Search results

Within the field of medical sociology, there is an extensive body of literature on notable family transitions and stages in the reproductive cycle, such as getting married or becoming a parent, as they relate to mental health and well-being. However, the transition to becoming a completed family, that is, the process of determining or recognizing that one’s family is complete, is notably absent. In response to this empirical gap, this chapter presents findings from 114 semi-structured interviews with participants who reported having at least one child and who considered their family to be complete. First, the concept of “family completion” is introduced and conceptualized based on the qualitative considerations of participants and the contextual medical sociology literature. Then, thematic considerations around the process of family completion, related emotional preparations, and factors associated with mental health and well-being are explored. Findings suggest that family completion can be an important transitional period for parents and can be associated with emotional hardship for some individuals. Participants described experiencing conflict with their partner if they disagreed on the completion decision, frustration and sadness related to infertility, and/or feelings of loss or depression when completion was regarded as the end of a personal or familial life phase. This chapter concludes that creating a cultural context in which family completion is a recognized family transition period may spur intentional consideration among parents and promote the design of intervention services for parents experiencing changes in mental health or well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the impact of partnership and family‐building on the aspirations, expectations and orientations to work of a sample of highly qualified women working across a range of industry sectors.

This paper draws on both qualitative and quantitative data collected in a longitudinal study of the early careers of UK graduates, incorporating both a large‐scale questionnaire survey and detailed interviews with a sample of respondents.

This paper highlights the persistence of gender asymmetries in both employment and domestic partnership and shows the complex decision‐making process which determines career prioritization among equally highly qualified partners. It also provides evidence of change in the values, priorities and orientations to work and the work‐life balance of UK graduates as they progress through early career development.

The extent to which highly qualified women use (and are sometimes precipitated by circumstances into using) the life stage associated with stable partnership formation and family‐building to reassess values and priorities has implications for both policymakers and employers. In particular, employers need to take account of changing orientations in work and life stage in formulating effective recruitment and retention strategies for high‐qualified workers.

This paper provides new data on how dual‐career partnerships negotiate the transition from, in career terms, single entities into dyads and the dynamics of gender role change and stability.

Family building (FB) is a building where residents of different flats are close relatives. Being quite common in metropolitan areas, these unique psychosocial environments remain underexamined. We aimed to research into the interactions within the family and psychosocial features of FBs. One hundred and one children living in FBs and FB-experiences of their parents were assessed by semi-structured interviews using K-SADS-PL. Mothers scored their satisfaction from FB-lifestyle in the scale of 0-100. The sample consisted of 35 girls and 66 boys. Mean age was 108±37.4 months. ADHD and anxiety disorders were the common diagnoses. Eighty-two families lived with paternal relatives. Number of relative-neighbors in the building changed between 2-10. Forty-one mothers scored ?50 for their satisfaction; 58% believed FBs affected their children's symptoms negatively. Examining the perceived advantages and disadvantages of FBs, ‘extreme criticism' and ‘social support' were the decisive items to predict mothers' satisfaction levels. Having both positive and negative effects, FB-lifestyle seem to complicate interpersonal relations within the family. This study has revealed some preliminary findings, but further studies are required in the field.

Concern with demographic prediction and projection has ensured a wide variety of studies of family building. These studies range from large‐scale surveys of fertility patterns to a number of in‐depth investigations of pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood. The former include cross‐sectional cohort surveys of fertility expectations, attitudes to family planning and contraceptive behaviours, where detailed reproductive histories have been obtained from a wide range of respondents and analysed by cohorts, based on the year of birth or age of marriage of the informant. However, a major defect in these surveys lies in the collection of accurate retrospective data, for example a middle aged married women having to give an account of her behaviour and/or attitudes when she first married twenty years earlier. The remedy suggested by Ryder and Westhoff is ‘to use comparable classification procedure in a longitudinal study, collecting data periodically from the same families as they progress through their family life cycles. Several such longitudinal surveys have been undertaken and they provide a more detailed picture of the process of family building. This concern with the dynamic aspects of having children is reflected in the more qualitative micro‐studies of pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood.

Adoption practice is originally designed as a live-saving option for some category of children. In recent times, this purpose has been challenged by several social, biological and cultural exigencies. Hence, a notable morphing of the practice to satisfying adopters’ need has been observed, however, requiring further interrogations. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Data were collected through sessions of interviews with six adoption officials (social workers), four orphanage managers, three legal practitioners and 13 prospective and successful adopters, across three selected states.

The study records contemporary adoption practices as mostly a management strategy for infertility by bringing to fore diverse narratives that reveal adoption as now primarily construed, subconsciously implemented and ultimately serving in many ways as the social security mechanism for adopters than for securing the children who are to be adopted.

This by implication results in poor adoptive parent–child bonding, disservice and maltreatments in diverse ways.

This study heralds the “rebranded” security benefits of adoption and enlarges the scope and genres of social security implications of child adoption in the contemporary Nigerian society.

Popularly viewed as a humanitarian issue that transcends not only geopolitical boundaries of nationality but also sociopolitical borders of race, the ways in which transnational adoption reflects the racialization of children are often ignored. Because adoption is not a random process of family building but rather a purposive endeavor that involves the multiple dynamics of race, class, gender, sexual orientation and disability, it is important to recognize how trends in transnational adoption intersect with shifting racial structure. This paper aims to examine visas issued to orphans entering the USA from 1990‐2005, international programs offered by US adoption agencies, and juxtaposes these with policies governing adoption in sending countries to illustrate how transnational adoption mirrors these emerging racial categories.

Using the tripartite racial framework argued to characterize the shifting US racial structure, the author located adoptions in the top 20 sending countries to the USA for the past 16 years within this framework to assess how patterns of transnational adoption reflect the shifting US racial structure. To try to assess the extent to which adoptive parent “demand” intersects with agency programs and the policies of other countries, the author also performed a content analysis of an online adoption directory with 236 private adoption agencies (120 of which maintained (international adoption programs) and US Department of State data on adoption policies of the top 20 sending countries.

Transnational adoption patterns for the past 16 years lend support to the argument of a shifting racial structure and mirror the tripartite system described by Bonilla‐Silva. For the past 16 years the majority of adoptions have been either from the White or Honorary White categories whereas 20 per cent of adoptions have been from the Collective Black category. While policies of sending countries no doubt factor into which programs are offered by US private agencies, Department of State information suggests that the restrictiveness of countries’ adoption policies cannot by itself explain which countries are in the top 20. A significant part of this reciprocal process must include a focus on “demand” to explain who gets adopted. Data on transnational patterns of adoption illustrate all too clearly which children are preferred, aligning with the emerging Latin American‐like racial hierarchy in the USA.

To the author's knowledge, this application has not been attempted nor has anyone considered adoption (domestic or transnational) as another social indicator of intimacy (albeit for a relatively small segment of the population).

The purpose of this paper is to explore factors influencing decision making about disclosure of assisted reproductive technology (ART) use in the workplace.

A qualitative study design was used. In total, 31 women and 6 men who were using or had recently used ART were recruited from British fertility networks and interviewed. Data were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed.

Two main strands were identified each encompassing two themes: “Concerns about disclosure” covered the very personal nature of disclosing ART treatment and also career concerns and “Motives for disclosure” covered feeling which was necessary to disclose and also the influence of workplace relationships.

The relatively small, self-selected sample of participants was recruited from fertility support networks, and lacked some diversity.

Clarity about entitlements to workplace support and formal protection against discrimination, along with management training and awareness raising about ART treatment is needed to help normalise requests for support and to make decisions about disclosure within the workplace easier.

The study has highlighted an understudied area of research in ART populations. The data provide insight into the challenging experiences of individuals combining ART with employment and, in particular, the complexity of decisions about whether or not to disclose.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze factors that determine the demand for single family houses in Alabama urbanized areas, commonly referred to as metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs).

This paper builds and estimates a housing demand model that incorporates both macroeconomic and housing‐related variables using a panel time series data for 1988‐2007. The study is different from past research, which mainly focuses on housing demand at the state or national level, by looking at the factors influencing demand for housing at the MSAs level.

The study finds that demand for new single family houses in Alabama MSAs is influenced by both national economic factors and local factors. Population growth and increased sale of existing houses increase demand for new single family houses in the MSAs. On the contrary, increased cost of building a new house, higher real mortgage interest rates and unemployment rates are found to reduce the demand for new houses.

This study is one of the few studies that focus on housing demand at the local level, particularly in the US housing market. Since demand for housing will always be local and therefore influenced mostly by local conditions, the result reveal unique dynamics that are specific to the MSAs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Family Development Centre (FDC) staff’s[1] perspectives on their roles and capacity to promote early childhood language learning through good parenting.

This research employed in-depth interviews with 30 FDC coordinators and volunteer staff, supported by limited field observations.

Identifying risk, surveillance of at-risk families, building community solidarity and activities to support parenting and children, emerged as key components of FDC work. Volunteers softened their surveillance role by emphasising their social support function and personal links to local communities. Most activities aimed to strengthen family bonding and relationships, with fewer specifically addressing early childhood language deficits. Volunteers found the latter challenging, and generally sought to work in cooperation with education, public health and child care staff where projects involved language development.

Most volunteers said they lacked the capacities to promote early language development effectively and required additional training in such areas as partnerships and collaboration, family and parenting support, and project management. The authors argue that the importance given to partnerships reflects volunteers’ recognition that they need to draw on outside expertise to address children’s language problems. Given resource constraints, volunteers will remain central to family support work for the immediate future. Even with training lay volunteers will not become language experts, and future policy should centre on building a framework of professional support for the community teams.

This study fills a gap in knowledge about FDC volunteer roles and suggests a need for training that focuses on teamwork rather than specialist language expertise.