Social Support Postpartum: Bengali Women from India on Their Coping Experiences following Childbirth.

Undertaken in Kolkata, India, our study aimed to explore the experiences of Bengali middle-class women on perceived stressful events, social support, and coping experiences following childbirth. Becoming a mother following childbirth is a shared phenomenon irrespective of culture, social strata, or country, while stress during the postpartum period or depression is not. Discrete medical intervention does not sufficiently address the complexities of postpartum experiences since influencing factors also include economic, political, cultural, and social backgrounds. Adopting a feminist and phenomenological approach, individual in-person interviews were conducted with twenty women recruited via snowball sampling. Our findings revealed that events experienced as stressful may lead to poor postpartum well-being. Underpinned by gendered discourse and biases, stressful events included familial imperatives for a male child, poor social and emotional support from the family, mostly partners and fathers, and systemic workplace barriers. The women in our study commonly resided with their mothers postpartum. They expressed feeling sheltered from these experiences, cared for, and supported. We discuss the women's experiences from a feminist pragmatic worldview, which advocates for a flexible feminism recognizant of the unique and nurturing relationship experiences between Bengali middle-class women and their mothers. In conclusion, we advocate for culturally sensitive, women-centered postpartum care practices that may entail the inclusion of intergenerational care during this critical phase of maternal well-being. These insights underscore the necessity of tailoring postpartum support systems to align with the cultural and familial contexts of the individuals they serve.

The role of the 30% threshold for Islamic parties: A fast-growing middle class and religion-based political preferences in Indonesia.

Recently, Indonesia's middle-class Muslims have come under suspicion for strengthening the religious foundation of their political preferences. However, while this suspicion has been triggered by their increasingly confident expressions of Islamic identity in political, social and economic spheres, these public expressions do not consistently translate into electoral outcomes. Despite the significant growth of the middle class, the proportion of votes cast for Islamic parties, encompassing both pro-shari'a or Islamist and Islam-inclusive parties, has declined from 37% in 1999 to 30% in 2019. Utilising panel data from 397 districts and cities spanning three recent general elections (2009, 2014 and 2019), this study examines the association between the middle class's proportion of the total population and the vote share of Islamic parties. Our fixed-effect estimations validate an inverted U-curve relationship between the middle class's share and the vote share of pro-shari'a or Islamist parties, with the turning point occurring at approximately 29% of the middle class's total population. In regions with a lower percentage of the middle class, the vote share of Islamist parties rises in parallel with middle-class growth. Conversely, at a higher level, a growing middle class curtails the vote share of Islamist parties. This suggests that Indonesia's contemporary social structure is undergoing desecularisation in various ways, contingent on levels of modernisation. Notably, this desecularisation process does not imply a movement towards establishing an Islamic state. Indonesia's Muslims are moderate and more inclined to support secular, national or Pancasila-based parties, which tend to be inclusive and secular in their approach.

The gendered violence of injecting-related stigma among relatively affluent, suburban women who inject drugs.

INTRODUCTION: In honouring the legacy of Jude Byrne's life-long advocacy for women and mothers who use drugs, this paper presents a case study of a group of women about whom we know little about and hear even less from: women who inject drugs in relatively affluent suburbs. METHODS: Based on a 2020 qualitative study of people who inject drugs in an affluent area of Sydney known as 'The Beaches', we use in-depth interview data to thematically explore the lived experiences of gendered stigma among women who inject drugs. RESULTS: Even when women occupy the 'ideal' social position in terms of class (middle-class) and race (White) they remain subject to harmful forms of gendered stigma related to injecting drug use. Participants had internalised negative attitudes around injection drug use as a form of failed femininity and, despite being part of 'good' families and neighbourhoods, participants experienced forced child removal. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Taking the lead from feminist intersectionality scholarship, our data illustrate how stigma and discrimination act as a form of structural violence against women who inject drugs in affluent communities. While the social relations of gender provide some degree of protection by 'performing proximity to Whiteness', gendered stigma and violence persist.

Understanding the relationship between maternity care providers and middle-class Chinese migrant women in the Netherlands: A qualitative study.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to provide insights into the formation and the quality of the maternity care provider-woman relationship between midwives, maternity care assistants and middle-class Chinese migrant women in the Netherlands. DESIGN: online in-depth interviews addressing interpersonal trust, women's autonomy in shared decision making and culturally sensitive care PARTICIPANTS: 46 middle-class Chinese migrant women, 13 midwives and 12 maternity care assistants in the Netherlands FINDINGS: Midwives and maternity care assistants reported challenges interpreting the needs of middle-class Chinese migrant women in care practices while Chinese migrant women experienced receiving insufficient emotional support. Midwives and maternity care assistant tended to attribute women's different preferences for care to culture which reinforced difficulties of addressing women's needs. Middle-class Chinese migrant women experienced a lack of responsive care, feelings of being overlooked, being uncomfortable to express different opinions and challenges in developing autonomy in the shared decision-making process. CONCLUSIONS: A trusting relationship, effective communication with maternity care providers, and a culturally sensitive and safe environment could be beneficial for middle-class migrant mothers. Chinese migrant women held ambivalent attitudes towards both traditional Chinese health beliefs and Dutch maternity care values. Each individual woman adopted the practice of the "doing the month" tradition to a different extent. This indicated the need for maternity care providers to recognize women's various needs for more responsive and individualized care, especially for first-time migrant mothers to negotiate their ways through the new healthcare system. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: We suggest a more proactive role for maternity care providers addressing the individual's subjectivity and preferences. Our findings are relevant and applicable for maternity care professionals conducting shared decision making with middle-class and highly educated migrant women living in Western contexts.

Is non-medical use normal? Normalisation, medicalisation and pharmaceutical consumption.

The theory of the normalisation of youth drug use in advanced capitalist societies has had an enduring legacy in contemporary drug scholarship. While the literature on the normalisation of 'illicit' drugs is well developed, less has been written about application of the theory to emerging discourse of pharmaceutical 'abuse', and how this might necessitate different thinking around what can be considered normal consumption. Pharmaceuticals are not directly associated with criminality, and their use does not traditionally attract stigma. In fact, social science scholarship has illustrated how many substances deemed illicit are normalised in the context of an ever-growing set of medical treatments. This paper explores the assumptions about legality, sociality and pleasure which sit behind the drug normalisation thesis, by reflecting on the relevance of drug normalisation in relation to pharmaceuticals, as well as examining scholarship on the medicalisation of society and qualitative research on non-medical use to illustrate the parallel processes of normalisation that apply to pharmaceuticals. The paper argues that questions of normalisation in relation to pharmaceutical use require a deeper engagement with the normative expectations we attach to pleasure, consumption and medicine, and the way this is structured by proximity to medical authority, whiteness and middle-classness.

Examining Plogging in South Korea as a New Social Movement: From the Perspective of Claus Offe's New Social Movement Theory.

This study examines plogging as an environmental movement, using Claus Offe's new social movement theory to critically analyze why its value as an environmental movement has not been recognized in Korean society. Four rounds of in-depth interviews and narrative analysis were conducted between 2 October and 28 December 2022, which involved eight individuals who participated in and organized the plogging movement. The results revealed three reasons for plogging's failure to be appreciated by Korean society as an environmental movement: (1) the plogging movement overlaps with existing social movements; (2) the generational gap related to plogging movement participants stemming from the "new middle class"; and (3) conglomerates using the plogging movement as a marketing tool. The plogging movement has value as a new proactive, social movement for environmental protection that centers on people's participation. However, long-standing ideological and structural issues embedded in Korean society hinder the recognition of plogging's value.

Injection drug use in an affluent beachside community in Sydney: An exploratory qualitative study.

INTRODUCTION: Social research on injection drug use has focussed on marginalised groups and communities, leaving a large gap in the field's understanding of how it is experienced in other settings, including in relatively affluent communities. METHODS: This research is based on fieldwork and 18 in-depth qualitative interviews conducted in suburban beach-side communities in Sydney collectively known as the Northern Beaches. RESULTS: Participants did not experience stigmatisation by local health services as the norm or as a deterrent to access. Drug acquisition on the Northern Beaches occurred among closed networks of friends and acquaintances, and injecting use rarely occurred in public settings. Police contact was minimal, resulting in lower levels of criminalisation. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Unlike many of the participants featured in the literature, our study participants grew up in middle and upper middle-class households, typically experiencing comfortable childhoods with little to no exposure to injection drug use. In this setting injection drug use operates covertly within the normal rhythms of middle-class life, hidden in amongst the bustle of cafés and shopping centres, and through the friendliness of neighbourhood driveway and doorstep interactions. Drug use is described as common in the area, with injecting behaviours stigmatised in ways that set it against the 'good' families and neighbourhoods of this beach-side enclave. In contrast to much of the Australian qualitative literature which frames injection drug use as a means of psychological relief or a subcultural norm, our participants described injecting as motivated by the desire to enhance pleasure and social connection.

Poverty, redistribution, and the middle class: redistribution via probability distributions vs. redistribution via the linear income tax system.

It has been known for a long time that (1) when graphs of income amount on income relative rank for two income distributions intersect twice, three "transfer groups" are generated, with the poorest and richest both gaining under the same alternative income distribution and the middle group losing; and (2) the linear income tax system satisfies three fundamental principles of tax justice, namely, that as pretax income increases, three quantities should also increase-posttax income, tax amount, and tax rate. This paper links those two ideas, suggesting that the linear income tax system may be the natural and most effective way to guard against poverty reduction policies which, while helping the poorest, as urged by Rawls, may harm the middle, contributing to the weakening of the middle class, thought at least since Aristotle to be the backbone of society. This paper illustrates the two approaches with one initial distribution and three alternative final distributions, contrasting their minimum, median, proportion below the mean, and inequality. It also shows how to guard the linear income tax system against violating the tax amount principle of tax fairness when there is an injection of resources (e.g., from deficit spending or oil revenues) and how to empirically estimate the parameters (e.g., the marginal tax rate) of the linear income system that the population will regard as fair.

Affective-sexual relations: conceptions and representations of middle class young university students / Relações afetivo-sexuais: concepções e representações de jovens universitários de classes médias / Relaciones afectivo-sexuales: concepciones y representaciones de jóvenes universitarios de clase media

This study aimed to analyze the conceptions and representations of young university students of both sexes, belonging to the middle classes and of different sexual orientations, regarding their affective-sexual relationships. Twenty-four young people, students from a public university, participated in this study, whose ages ranged from 18 to 30 years, 13 men and 11 women. The data collection consisted of the application of socioeconomic questionnaires and the realization of five audio-recorded sessions of the focus group. The material was organized according to the Thematic Analysis, from which the following categories emerged: close relationship and open relationship. For most participants, representations about close and open relationships proved to be plural and flexible, as agreed by the couple. Affective-sexual relationships would not only be under the aegis of institutionalized rites (dating, engagement, marriage), but would be built gradually according to satisfactory agreements

Este estudo teve por objetivo analisar as concepções e representações de jovens universitários de ambos os sexos, pertencentes às classes médias e de diferentes orientações sexuais, a respeito de suas relações afetivo-sexuais. Participaram 24 jovens, estudantes de universidade pública, cujas idades variaram de 18 a 30 anos, sendo 13 homens e 11 mulheres. A coleta de dados consistiu na aplicação de questionários socioeconômicos e na realização de cinco sessões áudio-gravadas de grupo focal. O material foi organizado conforme a Análise Temática da qual emergiram as seguintes categorias: relacionamento fechado e relacionamento aberto. Para a maioria dos participantes, as representações sobre relacionamento fechado e aberto revelaram-se plurais e flexíveis conforme acordado pela dupla/casal. Os relacionamentos afetivo-sexuais não estariam apenas sob a égide de ritos institucionalizados (namoro, noivado, casamento), mas seriam construídos paulatinamente conforme acordos satisfatórios

Este estudio tuvo como objetivo analizar las concepciones y representaciones de jóvenes universitarios de ambos sexos, pertenecientes a las clases medias y de diferentes orientaciones sexuales, en cuanto a sus relaciones afectivo-sexuales. Participaron 24 jóvenes, estudiantes de una universidad pú-blica, cuyas edades variaban de 18 a 30 años, siendo 13 hombres y 11 mujeres. La recogida de datos consistió en la aplicación de cuestionarios socioeconómi- cos y la realización de cinco sesiones de focus groupgrabadas en audio. El material se organizó según el Análisis Temático del cual surgieron las siguientes categorías: relación cerrada y relación abierta. Para la mayoría de los participantes, las representaciones sobre las relaciones cerradas y abiertas resultaron ser plurales y flexibles según lo acordado por la pareja. Las relaciones afectivo-sexuales no sólo estarían bajo la égida de ritos institucionalizados (relación, noviazgo, matrimonio), sino que se construirían gradualmente según acuerdos satisfactorios

"The Internet Is Keeping Me from Dying from Boredom": Understanding the Management and Social Construction of the Self Through Middle-Class Indian Children's Engagement with Digital Technologies During the COVID-19 Lockdown.

This paper unpacks how everyday lives of urban middle-class children were mediated by digital technologies during the COVID-19 national lockdown in India. In contemporary India, children's engagements with digital technologies are structured by their social class, gender, and geographical locations. The resultant disparities between "media-rich" and "media-poor" childhoods in India are stark (Banaji 2017). In this paper, we argue that the national lockdown in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic exposed India's "media-rich" children to particular threats and obstacles. Based on semi-structured interviews and mapping exercises with 16- to 17-year-old urban middle-class young people, we explore how being confined to their homes for an extended period when their schools shifted to online delivery of teaching and learning; young people negotiated risks and sought digital opportunities in the management and social construction of the self (Callero 2003, 2014). While the majority of existing studies focus on societal anxieties around children's digital media use, in almost a medicalized and pathological fashion, and its impact on parenting practices (Lim 2020; Livingstone and Blum-Ross 2020), we shift the attention to study this social phenomenon to help understand how children reflect on their engagement with technology and shape their own well-being through social construction of the self. Our findings demonstrate that children are reflexive users of digital technologies, as they navigate network failure issues, the demands of online classrooms, their own mental health and social relationships, and deploy the affordances of digital technologies to combat loneliness, nurture contact with friends, and explore educational and career resources. These strategies, in the management and social construction of the self, play out within the discourse of pedagogized middle-class childhood in India, which is imbued with notions of academic success and failure (Kumar 2016; Sen 2014). Media-rich middle-class young people's management and social construction of the self, in the context of crisis and uncertainty, helps promote our understanding of the relationship between social structure, self-structure, and behavior choices, implications of this for child well-being, and reproduction of social inequality in society.

Re-imaging everyday routines and educational aspirations under COVID-19 lockdown: Narratives of urban middle-class children in Punjab, India.

Based on in-depth interviews with 24 middle-class Indian child participants, this is the first exploratory qualitative study, in India, to demonstrate the ways in which children as reflexive social actors re-negotiated everyday schedules, drew on classed resources at their disposal and made sense of the impact of the pandemic on their educational pathways and future aspirations. These narratives offer a unique lens on the politics of middle-classness and its constitutive relation to constructions of normative childhoods in contemporary India. Study findings contribute to the sociology of Indian childhood and more generally help enrich our understanding of southern childhoods and the reproduction of inequalities in contemporary India.

Superwoman Schema: a context for understanding psychological distress among middle-class African American women who perceive racial microaggressions.

Objective: Current racial mental health disparities among African American women have been attributed to chronic experiences of race-related stressors. Increased exposure to racism in predominately White spaces may increase reliance on culturally normative coping mechanisms. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between psychological distress, perceived racial microaggressions, and an obligation to show strength/suppress emotions among educated, middle-class African American women.Design: A sample of 243 African American women aged 19-72 years (M = 39.49 years) participated in an online study. Participants completed self-report measures of psychological distress (PHQ-8 and GAD-7), racial microaggressions (IMABI), and modified items from the Stereotypical Roles for Black Women (SRBWS) to assess an obligation to show strength/suppress emotions. Factor analyses were conducted to assess the reliability of the obligation to show strength/suppress emotions subscale in our sample. Descriptive statistics, multiple linear regression, and mediation analyses were also conducted to examine variable associations.Results: Statistical analyses revealed educated, middle-class African American women who endorse an obligation to show strength/suppress emotions with perceived racial microaggressions experienced increased psychological distress.Conclusion: Obligation to show strength/suppress emotion may increase risk for psychological distress among African American women who perceive racial microaggressions. Future research and clinical implications are discussed.

Pleasure, prohibition and pretence: single middle class women negotiating heteronormativity in Bangladesh.

Understanding heteronormativity through the 'lived sexualities' of single women in urban Bangladesh, who are rarely included in any discourse of sexuality, this paper looks at middle class women who do not conform to marriage normativity but who carve out a space of social respect, acceptance and happiness through a long process of negotiation and careful navigation. Taking the intersectionality of gender, class and sexuality as its focus-this qualitative study seeks to understand the tactics of avoidance and the strategic routes women employ in their everyday lives as they negotiate heteronormative prohibitions to pursue sexuality and pleasure.

Work-Life Balance and Mental and Physical Health among Warsaw Specialists, Managers and Entrepreneurs.

Many studies have shown that low work-life balance (WLB) can be harmful to health. Poland is a country with one of the lowest indicators on the WLB scale among European countries but there are only a few studies about the connection between WLB and health. The present analysis aimed to answer the questions of whether the lower WLB among Warsaw's middle class correlates with poorer mental and physical health, and what life orientations and values typical of the middle class are related to work-life balance. Two surveys were conducted in the years 2003 and 2013 on the quota samples of 500 members of the Warsaw middle class: specialists, managers, and entrepreneurs. The current analysis has indicated the connection between a lower level of WLB and worse mental and physical health. Some middle-class life orientations are connected with a high WLB. The relationship between WLB and health was stronger in 2013 than in 2003. It can be considered a result of mentality and lifestyle changes and generational renewal. The study should be repeated in 2023 after the COVID-19 pandemic as the work situation of the middle class may have changed.

Contextualizing the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on food security in two small cities in Bangladesh.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an evolving urban crisis. This research paper assesses impacts of the lockdown on food security and associated coping mechanisms in two small cities in Bangladesh (Mongla and Noapara) during March to May 2020. Due to restrictions during the prolonged lockdown, residents (in particular low-income groups) had limited access to livelihood opportunities and experienced significant or complete loss of income. This affected both the quantity and quality of food consumed. Coping strategies reported include curtailing consumption, relying on inexpensive starchy staples, increasing the share of total expenditure allocated to food, taking out loans and accessing relief. The pandemic has exacerbated the precariousness of existing food and nutrition security in these cities, although residents with guaranteed incomes and adequate savings did not suffer significantly during lockdown. While coping strategies and the importance of social capital are similar in small and large cities, food procurement and relationships with local governments show differences.

The contribution of mutation and selection to multivariate quantitative genetic variance in an outbred population of Drosophila serrata.

Genetic variance is not equal for all multivariate combinations of traits. This inequality, in which some combinations of traits have abundant genetic variation while others have very little, biases the rate and direction of multivariate phenotypic evolution. However, we still understand little about what causes genetic variance to differ among trait combinations. Here, we investigate the relative roles of mutation and selection in determining the genetic variance of multivariate phenotypes. We accumulated mutations in an outbred population of Drosophila serrata and analyzed wing shape and size traits for over 35,000 flies to simultaneously estimate the additive genetic and additive mutational (co)variances. This experimental design allowed us to gain insight into the phenotypic effects of mutation as they arise and come under selection in naturally outbred populations. Multivariate phenotypes associated with more (less) genetic variance were also associated with more (less) mutational variance, suggesting that differences in mutational input contribute to differences in genetic variance. However, mutational correlations between traits were stronger than genetic correlations, and most mutational variance was associated with only one multivariate trait combination, while genetic variance was relatively more equal across multivariate traits. Therefore, selection is implicated in breaking down trait covariance and resulting in a different pattern of genetic variance among multivariate combinations of traits than that predicted by mutation and drift. Overall, while low mutational input might slow evolution of some multivariate phenotypes, stabilizing selection appears to reduce the strength of evolutionary bias introduced by pleiotropic mutation.

¿Comer como el discurso médico-nutricional manda? Discursos y prácticas sobre alimentación saludable en sectores medios de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina / ¿Eating as the medical-nutritional discourse orders? Discourses and practices on healthy eating habits among middle-class sectors in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Resumen. Objetivos: describir y analizar los discursos sobre alimentación saludable y su relación con las prácticas declaradas de integrantes de hogares con hijos/as que pertenecen a los sectores medios y que residen en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. Métodos: se utilizó un enfoque cualitativo, un tipo de estudio exploratorio-descriptivo y la técnica de relevamiento de la información fue la entrevista semiestructurada. Se seleccionaron intencionalmente 12 hogares pertenecientes a sectores medios que residen en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, integrados por parejas con hijas/os de diferentes edades. El procesamiento y análisis de la información fue realizado mediante la estrategia de análisis temático cualitativo. Resultados: se evidencia un discurso homogéneo sobre lo que se considera alimentación saludable, en función de las recomendaciones alimentarias vigentes independientemente de la edad y de vivir o no con sus hijos/as. Así como, una diversidad de prácticas de compra, preparación y consumo de alimentos. Esta diversidad se explica por la presencia de otros criterios que compiten con la búsqueda de alimentación saludable. Aunque se reconoce el efecto preventivo de la alimentación en relación con los problemas de salud asociados a esta, como el sobrepeso y la obesidad, emergen como los más enunciados y las explicaciones se asocian con la responsabilidad individual. Dos son las consecuencias más visibles de la divulgación y penetración del discurso médico-nutricional: reenviar al ámbito individual las prácticas alimentarias y del cuidado del cuerpo y omitir el peso del contexto y la responsabilidad colectiva en la explicación de los problemas de salud asociados con la alimentación actual.

Abstract. Objectives: To describe and analyze the discourses on healthy eating habits and their relationship with declared practices that hold middle-class parents who live in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Methods: A qualitative research was conducted, a type of exploratory-descriptive study and data was gathered with semi-structured interviews. Twelve households were intentionally selected, consisting of couples who had children of different age. A thematic analysis strategy was carried out to systematize and analyze the transcriptions. Results: A homogeneous discourse on healthy eating was observed, which is aligned with expert recommendations regardless of the interviewee´s age, whether or not they live with their children, and also their varied food purchasing, preparation, and consumption practices. The diversity observed in these practices can be explained by other criteria which compete with their quest for healthy eating. Even if the benefits of healthy eating to prevent food-related illnesses are recognized, overweight and obesity seem to prevail as the main reasons to choose what to eat, and individual responsibility is articulated. Two are the consequences of the diffusion and incorporation of the medical and nutritional discourse: first, to consider eating practices and body care as issues related to the personal realm; and, second, to leave out the weight that the social context and collective responsibility exert in the explanation of health problems associated with current eating habits.

New Measures of Economic Insecurity Reveal its Expansion Into EU Middle Classes and Welfare States.

Economic instability, social changes, and new social policies place economic insecurity high on the scholarly and political agenda. We contribute to these debates by proposing a new multidimensional, intertemporal measure of economic insecurity that accounts for both its multiplicity and its dynamism. First, we develop three theory-driven, multidimensional measures of economic insecurity. Principal Components Analysis validates the measure. Second, we develop a dynamic approach to insecurity, using longitudinal data and a newly revised headcount method. Third, we then use our new measures to analyze the distribution of insecurity in Europe. Our analysis shows that insecurity is widespread across Europe, even in low-inequality, encompassing welfare states. Moreover, it extends across income groups and occupational classes, reaching into the middle classes.

Rewealthization in twenty-first century Western countries: the defining trend of the socioeconomic squeeze of the middle class.

The wealth-to-income ratio (WIR) in many Western countries, particularly in Europe and North America, increased by a factor of two in the last three decades. This represents a defining empirical trend: a rewealthization (from the French repatrimonialisation)-or the comeback of (inherited) wealth primacy since the mid-1990s. For the sociology of social stratification, "occupational classes" based on jobs worked must now be understood within a context of wealth-based domination. This paper first illustrates important empirical features of an era of rising WIR. We then outline the theory of rewealthization as a major factor of class transformations in relation to regimes stabilized in the post-WWII industrial area. Compared to the period where wealth became secondary to education and earnings for middle-class lifestyles, rewealthization steepens society's vertical structure; the "olive-shaped" Western society is replaced by a new one where wealth "abundance" at the top masks social reproduction and frustrations below. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40711-020-00135-6.

Mothers' Narratives on their Immigration Experiences: Associations with Maternal Relatedness and Adolescent Adjustment.

We examined the hypothesis that lower maternal relatedness mediates the associations of immigrant mothers' acculturative stress and lack of benefit finding in immigration with poorer adjustment of their adolescents in terms of more externalizing problems and lower school achievements and self-worth. Participants were 93 adolescents (47.31% girls, Mage  = 16.04) and their mothers (Mage  = 45.83) from middle-class families. Mothers immigrated to Israel from the Former Soviet Union or Western countries (Myears-in-Israel  = 19.75). We used a multimethod multi-informant approach that included a novel narrative procedure for assessing acculturative stress and benefit finding. Structural Equation Modeling supported the hypothesis, suggesting that research on and practice with adolescents in immigrant families should consider the meaning parents derive from their immigration experiences.