Scholars have characterized as “extreme” the intersection of work and family in military service (MacDermid Wadsworth & Southwell, 2011) and periods of deployment involve further stress for partners of military members (e.g. Not having enough personal time, having too many responsibilities at home, changing marital roles, and parenting hassles) that may make managing both work and family life more difficult (Chandra et al., 2011). Research with partners of deployed service members has focused primarily on mental health (Donoho et al., 2018; Mansfield et al., 2010) as well as parenting and household responsibilities (Chandra et al., 2011), but less is known about partners’ employment related outcomes. In the current study, both role strain and role enhancement processes were tested over time in a sample of employed partners of deployed Army National Guard Members (GMs) and a comparison group composed of partners of non-deploying GMs. In accordance with theories of work-family conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985) and resource drain theory (Rothbard, 2001), a model utilizing two waves of data was tested; household challenges experienced by at-home partners were hypothesized to be related to more negative family-to-work spillover, and ultimately associated with less job engagement and more depressive symptoms. In addition theories of work-family facilitation (Grzywacz & Butler, 2005) and work-family enrichment (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006) were utilized to test whether family strengths (e.g. effective family functioning and military spouse role satisfaction) in the face of deployment were associated with positive FTW spillover, and ultimately with more job engagement and fewer depressive symptoms. Results revealed that household challenges were related to more negative family-to-work spillover, more depressive symptoms, and less job engagement. Effective family functioning was related to more positive FTW spillover, which was related to more job engagement. Results were consistent across the deploying and non-deploying group with the following exception: in the deploying group only, negative FTW spillover was associated with more depressive symptoms. The current study has implications for the field of work and family research, employers, and military family service providers. First, the current study provided evidence of cross-domain work-family conflict and work-family enrichment in a sample of partners of National Guard members. Second, the study highlighted numerous consequences for employees facing significant household challenges. The role of household challenges in employees’ lives may have implications for how employers should structure workplace culture and the employee supports they offer. Finally, only partners of deployed GMs experienced more depressive symptoms associated with negative FTW conflict. Military family service providers may use that information to better serve partners of deploying service members who are at risk of mental health concerns during deployment.

<p>Using self-reports from 83 military connected youths, the results of the present study challenge convention, suggesting first that the best fitting model for youth’s non-normative caregiving behaviors includes three distinct behavior types: Parentification, Adultification, Role Reversal. Second, that while non-normative caregiving behaviors may be associated with youths’ socio-emotional well-being, how these behaviors are associated may depend on both the behavior and the outcome. Lastly, that Unfairness significantly moderates the association between youth’s non-normative caregiving behavior types and socio-emotional wellbeing. Implications and directions for future research on youths’ non-normative caregiving experiences and types of non-normative caregiving behaviors are considered.</p>

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This thesis presents an ethnographic account of everyday life for eighteen healthy and safe, small town, Aotearoa/New Zealand children aged between ten and eleven years. It undertakes a social constructionist analysis of five domains of the children's lives; self and identity, their relationships with each other, their relationships with adults, time and space, and safety and risk. These domains reflect the intersection between the children's own lives and their wider contexts. The approach taken is consistent with the new social studies of childhood perspective that has been articulated over the past 15-20 years. This approach, developed in response to a perceived over-determinism in the developmental accounts of childhood, brings to the foreground the need to document more fully children's standpoints. The children held a sense of themselves as good people and their thoughts about the future, relationships and themes of stability were prominent areas of self-development for them. Their friendships provided important social and emotional resources. Making and sustaining friendships involved delicate processes of positioning and while they provided emotional sustenance they could also be a source of confusion and anxiety. Intense friendships were important for both boys and girls. Relationships with adults were critical and time was an important component of good relationships. The children thought about time in a variety of ways, but the linear progression of time from the present out to the future was not a strong component of this. Home was important place to the children, home as stability, as a place for time with parents and for free time were prominent themes. It was also a place of self-care for a number of the children. School time was experienced as time to play with friends and socialise, and schoolwork time. Social time was more prominent in the children's thinking than work time. Global discourses about risk and safety played a powerful role in influencing the ways in which the children spent their time, particularly the ways in which they utilised public spaces. The children were keen to participate in the research and were insightful social commentators demonstrating a passionate interest in being able to express their views and to think about the way that different dimensions of their social worlds influenced the things they were able to do.

Social-ecological change has driven smallholder farmers throughout the world to employ a diverse array of adaptation strategies. Social, economic, and cultural factors along with environmental changes have been widely studied as determinants of adaptation decision-making. Increasingly, scholars are also examining the role of values in these decisions. Many have posited that adaptation to social-ecological change will necessitate tradeoffs of these values; however, little empirical work has been done to identify and examine these tradeoffs. In response to this gap, we first identify how farmers and fishers adapted to multiple social-ecological stressors in northwestern Pakistan. Second, we investigate how social-ecological factors, perceived changes, and perceived costs influence adaptation decision-making and adaptive capacity. Third, we examine the role of and tradeoffs between values in adaptation decision-making. Based on our findings, we posit that in addition to the identification of values, it is also necessary to examine values as they relate to one another, change over time, and are embedded in multi-scalar processes. This will allow us to more fully understand the factors that influence adaptation decisions and support more equitable strategies that align with stakeholders’ diverse values.

<p>Preschoolers in the US are not meeting dietary guidelines, which is concerning since experience with foods during early childhood may influence food preferences in later life. To better understand why preschoolers are not meeting dietary guidelines it is necessary to understand the factors that influence why parents offer their children specific foods. The purpose of this study was to use the means-end framework and the laddering interview technique to better understand <i>why </i>parents of preschoolers decide to offer their children certain foods and <i>why</i> certain feeding strategies are helpful. A total of 33 parents of preschoolers (3–5-year-olds) completed one-on-one phone interviews regarding the foods they typically offer their child. Laddering data were elicited for three food groupings: foods parents typically offer, foods parents typically avoid, and foods parents prefer to offer. The resulting data were analyzed and summarized in a series of hierarchical value maps (HVMs). Parent and child-centric themes emerged as factors that influenced the foods parents offered their preschooler. The results of this study provide insight into the meanings and beliefs that impact the food decisions and feeding strategies used by parents of preschoolers.</p>

Due to the unique experiences and needs of parents with children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), (i.e., child’s limited functional ability; increased duration and extent of caretaking), parents of children with ASD often experience affiliate stigma. Affiliate stigma is the internalized cognitive, affective, and behavioral impact of association with marginalized populations, in this case individuals diagnosed with a mental illness or a developmental disability such as ASD (Mak & Cheung, 2008). Outside of differences in provider-caregiver interactions (Mandell & Novak, 2005; Palmer et al., 2010), little research has explored the impact of racial and ethnic identity on ASD caregiving experiences. Research exploring differentiation of self in parental caregivers is also sparse. Differentiation is conceptualized as the way individuals think about themselves in relation to others. Optimal differentiation is characterized by emotional interdependence with others -- that is maintaining a state of connectedness without emotional over-involvement (Kerr & Bowen, 1988). To address these gaps in the literature, a self-report survey measuring affiliate stigma, differentiation of self and racial/ethnic identity was completed by 147 parents of children diagnosed with ASD. Participants identifying as a racial/ethnic minority made up 36.7% of this study’s sample. Results from a hierarchical regression analysis suggests that higher differentiation of self predicts greater affiliate stigma. Identity as a racial or ethnic minority had no significant impact on experiencing affiliate stigma.

<p>  </p> <p>As the default state response to child maltreatment in the U.S., child welfare system (CWS) interventions are delivered to caregivers of 1.3 million children annually (USDHHS, 2021). In theory, CWS interventions aim to reduce risks for child maltreatment by providing services to parents; however, research and anecdotal evidence from stakeholders suggest that many families do not benefit from CWS intervention as intended (Russell et al., 2018). One important feature of CWS interventions is that they differ greatly between families – in ways both intentional and unintentional (Jonson-Reid et al., 2017). As such, exploring how differences in intervention delivery may explain outcomes is of value. For instance, the explanatory potential of parents’ experiences of interventions has been overlooked. The overarching goal of this dissertation was to expand the empirical evidence base related to how focusing on parents’ experiences and well-being during and after CWS interventions can help explain differences in outcomes as traditionally measured (i.e., chronic CWS involvement and ongoing child maltreatment). Paper 1 quantitatively explores levels and trends in parent well-being for three years following a CWS investigation, including how indicators of parent well-being relate to child welfare outcomes. Results suggest that only parents’ mental health remains a consistent predictor of child maltreatment risk after three years, and that no parent well-being indicator predicted CWS re-involvement. Paper 2 expands upon Paper 1 by exploring the role of parents’ experiences with CWS services and caseworkers in shaping trends in parent well-being and child welfare outcomes. Overall, results indicated that no indicators of parents’ experiences predicted odds of CWS re-reports, but that some aspects of parents’ experiences may predict ongoing maltreatment risk. Results also indicated that parents who received or were mandated to a greater number of services overall also reported changes over time in well-being related to mental health, IPV victimization, and drug use-related problems. Findings also suggested that parents from marginalized backgrounds may have different experiences with interventions. Paper 3 qualitatively explored parents’ experiences in a specialized form of CWS intervention (Family Treatment Court), with an emphasis on how parents experience and make sense of the many manifestations of state power during interventions. Together, these three studies offer modest implications for future research and practice related to promoting parent well-being and child safety in the context of the evolving CWS.</p>

Across deployment cycles, individuals negotiate family roles to accommodate the absence then re-entry of service members. There is scant empirical evidence about the processes through which roles are reorganized. Guided by the family resilience framework (Walsh, 2016) and the model of military marriage (Karney & Crown, 2007), I hypothesized that communication would be a mechanism through which couples negotiated roles during reintegration. Couple communication was conceptualized as occurring over two distinct but related temporal rhythms: established communication patterns and daily communication strategies. I expected that couples’ Time 1 (T1) established communication patterns (problem solving and withdrawal) would predict role negotiations at Time 3 (T3), and that these associations would be mediated by daily communication strategies at Time 2 (T2). 54 heterosexual National Guard couples were interviewed at three times across eight months after service members’ return from deployment. T1 and T3 were in-person interviews and measured participants’ established patterns of family life, including established communication patterns and ease in role negotiations. T2 was a four-day data “burst” and captured couples’ daily behaviors such as competence with daily communication strategies. Path analyses indicated that T1 problem solving (an established pattern) predicted service members’ more competent T2 daily communication and easier T3 role negotiations. While no indirect associations emerged for either partner, significant others’ T2 more competent daily communication strategies predicted easier T3 role negotiations for both partners. Results suggest that problem solving and competent daily communication strategies contribute to resilient family functioning during reintegration. This study highlights the viability and importance of adopting multiple temporal rhythms to examine processes across couple transitions.

I performed a secondary analysis of existing data and determined that when interacting with physicians during primary care visits for chronic illness treatment, patients using opioids are less likely to continue presenting concerns designed to reinforce their social and emotional uniqueness during the second half of primary care visits when physicians provide empathic support of their concerns in the first half of visits.