A Discussion between Quebecois Social Anthropologists and Historians

The article examines the debate between Quebecois anthropologists and historians around the “disparationist” thesis. According to this thesis, first expressed in several 17th century texts, the Attikamegues and Montagnais peoples had completely disappeared by the end of that century due to epidemics and Iroquois raids, and the territories in which they lived were occupied by alien autochthonous groups. Therefore, the modern Innu and Atikamekw are implied not to be the direct descendants of the people who lived here before the arrival of Europeans. Anthropologists criticize this thesis, stressing intergenerational continuity. They see it as a political notion that denies the indigenous rights of the First Nations. The author examines the critical arguments of the anthropologists and tries to reveal the relationship between the political implications of the problem and its purely scientific component. From his point of view, the “disparationist” thesis does not take into account the mobility and the relatively amorphous social structure of taiga hunters, in which even the replacement of some groups by others does not imply a break in continuity.

Understanding and breaking the intergenerational cycle of abuse in families enrolled in routine mental health services: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial and two non-interventional trials investigating mechanisms of change within the UBICA II consortium

Background Parents’ mental illness (MI) and parental history of early life maltreatment (ELM) are known to be significant risk factors for poor parenting while poor parenting is a crucial mediator of the intergenerational continuity of child maltreatment. Hence, maltreatment prevention programs for families with an MI parent, which pay particular attention to experiences of ELM in the parent, are urgently needed. Parental mentalizing was previously found to mediate successful parenting. Interventions aimed at improving the parental mentalizing capacity reduced maltreatment risk in parents. The aim of the present study is to investigate the effectiveness of a mentalization-based parenting-counseling in acutely mentally ill parents currently treated at a psychiatric hospital. Methods Mentalization-based parenting-counseling (MB-PC) vs. enhanced standard clinical care (SCC+) will be administered in a cluster-randomized-controlled trial (RCT). Patients treated at psychiatric hospitals with children between 1.5 and 15 years will be included in the trial. MB-PC will be administered as a 12-h combined individual and group program enriched by social counseling (over a course of 5 weeks) as add-on to standard clinical care, while the control condition will be standard clinical care plus a 90-min psychoeducation workshop on positive parenting. Primary efficacy endpoint is self-reported parenting practices at follow-up. Embedded within the RCT will be two sub-studies investigating social cognition and dyadic synchrony as biobehavioral mechanisms of change. Discussion The main goal of the present study is to investigate ways to break the intergenerational continuity of maltreatment by assessing the benefits of a prevention program which aims at improving parenting in vulnerable mothers and fathers. MB-PC is a short, low-cost intervention which can be delivered by nurses and social workers and is applicable to MI patients with children with a broad range of diagnoses. If it is shown to be effective, it can be directly implemented into standard psychiatric hospital care thereby providing help to prevent child maltreatment. Trial registration German Clinical Trials Register DRKS00017398. Registered on 5 July 2019

Major depression, temperament, and social support as psychosocial mechanisms of the intergenerational transmission of parenting styles

In this three-generation longitudinal study of familial depression, we investigated the continuity of parenting styles, and major depressive disorder (MDD), temperament, and social support during childrearing as potential mechanisms. Each generation independently completed the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI), measuring individuals’ experiences of care and overprotection received from parents during childhood. MDD was assessed prospectively, up to 38 years, using the semi-structured Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (SADS). Social support and temperament were assessed using the Social Adjustment Scale – Self-Report (SAS-SR) and Dimensions of Temperament Scales – Revised, respectively. We first assessed transmission of parenting styles in the generation 1 to generation 2 cycle (G1→G2), including 133 G1 and their 229 G2 children (367 pairs), and found continuity of both care and overprotection. G1 MDD accounted for the association between G1→G2 experiences of care, and G1 social support and temperament moderated the transmission of overprotection. The findings were largely similar when examining these psychosocial mechanisms in 111 G2 and their spouses (G2+S) and their 136 children (G3) (a total of 223 pairs). Finally, in a subsample of families with three successive generations (G1→G2→G3), G2 experiences of overprotection accounted for the association between G1→G3 experiences of overprotection. The results of this study highlight the roles of MDD, temperament, and social support in the intergenerational continuity of parenting, which should be considered in interventions to “break the cycle” of poor parenting practices across generations.

Environment as a sociocultural phenomenon

This article is dedicated to consideration of the environment as a sociocultural phenomenon. Emphasis is placed on the trend of changing the attitude towards environment from technological to sociocultural. Examination of the environment in such paradigm allows reconsidering the phenomenon from axiological perspective, which transforms the attitude towards environment, at times fundamentally. The article employs the analysis of secondary data of the conducted applies research, as well as the expert survey of specialists from the three neighboring countries – Russia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. The following conclusions were formulated: the environment is perceived as universal and regional value that impacts the spiritual life of an individual and the society, thereby ensuring their spiritual security; 2) the adoption of managerial decisions in the environmental sphere should be associated with conceptualization of this phenomenon as sociocultural, which increases the degree of responsibility and importance of the environment for the intergenerational continuity of culture-bearers. The novelty of the work consists in substantiation of the need for paradigm shift in comprehension of the environment as a sociocultural phenomenon. The focus may move from the economic or ultimately ecological attitude towards environment to sociocultural.

The relationship between mothers’ and their daughters’ family size emerged in the United States during the 19th century

For more than a century, a key question of the social sciences has been whether daughters’ family sizes relate to their mothers’ family sizes. Contemporary evidence confirms that, in developed countries, women from larger families indeed tend to have more children themselves. There is considerable doubt, however, whether intergenerational continuity in childbearing constitutes a universal feature of human societies. Based on a large-scale web-harvested collection of online memorials, we show that intergenerational continuity in childbearing in the U.S. emerged only in the first half of the 19th century, paralleling the country’s marked fertility decline. Furthermore, we show that statewide differences in intergenerational continuity in childbearing coincide with statewide differences in abortion laws. This suggests that control over individual fertility was a major driver of the emergence of intergenerational continuity in childbearing. This finding suggests that, although intergenerational continuity in childbearing has appeared only relatively recently in the history of humankind, it will eventually become relevant worldwide.

Grandparents and the transmission of the faith and Christian lifestyle

In the past the multigenerational housing was a necessity due to economic reasons. Young families were only gradually acquiring the means enabling them to become independent of their parents. Overall economic growth and progressive urbanisation have made it possible for young families to gain their independence much more quickly. However, from the perspective of the transmission of faith and Christian lifestyle, this development has broken the natural intergenerational continuity. Young families are often unable to transform the way they live their faith into an adequate lifestyle which used to be transmitted from generation to generation as a matter of course. The surveys on religiosity in Slovakia show the positive influence of grandparents on the transmission of faith. The most important persons in this area are mothers and grandmothers, while fathers and grandfathers' typical feature is their long-term nonparticipation in this process. Recently, we can observe a trend towards the renewal of multigenerational housing with a larger living area linking the autonomy of a nuclear family with its proximity to grandparents. Provided that both sides comply with mutually agreed rules regulating their coexistence and the use of common areas, such housing can be enriching for each of them.