Nuclear Family Unit Research Articles

Familial clustering of dysbiotic oral and fecal microbiomes in juvenile dermatomyositis

Juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) is a rare immune-mediated disease of childhood with putative links to microbial exposures. In this multi-center, prospective, observational cohort study, we evaluated whether JDM is associated with discrete oral and gut microbiome signatures. We generated 16S rRNA sequencing data from fecal, saliva, supragingival, and subgingival plaque samples from JDM probands (n = 28). To control for genetic and environmental determinants of microbiome community structure, we also profiled microbiomes of unaffected family members (n = 27 siblings, n = 26 mothers, and n = 17 fathers). Sample type (oral-vs-fecal) and nuclear family unit were the predominant variables explaining variance in microbiome diversity, more so than having a diagnosis of JDM. The oral and gut microbiomes of JDM probands were more similar to their own unaffected siblings than they were to the microbiomes of other JDM probands. In a sibling-paired within-family analysis, several potentially immunomodulatory bacterial taxa were differentially abundant in the microbiomes of JDM probands compared to their unaffected siblings, including Faecalibacterium (gut) and Streptococcus (oral cavity). While microbiome features of JDM are often shared by unaffected family members, the loss or gain of specific fecal and oral bacteria may play a role in disease pathogenesis or be secondary to immune dysfunction in susceptible individuals.

Analysis of the Transformation of Residential Open Spaces from Center of Activities to Empty Enclosures

This research paper looks at four factors resulting in transformation of residential open space specifically the courtyard, from centre of activities to empty enclosures. These factors are historical, cultural, society and gender. Predominantly this research looks at residential space in Lahore from a feminist perspective; tracing and analysing it from a gender based socio-cultural aspect of connectivity to individuality. Rapid social and demographic changes are resulting in a new future of residential architecture in our part of the world, leading to cultural changes where globalization is one of the major factors. The structure has evolved overtime from a traditional joint family unit to a nuclear family unit which is a major shift resulting from this phenomenon. A qualitative research approach using purposive sampling method was employed. The findings highlight the importance of these open and semi covered spaces towards a healthy and connected social life fostering activities of relaxation.

"It Means Possibility"

Following the cataclysmic AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, a defiant embrace of the word "queer" and new technology sparked an influx of films by independent filmmakers that were later termed "New Queer Cinema." As a product of its time, New Queer Cinema interrogates the heteronormativity it conflicts with and thus breeds a reimagining of what queer film can look like. The conflict between queer identity and its heteronormative surroundings drives distance between queer individuals and their communities, as well as larger social structures. This distance leads to a sense of isolation. This article explores themes of isolation within select New Queer Cinema films and offers a potential reference point from which we can understand queer life and cultural production in the midst of yet another global illness—COVID-19. Gus Van Sant’s 'My Own Private Idaho' (1991) highlights isolation from heteronormative social structures, particularly the nuclear family unit. Cheryl Dunye’s 'The Watermelon Woman' (1996) focuses on a curation of queer kinship as a survival tactic in the face of this isolation. Gregg Araki’s 'Totally Fucked Up' (1993) and Thomas Bezucha’s 'Big Eden' (2000) both explore themes of self-imposed isolation. 'Totally Fucked Up' provides an essential New Queer Cinema perspective of this phenomenon; meanwhile, 'Big Eden' challenges assumptions that queer individuals are destined to be isolated by imagining a future in which this is not the case. Themes of isolation are essential to the New Queer Cinema genre as a product of its circumstances. Yet, it also provides a basis from which the possibilities of future queer cinema and culture can be imagined. Understanding this relationship is critical as we begin to understand the effects of structural and social isolation on the queer community as exacerbated by COVID-19.

Past, present and future: multiple motivations for youth’s financial and in-kind support to others in rural Ghana

ABSTRACT In the growing literature on youth transitions, comparatively little attention has been paid to the role that young people play as providers, particularly support for people outside of a nuclear family unit. Based on 92 interviews with 44 young adults living in rural Ghana, this research investigates the multiple reasons why they provide financial and in-kind support to a range of immediate, extended and non-family members. We create a typology of motivations, identifying eight reasons youth identified for supporting people across four generations. These drivers of support relate to the past, present and future and do not fall neatly into dichotomies of self-interest or altruism. Some are situational, dependent on the need of the recipient, the ability of the young person to provide support at that point in time and/or circumstances of other people in their broader family and social networks. Youth identified multiple reasons for supporting the same person and articulated different motivations depending on their relationship to the recipient and their gender. Together, these nuanced explanations offer insights into an often-overlooked aspect of youth transitions and a departure point for further research into the important role young people play in supporting others in their families and communities.

Effects of family interventions on interpersonal conflicts: A network perspective

Summary Intense conflicts are prevalent in families receiving child welfare services. Research in the field of family interventions usually focusses on dyadic conflicts within the limits of the nuclear family unit, ignoring the larger social context of families. Therefore, this study analyses effects on interpersonal conflicts in personal networks of parents during a family intervention. The theoretical framework is based on the family systems theory, which highlights the role of mutual trust for conflict resolution. This research applied ego-centric network analysis in combination with a longitudinal design. The sample consists of 46 parents who were enrolled in a home-based family intervention in Switzerland. Findings The results show that development of mutual trust between practitioners and the network members of parents is associated with significant decrease in conflict density and conflict reciprocity. Hence, network members experience fewer interactions that are associated with conflict as well as less intense conflicts in the medium term. However, no effects were found on the centrality of parents in interpersonal conflicts. Applications The results of this study suggest that practitioners in family interventions must establish mutual trust with not only parents but also other individuals to promote a less stressful family environment. This emphasizes the importance of a network perspective on interpersonal conflicts in child welfare interventions.

Bounded Love: Hilchot Eruvin and Queer Theory in Conversation

ABSTRACT This article argues that the rabbinic framework of Eruvin as a conceptual system simultaneously undermines rigid boundaries and creates new, more fluid ones, modeling a mode of halakhah that is “queer” and shares notable features with queer theory. The article examines three areas of interaction between Eruvin and queer theory: the challenge that both Eruvin and queer theory offer to an understanding of public and private as a rigid binary; the ways that texts in Hilchot Eruvin challenge us to move beyond the primacy of the nuclear family unit; and the idea that Eruvin, in its nuancing of “entry,” can model a sexuality beyond simply penetrative intercourse. This article develops greater understanding of the effects and contributions of the Rabbinic project of Hilchot Eruvin while simultaneously modeling a new way of thinking about queerness and halakhah: as a conversation in which queerness is generative rather than problematic.

“We're Here! We're Queer! Fuck the Banks!”

Abstract Literalizing the metaphor of José Esteban Muñoz's famous statement, “Queerness is not yet here. . . . The here and now is a prison house,” this essay argues that the process of affectively reorienting space and minds toward abolition is a queer act. It posits that abolition and queerness overlap in their refusal to maintain faith in institutions to effect change, specifically through legal reforms that redouble the status quo while shunning broader visions of liberation. Queer abolitionist affects reorient space toward decolonial futures by challenging normative paradigms of power and its critique. In messy and imperfect ways, a queer abolitionist analysis understands love and collectivity more capaciously beyond the nuclear family unit to social relations not of domination but of transformation. By exploring the affective dimensions of queer abolition, this essay takes up the spatial and symbolic relationship between the Pride parade and the prison industrial complex. It brings together an analysis of public protest against the colonial-carceral state and prison education, specifically the Humanities Behind Bars program, in order to engage how queer affects strengthen and sustain the relationships so vital to abolitionist world making.

When Everything Changes, Everything Stays the Same: The Queer Paradox of Quarantine Pods

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the practice of podding was encouraged in public discourse as a way to manage the isolation and stress many people experienced. While described as a creative mode of relationality that extended traditional nuclear family units, the public discourse about forming quarantine pods during the COVID-19 pandemic was a strategic bordering practice. Even though some community members (LGBTQIA+ and otherwise) celebrated the resilient ways in which queer experiences could model these nonnormative intimacies, public discourses about pandemic podding limited the potential to imagine new ways of being, often further entrenching normative ideals of citizenship and heteronormative family making. Although uncharted modes of relationality such as podding offer the promise of inclusive, radical, and generative futures, the reactive, bounded, and formalistic construction of pandemic pods never fully materialized that future.

From Afghan Pan-Islamism to Turkish Feminism

From Afghan Pan-Islamism to Turkish Feminism

Rethinking the heteronormative foundations of kinship: the reification of the heterosexual nuclear family unit in Singapore’s COVID-19 circuit-breaker restrictions

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 global pandemic necessitated nationwide lockdowns in many countries and Singapore was no different, announcing an eight-week ‘circuit-breaker’ in the beginning of April 2020. When it ended, the Singaporean government announced that restrictions on physical interactions would be eased in three phases. In Phase 1, all physical interactions between households continued to be disallowed with exceptions made for visits to parents and grandparents so that families could provide mutual support to one another. This article argues the permissibility of certain interactions hierarchised social ties according to a heteronormative logic where heteronormative kinship structures were elevated above others – thus excluding multiple constituencies that either did not have access to these kinship structures or for whom they did not provide support. Reading this instantiation as part of a larger reification of the heterosexual nuclear family unit in Singapore, this article posits that the demonstrable inability of heteronormative kinship to fulfil everyone’s support needs signals the urgency of rethinking extant heteronormative foundations of kinship in Singapore. Queering kinship in this way extends the existing body of queer studies scholarship in Singapore which has largely focussed on the effects of heteronormativity on LGBT lives by demonstrating how heteronormativity shapes non-LGBT lives as well.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Family Relationships in Italy: Withdrawal on the Nuclear Family

The health emergency linked to the spread of COVID-19 has profoundly transformed people’s lives, both from the point of view of family and significant relationships, and at work, substantially modifying the relationship between these two significant areas. This contribution is aimed at assessing how Italian families are facing the current situation in dealing with work and care responsibilities using data from a CAWI study done during Phase 1 of the emergency (full lockdown, from March to April 2020) that surveyed over 1,391 participants, 73% women, (M age = 47; SD = 11.3). Findings from this study will contribute to a more thorough understanding of how people have reconciled work and care responsibilities during the lockdown, as well as their coping strategies. Findings from multivariate analysis have shown how health emergency and the related containment measures impact both personal/parental and work spheres, producing negative effects on the specific group of working parents, especially women. The 78% of respondents indicated that they continued to work mostly from home (62%) while simultaneously taking care of children. Moreover, married women and young people, and those without children, performed more effective coping strategies. Such results reveal the challenges of a nuclear family unit, wherein parents are separated from parental networks and time between family and work must be reconciled. Such problems are particularly challenging for women.

Surrogacy as a Family Project: How Surrogates Articulate Familial Identity and Belonging

This paper explores how surrogates negotiate the meaning of familial belonging and family identity when they discuss surrogacy with their husband, children, and other relatives. We suggest that surrogacy necessitates reflexive explication of what a family is and how this family is implicated in surrogacy. Our comparative study analyzes ethnographic data on Israeli and US surrogates to illuminate key similarities in surrogates’ strategies vis-a-vis their husband and children, pointing to the importance of daily family practices in how people understand family belonging. First, we map out the ways surrogates engage their husbands in order to gain their support and protect their nuclear family unit before entering the process. Next, we look at how surrogates explain surrogacy to their children in efforts to clarify siblingship and the boundaries between the two families, and to make surrogacy into an educational family project. We analyze the metaphors and rituals in surrogates’ family-bounding practices.

Prevalence of and factors associated with Helicobacter pylori infection in preschoolers in Havana, Cuba: A population-based study

IntroductionHelicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection is usually acquired in childhood. It has not been widely studied in individuals within the pediatric age range in Cuba. AimTo identify the prevalence of the infection and its associated risk factors in 3-year-old children in Havana. Materials and methodsAn analytic, cross-sectional, epidemiologic analysis was conducted on 1,274 children belonging to the cohort of participants in the Natural History of Wheezing in Cuba study (HINASIC for its Spanish acronym) that were 3 years of age and provided a stool sample. H. pylori infection was identified by determining the H. pylori antigen (Ag) in stool, utilizing the commercial Spinreact kit, from Spain. The data were collected through a questionnaire applied by the researchers that included sociodemographic, environmental, and lifestyle variables, as well as infection from other parasites. Prevalence and the prevalence ratio with a 95% confidence interval were calculated and the dichotomous logistic regression analysis was employed. ResultsThe prevalence of positive H. pylori Ag was 5%. Sleeping together was the risk factor found (PR: 1.27; 95% CI: 1.03-1.50). Protective factors were drinking water from water delivery trucks (PR: 0.16; 95% CI: 0.04-0.72) and living in a nuclear family unit (PR: 0.94; 95% CI: 0.85-0.99). ConclusionsThe prevalence of H. pylori infection in early childhood places Havana in an intermediate position at the international level. To control the infection, causal studies should be conducted and opportune interventions implemented.

From Rivers to Confetti: Reconfigurations of Time through New Media Narratives

From Rivers to Confetti: Reconfigurations of Time through New Media Narratives

Women’s Labour, Patriarchy and Feminism in Twenty-first Century Kerala: Reflections on the Glocal Present

This article focuses on two sites in late 20th to early 21st century Malayali society to examine the transformative effects of global flows on the gender dynamics of each—labour and feminist interventions—to reflect on the shape of, and resistance to, post-liberalisation patriarchy in Kerala. As is well known, labour migration to the Persian Gulf from Kerala from the 1970s has been a decisive flow that has impacted all aspects of life in the state. Its impact on the family as a procreative unit has, however, been only probed superficially. I argue that the opening of the global job market, combined with other features of contemporary Malayali society, has transformed the very functioning of the nuclear family unit. In feminist politics, global flows have led to the surfacing of several ‘regulative universals’, and these flows take place through a variety of channels. The clash now is no longer between the indigenous and the foreign, but between ‘glocally generated’ hybrids.

How Extended Family Mental Health Issues Influence Household Portfolio Allocations

Growing research links household financial decisions to physical and mental health status within the nuclear family. However, the focus on the nuclear family could underestimate the health-wealth effect. Research also finds that household wealth can decline when an extended family member experiences a physical health shock. We expand current economic modeling to investigate the connection between household portfolio allocations and the mental health of siblings. We hypothesize that mental health issues (psychological distress) outside of the nuclear family unit are a unique contributor to household portfolio allocation decisions. We use panel data and find that having at least one sibling with psychological distress decreases probability of risky asset ownership (stocks, mutual funds), decreases risky assets as a share of financial assets, and decreases total amount of risky asset holding. These results have important implications for understanding the connection between health, portfolio allocation, and wealth building.

“Mommy Killed Him”: Gender, Family, and History in Wes Craven’s <em>A Nightmare on Elm Street</em> (1984)

Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) tends to have been read as either a showcase of female agency, or as a celebration of misogyny. We argue that this film is significant in the history of gender in horror cinema, and that ascertaining this importance means moving beyond those polarised readings. Specifically, we read Craven's film in the context of the socio-political environment in which it was produced. A Nightmare on Elm Street was released during the height of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Reagan (like his counterpart, Margaret Thatcher, in Britain) championed a traditional, middle-class, white, heterosexual and heterosexist model of the nuclear family. Within this family model, women were seen as passive reproducers of the nation. Women were responsible for raising the children, who were figured as being similarly docile. We argue that this film both contests and endorses the sexual politics of Reagan's idealised family. Nightmare's so-called 'final girl', Nancy, does indeed have agency; she retaliates against familial authority (both that of her morally ambiguous parents and the sinisterly paternalistic Freddy Krueger). Yet, Nancy also becomes a kind of mother figure; in being assigned (by the script) the task of destroying Krueger, she becomes responsible for protecting the youth-and, yes, the families- of Elm Street; of continuing the job started by her parents. The future of Middle America lies in this final girl's hands.

Building WF16: construction of a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) pisé structure in Southern Jordan

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period in South-west Asia is essential for our understanding of the transition to sedentary, agricultural communities. Developments in architecture are key to understanding this transition, but many aspects of PPNA architecture remain elusive, such as construction techniques, the selection of building materials and the functional use of space. The primary aim of the research described within this contribution was to build a PPNA-like structure in order to answer questions about PPNA architecture in general, while specifically addressing issues raised by the excavation of structures at the site of WF16, southern Jordan. The second aim was to display a ‘PPNA’ building to visitors in Wadi Faynan to enhance their understanding of the period. The experimental construction based on one of the WF16 structures showed that (1) required materials can be acquired locally; (2) a construction technique using mud layers as described in this paper was most probably used; (3) flat, or very slightly dome-shaped, roofs are functional and can also be used as a solid working platform; (4) the WF16 small semi-subterranean buildings appear inappropriate for housing a nuclear family unit.

When the State Tries to See Like a Family: Cultural Pluralism and the Family Group Conference in New Zealand

In 1989 New Zealand legislators revised their child welfare legislation, partially in response to Māori and Pacific Island critiques that the previous state‐centered regime had failed to take into account their culturally distinctive techniques for being a family and had failed to support culturally specific practices of decision making and conflict resolution. Legislators instituted a new and increasingly popular form of alternative dispute resolution—the family group conference—in an attempt to create a bureaucratic response to family dysfunction that was capacious enough to allow for any and every family's involvement. In the process, however, they continued to understand what counts as a family along nuclear family lines. Against the New Zealand lawmakers’ assumptions, this article illustrates how, in the context of transnational migration, Samoan families experience tensions between the nuclear family unit that lawmakers envision and their lived extended kinship groups. As extended families, Samoan migrant families’ goal is not to produce socially productive citizens for the nation‐state, but rather to produce a transnational family reputation. Thus, despite the legislators’ efforts to create culturally sensitive forms for family conflict resolution, Samoan social workers and community counselors had to translate the legislative act for Samoan families, negotiating and managing the conflicting presuppositions of what it means to be a nuclear family embedded in the act and what it means to be an extended family for Samoans.

‘Ordinary decent domestic violence’: A discursive analysis of family law judges’ interviews

This study examined judges’ constructions of the ‘best interests of the child’ in child custody and access arraignments where there were allegations of domestic violence within the context of an interview. Using interviews with six Irish District Court judges, a micro-structural discourse analysis enabled the identification of socio-cultural discourses, scientific knowledge and judges’ own values and beliefs biases about custody arraignments in cases of domestic violence. Judges’ discourses were shaped by an idealisation of the nuclear family unit which resulted in a pro-access philosophy (Theme 1). The knowledge that domestic violence had occurred challenged this ideology and, to rhetorically manage this dilemma, judges’ talk normalised or trivialised abusive parents’ behaviour, which rendered domestic violence irrelevant to child custody and access (Theme 2). Mothers who alleged domestic violence when they disputed contact between fathers and their children were pathologised through talk (Theme 3). It is recommended that systems be put in place, including judicial training, to facilitate judges in their decision-making process in this highly discretionary and complex area of the law.