childcare tasks were correlated with participation in parenting/father-directed classes, the use of parental leave, wives engaged in formal employment, work requiring less than 10 hours of overtime per month, the highest level of education (junior high school, high school, junior college, vocational school, or technical school: non-university graduate), low WFCS scores, and high QMI scores. The groups citing the frequent performance of housework were associated with not living with grandparents, shift work, participation in parenting/father-directed classes, household yearly income of 6 million yen or more, highest level of education (non-university graduate), wife engaged in formal employment, wife's health condition (normal, poor, very poor), and high QMI scores. The subjects were divided into four groups: frequent childcare-frequent housework (38.4%), frequent childcare-infrequent housework (14.0%), infrequent childcare-frequent housework (19.5%), and infrequent childcare-infrequent housework (28.1%). Among the four groups, the highest correlation was observed for participation in parenting/father-directed classes, overtime hours, wife's work status, and QMI scores.Conclusion To promote participation in parenting, fathers should be encouraged to care for children more frequently and help with housework. As such, introducing support methods in classes for fathers is a necessary step toward this objective.
Accounting for both bidirectional and interactive effects between parenting and child temperament can fine-tune theoretical models of the role of parenting and temperament in children’s development ...of adjustment problems. Evidence for bidirectional and interactive effects between parenting and children’s characteristics of frustration, fear, self-regulation, and impulsivity was reviewed, and an overall model of children’s individual differences in response to parenting is proposed. In general, children high in frustration, impulsivity and low in effortful control are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of negative parenting, while in turn, many negative parenting behaviors predict increases in these characteristics. Frustration, fearfulness, and effortful control also appear to elicit parenting behaviors that can predict increases in these characteristics. Irritability renders children more susceptible to negative parenting behaviors. Fearfulness operates in a very complex manner, sometimes increasing children’s responses to parenting behaviors and sometimes mitigating them and apparently operating differently across gender. Important directions for future research include the use of study designs and analytic approaches that account for the direction of effects and for developmental changes in parenting and temperament over time.
The prevalence of corporal punishment is high in the United States despite a 1998 American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement urging against its use. The current study tests whether the ...socioeconomic difference in its use by parents has changed over the past quarter century. It goes on to test whether socioeconomic differences in the use of nonphysical discipline have also changed over time.
Data are drawn from 4 national studies conducted between 1988 and 2011. Each asked how often a kindergarten-aged child was spanked in the past week and what the parents would do if the child misbehaved, with physical discipline, time-out, and talking to child as possible responses. We use regression models to estimate parents' responses to these questions at the 90th, 50th, and 10th percentiles of the income and education distributions and t tests to compare estimates across cohorts.
The proportion of mothers at the 50th income-percentile who endorse physical discipline decreased from 46% to 21% over time. Gaps between the 90th and 10th income-percentiles were stable at 11 and 18 percentage points in 1988 and 2011. The percentage of mothers at the 10th income-percentile endorsing time-outs increased from 51% to 71%, and the 90/10 income gap decreased from 23 to 14 percentage points between 1998 and 2011.
Decline in popular support for physical discipline reflects real changes in parents' discipline strategies. These changes have occurred at all socioeconomic levels, producing for some behaviors a significant reduction in socioeconomic differences.
The amount of time that children spend using various screen devices and the factors predicting it have long been the subject of empirical inquiry because of the negative outcomes associated with ...extensive media exposure. Most research has focused on factors such as parents’ sociodemographic characteristics and their attitudes regarding media, with little attention to parents’ child-rearing needs and their screen-assisted practices. This oversight is indeed critical, as children’s media use takes place within the context of the parent–child relational dynamic. Furthermore, no substantive attempts have been made to distinguish between factors associated with children’s screen time on weekdays and those determining weekend media exposure. This differentiation is especially relevant because parents may face different challenges during each of these respective parts of the week. The present study aims at filling these gaps by explaining screen viewing time of toddlers aged 1.5 to 3 years, with special emphasis on screen use as a parenting tool.
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