Research over the last few decades has consistently found that fathers are not routinely included in the provision of child welfare services. The current study examined whether ambivalent sexism on the part of child welfare workers was related to their beliefs about involving fathers. Ambivalent sexism theory posits that gender stereotypes include subjectively positive beliefs in addition to hostile beliefs that both serve to perpetuate patriarchal systems. Participants (N = 490) were currently front-line child welfare workers in the United States who completed an online survey assessing ambivalent sexism and beliefs about father involvement in child welfare cases. Ambivalent sexism was assessed using the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory and the Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory. The Dakota Father Friendly Assessment was modified to assess beliefs about father involvement in child welfare. Latent class analysis was used to empirically derive four sexism profiles. Results indicated that participants with profiles suggesting less sexist beliefs had more positive attitudes about father involvement and had a lower preference for working solely with mothers. Sexism profile was not related to participants’ stated father involvement behaviors such as conducting home visits when fathers are present, including fathers in case planning discussions, and recruiting fathers or paternal relatives as placement options. Implications for social work and child welfare practice include developing training that increases knowledge of fathers’ importance and increases workers’ comfort in providing services to men.

Issues concerning children may be the most intense and emotive areas of divorce and can lead to spectacular legal battles. Social work practice revealed that it is often the father who leaves the court, stripped of his fatherhood by a court order that only grants him limited access to his own children. Some divorced fathers disengage from their children's lives but there is documented evidence of South African fathers who desire continuity in their relationships with their children after divorce. An interest in these fathers prompted this study. Fathers who challenged maternal custody were selected since it was assumed that their lived experiences would include non-custodial as well as custodial fatherhood. The study was approached from a constructivist position and was further informed by a family systems theory. South African and international literature was perused followed by an exploratory study on the relatively uncharted terrain of paternal custody. A qualitative method was used and one unstructured interview with a schedule was conducted with each of the five respondents who were selected according to non-probability purposive sampling methods. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data was analysed cross-sectionally around certain themes and categories that were extracted from the data. The most significant findings of the study which appear to resemble some earlier national and international findings, are summarised as follows: Some fathers appear to have sound motives for pursuing custody of their children. These fathers, if afforded the opportunity, find fulfilment in parenting their children whom they perceive to be happy and prosperous in their care. There are fathers in whom divorce causes clear and profound signs of distress which appear to be related to the loss of the pre-divorce father I child relationship. The feeling of powerlessness to effect the well-being of their children as they see it was emphasised. Recommendations generated from these findings relate to the elimination of gender bias from custody decisions, including fathers in therapeutic interventions with divorced families and the provision of family courts and mediation services as suggested in the White Paper for Social Welfare. Recommendations for future research are also presented.

Background: Expecting a child and becoming a parent is one of life’s major events, during which the parents’ perspective on life and their couple relationship changes. For some parents, childbearing entails a decrease in parental couple relationship quality. The way in which parents are able to cope with childbearing may be connected with their Sense of Coherence; which is a person’s ability to perceive life as comprehensible, manageable and meaningful. For parents’ positive childbearing experiences, professional and social support have been proven to be valuable. However, far from all parents have access to social support; furthermore, professional support does not always meet the needs of expectant parents. Hence, more research is needed to increase knowledge about expectant parents’ experiences of professiona land social support. In addition, more research is needed to explore factors associated with quality of couple relationship among parents during childbearing. Aims: The overall aim of the thesis was to explore professional and social support for first-time mothers and partners during childbearing in relation toquality of couple relationship and Sense of Coherence. Methods: The study’s designs were explorative, prospective and longitudinal; both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. Specifically, explorative designs, qualitative methods and phenomenographic analysis were used to explore expectant first-time mothers’ (I) and partners’ perceptions of professional support (II). Furthermore, an explorative design, qualitative method and qualitative content analysis were used to explore expectant first-time mothers’ experiences of social support (III). Within Study IV, a prospective longitudinal design, descriptive statistics, non-parametric tests and multiple linear regression analysis were used to evaluate factors associated with quality of couple relationship among first-time mothers and partners, during pregnancy and the first six months of parenthood. Results: The overall results of the thesis revealed both similarities and differences between expectant first-time mothers’ and partners’ perceptions of professional support, effects from social support and associated factors with perceived quality of couple relationship. The similarities were; both mothers and partners perceived that professional support could facilitate partner involvement, influence their couple relationship and facilitate contacts with other expectant parents. According to first-time mothers’ experiences, their couple relationship with their partner was also strengthened by social support during pregnancy. Further, the results showed that both first-time mothers’ and partners’ higher perceived couple relationship quality six months after birth, was associated with their higher perceived social support. The results showed also that both mothers and partners perceived their quality of couple relationship to decrease and Sense of Coherence to increase six months after childbirth, compared to the pregnancy. Differences revealed were such as: higher Sense of Coherence was only associated with mothers’ higher perceived quality of couple relationship, and first-time mothers reported perceiving more social support compared to the partners both during pregnancy, first week and six months after childbirth. Conclusions: Professional and social support can strengthen first-time mothers and partners both individually and as a couple, in their abilities to cope with childbearing. On the individual basis, the expectant parents could be strengthened through professional and social support that contributed to their understanding and feeling of being prepared for childbirth and parenting, for instance. As a couple, the parents were strengthened by professional support that included the partner’s role, as well as higher perceived social support overall. In contrast, lack of support could have a negative influence on the expectant parents’ feeling of being prepared for childbirth and parenting. Besides this, the results indicates that childbearing has a positive effect on parents’ abilities to cope with life even though their quality of couple relationship decrease. Professionals can use these results in their further understanding about how to offer satisfactory support to first-time mothers and partners during childbearing.

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a destructive behaviour engaged in by a large proportion of youth and young adults in current society. Despite previous work, the recent revision of the DSM does not include NSSI as a distinct syndrome; instead it remains in a category for disorders requiring additional research. Thus, in order to better understand the many etiological components underlying NSSI behaviour, still more investigation is required. To this end the current investigations aimed to further elaborate upon known links between NSSI behaviour and parent-child relationships from two perspectives: first, with regard to the overall quality of relationships with parents, and second, with specific focus on the impact of attachment representations of early relationships with parents. Though both perspectives have been investigated in the past, the current studies were developed to alleviate methodological limitations of the existing literature. Study 1 adopted a person-centered approach to examine patterns of perceived relationship quality reported by self-injuring youth based on the combination of multiple relational characteristics; these patterns were then compared with several indices related to different manifestations of NSSI behaviour. Results show heterogeneity in the perceptions of parent-child relationship quality in self-injurers, such that both negative and positive family backgrounds were implicated in the behaviour. Further analyses demonstrate that the level of risk presented by a self-injuring individual can be differentiated based on perceived quality of parent-child relationship. Study 2 investigated how individuals’ internalized states of mind regarding early attachment experiences are related to NSSI, with particular attention dedicated to the relative influences of child maltreatment and attachment representation. Attachment representations reflecting deficits in emotion regulation (preoccupied, unresolved/cannot classify) were most common in self-injurers. Moreover, self-reported childhood maltreatment and attachment states of mind independently contributed to the prediction of NSSI. Lastly, findings suggest that distinct relational influences characteristic of relationships with mothers and fathers are associated with NSSI. The two studies presented here significantly contribute to existing knowledge concerning parental influences in the etiology of NSSI. These investigations add to existing knowledge of NSSI, and may ultimately aid in preventing and treating this damaging behaviour.

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Thesis (PhD (New Testament Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / New Testament Studies / unrestricted

Orientador: Maria Rita Salzano Moraes / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-27T16:55:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Shiga_EstherMelo_M.pdf: 946434 bytes, checksum: ea7932872cfb4ff5abe947a158f0774e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / Resumo: A partir de algumas questões trazidas pela clínica, este trabalho traz uma reflexão teórica sobre o que se passa com a "fé religiosa" no processo de análise. Como nos aponta Lacan ([1960] 2005), a psicanálise não apenas surge no meio judaico-cristão, mas toda sua referência ética gira em torno dessa tradição, assim como todas as questões a respeito da função pai. A morte de pai primordial anunciada pelo mito criado por Freud nos aponta o mito do nosso tempo: Deus está morto. No entanto após o assassinato do pai, os filhos, com saudades, criam um substituto ¿ o totem ¿ a primeira religião. Todavia a psicanálise nós aponta um outro caminho diante a falta do pai: realizar seu luto. Realizar o luto desse pai Onipotente é algo que se pode esperar de uma análise, e que pode colocar em jogo a relação do sujeito com a religião. O mito de Freud permite a Lacan afirmar, não apenas que Deus está morto desde sempre, mas que Deus é inconsciente, o que aponta a irrepresentabilidade de Deus ¿ muito diferente da figura do Pai zeloso que olha por nós - e supõe encarar a falta do pai como um fato de estrutura. A psicanálise dá assim um outro valor ao pai, ele ganha uma dimensão espiritual. No livro do Êxodo, Deus se apresenta como "ehyeh asher ehyeh", e duas traduções são feitas, cada uma trazendo um discurso diferente; a primeira nos apresenta um Deus, cujo nome é impronunciável, um Deus feito de nada; a segunda, Deus é apontado como um ente suficientemente superior e onipotente, a ponto de preencher o homem em sua falta. Essa diferença se articula na separação entre o Gozo de Deus e o Desejo de Deus, algo fundamental para pensar as mudanças do lugar do pai em análise / Abstract: This research draws a reflection upon what happens with "religious faith" inside the analysis process, having as a starting point issues brought by the clinic. As pointed out by Lacan (2005, 1960), psychoanalysis not only comes up in the judeo-christian community, but all its ethical reference revolves around this tradition, as well as all the questions about the function of the father. The death of the primordial father announced by the myth created by Freud presents the myth of our time: God is dead. However, after the father¿s murder, the sons, missing him, create a substitute ¿ the totem ¿ the first religion. Nonetheless, psychoanalysis shows us another way to face the lack of the father: mourning for him. Mourning for this Omnipotent father is something that one can expect from an analysis, and that the relation of the subject with religion can be put at stake. Freudian myth enables Lacan to say not only that God is dead forever, but that God is unconscious, which means that God is not representable ¿ differently from the zealous father figure who watches over us ¿ and assumes facing the lack of the father as a fact of structure. Psychoanalysis, therefore, gives a different value to the father, who is raised to a spiritual dimension. In the book of Exodus, God introduces himself as "ehyeh asher ehyeh", and two translations are made, each bringing a different speech; the first presents us with a God, whose name is unpronounceable, a God made of nothing; the second, God is designated as an omnipotent and sufficiently superior entity, ready to fill the man in his lack. This difference is articulated in the division between the Jouissance of God and the Will of God, something fundamental to think the changes of the father¿s place in analysis / Mestrado / Linguagem e Sociedade / Mestra em Linguística Aplicada

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Child development--Father's personality--Early child-care experience of fathers--Playfulness--Employment--Marriage status--Psychological support--Middle-class fathers.

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