Family Matters articles from December 2003

Family Matters archives from December 2003

Acting director's report.(Editorial)
December 22, 2003... It gives me pleasure to introduce this 65th issue of Family Matters, which includes six papers by Institute researchers, and three by external contributors. While a range of topics is covered, a number of papers address aspects of children's...

Listening to children: developing a child-centred approach to childhood poverty in the UK: a recent UK study looked at the impact of childhood poverty and social exclusion on the lives of children-from their own perspectives.
December 22, 2003... In the United Kingdom the Labour government's focus on eradicating child poverty within the next 20 years has meant that the interests of children and their families have become more central to the policy agenda. The government's intention has...

Family transitions among Australia's children: How much time do children spend in specific family types, and to what extent do they experience various family transitions? The estimates reported here take into account the dynamic nature of family experiences throughout childhood.
December 22, 2003... Changes in family circumstances and living arrangements are a normal part of life. However, the increasing diversity of family forms and instability of relationships means that children potentially face many more family transitions across the...

Minding the children during school holidays.(Family Trends)
December 22, 2003... The need for non-parental child care is an obvious and central outcome of the increased workforce participation of mothers. Given that school-age children generally have considerably longer holidays than their parents, many parents may confront...

"Downtime" for children on the internet; recognising a new form of child abuse: Janet Stanley argues that the community has a responsibility to protect children from abusive experiences through the internet, especially those children whose parents are unable or unwilling to protect them.
December 22, 2003... It is said that children in the United States spend more time with electronic media than they spend in any other activity, except sleep (Anderson 2003). There is a long history of research on the impact on children of watching violence on...

Helping families cope: a fresh look at parent effectiveness training: Australian parents are concerned about their relationship with their children, as well as with ways of managing children's behaviors. What is the nature of these concerns, and did enrolling in a Parent Effectiveness Training course make a difference?
December 22, 2003... As with any other group of people, families have to find ways of relating together successfully and managing conflict between members, whether between parent and child, between siblings, or between the parents themselves. Their communication...

Premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital stability: is it a good idea for couples who intend to get married to live together first? The findings have been mixed. This article re-examines the links between premarital cohabitation and the stability of the subsequent marriage.
December 22, 2003... Marriages have changed a great deal since the early 1970s. Perhaps the most spectacular changes have been the rise in the divorce rate and in the proportion of couples living together before they marry (de Vaus, Qu and Weston 2003). The divorce...

Family and community life: exploring the decline thesis: does the move away from traditional family forms and practices have implications for the quality of community life? This article explores the common assumptions, discusses the literature, and presents key findings from a recent Institute study.
December 22, 2003... Recently, focus on "strong" communities, and concern about the possible "decline" or "breakdown" of community, has re-emerged in academic and political discourse, and in the popular media. The aspects of community life that have been the focus...

Shared parenting: the views of separated parents with 50:50 care arrangements: what are the motives, arrangements, and reflections of separated parents who spend equal time with their children? This paper provides some insights.
December 22, 2003... In 1997, around one million children in Australia under 18 were living with one natural parent and had a parent living elsewhere (ABS 1998). Thus a core concern for public policy continues to be how to foster the continuing care and support of...

Bargaining over children: from presumptive practices to child-focused litigation: the current Parliamentary Inquiry into a "rebuttable presumption" of 50:50 residency taps an aspiration by many children and adults for more meaningful child--parent engagement following separation and divorce. But rather than endorse pre-emptive assumptions about family structure, the inquiry should begin with the child's interests and work outwards.
December 22, 2003... The Australian Government Inquiry into child custody arrangements in the event of family separation "seeks to address community concerns about the operation of contact and child support arrangements for separated families, and reflects the...

Shared parenting: in the shadow of the law.(Shared Parenting Council Of Australia ...)(shared parenting after separation or divorce will provide all the necessary protection for a child at risk)
December 22, 2003... Law academics, judges, women's legal services, and single-mother groups have said much about the great wave of harm that could flow from implementing a rebuttable presumption of shared parenting in family law. Much of it has been alarmist, some...

What's wrong with a presumption of joint custody?(Positive Shared Parenting Alliance ...)
December 22, 2003... A presumption of 50:50 joint custody of children would mean that, right at the point when parents decide they can no longer cooperate sufficiently to stay in a relationship, they would be required to begin the complex cooperative task of joint...

Compensation for the cost of raising children born as a result of medical negligence.(In The News)
December 22, 2003... Facts Mr and Mrs M. wanted no further children. Mrs M. saw a gynaecologist, Dr C., for sterilisation. She told him that, at age 15, she had had her right ovary and fallopian tube removed. Dr C. operated to clip the left fallopian tube to...

Contemporary issues in family research seminars.(AIFS Seminars)(Calendar)
December 22, 2003... In 2003, the Australian Institute of Family Studies is continuing its series of seminars presenting research on national and international issues related to the family. The seminars, designed to promote a forum for discussion and debate, are...

AIFS researchers attend New Zealand conference.(AIFS Activities)(Australian Institute of Family Studies)
December 22, 2003... Four Institute researchers attended the July 2003 conference of the Australasian Human Development Association, held on Waiheke Island off Auckland, New Zealand. Participants from Australia and New Zealand, and worked in the areas of early...

Family Matters is a refereed journal.(AIFS Activities)
December 22, 2003... Readers are reminded that Family Matters is a fully refereed academic journal, recognised by the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) for the purposes of Research Data Collection, and included in the Register of Refereed...

NAIDOC at Wagga Wagga.(AIFS Activities)(National Aboriginal and Islander Day of Celebration)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... Team member of the Stronger Families Learning Exchange at the Australian Institute of Family Studies, Colleen Turner, attended the finale of a series of NAIDOC events at the Ashmont Community Resource Centre in the regional centre of Wagga...

LSAC interviewer training.(AIFS Activities)(Australian Institute of Family Studies)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... Growing Up in Australia (the longitudinal study of Australian children) entered the first phase of data collection in August 2003. The Project Operations Team at the Australian Institute of Family Studies has been working with the field agency...

Introducing: the Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault.(AIFS Activities)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... In 2003, as part of its strategy to reduce the incidence of sexual assault in Australia, the Australian Government's Office of the Status of Women contracted the Australian Institute of Family Studies to develop and manage the Australian Centre...

Seminars.(AIFS Activities)
December 22, 2003... Parenting practices (Seminar held at the Institute on 15 May 2003.) Christine Wood, a researcher on Australian parenting practices, presented a seminar on qualitative issues from her doctoral study at the University of Tasmania. The study...

AIFS researchers attend SPRC conference.(AIFS Activities)(Social Policy Research Centre)(Australian Institute of Family Studies)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... The 8th Australian Social Policy Conference was held in Sydney on 9-11 July 2003. This conference, which plays an important role in the promotion of social policy debate, was sponsored by the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of...

AIFS farewells colleague.(AIFS Activities)(Australian Institute of Family Studies)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] CAPTION: Colleagues turned out in force on 7 August 2003 to farewell AIFS researcher Wendy Stone (centre, in the white top) who has taken up the position as Assistant Research Director with the Australian Housing and...

Family law and child protection: on 27 October 2002, the Attorney-General, The Hon Daryl Williams MP, launched the Family Law Council's Report, Family Law and Child Protection. This summary sets out the background and main recommendations raised in that report.(Family Law)
December 22, 2003... The ability, of the Family Court of Australia and the Federal Magistrates Service to properly assess child abuse allegations is a matter of great public concern. Wrong decisions in this area can have tragic long-term consequences for children...

Designing Family Support Programs: Building Children, Family and Community Resilience.(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... by Margaret Sims, Common Ground Publishing, Altona, Victoria, 2002. Price: $49.00. From their beginnings in the United States in the 1970s, family support programs have continued to grow and generate the interest of policy makers and...

Inequality in Australia.(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... by Alastair Greig, Frank Lewins and Kevin White, Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, 2003. Price: $44.95. In this text the authors argue that, although many Australians believe that they live in an egalitarian society, this is...

Part of the Family: Pathways Through Foster Care.(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... by Gillian Schofield, British Association of Adoption and Fostering, London, 2003. How can or does long-term foster care meet the needs of children? What are the different pathways that foster children follow through childhood and into...

Parenting and Disability: Disabled Parents' Experiences of Raising Children.(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... by Richard Olsen and Harriet Clarke, Policy Press, Bristol, 2003. Price: UK 18.99. While much has been written on the subject of parents raising disabled children, much less research has focused on parents who are themselves disabled. This...

What to do when your children turn into teenagers?(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... by David Bennett and Leanne Rowe, Random House, Millson's Point, 2003. Price: $29.95. This book is aimed at providing practical and down-to-earth advice to the parents of teenagers. Written by two medical doctors who specialise in...

Family focused grief therapy: a model of family-centred care during palliative care and bereavement.(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... by David W. Kissane and Sidney Bloch, Open University Press, Buckingham, UK, 2002. This book presents a model of family-centred care, which can be applied during the period of palliative care of the patient, and also during the period of...

Conferences.(Calendar)
December 22, 2003... This short selection of forthcoming family-related conferences is taken from the Australian Institute of Family Studies Internet listing, which is updated weekly. For the complete, up-to-date list, refer to www.aifs.gov.au/...

Mothers in the workforce.(New)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... Changes in the labour force status of lone and couple Australian mothers, 1983-2002, by Matthew Gray, Lixia Qu, Jennifer Renda, David de Vaus, AIFS Research Paper No. 33, June 2003.32 pages. Also available online. This new Research Paper...

Family change and community life.(New)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... Family change and community life: Exploring the links, by Jody Hughes and Wendy Stone, AIFS Research Paper No. 32, April 2003.52 pages. Also available online. Concern about community decline, a prominent theme in the social capital...

Social capital at work.(New)
December 22, 2003... Social capital at work: How family, friends and civic ties relate to labour market outcomes, by Wendy Stone, Matthew Gray and Jody Hughes, Research Paper No. 31, Australian Institute of Family Studies, April 2003.44 pages. Also available...