The Ecology of Childhood

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Bennett Woodhouse
Keyword(s):  
Ecological Model ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Labor Conditions ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Rights Of The Child ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Physical Environments ◽  
Collective Survival

This book uses the ecological model of child development together with ethnographic and comparative studies of two small villages, in Italy and the US, as its framework for examining the well-being of children in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Global forces, far from being distant and abstract, are revealed as wreaking havoc in children’s environments even in economically advanced countries of the OECD. Falling birth rates, deteriorating labor conditions, fraying safety nets, rising rates of child poverty and a surge in racism and populism are explored in the dish of the village as well as data-based studies. Globalism’s discontents—unrestrained capitalism and technological change, rising inequality, mass migration, and the juggernaut of climate change--are rapidly destabilizing and degrading the social and physical environments necessary to our collective survival and well-being. This crisis demands a radical restructuring of our macrosystemic value systems. Rejecting metrics such as GDP, Efficiency and Bigness, this book proposes instead an ecogenerist theory that asks whether our policies and politics foster environments in which children and families can flourish. It proposes, as a benchmark, the family supportive human rights principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The author uses stories from actual children’s lives, in both small and urban settings, to explore the ecology of childhood and illustrate children’s rights principles in action. The book closes by highlighting ways individuals can work at the local and regional levels to create more just and sustainable worlds that are truly fit for children.

Children of the Great American Recession

2020 ◽  
pp. 131-150
Author(s):  
Barbara Bennett Woodhouse
Keyword(s):  
Child Maltreatment ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Global Competitiveness ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
The Government ◽  
The U.S

Chapter seven examines the effects of the Great Recession on U.S. children. It opens with a discussion of various methods for measuring national well-being. Each measure, from Gross Domestic Product and the Global Competitiveness Index to the Human Development Index, the GINI Index of inequality, reflects different priorities. In measuring changes in child well-being, poverty is a key factor. The author reviews leading methods for measuring child poverty, including absolute versus relative benchmarks, market child poverty versus poverty after government benefits, the poverty gap between children and other groups, and boundaries between poverty and extreme poverty. In measuring changes in child well-being, in addition to poverty, researchers study food insecurity, housing instability, health-care gaps, and child maltreatment. In each category, the author uses a comparative lens to explore the long term effects of recession and the national response in the U.S. and Europe. At the macro level, national “politics”—defined as the authoritative allocation of values and distribution of rewards in wealth, power, and status—shaped the government response. The author documents the U.S. government’s failure to address rising levels of child poverty, malnutrition, homelessness, infant and maternal mortality, and child maltreatment associated with the recession.

Globalization

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-204
Author(s):  
Barbara Bennett Woodhouse
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Family Separation ◽  
Technological Revolution ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
The Many ◽  
Rich Countries

Chapter nine identifies the elephant in the room—the threat to children’s well-being posed by globalization. While recognizing the many benefits of globalism, the author identifies six damaging phenomena related to globalization that are degrading the ecology of childhood. These threats are (1) unrestrained capitalism, (2) runaway technological revolution, (3) rising inequality, (4) mass migration, (5) racial and ethnic conflict, and (6) the apocalyptic crisis of climate change. The author shows how these phenomena, far from being distant and abstract from children’s lives, are affecting every level of the ecology of childhood, from the microsystems of family life to the macrosystems that shape national and global agendas. Collectively, these phenomena are responsible for many of the problems already highlighted in the book, including deteriorating wages and working conditions for parents, diminished opportunity for young people to start families, the trauma of family separation and forced migration, and unconscionable rates of child poverty even in rich countries. These troubling developments, if unrecognized and unaddressed, threaten children’s cognitive and social development, undercut intergenerational solidarity, and increase children’s vulnerability to illness, natural disaster and environmental degradation.

How a Comparative Study of Childhood Became a Story of Global Crisis

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Barbara Bennett Woodhouse
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Adult Health ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Adverse Childhood

Chapter one provides a chronological account of the evolution of the project. It began in 2008 as a study comparing Italy’s social welfare approach and with the United States’ free market approach, to explore how social polices affect the ecology of childhood in rich nations. It rapidly became the story of an environmental crisis on a global scale. When the great recession struck both countries, the vulnerability of both systems was revealed. Even as politicians seeking to stabilize markets slashed at existing safety nets, neuroscientific research was documenting the lifelong effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) on brain development, adult health and well-being. The strains of recession fuelled a populist backlash and nationalistic political leaders in both countries gained control by inflaming anti-immigrant and white nationalist sentiments. The discontents of globalization, including market economics, technological revolution, rising inequality, mass migration, and climate change, were clearly calling into question dominant assumptions about prosperity through limitless growth. The book evolved to document these changes over a ten-year period. Chapter one closes by explaining the rationale for starting at the micro level; examining the small worlds of children provides a foundation for understanding how global forces are affecting the intimate ecologies of childhood.

Growing up in Poverty: Children and the Great Recession in Spain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Ayllón
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Business Cycle ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Economic Well Being

This chapter provides a diagnosis of the economic ill-fare of Spanish children since 2008 with the objective of assessing the impact that the Great Recession has had on them. The results show children’s great economic vulnerability to changes in the business cycle. The Great Recession has had important consequences on the economic well-being of many children—not only because of the sky-high unemployment rates of the adults that look after them, but also because of the lack of a generous and comprehensive social protection system that can be relied upon when the economy slows down. Notwithstanding this, it is important to remember that child poverty was a major social problem in Spain before this economic downturn.

Advocating for Transgender and Non-Binary Affirmative Spaces in Graduate Education

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Knutson ◽  
Em Matsuno ◽  
Chloe Goldbach ◽  
Halleh Hashtpari ◽  
Nathan Grant Smith
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Graduate Education ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Ecological Model ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Educational Success ◽  
Post Secondary Education ◽  
Identity Exploration ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Social Ecological

Nearly 50% of graduate students report experiencing emotional or psychological distress during their enrollment in graduate school. Levels of distress are particularly high for transgender and non-binary graduate students who experience daily discrimination and marginalization. Universities and colleges have yet to address and accommodate the needs and experiences of transgender and non-binary graduate students. Given the multitude of challenges these students may face, educational settings should not present additional barriers to educational success and well-being. In an effort to improve graduate education for transgender and non-binary students, we add to the existing scholarship on affirming work with transgender undergraduate students by addressing the unique concerns of graduate students. We utilize a social-ecological model to identify sources of discrimination in post-secondary education and to provide transgender- and non-binary-affirming recommendations at structural, interpersonal, and individual levels. For practitioners who wish to do personal work, we provide guidance for multicultural identity exploration. A table of recommendations and discussion of ways to implement our recommendations are provided.

On Major Conceptual Shifts within Research on Child Well-Being in Estonia

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2-2020) ◽  
pp. 174-184
Author(s):  
Dagmar Kutsar
Keyword(s):  
Social Issue ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Social ◽  
Children And Childhood ◽  
International Comparative

The aim of this paper is to highlight major shifts in research regarding children and childhood as a narrative of the author. It starts from presenting a retrospective of child poverty research in Estonia, and it is demonstrated how it has developed from the social and political acknowledgement of poverty as a social issue in the early 1990s. Then it revisits main shifts in theory and methodology of childhood research and reaches international comparative approaches to child subjective and relational well-being.

Early human relations set the foundation for adult health and working life

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Sinclair ◽  
Tam Baillie
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Adult Health ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Rights Of The Child ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Evidence Analysis ◽  
Before School ◽  
Child Health Research ◽  
Early Human

Investing in early years is close to magic, without being magic. The United Nations has given greater prominence to the early years through a General Comment on the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Health research is gravitating to a view that adult physical and mental conditions have their origins in the womb and the earliest months and years of life. More than any other skills, employers want people who can talk, listen, and work with others: attributes that are largely picked up before school. Economists have demonstrated that the best return on investment in ‘education’ is in supporting parents and children, in the years before school. While evidence, analysis, and experience, which we review, points in one direction, it leads to three questions. Where are we now in child well-being and supporting parents and their very young children? Why are we not doing better? What can be done?

Middle and Below Living Standards: What Can We Learn from Beyond Income Measures of Economic Well-being?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marii Paskov ◽  
Joan E. Madia ◽  
Tim Goedemé
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Material Deprivation ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Household Level ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Working Age ◽  
Household Incomes ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Economic Well Being

This chapter complements the income-based measures of living standards on which earlier chapters have focused by incorporating non-income dimensions of economic well-being into its analysis, including indicators of material deprivation, economic burdens, and financial stress. It analyses how working-age households around and below the middle of the income distribution fared in European countries in the years before, during, and after the Great Recession. Harmonized household-level data across the members of the EU are analysed to see whether the evolution of these various non-income measures present a similar or different picture to household incomes over time. To probe what lies behind the patterns this reveals, four quite different countries are then examined in greater depth. Finally, the chapter also explores the relationship between material deprivation for households around and below the middle and overall income inequality.

Belgium: Creeping Vulnerability of Children

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Vinck ◽  
Wim Van Lancker
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Important Lesson ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Poverty Risk ◽  
Poor Households ◽  
Families With Children ◽  
The Impact

Belgium has been plagued by comparatively high levels of child poverty, and by a creeping, yet significant, increase that started in the good years before the crisis. This is related to the relatively high share of jobless households, the extremely high and increasing poverty risk of children growing up in these households, and benefits that are inadequate to shield jobless families with children from poverty. Although the impact of the Great Recession was limited in Belgium, the crisis seems to have had an impact on child poverty, by increasing the number of children living in work-poor households. Although the Belgian welfare state had an important cushioning impact, its poverty-reducing capacity was less strong than it used to be. The most important lesson from the crisis is that in order to make further headway in reducing child poverty, not only activation but also social protection should be improved.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document