Current data suggest that the homeschooling community is a diverse and growing social movement, varying demographically in terms of race, religion, socioeconomic status, and…
Abstract
Current data suggest that the homeschooling community is a diverse and growing social movement, varying demographically in terms of race, religion, socioeconomic status, and political beliefs. However, with over 68% of the homeschooling population being non-Hispanic White – a group not accustomed to systemic oppression and racial marginalization – the homeschooling narrative reflected in research is often skewed by the socioeconomic status, political power, and cultural interests of White, two-parent, middle-class homeschooling households. Amidst increasingly amiable responses toward homeschooling, Black families of varying socioeconomic backgrounds have shown interest in becoming home educators. Included in this chapter are their lesser-told accounts – narratives from the primary homeschooling parent – Black mothers. Relying on 20 in-depth interviews, this study utilizes the theoretical frames of systemic gendered racism, intersectionality, and the coding procedures of grounded theory methods to analyze the narratives of Black homeschooling mothers. Overlooking the experiences and concerns of marginally represented homeschooling families such as Black homeschoolers can haphazardly reproduce social inequalities and/or fracture the homeschooling movement along stratified categories. Findings underscore homeschooling as a classed and gendered process and draw attention to the specific racialized boundaries and indignities that obstruct Black mothers’ educational and parenting goals. The author explains how Black women navigate systemic marginalization while homeschooling.
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This study, based on data from the National Survey of Families and Households, confirms normative preference for nuclear households across all cohorts and racial/ethnic groups…
Abstract
This study, based on data from the National Survey of Families and Households, confirms normative preference for nuclear households across all cohorts and racial/ethnic groups throughout this century. However, a noteworthy minority (about 30%) did live with grandparents at some time during their childhood. Living with grandparents as well as having a grandparent live in one's parental household were somewhat more prevalent during the 30's and 40's, indicating that extended households may have been formed in response to the Depression and especially World War II. There also is a significant effect of nuclear family structure: living arrangements with grandparents predominate among those who did not live with both parents at some time during their childhood. The data also suggest that it is important to differentiate between grandparental living arrangements that are oriented toward the care of the grandchildren and those arrangements that imply care for the grandparent: the former arrangement predominates among Blacks, whereas the latter is more common among Whites. During the past decade there has been increased interest in extended family living arrangements and particularly in households including grandparents and/or grandchildren. This interest reflects several demographic trends during the latter part of this century, especially increases in divorce and in parental problems (drugs, AIDS) that preclude parents from taking care of their own children as well as increases in longevity and in the survival of frail elderly, many of whom come to live with their adult children. Census data offer information on the prevalence of extended family arrangements at any one point in time, but they are insufficient to estimate a person's lifetime “risk” of living with grandparents and provide only limited information on the duration of such living arrangements. Data from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) include information not only on whether individuals ever lived with their grandparents but also on the type and the duration of such arrangements. Based on this data set, this article assesses trends in living arrangements with grandparents, and variations in these trends by race and childhood family structure.
Abubakar Manu, Agnes M. Kotoh, Rexford Kofi Oduro Asante and Augustine Ankomah
Available studies on parent-child communication about sexual and reproductive health in Ghana have largely focused on assessing communication frequency, barriers, and who…
Abstract
Purpose
Available studies on parent-child communication about sexual and reproductive health in Ghana have largely focused on assessing communication frequency, barriers, and who communicates with whom within the family. The purpose of this paper is to examine parental and family contextual factors that predict parental communication with young people about sexual and reproductive health.
Design/methodology/approach
A cross-sectional interviewer-administered survey was conducted among 790 parents selected through a multistage sampling technique. The Cronbach’s α statistic was used to assess various parental and family contextual constructs on parent-child communication about sexual and reproductive health. Separate hierarchical multiple regression models for mothers and fathers were constructed to assess predictors of parental communication about sexual and reproductive health.
Findings
Nearly the same factors predicted mothers’ and fathers’ communication with young people about sexual and reproductive health matters. The predictors for both mothers and fathers included high socioeconomic status (SES), family religiousity, parent discipline, perceived parent sexual knowledge and parent trustworthiness. Parent permissiveness predicted only for fathers.
Social implications
Parental communication on sexual and reproductive health is influenced by high SES, family religiousity, parent sexual knowledge, parent discipline and trustworthiness. Interventional programmes on communication about sexual and reproductive health need to take cognisance of these factors to improve parent-child communication about sexual and reproductive health.
Originality/value
This paper adds to the limited evidence on parent-child communication about sexual and reproductive health in Ghana, by examining parental and family contextual factors that influence parental communication with young people about sexual and reproductive health.
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Cathrine Norberg and Ylva Fältholm
The purpose of this paper is to contribute with increased knowledge about gender in mining by exploring how women are discursively represented in texts produced by actors in the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute with increased knowledge about gender in mining by exploring how women are discursively represented in texts produced by actors in the international mining arena.
Design/methodology/approach
The study combines corpus linguistic methods and discourse analysis. It implies a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses, where the former is used as the point of departure for the latter, and where the material analysed is chosen on the basis of certain selected search phrases. The source for the study is the web, and the search engine used for the retrieval of data is WebCorp Live, a tool tailored for linguistic analysis of web material.
Findings
The analysis reveals that although the overarching theme in the women-in mining discourse is that women are needed in the industry, the underlying message is that women-in-mining are perceived as problematic.
Practical implications
The study shows that if mining is to change into a modern industry, the inherent hyper-masculine culture and its effects on the whole industry needs to be problematised and made evident. To increase the mere number of women, with women still heavily underrepresented, is not enough to break gender-biased discrimination.
Originality/value
The research contributes with new knowledge about gender in mining by using a method, which so far has had limited usage in (critical) discourse analysis.
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Silje Louise Dahl, Ellen Madssen Andenes and Johanne Yttri Dahl
This study aims at a better understanding of parents’ identity work when their parenting skills are questioned, in an organizational setting. The parents in this study were…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims at a better understanding of parents’ identity work when their parenting skills are questioned, in an organizational setting. The parents in this study were assessed as at risk of unsatisfactory parental functioning because of problems related to drugs, mental health and/or psychosocial functioning, and they were observed and offered guidance at an extended health centre in Norway. The study explores how individual self-presentations are interwoven with and dependent on organizational narratives of identity.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on an analysis of 16 qualitative interviews, three exemplary cases are analyzed in detail. Narrative identity and professional gaze constitute the theoretical framework.
Findings
Parents and service providers negotiate which organizational narratives of identity are available, and the narratives are integrated in parents’ self-presentations in different ways. The most common strategy is to accept the organizational narratives offered, but they are also transformed and rejected. The experience of being seen by an empathic professional gaze contributes to the creation of an acceptable self-narrative.
Practical implications
Tending to parents’ identity needs should be an integral part of services provided. If parents are to cooperate with state services and engage in interventions, their needs for preserving an acceptable and coherent self-narrative must be considered.
Originality/value
This paper adds to the understanding of how identity work is a central feature of service provision. It also adds to the literature on relationships between identity narratives at different levels of society.
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David Palomera, Margarita León, Lucía Martínez-Virto, Daniel Gabaldón-Estevan and Zyab Ibáñez
Since the year 2000, the provision of early years education and care for the under-threes (hereafter 0–3 ECEC) has undergone a steady increase in Spain. This growth has taken…
Abstract
Since the year 2000, the provision of early years education and care for the under-threes (hereafter 0–3 ECEC) has undergone a steady increase in Spain. This growth has taken place in all 17 Autonomous Communities, albeit not in a uniform way. We analyse how state regulations regarding ECEC have evolved from the first National Education Law in 1990 (LOGSE) to the most recent one in 2020 (LOMLOE). We compare seven Autonomous Communities and assess the impact of their different management models and levels of coverage on equality of opportunities, both in how families access the services and in how much they pay. We try to ascertain under what conditions ECEC can go beyond being a policy that helps families juggle work and family responsibilities and become a redistributive and equal opportunities policy that helps the most socially disadvantaged groups. Our study concludes that although there are differences in both access criteria and in the price of services, all the regions studied have progressively moved towards services that aim to be more equitable, with an explicit recognition of the particular difficulties caused by low incomes, disabilities, single parenthood, or gender-based violence. Even so, certain structural characteristics of ECEC – such as the fluctuating nature of its financing, its weak public regulation and monitoring, and significant outsourcing to private providers – make it difficult to universalise the service in order to make it a truly redistributive policy.
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Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS) is a well understood, yet under-recognized, placental disease affecting any given pregnancy at a rate of 1 in 1,000. There is no…
Abstract
Purpose
Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS) is a well understood, yet under-recognized, placental disease affecting any given pregnancy at a rate of 1 in 1,000. There is no clustering of TTTS; instead the threat remains pathologically distinctive due to its pervasiveness. However, while incidence rates are random, survival rates are not. Despite compliant acceptance of “routine prenatal care,” sadly, there are many women who for currently unknown reasons are not receiving the advanced prenatal care needed to appropriately screen for, diagnosis and treat TTTS. And these women are paying the ultimate price for such obstetrical oversight.
Methodology
This study hypothesizes that differential care being given by primary obstetricians of TTTS patients is resulting in experienced inequalities. Utilizing social reproduction theory, and through ethnographic and quantitative analyses of primary data, this study seeks to divulge the complex social processes taking place (or failing to take place) within the world of American obstetrics, and begin to understand how they are affecting TTTS mortality and morbidity rates.
Findings
Findings illuminate a profound imbalance of power and influence amongst the following entities: American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Society of Maternal Fetal Medicine; obstetrical training and practice; and levels of patient awareness and advocacy.
Value
This study argues that the current social relations being reproduced by these entities are perpetuating a climate that allows for disregard of proper TTTS management. Specifically, this study theoretically explores what social relations and subsequent (in)actions are being reproduced prior to TTTS diagnoses, and applies the effects of those observations.