...isn't about children, but about the harmful cultural messages we, as parents, perpetuate in our relationships with children. ...addresses the work we as parents must do to free ourselves, the children who share our lives, and our world from those harmful messages. ...uses current research to debunk the myth that controlling children is necessary to ensure they grow up to be healthy and responsible adults. ...demonstrates how changing our parent-child relationships plays a critical role in creating social change. ...gives parents strategies and tools for letting go of harmful control of children. Book jacket.
Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.
Following the implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998, awareness has increased that we live in a rights-based culture and that children constitute an important group of rights holders. Now in its third edition, Children's Rights and the Developing Law explores the way developing law and policies in England and Wales are simultaneously promoting and undermining the rights of children. It reflects on how far these developments take account of children's interests, using current research on children's needs as a template against which to assess their effectiveness and considering a broad range of topics, including medical law, education and youth justice. A critical approach is maintained throughout, particularly when assessing the extent to which the concept of children's rights is being acknowledged by the courts and policy makers and the degree to which the UK fulfils its obligations under, for example, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This books examines the increased prominence of children’s rights in education to ask whether we are witnessing a paradigm shift within the education system. The author uses a wide range of case studies from Scotland and England to examine the extent to which children and young people with Special Educational Needs/ Additional Support Needs are in practice able to realise their new rights of participation and redress. In addition, the book examines the ways in which the child’s capacity to make independent decisions is understood and acted upon in different contexts, and the factors which ultimately promote or inhibit the rights of young people and children with SEN/ ASN. The author asks whether, in a context of tight budgets and often limited support, this new emphasis on children's rights can be seen as ‘window-dressing’ and a distraction from reductions in support for social welfare.
In recent decades, advances in biomedical research have helped save or lengthen the lives of children around the world. With improved therapies, child and adolescent mortality rates have decreased significantly in the last half century. Despite these advances, pediatricians and others argue that children have not shared equally with adults in biomedical advances. Even though we want children to benefit from the dramatic and accelerating rate of progress in medical care that has been fueled by scientific research, we do not want to place children at risk of being harmed by participating in clinical studies. Ethical Conduct of Clinical Research Involving Children considers the necessities and challenges of this type of research and reviews the ethical and legal standards for conducting it. It also considers problems with the interpretation and application of these standards and conduct, concluding that while children should not be excluded from potentially beneficial clinical studies, some research that is ethically permissible for adults is not acceptable for children, who usually do not have the legal capacity or maturity to make informed decisions about research participation. The book looks at the need for appropriate pediatric expertise at all stages of the design, review, and conduct of a research project to effectively implement policies to protect children. It argues persuasively that a robust system for protecting human research participants in general is a necessary foundation for protecting child research participants in particular.
CODING MANUAL INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE FROM THE CHAPTER AUTHORS, AND THEIR E-MAIL ADDRESSES CAN BE FOUND ON PAGE XV OF THE BOOK. Family studies is an area that has enjoyed the benefits of conceptual and methodological advances in recent years including the widespread adoption of observational research techniques. The selection of an appropriate coding system is critical to achieving a better understanding of the complex family processes related to normative and pathological development. This book presents 14 examples of family observational coding systems, chosen for the wide range of constructs and phenomena they capture. Each system is described in detail, and excerpts from the coding manual are presented (links to the full coding manuals are available to purchasers of the book at LEA's Web site, www.erlbaum.com). Each chapter follows a consistent outline, so that the different coding systems can be more easily compared to one another. They include the theoretical underpinnings of the measure, its reliability and validity, the coding process, strategies for coder training, and examples of studies in which it has been used. This volume will prove invaluable to students and researchers in family studies, clinicians, and other practitioners who need to interpret data from family observations.
Adult preconceptions about the mental life of children tend to discourage a child’s philosophical bent. By exposing the underpinnings of adult views of childhood, Matthews clears the way for recognizing the philosophy of childhood as a legitimate field of inquiry and conducts us through influential models for understanding what it is to be a child.
This title was first published in 2000: This anthology of essays focuses on the human rights of children in the area of sexuality. Looking at the theoretical aspects, essays examine the history and construction of concepts of childhood and child sexuality, while other essays take an interdisciplinary approach, examining anthropological, sociological, psychological and economic perspectives on law and childhood sexuality. Specific problems that arise in litigation and judicial practice are looked at in more detail, and in some cases, comparative and international approaches are taken to the examination of law reform and initiatives in selected countries and in international organizations.
