Child-Bearing

3 Key excerpts on "Child-Bearing"

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  eBook - ePub

  Children and Families in the Social Environment

  Modern Applications of Social Work

  • James Garbarino(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  6The Ecology of Childbearing and Child Rearing Garbarino James and L. Benn Joanne There are two lasting bequests we can give our children— one is roots, the other wings. Anonymous

  The decision to accept the responsibilities of parenthood is a bold confrontation between dreams and doubts, between past and future. This chapter uses the ecological perspective to examine the social and psychological aspects of becoming and sustaining a healthy family. Beginning with childbirth as a critical life event, we explore the importance of active parent participation in decisions affecting child development and family life. Important variations in childbirth practices across cultural and historical contexts form the basis for discussing basic issues in parent-child relationships from childhood through adolescence. All those concerned with optimizing the potential of our youngest generation must appreciate the monumental task of maintaining the delicate balance of supports and challenges that give children both roots and wings.

  Childbearing: Birth of the Parent-Child Relationship

  A baby emerges from the protection of the mother’s womb into a new environment. Without the buffering influence provided by the prenatal home, the newborn must adjust to bombardment by the sensations of light, sound, and temperature change. The baby’s parents, too, are encountering profound changes. For the mother, the final stages of labor and delivery mark the culmination of more than 9 months of bodily changes to accommodate the growing fetus. For both parents, the delivery is another important phase in the psychological and social preparation for becoming a parent. Bronfenbrenner (1979) calls these life changes ecological transitions.

  Defined as alterations in an individual’s position in the environment resulting from a change in role or setting, ecological transitions are numerous during pregnancy and childbirth. Examples of transitional events experienced by most parents during the perinatal period include entering the birth setting, seeing and touching the newborn for the first time, and taking the neonate home. Together, this cluster of activities and associated role changes defines and gives meaning to the birth experience as a critical life event that can affect profoundly both newborn and parents for the remainder of their lives.

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  Families, Labour and Love

  Family diversity in a changing world

  • Maureen Baker(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Historians have begun to pay greater attention to children’s contributions to families while social psychologists continue to study early childhood development. Sociologists have tended to focus on the adults in families rather than the children (Eichler 1988, p. 58) and have glossed over other important issues, such as how the experience of childhood has changed from the viewpoint of children, their parents and the state. In recent decades, however, a number of sociologists have studied how children influence their parents’ behaviour (Ambert 1990, 1992), reasons for and against Child-Bearing (Veevers 1980, Cameron 1990, 1997), children and the state (Jamrozik and Sweeney 1996), and theorised about children born through new reproductive technologies (Eichler 1996). Despite these investigations, sociologists have tended to view ‘the family’ as a unit and have overlooked the fact that children may have divergent needs and views from their parents.

  PARENTHOOD, REFLECTION AND CHOICE

  In all three countries, marriage and reproduction within marriage have been associated with maturity, responsibility and the ‘normal’ adult lifestyle. Increasingly, however, whether or not to marry and reproduce are becoming choices for a greater number of people. These choices are allowed by more effective contraceptives, legalised abortion, changing attitudes about alternative lifestyles and more options for women to support themselves through paid work (Renvoize 1985). Despite these options, most people marry at least once and bear children (McDaniel and Tepperman 2000, p. 24).

  Access to safe and reliable contraception is not the only determinant of Child-Bearing decisions. Political economists remind us that fertility choices may also reflect the declining economic value of children, higher expectations of living standards, pressures on women to contribute to the family income, women’s educational and employment aspirations, and life alternatives. Fertility is also influenced by cultural and personal ideals about family size and the timing of births, perceptions of marital stability, and the costs and benefits of reproduction with a particular person in a specific culture or society (Callan 1982a, p. 387).

  Research from many countries indicates that most adults who become parents do so as a matter of course, without much reflection. Those who do not reproduce are either unable to, for physiological or situational reasons, or choose not to. People who decide not to reproduce tend to weigh the advantages and disadvantages and discuss the issues at some length with their partner, family or friends before finalising their decision (Ramu and Tavuchis 1986, Cameron 1997). Researchers have focused on two main explanations for why so many people continue to reproduce, despite the hardships. One relates to social expectations and pressures, and is derived from structural functionalism, and the other emphasises cost/benefit analysis, and is derived from both social exchange theory and the political economy perspective.

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  An Introduction to Population Geographies

  Lives Across Space

  • Holly R. Barcus, Keith Halfacree(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  It stresses fertility’s always relational connection to the other elements of the demographic equation and the multiple arenas of life course constitution (2.3). Section 4.2 starts by summarizing two key ways fertility has been modeled at the aggregate scale. The empirical correlates of such models in the present day are then introduced in Section 4.3 ’s overview of a global fertility divergence. The children produced then come to the fore in Section 4.4 ’s account of the “value” of a child, before Section 4.5 engages with individual and family practices managing timing and spacing of births. Also central to shaping fertility geographies are various state policies, some explicitly demographic, introduced in Section 4.6. Lastly, before the conclusion, Section 4.7 extends the traditional scope of fertility geographies through a broader perspective on conception, birth and parenthood today. 4.1.2 Measuring production of children Fertility refers to the number of children born to an individual or a defined population, often a country. To begin to articulate a process with such far-reaching implications and dimensions, Demographers have devised a range of statistics-based definitions (Holdsworth et al. 2013: 10, 72–76; Poston and Bouvier 2010: 40–52). Three are particularly useful, but increase in both sophistication and data demands, respectively. Crude Birth Rate (CBR) expresses the total number of births occurring in a specified population over a specific period of time. It is easy to calculate and may have direct practical implications (e.g. numbers of new mouths to feed). For a given year: Note that only live births are used to define CBR and that the rate uses the estimated mid-year area population as denominator. Accurate statistics are clearly required for both measures

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