Parental Kinship Research Articles

Foster-parent training and foster-child outcomes: An exploratory cross-sectional analysis

Very little research has been conducted on the effects of foster-parent training. This study used cross-sectional data from a larger outcome-monitoring project to describe the training received by foster (including kinship) parents in Ontario, Canada, and explore the possible links between such training and selected foster-child outcomes. The sample comprised 603 foster children, aged 10–17 years, and their foster (93%) or kinship parents (7%). The foster or kinship parents had received an average of about two types of training (range 0–5). The training was related significantly to foster-child outcomes in only 5 of 30 (17%) regression analyses. The statistically significant results suggested that foster-parent and related personnel training may heighten expectations of the child, thereby creating a sensitizing effect of which, if confirmed, trainers and trainees should be made aware.

Confucianism and Familism: A Comment on the Debate Between Liu and Guo

The debate in Dao between LIU Qingping and GUO Qiyong (see Liu 2007 and Guo 2007) touches on a question that has accompanied Confucianism since the downfall of the Chinese empire: Is Confucianism “familism”? Has it been the ideology of the zongfa 宗法 system? Has, under its influence, xiao 孝 been the “cardinal virtue” of historical China? Has xiao been the entrance door not only to submissiveness and traditionalism, but also to nepotism and corruption, and has it prevented the growth of public spirit? This suspicion has been uttered not only by Chinese May Fourth thinkers like WU Yu 吳虞. It has also had a long European history, starting with Montesquieu and Herder and leading via Hegel to Weber, with a broad and lasting impact on the humanities and the social sciences (see Opielka 2004). Familism is not a peculiarity of China, but no other of the great ethical systems that have evolved in the history of mankind has been so closely identified with it as has Confucianism. However, while the influence of familism in Chinese history with all its concomitants can hardly be doubted, the Confucian part in it is not as evident as, for example, LIU Qingping’s articles suggest. Familism is certainly older than Confucianism and not necessarily dependent on it. Confucianism itself had, relative to the specific thinker or text and to the historical circumstances, not only a fostering, but also a moderating influence on familism, and it could even take on an explicitly critical attitude. On the one hand, the most prominent modern examples for radical criticism of the family system in the name of Confucianism are KANG Youwei 康有為 and XIONG Shili 熊十力. On the other hand, we have a strong accent on parental authority and kinship loyalty in periods of weak central government, e.g. in the Chinese “middle ages” (Knapp 2006). In general, Confucianism has tried to protect family structures and at the same time prevent their making themselves independent. The overall historical balance is open to dispute. As to the classical Confucian texts, family is, in general, certainly a first-rank topic. It is the place not only of the primary experience in moral action, but also a realm of particular Dao (2008) 7:41–44 DOI 10.1007/s11712-008-9039-z

Prevention of behavior problems for children in foster care: outcomes and mediation effects.

Parent training for foster parents is mandated by federal law and supported by state statues in nearly all states; however, little is known about the efficacy of that training, and recent reviews underscore that the most widely used curricula in the child welfare system (CWS) have virtually no empirical support (Grimm, Youth Law News, April-June:3-29, 2003). On the other hand, numerous theoretically based, developmentally sensitive parent training interventions have been found to be effective in experimental clinical and prevention intervention trials (e.g., Kazdin and Wassell, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 39:414-420, 2000; McMahon and Forehand, Helping the noncompliant child, Guilford Press, New York, USA, 2003; Patterson and Forgatch, Parents and adolescents: I. Living together, Castalia Publishing, Eugene, OR, USA, 1987; Webster-Stratton et al., Journal of Clinical Child Pyschology Psychiatry, 42:943-952, 2001). One of these, Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC; Chamberlain, Treating chronic juvenile offenders: Advances made through the Oregon Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care model, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, USA, 2003), has been used with foster parents of youth referred from juvenile justice. The effectiveness of a universal intervention, KEEP (Keeping Foster Parents Trained and Supported) based on MTFC (but less intensive) was tested in a universal randomized trial with 700 foster and kinship parents in the San Diego County CWS. The goal of the intervention was to reduce child problem behaviors through strengthening foster parents' skills. The trial was designed to examine effects on both child behavior and parenting practices, allowing for specific assessment of the extent to which improvements in child behavior were mediated by the parenting practices targeted in the intervention. Child behavior problems were reduced significantly more in the intervention condition than in the control condition, and specific parenting practices were found to mediate these reductions, especially for high-risk children in foster families reporting more than six behavior problems per day at baseline.

Who disrupts from placement in foster and kinship care?

Objective To identify reliable, inexpensive predictors of foster care placement disruption that could be used to assess risk of placement failure. Methods Using the Parent Daily Report Checklist (PDR), foster or kinship parents of 246 children (5–12 years old) in California were interviewed three times about whether or not their foster child engaged in any of the 30 problem behaviors during the previous 24 h. PDR was conducted during telephone contacts (5–10 min each) that occurred from 1 to 3 days apart at baseline. Disruptions were tracked for the subsequent 12 months. Other potential predictors of disruption were examined, including the child's age, gender, and ethnicity, the foster parent's ethnicity, the number of other children in the foster home, and the type of placement (kin or non-kin). Results Foster/kin parents reported an average of 5.77 child problems per day on the PDR checklist. The number of problem behaviors was linearly related to the child's risk of placement disruption during the subsequent year. The threshold for the number of problem behaviors per day that foster and kinship parents tolerated without increased risk of placement disruption for these latency-aged children was 6 or fewer. Children in non-kin placements were more likely to disrupt than those in kinship placements. There was a trend for increased risk of disruption as the number of children in the home increased. Conclusions The PDR Checklist may be useful in predicting which placements are at most risk of future disruption, allowing for targeted services and supports.

Web-based training for foster, adoptive, and kinship parents

Foster, adoptive, and kinship parents urgently need high quality in-service training to help them better understand and deal with serious behavior problems of children in their care. Parents are increasingly turning to the Internet for information, advice, support, and now, for formal training. Breakthroughs in technology have made the Web more accessible and more sophisticated, visually. For example, it is now feasible to use video or animation to model social skills, a mainstay of today's parent training interventions. The current study examined the effectiveness of two online courses — on lying and sexualized behavior — with a sample of foster parents from the Foster and Kinship Care Education Program of California Community Colleges. The intervention used interactive multimedia formats to present behavior problems, provide insights into their etiology, and offer parents practical steps to resolve them. Findings showed significant gains in parent knowledge for both courses, and in competency-based parent perceptions for the course on lying, with findings for the other course in the expected direction. Overall, user satisfaction and implementation fidelity were very high. Implications and future directions for this type of intervention are discussed.

Consanguinity and Associated Socio-Demographic Factors in Qatari Population

A multi-stage sampling design was used between January and May 2004 to explore the association between sociodemographic factors and consanguineous marriages in the Qatari population using a sample of 1800 Qatari females aged 15 years and above. Data on 1515 (85.8%) Qatari national families who gave their consent for the study were obtained. The socio-demographic factors considered were: husband's age, her own age, husband's and own educational levels, husband's occupationher own occupation, housing conditions, husband's parental kinship, her own parental kinship and kinship between the spouses. The rate of consanguineous marriages in the sample was found to be 54% with 95% estimated population confidence limits 52.4% to 55.6%. Consanguinity was more common for women with educated husbands (secondary or university / high) and the frequency of consanguineous marriage significantly increased when the husband's educational level was higher (p = 0.003). The results of stepwise multiple logistic regression analysis for the occurrence of consanguineous marriages showed that the wife's education, the husband's education and parents’ consanguinity status were the only significant associated variables.

A threefold genetic allee effect: population size affects cross-compatibility, inbreeding depression and drift load in the self-incompatible Ranunculus reptans.

A decline in population size can lead to the loss of allelic variation, increased inbreeding, and the accumulation of genetic load through drift. We estimated the fitness consequences of these processes in offspring of controlled within-population crosses from 13 populations of the self-incompatible, clonal plant Ranunculus reptans. We used allozyme allelic richness as a proxy for long-term population size, which was positively correlated with current population size. Crosses between plants of smaller populations were less likely to be compatible. Inbreeding load, assessed as the slope of the relationship between offspring performance and parental kinship coefficients, was not related to population size, suggesting that deleterious mutations had not been purged from small populations. Offspring from smaller populations were on average more inbred, so inbreeding depression in clonal fitness was higher in small populations. We estimated variation in drift load from the mean fitness of outbred offspring and found enhanced drift load affecting female fertility within small populations. We conclude that self-incompatibility systems do not necessarily prevent small populations from suffering from inbreeding depression and drift load and may exacerbate the challenge of finding suitable mates.

Kith and kin care: parental attitudes and resources of foster and relative caregivers

Children in the custody of local child welfare systems are increasingly placed with relatives, rather than in traditional foster care. Scholars and practitioners have called for an examination of these care environments, as a step toward determining how beneficial they are to children in out of home placement. The present study compared a group of traditional ( n=51) and kinship ( n=50) foster parents in four domains: (1) parenting attitudes; (2) social resources; (3) economic resources; and (4) health. The caregivers were interviewed in their homes, via a standardized parenting questionnaire and a background questionnaire designed for this study. Kinship care providers endorsed more problematic parental attitudes than traditional foster parents did (i.e. less warmth/respect, more parent-child conflict/anger, more strictness/overprotectiveness). Because kinship parents were found to be older than traditional foster parents in this study, differences between the two groups on parenting attitudes were examined controlling for age. These analyses resulted in non-significant differences between the two groups on parenting. However, even when controlling for age, kinship care providers reported that they have fewer economic and social resources, and poorer health than traditional foster parents reported. These results are considered in terms of the literature on the quality of family contexts and its relation to child outcomes. The implications of these findings for child welfare practice are also discussed.

Challenges posed by kinship care: A study focussing on New South Wales

Kinship care as a formal placement option has been steadily increasing over recent years, particularly in New South Wales. This paper draws on a report of research on kinship care in New South Wales, in which the two authors participated (Mason et al, 2002). In conducting the research, qualitative and quantitative methods were used to explore both ‘top down’ perspectives (from policy documents and statistics) and ‘bottom up’ perspectives (from child protection practitioners and those who experience policy as service recipients – kinship carers, young people in kinship care and parents of children in kinship care).In this paper we briefly outline the research and discuss findings relating to definitions of kinship care, the extent of kinship care in NSW, decision making around the placement of children in kinship care, reasons given by participants for kinship care, and support for carers.

Impact of parental relationships in maximum lod score affected sib‐pair method

Many studies are done in small isolated populations and populations where marriages between relatives are encouraged. In this paper, we point out some problems with applying the maximum lod score (MLS) method (Risch, [1990] Am. J. Hum. Genet. 46:242-253) in these populations where relationships exist between the two parents of the affected sib-pairs. Characterizing the parental relationships by the kinship coefficient between the parents (f), the maternal inbreeding coefficient (alpha(m), and the paternal inbreeding coefficient (alpha(p)), we explored the relationship between the identity by descent (IBD) vector expected under the null hypothesis of no linkage and these quantities. We find that the expected IBD vector is no longer (0.25, 0.5, 0.25) when f, alpha(m), and alpha(p) differ from zero. In addition, the expected IBD vector does not always follow the triangle constraints recommended by Holmans ([1993] Am. J. Hum. Genet. 52:362-374). So the classically used MLS statistic needs to be adapted to the presence of parental relationships. We modified the software GENEHUNTER (Kruglyak et al. [1996] Am. J. Hum. Genet. 58: 1347-1363) to do so. Indeed, the current version of the software does not compute the likelihood properly under the null hypothesis. We studied the adapted statistic by simulating data on three different family structures: (1) parents are double first cousins (f=0.125, alpha(m)=alpha(p)=0), (2) each parent is the offspring of first cousins (f=0, alpha(m)=alpha(p)=0.0625), and (3) parents are related as in the pedigree from Goddard et al. ([1996] Am. J. Hum. Genet. 58:1286-1302) (f=0.109, alpha(m)=alpha(p)=0.0625). The appropriate threshold needs to be derived for each case in order to get the correct type I error. And using the classical statistic in the presence of both parental kinship and parental inbreeding almost always leads to false conclusions.

Developmental Issues for Young Children in Foster Care

Greater numbers of young children with complicated, serious physical health, mental health, or developmental problems are entering foster care during the early years when brain growth is most active. Every effort should be made to make foster care a positive experience and a healing process for the child. Threats to a child's development from abuse and neglect should be understood by all participants in the child welfare system. Pediatricians have an important role in assessing the child's needs, providing comprehensive services, and advocating on the child's behalf. The developmental issues important for young children in foster care are reviewed, including: 1) the implications and consequences of abuse, neglect, and placement in foster care on early brain development; 2) the importance and challenges of establishing a child's attachment to caregivers; 3) the importance of considering a child's changing sense of time in all aspects of the foster care experience; and 4) the child's response to stress. Additional topics addressed relate to parental roles and kinship care, parent-child contact, permanency decision-making, and the components of comprehensive assessment and treatment of a child's development and mental health needs.

Consanguinity and associated socio-demographic factors in the United Arab Emirates.

The aim of this study was to explore the association between socio-demographic factors and consanguineous marriages in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This was a cross-sectional population-based study conducted in the cities of Al Ain and Dubai between October 1994 and March 1995. A multi-stage sampling design was used and a representative total sample of 2,200 UAE females aged 15 years and above were included in this study. Data on 2,033 (85.8%) UAE national families who consented to participate in the study were obtained. The rate of consanguineous marriages in the sample was found to be 50.5% with 95% estimated population confidence limits 49.2-51.8%. The socio-demographic factors considered were: husband's age, wife's age, husband's and wife's educational levels, husband's occupation, wife's occupation, housing conditions, husband's parental kinship, wife's parental kinship, and kinship between the spouses. Consanguinity is more common among women with educated husbands (secondary or university/high) than among women with less educated husbands. The results indicate that the frequency of consanguineous marriages significantly increases when the husband's educational level is higher (p = 0.003). The distribution of relationship between spouses over the two generations of the study group and their parents is presented. The incidence of consanguineous marriages among the parents is 53% and 62% for the women and their husbands, respectively, and the overall incidence is 57%. The parallel patrilateral marriage is obviously the favoured practice when considering the parent's kinship distributions. The results of step-wise multiple logistic regression analysis for the occurrence of consanguineous marriages show that the husband's education and husband's parent's consanguinity status only are significantly associated variables.

Three Dimensions of Parental Kinship Terminology: Situation, Subgroup Identity, and Sentiment

Three Dimensions of Parental Kinship Terminology: Situation, Subgroup Identity, and Sentiment