Risk versus Resilience in Parents’ Health and Family Functioning Across the Pandemic

Are parents and families struggling with the ongoing demands of the pandemic, or are parents resilient and adjusted to the ‘new normal’? Assessing average risk versus resilience requires examining how parents and families have fared across the pandemic, beyond the initial months examined in prior investigations. The current research examines average levels of risk versus resilience in parents’ health and functioning over the first 1.5 years of the pandemic. Parents (N = 272) who had completed general assessments prior to the pandemic completed reassessments of psychological and physical health, couple and family functioning, and parenting within two lockdowns involving mandatory home confinement: at the beginning of the pandemic (26 March–28 April 2020) and 17 months later (18 August–21 September 2021). On average, parents exhibited declines in psychological and physical health (greater depressive symptoms; reduced well-being, energy and physical health) and in couple and family functioning (reduced commitment and family cohesion; greater problem severity and family chaos). By contrast, parent-child relationship quality and parenting practices were resilient with no average differences across the lockdowns. Declines in health and couple/family functioning generally occurred irrespective of pre-existing vulnerabilities (poor health and functioning prior to the pandemic) and external stress (reported impact of the pandemic). Partner support, however, tended to buffer declines in couple/family functioning. The results emphasize that attending to the challenges parents and couples face in the home will be important targets to mitigate the ongoing risks of the pandemic to parents’ and children’s well-being.

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Cognitive Abilities in Extreme Poverty

To improve global human capital, an understanding of the interplay of endowment across the full range of socioeconomic status (SES) is needed. Relevant data, however, are absent in the nations with the most abject poverty (Tucker-Drob & Bates, 2016), where the lowest heritability and strong effects of SES are predicted. Here we report the first study of biopsychosocial gene–environment interaction in extreme poverty. In a sub-Saharan sample of early teenage twins (N = 3192), we observed substantial (~30–40%) genetic influence on cognitive abilities. Surprisingly, shared environmental influences were similar to those found in adolescents growing in Western affluent countries (25–28%). G × SES moderation was estimated at aˋ = .06 (p = .355). Family chaos did not moderate genetic effects but did moderate shared environment influence. Heritability of cognitive abilities in extreme poverty appears comparable to Western data. Reduced family chaos may be a modifiable factor promoting cognitive development.

A Study on Importance and Efficacy of Self Help Groups in Women Employment

“Women”; a word that reminds us our mother, sisters, wife, daughters fulfilling all their family chaos and now they can be seen in more modern roles like managers, educators, political leaders and much more is coming. Today they have even dared to break the gender barriers to become mountaineers, pilots and even serving combat roles in armed forces. In India, after independence the constitution leaders and policy makers realized the fact that, in order to develop whole country it is very important to put women in equal position to men. It was the need of the hour to make women empower economically, socially, politically, legally as well as psychologically. Education is the first and foremost way to empower them as it created awareness and enable them to take decisions.Self Help Groups (SHGs) have become the vehicle of change in the rural areas, transforming the lives of the marginalized. SHGs organize the poor and the marginalized to join hands to solve their problems and the method has been very successfully used by the government and the Non-Government Organizations in achieving several goals. As a firm or enterprise, SHG performs the role of collective bank and enterprise and ensures better access to loans with a lower rate of interest to start micro unit enterprise. SHGs have emerged as a powerful instrument in order to eliminate poverty and for the empowerment of women in the rural economy. SHGs through the network of commercial banks, co-operative banks, regional rural banks, NABARD and NGOs are largely supply driven and a recent approach in the provision of financial services to the poor and further upgrading their status in the society. In this empirical study we analyze the performance of the SHG’s in order to understand the benefits it has accrued to the females of the society. The paper here focuses on appraising the women empowerment in various fields like economical, psychological, social etc. with the help of Self Help Groups.