Parenting experiences of marriage immigrant women in South Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic: a descriptive phenomenological study.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to investigate the experiential meaning of child-rearing for marriage immigrant women in Korea in the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. METHODS: Using the hermeneutic descriptive phenomenology framework developed by Colaizzi, 10 marriage immigrant women rearing preschool and school-age children were invited through purposive and snowball sampling from two multicultural support centers in Korea. The participants were rearing one or two children, and their original nationalities were Vietnamese, Japanese, Cambodian, and Chinese. Individual in-depth, face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted from September 1 to November 30, 2021. We extracted significant statements from the transcripts, transformed these into abstract formulations, and organized them into theme clusters and themes to authentically capture the essence of the participants' subjective experiences. RESULTS: Four theme clusters with 14 themes were derived. The four theme clusters identified were "navigating child healthcare alone," "guilt for not providing a social experience," "worry about media-dependent parenting," and "feelings of incompleteness and exclusion." This study explored the perspectives of mothers raising children as marriage migrant women who experienced physical and emotional health crises due to the COVID-19 pandemic. CONCLUSION: The findings underscore that marriage immigrant women encountered heightened challenges in managing their children's health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic due to linguistic and cultural barriers limiting access to healthcare and information. Additionally, these women experienced considerable emotional stress from perceived inadequacies in providing a holistic social and developmental environment for their children under extensive social restrictions.

Distinct patterns of grandparental involvement in childrearing and Chinese preschoolers' social-emotional development.

Grandparental involvement in childrearing has been associated with children's social-emotional development, yet findings are mixed. Grandparental involvement is a multidimensional concept that includes both quantity (i.e., the degree of grandparental involvement) and quality aspects (i.e., the quality of parent-grandparent coparenting and the quality of grandparenting practices). This study included both quantity and quality aspects to identify heterogeneous patterns of grandparental involvement and examined the associations between distinct patterns of grandparental involvement and children's social-emotional outcomes. Participants were 428 families with Chinese preschoolers (Mage = 53.75 months, SD = 10.32; 51.4% boys). Primary parental and grandparental caregivers completed the questionnaires. Four patterns of grandparental involvement emerged: the low-involvement mediocre-quality, the median, the high-involvement uneven-quality, and the high-involvement high-quality groups. Heterogeneous patterns of grandparental involvement exist and are differentially associated with children's social-emotional development. Children with grandparents in the high-involvement high-quality group demonstrated higher levels of social skills than those in the low-involvement mediocre-quality group and the high-involvement uneven-quality group. They also showed the lowest level of problem behaviors. This study highlights variations in grandparental involvement and helps to clarify previous inconsistent findings regarding the role of grandparental involvement in child development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Kawa haumaru: a matauranga Maori approach to child safety in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Enduring health inequities exist between Maori and non-Maori children within child injury prevention in Aotearoa. These inequities reflect broader patterns of health inequity experienced by Indigenous peoples globally and in Aotearoa. We assert their existence is the result of the ongoing impacts of colonisation and the dominant Pakeha framing by which injury prevention messages and interventions in Aotearoa have largely been developed. We argue the need for a strengths-based approach, grounded in matauranga Maori (traditional Maori knowledge) and te ao Maori (traditional Maori worldview) perspectives, to form the basis of more effective child injury prevention messaging and interventions. In this viewpoint, we detail foundational elements of matauranga Maori, tikanga (customs), kawa (practices) and matapono (values) that underlie Maori culture and contain protective elements and safety principles that can be readily applied to injury prevention messaging. We present two values-based child-rearing practices: (1) tuakana (older sibling/s) and teina (younger sibling/s) relationships and (2) kotahitanga (collective), which are determined by matapono that illustrate the value of a Maori framework. Incorporating a kaupapa Maori (Maori perspective/s) approach to injury prevention is necessary to reduce health inequities between Maori and non-Maori. Moreover, it offers a culturally safe approach that is responsive to Maori and enables tamariki (children) and whanau (families) to flourish.

De la razón moral a la de experto: discursos y prácticas sobre la salud en los manuales escolares del franquismo (1936-1975) / Da razão moral à especializada: discursos e práticas sobre saúde nos livros escolares de Franco (1936-1975) / From moral reason to expert reason: discourses and practices on health in Franco's school textbooks (1936-1975)

El propósito del presente trabajo es analizar la cultura de la salud promovida en las escuelas primarias españolas bajo el ideario del régimen franquista (1936-1975). Para ello, hemos indagado en los manuales escolares del periodo, recursos fundamentales en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje, con los que se trató de modificar la conducta de la población en relación con la salud y la enfermedad. Desde un enfoque etnográfico hemos analizado tanto el discurso sobre las prácticas infantiles, como el ideario de cuerpo y salud promovido. Si bien, disciplina y control social propios del régimen dejaron su impronta en la salud enseñada, las transformaciones sociales y políticas lo fueron modulando hacia una noción de salud menos moralizadora pero más deudora del discurso experto. (AU)

O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar a cultura da saúde promovida nas escolas primárias espanholas sob a ideologia do regime franquista (1936-1975). Para este fim, investigamos os livros escolares do período, recursos fundamentais no processo ensino-aprendizagem, que foram utilizados para tentar modificar o comportamento da população em relação à saúde e à doença. A partir de uma abordagem etnográfica, analisamos tanto o discurso sobre as práticas das crianças quanto à ideologia do corpo e da saúde promovida. Embora a disciplina e o controle social do regime tenham deixado sua marca na saúde ensinada, as transformações sociais e políticas o modulavam no sentido de uma noção menos moralizadora de saúde, mas mais endividada com o discurso dos especialistas. (AU)

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the culture of health promoted in Spanish primary schools under the ideology of the Franco regime (1936-1975). To this end, we have investigated the school textbooks of the period, fundamental resources in the teaching-learning process, which were used to try to modify the behaviour of the population in relation to health and illness. From an ethnographic approach, we have analysed both the discourse on children's practices and the ideology of body and health promoted. Although the regime's own discipline and social control left their mark on the health taught, social and political transformations gradually modulated it towards a less moralising notion of health that was more indebted to expert discourse. (AU)

Teaching practices and beliefs and language stimulation from the Mapuche Culture in rural children in the Araucanía Region. / Prácticas y creencias de enseñanza y estimulación del lenguaje desde la Cultura Mapuche en niños y niñas rurales en la Región de La Araucanía.

INTRODUCTION: Language is one of the most relevant cognitive tasks in child development and its acquisition is me diated, among others, by ethnic and cultural factors. OBJECTIVE: To characterize the practices and be liefs about language teaching and stimulation strategies of rural Mapuche Children aged between 0 to 4 years from an intracultural perspective. SUBJECTS AND METHOD: Qualitative study based on Groun ded Theory, which generates an understanding of the study issue from the perceptions of the research subjects. Ethnographic techniques such as observation and field notes were used, and 20 in-depth in terviews and four focus groups were conducted with caregivers (mothers, fathers, and grandparents), intercultural teachers and people with cultural roles (longkos, machis, and intercultural facilitators). 41 Mapuche people from the Ercilla, Curarrehue, Puerto Saavedra, Cholchol and Boroa territories of the Araucanía region, Chile participated. RESULTS: Four dimensions were obtained that characte rized the practices and beliefs regarding the acquisition and use of language in Mapuche children: a) Mapuche culture transcends through children and language, b) speech is a concrete and pragmatic process, c) there are traditional techniques for speech stimulation, and d) there are difficulties and easiness for the development of the indigenous language in young children. CONCLUSIONS: The preser vation and recovery of the indigenous language is a process of reinforcing the cultural identity for the Mapuche people, which has not been valued as a cultural heritage in the national society.

Child rearing and cultural diversity. Contributions of anthropology to pediatric practice. / Crianza infantil y diversidad cultural. Aportes de la antropología a la práctica pediátrica.

This article proposes to define child rearing as a social and cultural process that, far from depicting universal and invariable characteristics, shows a huge diversity, mostly linked to the cultural features of families and communities in charge of such process. It has been considered that the anthropological perspective may contribute to understanding such multiple forms of bringing up children that are usually seen at the pediatrician's office and that involve different concepts in relation to childhood, individual, body, motherhood, fatherhood, among others. In turn, this article warns about the risks of restricting the approach to child rearing to a naive cultural relativism that reduces the role of culture to essentials and, on the contrary, points out the need to consider how cultural features intertwine with social inequalities when interpreting such diversity.

En este artículo, se propone situar la crianza infantil como un proceso social y cultural que, lejos de presentar características universales e invariables, muestra una enorme diversidad, ligada, en gran medida, a particularidades culturales de las familias y comunidades que la llevan a cabo. Se considera que la perspectiva de la antropología puede contribuir a comprender esa multiplicidad de formas de criar a los niños que suele emerger en el consultorio del pediatra y que pone en juego diferentes concepciones de niñez, sujeto, cuerpo, maternidad, paternidad, entre otras. A su vez, se advierte acerca de los riesgos de limitar el abordaje de la crianza a un relativismo cultural ingenuo que esencialice el papel de la cultura, y se señala, por el contrario, la necesidad de considerar el modo en que las particularidades culturales se entrelazan con las desigualdades sociales a la hora de interpretar esa diversidad.

Cross-Cultural Research on Parents: Applications to the Care and Education of Children Introduction to the Issue.

The seven papers in this issue address a variety of challenges that parents in several different cultural places encounter as they do their best to ensure their children's safe, happy, and successful development from infancy through middle childhood: infant sleep, developmental agendas, temperament, preschools, academic success, and learning to be a parent in a new cultural environment. The authors use a varied of methods - qualitative and quantitative - to understand how parental figures in Botswana, China, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United States think about the needs of their children, their own role as parents, and the caretaking practices that follow. A final Commentary focuses on the power of parental ethnotheories in changing societies, and on the complexities and importance of cross-cultural research.

Getting the Baby on a Schedule: Dutch and American Mothers' Ethnotheories and the Establishment of Diurnal Rhythms in Early Infancy.

One of the earliest challenges for infants and their parents is developing a diurnal sleep-wake cycle. Although the human biological rhythm is circadian by nature, its development varies across cultures, based in part on "zeitgebers" (German: literally "time-givers") or environmental cues. This study uses the developmental niche framework by Super and Harkness to address two different approaches to getting the baby on a schedule. 33 Dutch and 41 U.S. mothers were interviewed when their babies were 2 and 6 months old. A mixed-methods analysis including counts of themes and practices as well as the examination of actual quotes shows that Dutch mothers emphasized the importance of regularity in the baby's daily life and mentioned practices to establish regular schedules for the baby's sleeping, eating, and time outside more than American mothers did. The U.S. mothers, in contrast, discussed regularity less often and when they did, they emphasized that their baby should develop his or her own schedule. Furthermore, actual daily schedules, based on time allocation diaries kept by the mothers, revealed greater regularity among the Dutch babies. Discussion focuses on how culture shapes the development of diurnal rhythms, with implications for "best practices" for infant care.

Maternal use of physical and non-physical forms of discipline and preschoolers' social and literacy skills in 25 African countries.

OBJECTIVES: Little is known about associations between different forms of discipline and children's literacy, social skills, and behavior in low- and middle-income countries. This study examined maternal use of physical discipline, harsh physical discipline, psychological aggression, and nonphysical discipline and their relative associations with preschool-aged children's social and literacy skills and behavioral difficulty in 25 diverse African countries. We also explored whether belief in physical discipline and sociodemographic factors moderate the associations between different forms of discipline and childhood outcomes. METHODS: The participants were 32,817 biological mothers and their preschool-aged children from the UNICEF Multiple indicator Cluster Surveys. Information regarding belief in and use of physical and nonphysical forms of discipline and children's social and literacy skills and behavioral difficulty were obtained via questionnaires obtained from mothers in each household. RESULTS: Psychological aggression was negatively, and nonphysical discipline positively associated with children's literacy skills. Harsh physical discipline, physical discipline, and psychological aggression were positively, and nonphysical discipline negatively associated with behavioral difficulty in children. Psychological aggression, physical discipline, and nonphysical discipline were positively associated with and harsh physical discipline negatively associated with children's social skills. Maternal education, preschool enrollment, and household wealth variously moderated the associations between different modes of discipline and children's literacy and social skills and behavioral difficulty. CONCLUSIONS: Findings underline the negative consequences of harsh discipline on children's social and literacy skills and behavioral difficulty in African cultural communities.

Prácticas y creencias de enseñanza y estimulación del lenguaje desde la Cultura Mapuche en niños y niñas rurales en la Región de La Araucanía / Teaching practices and beliefs and language stimulation from the Mapuche Culture in rural children in the Araucanía Region

Resumen: Introducción: El lenguaje es una de las tareas cognitivas más relevantes en el desarrollo infantil cuya adquisición está mediada, entre otros, por factores étnicos y culturales. Objetivo: Caracterizar las prácticas y creencias sobre la enseñanza y estrategias de estimulación del lenguaje de niños/as Mapuche rurales de 0 a 4 años desde una perspectiva intracultural. Sujetos y Método: Estudio cualitativo basado en Teoría Fundamentada que produce una comprensión del problema a partir de las percepciones de los suje tos de investigación. Se utilizaron técnicas etnográficas como observación y notas de campo además de 20 entrevistas en profundidad y 4 grupos focales con cuidadores (madres, padres, abuelos/as), educadores interculturales, asesores culturales y agentes ancestrales de la cultura (longko y machi). Participaron 41 personas Mapuche de los territorios rurales de Ercilla, Curarrehue, Puerto Saave dra, Cholchol y Boroa de la región de La Araucanía/Chile. Resultados: Se obtuvieron 4 dimensiones que caracterizaban las prácticas y creencias en torno a la adquisición y uso del lenguaje en niños/as Mapuche: a) los/as niños/as y el aprendizaje de la lengua representan la mantención de la identidad Mapuche; b) el habla es un proceso concreto y pragmático; c) existen técnicas tradicionales para estimulación del habla, y d) existen dificultades y facilidades para el desarrollo de la lengua indígena en los niños/as pequeños. Conclusiones: La mantención y recuperación de la lengua indígena es un proceso de reforzamiento de la identidad cultural para el pueblo Mapuche, que no ha sido valorado como un patrimonio cultural en la sociedad nacional.

Abstract: Introduction: Language is one of the most relevant cognitive tasks in child development and its acquisition is me diated, among others, by ethnic and cultural factors. Objective: To characterize the practices and be liefs about language teaching and stimulation strategies of rural Mapuche Children aged between 0 to 4 years from an intracultural perspective. Subjects and Method: Qualitative study based on Groun ded Theory, which generates an understanding of the study issue from the perceptions of the research subjects. Ethnographic techniques such as observation and field notes were used, and 20 in-depth in terviews and four focus groups were conducted with caregivers (mothers, fathers, and grandparents), intercultural teachers and people with cultural roles (longkos, machis, and intercultural facilitators). 41 Mapuche people from the Ercilla, Curarrehue, Puerto Saavedra, Cholchol and Boroa territories of the Araucanía region, Chile participated. Results: Four dimensions were obtained that characte rized the practices and beliefs regarding the acquisition and use of language in Mapuche children: a) Mapuche culture transcends through children and language, b) speech is a concrete and pragmatic process, c) there are traditional techniques for speech stimulation, and d) there are difficulties and easiness for the development of the indigenous language in young children. Conclusions: The preser vation and recovery of the indigenous language is a process of reinforcing the cultural identity for the Mapuche people, which has not been valued as a cultural heritage in the national society.

Bacha posh in Afghanistan: factors associated with raising a girl as a boy.

This paper examines the factors associated with the cultural phenomenon of bacha posh in Afghanistan (in which girls are dressed and raised as boys), which occurs against a background of rigid gender norms and the male-centric nature of Afghan families. Survey data were collected from 1463 women in two provinces of Afghanistan, Kabul and Nangarhar. The primary outcome is a nominal variable, derived from the question, 'Do you have any girl in your family who has been raised for any time as a boy?' Independent variables comprise women's socio-demographic characteristics, family composition, economic characteristics, patriarchal gender attitudes and perceptions of community patriarchal attitudes. Factors associated with bacha posh include women having fewer sons and more daughters, working in the past three months and having less patriarchal gender attitudes. That bacha posh is often driven by a large number of daughters in the family with a corresponding low number of sons suggests that bacha posh is a response to very contextual features of Afghan life, including the preference for sons. Bacha posh in the family is linked to less patriarchal gender norms and can be a way for girls and women to acquire education, mobility and engagement in income-generating activities.

Crucial Contributions : A Biocultural Study of Grandmothering During the Perinatal Period.

Maternal grandmothers play a key role in allomaternal care, directly caring for and provisioning their grandchildren as well as helping their daughters with household chores and productive labor. Previous studies have investigated these contributions across a broad time period, from infancy through toddlerhood. Here, we extend and refine the grandmothering literature to investigate the perinatal period as a critical window for grandmaternal contributions. We propose that mother-daughter co-residence during this period affords targeted grandmaternal effort during a period of heightened vulnerability and appreciable impact. We conducted two focus groups and 37 semi-structured interviews with Himba women. Interviews focused on experiences from their first and, if applicable, their most recent birth and included information on social support, domains of teaching and learning, and infant feeding practices. Our qualitative findings reveal three domains in which grandmothers contribute: learning to mother, breastfeeding support, and postnatal health and well-being. We show that informational, emotional, and instrumental support provided to new mothers and their neonates during the perinatal period can aid in the establishment of the mother-infant bond, buffer maternal energy balance, and improve nutritional outcomes for infants. These findings demonstrate that the role of grandmother can be crucial, even when alloparenting is common and breastfeeding is frequent and highly visible. Situated within the broader anthropological and clinical literature, these findings substantiate the claim that humans have evolved in an adaptive sociocultural perinatal complex in which grandmothers provide significant contributions to the health and well-being of their reproductive-age daughters and grandchildren.

Antecedents of attachment states of mind in normative-risk and high-risk caregiving: cross-race and cross-sex generalizability in two longitudinal studies.

BACKGROUND: Longitudinal investigations of relatively large typical-risk (e.g., Booth-LaForce & Roisman, 2014) and higher-risk samples (e.g., Raby et al., 2017; Roisman et al., 2017) have produced evidence consistent with the claim that attachment states of mind in adolescence and young adulthood, as measured by the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), are associated with the quality of caregiving experienced during childhood. None of these studies, however, has examined whether such associations are consistent across sex and/or race, as would be expected in light of the sensitivity hypothesis of attachment theory. METHODS: We examine whether sex or race moderates previously reported links between caregiving and AAI states of mind in two longitudinal studies (pooled N = 1,058) in which caregiving was measured either within (i.e., observed [in]sensitive care) or outside (i.e., childhood maltreatment) of the normative range of caregiving experiences. RESULTS: Hierarchical moderated regression analyses in both longitudinal cohorts provided evidence that maternal insensitivity and experiences of maltreatment were prospectively associated with dismissing and preoccupied states of mind in adolescence, as hypothesized. Moreover, these associations were generally comparable in magnitude for African American and White/non-Hispanic participants and were not conditional on participants' biological sex. CONCLUSIONS: Both maternal insensitivity and the experience of maltreatment increased risk for insecure attachment states of mind in adolescence. Moreover, our analyses provided little evidence that either participant race or participant sex assigned at birth moderated these nontrivial associations between measures of the quality of experienced caregiving and insecure attachment states of mind in adolescence. These findings provide support for the sensitivity hypothesis of attachment theory and inform the cultural universality hypothesis of attachment processes.

Stimulation and Early Child Development in China: Caregiving at Arm's Length.

OBJECTIVE: To provide an empirical overview of the parenting landscape in rural China, focusing on 18- to 30-month-old children and their caregivers in rural Shaanxi province. METHODS: We collected unique data on 1442 caregiver-toddler dyads in rural areas of Shaanxi province and examined caregiver attitudes toward parenting, sources of information about parenting, and interactive parenting practices, and how each of these differed across generations. We measured how parenting attitudes and sources of information informed parenting practices. Finally, we measured levels of child development in our sample and the association between parenting practices and children's developmental outcomes. RESULTS: Most of the caregivers did not engage with children in a way that encouraged early development. Caregivers rarely told stories, sang, or used toys to play with their children. Grandmothers were more stressed by the children in their care and engaged significantly less than mothers did in the 3 stimulating interactions. Professional sources of information about parenting were underutilized by all caregivers. We found high rates of developmental delay in our sample and showed that these delays were associated with the lack of caregiver engagement. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that the major economic and social shifts occurring in rural China have not led to a widespread prevalence of stimulative parenting practices. Although caregivers report positive attitudes toward child-rearing, reliable sources of scientific information are lacking. Our results show a troubling generational disconnect between the information-seeking behaviors and parenting practices of rural caregivers.

Rural Native and European American Custodial Grandparents: Stressors, Resources, and Resilience.

Native American grandparents by tradition are expected to play a role in rearing grandchildren. However, in many Native grandfamilies, grandparents are rearing grandchildren not by choice or tradition, but as the result of family crises that necessitated grandparent intervention. European American grandparents have likewise been called to rear their grandchildren when their adult children are unable or unwilling to perform parental duties. Less is known about these custodial grandparents' resilience pathways, particularly among rural grandfamilies. Guided by the Resiliency Model of Family Stress, Adjustment, and Adaptation, this study examined the relationships between stressors, resources, and resilience among rural Native and European American custodial grandparents. Correlates of resilience were economic stress and stress management. Significant interactions were found between economic stress and government assistance and economic stress and stress management, indicating complex resilience pathways. Implications of study findings for research and intervention are discussed.

Mother-infant interactions with firstborns and secondborns: A within-family study of European Americans.

Given the large numbers of families with more than one child, understanding similarities and differences in siblings' behaviors and in parents' interactions with their sibling infants is an important goal for advancing more representative developmental science. This study employed a within-family design to examine mean-level consistency and individual-order agreement in 5-month-old sibling behaviors and maternal parenting practices with their firstborns and secondborns (ns = 61 mothers and 122 infants). Each infant was seen independently with mother. Firstborn infants were more social with their mothers and engaged in more exploration with objects than secondborn infants; firstborn and secondborn infants' behaviors were correlated for smiling, distress communication, and efficiency of exploration. Mothers engaged in more physical encouragement, social exchange, didactic interaction, material provisioning, and language with their firstborns than with their secondborns. Notably, only maternal nurturing (e.g., feeding, holding) did not differ in mean level when mothers were with their two infants. However, mean differences in mothers' social exchange and material provisioning with their two children attenuated to nonsignificance when controlling for differences in siblings' behaviors. Individual-order agreement of mothers' behaviors with firstborn and secondborn infants (across an average of almost 3 years) was only moderate. These findings suggest that mother-firstborn interactions may differ from mother-secondborn interactions. Future research should move beyond studying mother-firstborn dyads to understand broader family and developmental processes.

Newborn care practices and its determinants among postnatal mothers in Dessie Referral Hospital, Northeast Ethiopia.

OBJECTIVE: Newborn care practices like the initiation of breastfeeding within an hour, delay baby bathing, cord cutting with a safe instrument, and thermal care is a crucial intervention for the avoidance of more than 75% of neonatal deaths. Therefore, this study aimed to describe the practices and determinants of newborn care among postnatal mothers attending postnatal clinics in Dessie Referral Hospital, Northeast Ethiopia. RESULTS: A total of 418 postnatal mothers included in the study. The finding indicated that the proportion of initiation of breastfeeding within an hour, baby bathing after 24 h, cord cutting with a safe instrument, and thermal care was 83.9%, 75.8%, 46.9%, and 80.8% respectively. Overall, 46.9% (95% CI 41.9, 51.9) of newborn care practices was good. In the multivariable logistic regression analysis; women earning 651-1400 Ethiopian birr monthly (AOR = 0.428; 95% CI 0.183, 0.999), women who delivered spontaneous vaginally for their recent delivery (AOR = 0.438; 95% CI 0.240, 0.800), and mothers who had antenatal follow up once (AOR = 0.111; 95% CI 0.013, 0.944) were factors significantly associated with newborn care practices. Therefore, enhancing antenatal care services and providing counseling for these spontaneously delivered mothers will increase newborn care practices.

Reexamining the Verbal Environments of Children From Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds.

Amid growing controversy about the oft-cited "30-million-word gap," this investigation uses language data from five American communities across the socioeconomic spectrum to test, for the first time, Hart and Risley's (1995) claim that poor children hear 30 million fewer words than their middle-class counterparts during the early years of life. The five studies combined ethnographic fieldwork with longitudinal home observations of 42 children (18-48 months) interacting with family members in everyday life contexts. Results do not support Hart and Risley's claim, reveal substantial variation in vocabulary environments within each socioeconomic stratum, and suggest that definitions of verbal environments that exclude multiple caregivers and bystander talk disproportionately underestimate the number of words to which low-income children are exposed.

Transnationalism, parenting, and child disciplinary practices of African immigrants in Alberta, Canada.

Child discipline remains a topic of public health interest across the globe. Despite this enduring interest, very little is known about the child disciplinary practices of African immigrants in Canada. This paper explores the disciplinary practices of African immigrant parents in Alberta, a Canadian province with a recent surge in the population of African immigrants. Employing a critical ethnographic methodology, informed by transnational theory, we collected data through in-depth qualitative interviews with a purposive sample of African community leaders (n = 14), African immigrant parents (n = 32), policymakers (n = 2), and health and immigrant settlement workers (n = 10). As members of the African immigrant community, we were deeply immersed in the research settings, which afforded us the opportunity to collect pertinent observational data in the form of reflexive notes. Thematic analysis of the data revealed child disciplinary approaches that incorporate Canadian and African parenting practices, as well as practices that appear somewhat unique to this demographic. We found that African immigrant parents used corporal discipline, persuasive discipline, and a hybrid of the two, as well as emerging practices involving transnational fostering and emotional isolation of children who persistently misbehaved. These practices, in their totality, appeared to be influenced by the transnational experiences of parents and precepts that are traceable to Canada's legal and educational systems. We present theoretical, policy, and service implications of our findings, including a recommendation to incorporate sociocultural dimensions of child discipline into Canadian child welfare policies and practices.