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Military-connected students experience a high rate of parental absence due to their parents’ military obligations. Military work-related parental absences can affect school-aged children’s emotional and behavioural health and overall academic functioning. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The current review identified research studies that explored the effects of military-connected parental absence on school-aged children. Specifically, quantitative and qualitative research studies that examine the impact of military parental absences on dependent variables related to internalising and externalising behaviours and academic functioning were of interest. In all, 26 studies were identified for inclusion in the review.

Overall, military-connected students who experience a parental absence due to military service are more likely to exhibit an increase in problem behaviours and a decrease in academic functioning compared to civilian peers or military-connected peers who were not experiencing parental absence.

The current review elucidates parental absence within the military context, highlighting key factors that may contribute to increased and decreased behavioural and academic functioning of military-connected students. Results from the review in relation to risk and protective factors for military-connected students, future research and school programming directions are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association of various family factors with children’s fruit and vegetable (FV) intake.

A cross-sectional analysis of data from 601 parent-child dyads with children aged three to six years old was conducted. Parents completed questionnaires on child’s FV intake, parenting styles, parental feeding practices, family functioning, television viewing at mealtimes and frequency of family meals. Logistic regression was used to assess the association between various family factors and the likelihood of meeting the child’s daily FV recommendation with adjustment for different demographic variables.

Multivariate model adjusting for sociodemographic data indicated that meeting vegetable recommendation was associated with lower frequency of dining with grandparents (Odds ratio (OR) 0.94, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.89–0.99, p=0.031) and positively associated with parents using more desirable parental feeding practices (OR 1.15, 95% CI 1.09–1.21, p<0.001). Meeting fruit recommendation was associated with parents using more desirable parental feeding practices (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.09–1.17, p<0.001), higher frequency of dining with grandparents (OR 1.05, 95% CI 1.00–1.10, p=0.041), lower frequency of dining with father (OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.82–0.98, p=0.014) and higher score on authoritative parenting style (OR 1.05, 95% CI 1.01–1.08, p=0.009).

This study highlights the potential protective roles of various family factors, in particular authoritative parenting style and parental feeding practices, such as role modeling, moderate restrictive practices for less healthy foods, avoidance of forced feeding, and not using junk food as reward in relation to meeting FV recommendation in children. The role of grandparents in influencing the young children’s eating behaviors within the Chinese family warrants further investigation.

This study examined how parental divorce during emerging adulthood gives meaning to emerging adults’ developmental stage and interpersonal relationships.

The participant sample consisted of 15 females from the Southeastern United States who were between the ages of 18 and 25 (M = 21.5). Qualitative methods were utilized, with a transcendental phenomenological research methodology specifically applied. Interviews were conducted focusing on perceptions of the divorce experience in relation to important aspects of emerging adulthood, namely developmental experiences and interpersonal relationships, primarily intimate partner and dating experiences. NVivo was used to allow a “bottom-up” design, emergent design, and interpretive inquiry for data analysis.

Two major themes emerged from the data: (1) developmental stage facilitates insight into the divorce process and (2) parental divorce leads to contemplating and reconceptualizing perceptions of self and interpersonal relationships.

Results are relevant to researchers, parents, and practitioners as divorce is examined with a developmental lens. Findings suggest that the meaning and impact of parental divorce are distinct for emerging adult children, characterized by awareness and personal reflection. Implications for parenting and practice are provided.

The aim of this article is to summarise the available evidence from systematic reviews about the effectiveness of interventions to prevent or treat child physical abuse and neglect. A computerised search was undertaken of major electronic databases up to December 2005 using key search terms. Only systematic reviews were included in which the primary studies evaluated the effectiveness of targeted or indicated interventions for child physical abuse or neglect. A total of 31 systematic reviews were identified and 15 met all the inclusion criteria. They covered a range of interventions/services, including home visiting, parenting programmes, multi‐component interventions, intensive family preservation services, family‐focused casework and multi‐systemic family therapy. There was limited evidence of the effectiveness of services in improving objective measures of abuse and neglect, due in part to methodological issues involved in their measurement, but good evidence of modest benefits in improving a range of outcomes that are associated with physical abuse and neglect, including parental and family functioning and child development. The results also showed some interventions (eg. media‐based and perinatal coaching) to be ineffective with high‐risk families. The evidence provided by these reviews has clear implications for children's services in the UK and other western developed countries.

Where no psychosocial or interventional support is provided, children with acquired brain injury (ABI) are at significant risk of serious long-term behavioural and social difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to report the six- and 18-month long-term treatment effects of a family centred behavioural intervention to help families manage and prevent challenging behaviours in children following ABI.

In total, 31 parents were followed up at three time points (post-intervention, 6 and 18 months) after participating in an ABI adapted manualised “Signposts for Building Better Behaviour” programme (Hudson et al., 2003).

Attrition rates were highest amongst families caring for a child with mild ABI. The maintenance of treatment effects were detailed for those families who reported a reduction in challenging behaviour immediately post-intervention. There were no significant elevations in challenging child behaviour, maladaptive parenting, or family dysfunction for any participants over the long-term follow-up. Irrespective of injury severity, parents reported high levels of satisfaction and efficacy in the parenting role at 18 months post-intervention.

“Signposts” has further demonstrated its clinical viability by meeting the needs of parents who have a child with ABI in both the short- and longer-term.

The purpose of the study is to research the current state of fathers' involvement in childcare during parental leave and to assess attitudes of Russian population towards possible measures that can expand the use of parental leave by fathers in Russia.

The authors conducted a survey of Russian parents with children under the age of 18 months in 2022. The sample accounts for 1,000 people; the survey covered almost all Russian regions.

The authors found that the ideal workload of fathers is not expected to exceed a third of the total parental workload. Russian parents are not ready to admit dissatisfaction with the existing distribution of workload during parental leave. However, an egalitarian demand for greater involvement of fathers in parental responsibilities is forming, and an interest in transforming the parental leave policy is emerging.

The value of the study consists of assessing the effectiveness of measures that may have a beneficial effect on the use of parental leave by fathers, as well as identifying consequences of the possible introduction of mandatory parental leave for fathers.

There is little evidence regarding how to best support the emotional well-being of children in foster care. This paper aims to present the evaluation of an adaptation of the reflective fostering programme, a group-based programme to support foster carers. This study aimed to explore whether a version of the programme, co-delivered by a social work professional and an experienced foster carer, was acceptable and relevant to foster carers and to gather data on programme effectiveness.

In total, 38 foster carers attended the programme and took part in this study. Data was collected regarding carer- and child-focused outcomes at pre-intervention, post-intervention and four-month follow-up. Focus interviews were also conducted to further assess acceptability and relevance for foster carers.

Analysis of quantitative outcome showed statistically significant improvements in all outcomes considered including foster carers stress and carer-defined problems, as well as carer-reported measures of child difficulties. Focus group interviews with foster carers suggested that the programme as co-delivered by a foster carer and a social worker was felt to be relevant and helpful to foster carers.

These results provide a unique contribution to limited understandings of what works for supporting foster carers and the children in their care. Promising evidence is provided for the acceptability and relevance of the revised version of this novel support programme and its effectiveness in terms of carer- and child-related outcome measures. This work paves the way for further necessary impact evaluation.

There is an on-going debate as to whether health is negatively affected by economic inequality. Still, we have limited knowledge of the mechanisms relating inequality to individual health and very little evidence comes from less-developed economies. We use individual and multi-level data from Zambia on child nutritional health to test three hypotheses consistent with a negative correlation between income inequality and population health: the absolute income hypothesis (AIH), the relative income hypothesis (RIH) and the income inequality hypothesis (IIH). The results confirm that absolute income positively affects health. For the RIH we find sensitivity to the reference group used. Most interestingly, we find higher income inequality to robustly associate with better child health. The same pattern appears in a cross country regression. To explain the conflicting results in the literature we suggest examining potential mediators such as generosity, food sharing, trust and purchasing power.

This paper aims to understand the differing impacts of wealth distribution on human capital accumulation and skilled-unskilled labour generation under three educational paradigms as follows: private, public and a system of mixed education.

The authors use an overlapping generations model.

The wealth dynamics show that both in the private education system and public education system, there are two possible outcomes- stagnation and steady growth depending on the efficiency of the education system, skill premium and other parameters. The choice of the education system through voting is discussed. It is found that skilled workers would always vote for private education whilst unskilled workers vote for private education if public education expenditure of the economy is low.

The study is subject to several limitations. This paper considers the rate of interest and wage rate to be exogenously given, and thus ignores the general equilibrium effects. The authors do not consider the labour-leisure choice. The introduction of labour leisure choice in the model would alter many of the results. The authors do not consider heterogeneous ability across individuals. The analysis of the differential efficiency of the different education systems needs further, rigorous research. Also, this paper does not consider other occupations such as entrepreneurship and self-employment. This paper considers the labour demand function to be perfectly elastic, and hence, does not consider any demand constraint. What happens if bequests are taxed? What happens if parents are not altruistic? These questions may be addressed in future research.

If the proportion of tax paying skilled labour is low in any country, pure public education may not be able to generate sustained human capital growth. For countries with a sufficiently large proportion of skilled labour, the public education system would be successful. On the other hand, if skill premium is low or the education system is poorly managed private education system may fail too.

Whilst investigating the effects of public vs private education on growth and development in the presence of unequal wealth distribution, The authors have tried to address a few questions. First, why the public education system has been successful in skill accumulation in developed countries whilst it has failed to do so in less developed countries? Second, why do some countries with mostly privately run educational institutions perform much better in human capital production whilst others do not? Third, in an economy with unequal wealth distribution, what are the factors that result in public or private education as a voting equilibrium outcome?

This study aims to examine a second-order latent variable of family functioning built from two established protective factors for American Indian (AI) youth, i.e. family cohesion and parental monitoring. This study then examines if family functioning is related to alcohol use frequency or age of initiation for AI youth. Additionally, this study examines if family functioning served as a moderator for the risk factor of peer alcohol use.

Data came from the 2021 Our Youth, Our Future survey. Participants were 4,373 AI adolescents from Grades 6–12 across the contiguous USA. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the latent variable of family functioning. Structural paths and interaction terms between peer use and family functioning were added to the SEM to explore direct and moderating effects.

Family cohesion and parental monitoring were best represented by a second-order latent variable of family functioning, which was related to later initiation and lower alcohol use frequency.

The findings regarding the initiation of alcohol use may be applicable to prevention programs, with family functioning serving as a protective factor for the initiation of alcohol use. Programs working toward alcohol prevention may be best served by focusing on family-based programs.

The latent variable of family functioning is appropriate for use in AI samples. Family functioning, which is an inherent resilience factor in AI communities, was shown to be protective against harmful alcohol use behaviors.