How adopters’ and foster carers’ perceptions of ‘family’ affect communicative openness in post-adoption contact interactions

This article explores the constructions of communicative openness following adoption. Data from three waves of interviews with six adoptive mothers and four foster carers were collected, transcribed verbatim and analysed in keeping with a social constructivist grounded theory methodology. The results show that the way ‘family’ is constructed can both facilitate and impede communicative openness. Those who hold a fluid, child-centred concept of family, are willing to construct it as different and can accept the ebb and flow of family membership intuitively and view such openness as a natural part of caring for children. Those with a more traditional, nuclear construction of family may associate adoption with fear, a sense of biological related competition and the need to control the controllable, all of which act as barriers to communicative openness. The study demonstrates that communicative openness is person and context sensitive and emphasises the need to think creatively and flexibly about the very nature of family.

Conservation in the Iron Responsive Element Family

Iron responsive elements (IREs) are mRNA stem-loop targets for translational control by the two iron regulatory proteins IRP1 and IRP2. They are found in the untranslated regions (UTRs) of genes that code for proteins involved in iron metabolism. There are ten “classic” IRE types that define the conserved secondary and tertiary structure elements necessary for proper IRP binding, and there are 83 published “IRE-like” sequences, most of which depart from the established IRE model. Here are structurally-guided discussions regarding the essential features of an IRE and what is important for IRE family membership.

Not Entirely Married: Resisting the Hegemonic Patrilineal Family in Japan's Household Registry

The koseki 戸籍 (family or household registry) has long served as a material representation of the conceptual structure of Japanese family relations. Membership in a family has been stipulated and proved through registration in a koseki document defined through a shared surname and address. Evidence of family membership for purposes of legal transactions and social interactions has rested in the koseki document. However, during the past several decades some women have questioned the social pressure and legal requirement to change their names in marriage, choosing instead to maintain their surname by refusing to register their marriages to their “husbands.” Claiming themselves “married” but not legally registering their marriages, this growing group of name-change resisters defines their nonregistered marriages as jijitsukon 事実婚 (common-law or real marriage). Drawing on ethnographic research with women in jijitsukon marriages in Tokyo who refuse to share a koseki with their “husbands,” this article explores the implications of marital registration resistance in a marriage-centric society and the concurrent critique of the koseki system (the Koseki Law, koseki document, and the broader system of registration) and the legal marriage structure at the core of women's claims to be married when they do not meet Japan's legal criteria for marriage.

Meta-Analysis of Gene Popularity: Less Than Half of Gene Citations Stem from Gene Regulatory Networks

The reasons for selecting a gene for further study might vary from historical momentum to funding availability, thus leading to unequal attention distribution among all genes. However, certain biological features tend to be overlooked in evaluating a gene’s popularity. Here we present a meta-analysis of the reasons why different genes have been studied and to what extent, with a focus on the gene-specific biological features. From unbiased datasets we can define biological properties of genes that reasonably may affect their perceived importance. We make use of both linear and nonlinear computational approaches for estimating gene popularity to then compare their relative importance. We find that roughly 25% of the studies are the result of a historical positive feedback, which we may think of as social reinforcement. Of the remaining features, gene family membership is the most indicative followed by disease relevance and finally regulatory pathway association. Disease relevance has been an important driver until the 1990s, after which the focus shifted to exploring every single gene. We also present a resource that allows one to study the impact of reinforcement, which may guide our research toward genes that have not yet received proportional attention.

Signaling and Stakeholder Honesty: On the Individual and Combined Effects of Owner Family Membership and Religious Affiliation

Stakeholder honesty is highly important for managers, for instance, in decisions involving hiring. Due to reciprocity, stakeholders are more likely to be honest if the managers act honestly themselves. However, external stakeholders often cannot observe managers’ actions and instead have to rely on signals. This article examines the effects of two signals—a manager’s owner family membership and religious affiliation—on stakeholder honesty. By conducting an economic experiment and a survey, we find that stakeholders behave more honestly toward family managers compared to nonfamily managers. This effect is reinforced if the family manager is presented as religious.

Families Are Socially Constructed: Pragmatic Implications for Researchers

Scholars have long recognized that the boundaries of family membership and definitions of family relationships are socially constructed. The social construction of family membership, and the accompanying ambiguity surrounding family language and labels, particularly in complex families who have experienced divorce, remarriage, and other structural transitions, creates obstacles for recruiting study participants and for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data. In this paper, we explore how the increasing complexity of family structure and family membership can pose pragmatic challenges for researchers. Using our own work as examples, as well as the research of others, we share methodological approaches to addressing these challenges within both qualitative and quantitative research designs. We argue that giving primacy to respondents’ relational definitions changes how researchers approach their projects, stimulates innovative theoretical thinking, and advances understanding of how individuals and families construct their social worlds.

One or two languages for children on the autism spectrum?

The emerging research comparing verbal and non‑verbal development in typical individuals and those on the autism spectrum reveals no differences in the acquisition rate of specific features or concepts. Research on families suggests that what parents need is not to be given advice, but rather to be understood and supported by professionals who are family‑centered as well as culturally and linguistically responsive. Choices about language use in families are complex matters that shift dynamically over time. These shifts can include changes in family membership, situational demands, variations in language proficiencies and many other constraints and affordances of family life that require constant adaptation and fluidity. Which language parents choose to speak with their children comes from deeply personal decisions that are neither right nor wrong, but those decisions are often constrained under the weight of fear and misinformation. Speech‑language pathologists play an indispensable role in lifting this weight so that families feel the freedom to arrive at ways of speaking that promote their families’ wellness and goals.

Getting to Adoption

Chapter 1 explores the factors that influenced couples’ decision to pursue adoption, as well as their feelings, hopes, and fears surrounding adoption. Some couples—particularly heterosexual couples—recounted years of struggling to conceive, often with the help of painful, invasive, and expensive fertility drugs and treatments. Others described genetic or medical barriers to conceiving. This chapter also addresses the kinds of circumstances, beliefs, and experiences that fostered participants’ openness to adoption as a path to parenthood. For example, having family members who were adopted enabled a basic familiarity with adoption as a family-building route, making it less “foreign” than it was to some people—and served as evidence that biogenetic ties were not prerequisites for family membership and love.

Job Satisfaction, Turnover Intention and Work Performance in Chinese Family Enterprises

Based on the analysis of survey data of 121 family enterprises in China, we find that the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover intention is insignificant for family members, but significant for non-family members. Moreover, our findings also indicate that the effect of job satisfaction on work performance is less salient for family members, but more significant for non-family members. Our results further show that managerial positions moderates the main effects. This paper enriches the literature of family business by examining the importance of family membership and managerial position in the governance of family enterprises in an emerging country.

Who-All’s Coming Down to the Island: Belonging at the Lewis Fishery

While some roles may naturally make a person belong on Lewis Island (e.g. Lewis family membership), “belonging” is a trajectory of more or less connection, determined ultimately by people’s commitment to the Big Stories, particularly those of tradition and the communal values of civility, kindness, and connection. This chapter begins with an explanation of how one becomes a crew member and what that means, then moves to how anyone comes to “belong” on the island. The discussion then moves to the wider issue of ethnic, gender, age, ability, and religious diversity. While the Lewis Fishery and Lambertville have long been sites of noteworthy acceptance, this chapter traces how individual biographies and wider social trends have interacted with inclusive strategies on the island as part of larger cultural changes.