Who Is Watching the Children? A Quantitative Analysis of Strategies for Reconciling Work and Parenting during Lockdown in Northern Italy

(1) Background: In their efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19, most countries closed schools and kindergartens. To date, little is known about the strategies of working families reconciling work and parenting during repeated lockdown situations. (2) Methods: We performed a quantitative survey of working parents in Italy during a week of ‘hard lockdown’ in February/March 2021. (3) Results: 3725 voluntary adult participants from different households responded. Though officially not allowed, 53.4% of all participants sought help from people outside the nuclear family to bridge the situation, mostly the grandparents (79%; n = 1855). Overall, parental coping strategies included alternating working–childcare-turns with their partner (35%, n = 1316), working early in the morning or during nighttime (23%; n = 850), or leaving the children unattended (25%, n = 929). (4) Conclusions: The closure of schools/kindergartens forcefully shifts the responsibility for childcare onto the nuclear family, where new strategies arose, including health-damaging models of alternating work–childcare-shifts, ‘illegal’ involvement of third parties from outside the nuclear family, as well as neglect of age-related childcare. Our findings underline that working families need additional support strategies during repeated closure of childcare institutions to be able to reduce contact and minimize secondary damage.

Contested Territory

The extent to which non-elite youth in premodern Western societies had a culture of their own is an open question. “Youth culture” here refers to the many ways in which young people found meaning in and made meaning out of their lives, while “non-elite youth” designates young men and women who grew up in working families: peasants, artisans, and day laborers. Just as the status of youth was ambiguous, the culture of non-elite youth was contested, both between youth and the rest of society and between male and female youth. The times and spaces available to non-elite boys and girls to develop and experience their own culture were framed by the tasks they had to accomplish during youth: acquire the skills that would allow them to earn a living and find a spouse. In the early modern period, the customary tolerance of the disruptive and rowdy aspects of youth behavior—rebelliousness, illicit sexuality, and violence—gave way to fear and suspicion, as spiritual and political rulers throughout Europe undertook campaigns to control, Christianize, restrict, or ban various manifestations of youth culture and the activities of youth groups. The effect of such measures was limited, which suggests that they were not consistently enforced and that the common people continued to tolerate youthful disorder. Historians’ responses have been as ambivalent as those of premodern adults. Was the (predominantly male) culture of non-elite youth an expression of joy, creativity, and freedom and inherently benign, even utopian, or was it inherently violent, aggressive, and cruel?

From Oracy to Literacy in the Classroom: Implications for Mother Tongue-based Bilingual Education in Cameroon

Observation of early childhood education in Cameroon reveals that children on their first day at school have not acquired sufficient oral competence in their L1. They go to school at the age of two when the language acquisition phase is still in its initial stages. The result is systematic separation of the child from the family. Among educated and working families, this separation becomes almost total and communication significantly reduces between parents and their children who are either under the care of the school mistress or that of the caretaker. This has a serious effect on the development of oral communication competencies as an essential phase in language acquisition and learning. In this paper, I examine oral competence in the classroom as an important phase in the successful development of children’s reading and writing skills. Based on the Cameroonian situation, I argue that efficient mother tongue-based bilingual education must consider oracy as a primary link in overall literacy achievement in the classroom. Oracy is presented to have significant cultural, cognitive and pedagogic implications. Accordingly, programmes for the training of trainers should systematically integrate oral mother tongue teaching at all levels for better and improved levels of sustained literacy skills.

‘Victory’ against poverty cements Xi’s legitimacy

Significance The campaign has improved living conditions for tens of millions of people in remote areas, but diverted resources away from working families struggling under the economic downturn and the COVID-19 pandemic. It has also exposed deep-seated failings of China’s bureaucracy and its top-down command structure. Impacts Reform of China’s household registration (hukou) system is once again on the political agenda. Improving healthcare for people living outside the major cities -- the majority of the population -- is a now a government priority. The government will encourage the private sector to provide wider childcare and eldercare services for working families.