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Nurse home visiting programmes designed to reduce the likelihood of child maltreatment in families at risk have been widely implemented in Australia and overseas. The purpose of this paper is to examine the intensity and duration of maternal involvement in a nurse home visiting programme to prevent child maltreatment.

A retrospective, longitudinal design was employed. The clinical records of 40 mothers who had received nurse home visits following the birth of a new baby for at least six months, and had provided consent for their details to be accessed for research purposes, were selected for analysis. The influence of antenatal characteristics and well-being on maternal involvement in a nurse home visiting programme was examined using reliability of change indices.

Mothers with impaired family functioning reporting they experienced violence at home were more likely to leave the programme early and received fewer than the prescribed number of home visits compared to mothers who had been enroled into the programme for other complex psychosocial needs. At the same time, mothers enroled on the basis of impaired psychological functioning and who did not report violence in the home remained, and received more than the prescribed number of home visits over the course of their involvement.

Results showed that domestic violence increased the risk of poor engagement with a targeted nurse home visiting programme. At the same time, home visitors responded to complex individual and family needs by increasing the number of home visits accordingly. This theoretically based pilot research has helped to disentangle antecedents of maternal involvement and the subsequent impact on programme outcomes. Further investigation using a larger study sample is needed.

Previous literature demonstrated low-to-moderate rates of agreement between children and mothers regarding child anxiety. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate factors related to differences between mother-child dyads who disagreed vs agreed in their reports of child anxiety symptoms.

In total, 87 children aged 9-12 years old and their mothers completed questionnaires regarding maternal perceptions of child behavior, maternal separation anxiety about the child’s individuation, and mother-child relationship characteristics.

The results showed that mothers in mother-child dyads who disagreed on child anxiety symptoms, compared to those in dyads who agreed on child anxiety symptoms, perceived their children as showing higher affect intensity and behavioral problems. They also expressed greater anxiety about the children’s individuation process, characterized in part by children’s increased autonomy and decline of reliance on them. Further, children in dyads who disagreed, compared to those in dyads who agreed, reported lower mother-child attachment security.

The results extend the literature by identifying specific factors related to the discrepancy between mothers’ and children’s reports of childhood anxiety in early adolescence. The results highlight the need to consider both mothers’ and children’s views when assessing childhood anxiety. Importantly, the results also indicate that specific factors investigated in this study, including maternal perception of children’s behavioral problems and their affect intensity, maternal anxiety about child individuation, and mother-child attachment security, could be used to inform clinical decisions regarding informant discrepancies.

This paper uses a sample of school age children from the Nepal Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) to examine the relationship between maternal education and child schooling in Nepal. Taking advantage of the two-stage stratified sample design, we estimate a sample selection model controlling for cluster fixed effects. These results are then compared to OLS and Tobit models. Our analysis shows that being male significantly increases the likelihood of attending school and for those children attending school, it also affects the years of schooling. Parental education has a similarly positive effect on child school, but interestingly we find maternal education having a relatively greater effect on the schooling of girls. Our results also point to household wealth as having a positive effect on both the probability of schooling and the years of schooling in all our models, with the magnitude of these effects being similar for male and female children. Finally, a comparison of our results with a model ignoring cluster fixed effects produces results that are statistically different both in signs and in the levels of significance.

Understanding parental psychopathology interaction is important in preventing negative family outcomes. This study investigated the effect of paternal psychiatric history on maternal depressive symptom trajectory from birth to 12 months postpartum. Maternal Edinburgh Postpartum Depression screens were collected at 1, 6 and 12 months and fathers' psychiatric diagnoses were assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV from 64 families. There was not a significant difference in the trajectory of maternal depressive symptoms between mothers with partners with history of or a current psychiatric condition or those without a condition. However, mothers with partners with substance abuse history had higher levels of depressive symptoms relative to those affected by mood/anxiety disorders or those without a disorder. Our results call for a closer look at paternal history of substance abuse when treating postpartum maternal depression.

Research has found a strong correlation between maternal healthcare and health insurance coverage. But, despite having one of the best health coverage systems in the developing world, Rwanda still faces formidable challenges in provision certain key maternal health services, leading to higher levels of maternal morbidity and mortality. To understand this paradox, this study will examine the association between maternal health services and insurance coverage, utilizing the latest data from the Rwanda Demographic Health Survey.

Using a sample of 6,167 childbearing women aged 15–49 years, a bivariate and multivariate analysis was conducted to examine the paradoxical relationship between health insurance and maternal health services, such as antenatal care, in Rwanda.

The results reveal significant differences in ANC4+ and the timing of the first ANC, which remain low in Rwanda. Despite significant improvements in delivery factors and skilled ANC providers, ANC4+ rates in the country remain the lowest. However, this study found a positive and significant association between ANC4+ and insurance coverage (AOR = 1.64, p < 0.001).

Rwanda has implemented an effective health insurance policy, but there has been minimal progress in the utilization of maternal health services. Therefore, there is a strong need for policy interventions to reduce barriers to healthcare utilization. Additionally, supply-side factors such as transportation, socio-cultural factors and other logistic barriers should be examined in greater detail. These factors may overshadow the impact of health insurance on the utilization of healthcare services in Rwanda.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2023-0059

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between maternal, household and socio-economic characteristics and household food security in Aceh Province, Indonesia.

The data used are cross-section, secondary data from the Economic Census of Indonesia in 2016 (BPS, 2016) from 23 districts/cities. The central message of the present empirical analysis is that relatively simple indicators perform well in locating food security.

The analysis proves that mother’s age has a significant effect on average calorie intake at the household level. This may be due to the fact that mother’s age plays an important role in the provision of proper food to her family. Higher-aged mothers can understand better about the food quality and requirement for the family as compared to low-aged mother. Environmental factors like access to safe water and better sanitation facilities within housing premises indirectly enhance the absorptive capacity of available food intake. Thus, environmental factors could play an important role in food security through calorie intake, irrespective of economic status of the household. This analysis further strengthens the earlier findings that higher food intake availability alone may not lead to improved health outcome, unless measures are taken to improve access to safe water and sanitation. The contribution of dependency ratio in per capita calorie intake also appeared to be significant in this study. This shows that high dependency ratio reduces the per capita calorie intake due to a larger share in food items among households.

No previous study has comprehensively studied the relationship between maternal, household, and socio-economic characteristics and household food security, especially in Aceh, Indonesia.

Past literature has focused on the intergenerational transmission of gender ideologies, without considering the role cultural context plays. That is, while it is understood that there is a positive relationship between mothers’ gender ideology and that of their adolescents, how might this relationship differ among foreign-born mothers and their native-born adolescent children? This chapter extends the literature on the construction and transmission of gender ideology between immigrant mothers and their children in two ways. First, using data from the child sample of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N=2,202), it examines adolescent gender ideology as influenced by mothers’ gender beliefs and nativity. Second, it assesses the interaction between maternal gender ideologies and nativity as they influence adolescent ideology. Findings from this study suggest that the nativity of the mother does not affect the adolescent’s ideology, nor does it act as a moderator of maternal influence. The chapter ends with a summary and contextualization of the findings framed in developmental psychology and suggesting that factors external to the household, such as the influence of peers, may work to mitigate the effects of cultural frameworks.

Perinatal health is a good indicator of both maternal health status and the level of socioeconomic status attained in any community. This article presents part of the findings of a research project conducted in 1997 by the author to look at the determinants of maternal and perinatal health in Kisumu district of Kenya. Data were collected from four health facilities within the district which were selected through purposive sampling to act as sentinel centres. In total, 1,455 obstetric cases were enumerated and those with perinatal complications were isolated. Perinatal health status was measured by the frequency of low birth weights, neonatal deaths, still‐births, and early neonatal morbidity. Cross‐tabulations and multivariate analysis have been used to identify the major risk factors of the perinatal health problems identified in the study area. Among other things, the study reveals that the risk of most perinatal complications is significantly increased by maternal and environmental factors. These include poor pregnancy care, malaria and anaemia during pregnancy, poor socioeconomic conditions of the mother and poor sanitary conditions in the household. Any policy measure aimed at promoting perinatal health should seek to address all these factors.

Research on behavioral functioning among Mexican-origin children primarily uses an individual-centered approach that ignores the residential context. In addition, most studies have been unable to consider an important measure of inequality for this population, legal status; and mental health of children with undocumented parents is underexplored. We address these gaps by investigating the influence of parental legal status and neighborhood characteristics on Mexican-origin children’s behavioral functioning using a multilevel approach.

We use data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study and 2000 decennial census. Our primary focus is variation in internalizing and externalizing behavior problems among Mexican-origin youth (N = 2,535) with mothers who are undocumented, documented or naturalized citizens, or US-born using multilevel models.

The multilevel results show the importance of considering parental legal status. Mexican children of unauthorized mothers are more likely to exhibit internalizing and externalizing problems than all other groups of Mexican children. Furthermore, neighborhood-concentrated disadvantage is significantly associated with internalizing behavior problems, and neighborhood-concentrated affluence is significantly associated with externalizing behavior problems. In short, the results demonstrate the importance of considering both parental legal status and neighborhood contexts for understanding behavior problems of Mexican-origin children.

Our findings suggest that Mexican children’s mental health outcomes – measured by internalizing and externalizing behavior problems – vary significantly by parental legal status and neighborhood contexts. This study provides important nuances for public policy for health care prevention and interventions.

Anaemia during pregnancy is an important contributor to maternal mortality and morbidity in Kenya. A prospective study was conducted in Kisumu District, a region characterized by high incidences of maternal and infant mortality, to determine the levels and prevalence of maternal complications. Four health facilities were purposely selected to act as sentinel centres from urban and rural clusters. All the obstetric‐related cases were recorded between January and July 1997, and the outcomes of the pregnancies were recorded. Details on the respondents socioeconomic, demographic, biomedical and environment characteristics were also recorded. A total of 1,455 cases were recorded, of which 59 percent experienced obstetric‐related complications. Of those with complications, 22 percent were suffering from severe anaemia. Among other things, the study reveals that anaemia prevalence is determined by maternal and environmental factors. These include poor pregnancy care, illness during pregnancy, socioeconomic conditions of the mother and the sanitary conditions of the household. Policy measures aimed at managing anaemia should seek to address all these factors.