Paternal body mass index before conception associated with offspring's birth weight in Chinese population: a prospective study

Whether paternal epigenetic information of nutrition might be inherited by their offspring remained unknown. evaluate the relationship between preconception paternal body weight and their offspring's birth weight in 1,810 Chinese mother-father-baby trios. Information on paternal and maternal preconception body weight and height was collected via a self-reported questionnaire. Birth weight was collected from medical records. Paternal preconception body weight was associated with offspring's birth weight (p trend=0.02) after multivariable adjustment. Each standard deviation increment of paternal body mass index was associated with an additional 29.6 g increase of birth weight (95% confident interval: 5.7g, 53.5g). The association was more pronounced in male neonates, and neonates with overweight mothers, and with mothers who gained excessive gestational weight, compared to their counterparts (all p interaction<0.05). Sensitivity analyses showed similar pattern to that of the main analysis. Paternal preconception body weight was associated with birth weight of their offspring.

Low Involvement and Ineffective Monitoring Link Mothers’ Work-Family Conflict and Adolescent Self-Control

Understanding what explains the individual differences in adolescent self-control is crucial, given the importance of self-control to positive youth development. This research examines the extent to which mothers’ work–family conflict (WFC) associates with adolescent self-control via parenting (i.e., involvement, positive parenting, poor monitoring/supervision, and corporal punishment). One hundred and eighty-eight Chinese mother–child dyads participated in the research. Mothers reported on their WFC and parenting at T1, and adolescents rated their self-control 2.5 months later. Results of mediation model found that low involvement and poor monitoring/supervision linked the association between mothers’ WFC and adolescent self-control, net the effect of child sex, family socioeconomic status, and mothers’ marriage and working status. These findings suggest that boosting working mothers’ involvement and monitoring/supervision could be promising ways to nurture their adolescent children’s self-control, particularly for mothers with high WFC.

The role of agency in the language choices of a trilingual two-year-old in conversation with monolingual grandparents

This study examines the role of agency in a young trilingual child’s language choice in interaction with her Mandarin-speaking grandparents. The child was born in Japan to a Chinese mother and a Japanese father. English is used as a lingua franca in the family. The study demonstrates how the child asserts her agency to negotiate the decisions and efforts made by the grandparents. The bond of the heritage language and culture, and the value of child trilingualism are strongly desired and explicitly implemented in the grandparents’ monolingual or ‘bilingual-like’ discourse strategies in dealing with the child’s mixed codes. Meanwhile, the child’s flexible language use is not a passive response to the grandparents’ strategies but an exercise of her four significant senses and behaviour, which are: (1) resisting through no response; (2) moving on in a dual-lingual conversation; (3) assisting the grandparents to decode her non-Mandarin speech; and (4) modifying the language choices of herself and others. This study suggests that language choices of trilingual children are complex. It also provides empirical evidence that grandparents provide an important incentive in the planning of family language policy.

How Cultural Parenting Impacts Children’s Academics and Creativity

Parent-child interactions are influenced by cultural expectations, beliefs, and values. Chinese parenting is shaped by Confucian principles. Chinese children tend to be more academically successful but less creative than American children. Yet, little is known about how actual parent-child interactions might contribute to this finding. We conducted three case studies using a social constructivist approach to parenting to explore how parent-child interactions in early childhood education might influence children’s academics and creativity. We studied 11 participants from three families: Chinese, interracial (Chinese mother and American father), and American. Through interviews, observations, and artifacts, we found that parenting decisions are influenced by parents’ cultural climates. Chinese parents trained children to learn for academic achievement; American parents encouraged children to pursue their own interests; and inter-racial parents did some of both.

Image of the Great Mother Yan Zhengzai in the Chinese Culture and Literature

This article aims to present Confucius’ mother, Yan Zhengzai, in the Chinese ancient literature and history, remembering her feats of home education and praising her wisdom as the first representative of wise women in the Chinese traditional culture. China has never had a Mother’s Day, because there is no consensus on the typical representative of a Chinese mother. Confucius (28 September 551 B.C. — 11 April 479 B.C.) is one of the representatives of Chinese culture, his doctrine — Confucianism — is the foundation and spiritual mentality of the Chinese nation. Yang Zhengzai was both Confucius’s mother and first teacher. With her unique and new vision, concept, content, and teaching method, she brought up Confucius as the “Wise Teacher of Antiquity”, a great thinker, and educator of the traditional society of ancient China. She left the precious wisdom for Chinese matriarchal culture behind, making this great woman a worthy Chinese Holy Mother. This paper details the hard mental journey of the great mother and her teaching principles for the dignified development of the great son, as well as presenting other Chinese great mothers. The authors note that Yan Zhengzai is the most successful female model of family education in China and the world. Therefore, the authors propose to establish a Mother’s Day in China honoring Yang Zhengzai.

Extension sémantique de lexie chez des apprenants chinois plurilingues

RÉSUMÉ. L’extension sémantique, un genre d’erreur interlinguale dans la production en français (L3) des apprenants chinois dont L2 est l’anglais, présenterait-elle des influences translinguistiques des deux langues : chinois (langue maternelle) et anglais ? Telle est la question de cette recherche réalisée par le biais d’une enquête menée auprès de 137 étudiants de français dans quatre universités chinoises, afin de découvrir le mécanisme de mental processing des apprenants plurilingues. Avec les analyses quantitatives (Test-t) et qualitatives des productions écrites et en s’appuyant sur des théories de transfert (Swan, 1997 ; Jiang, 2000 ; Wei, 2009) et la théorie du prototype, on découvre que l’interférence des lemmes plurilingues (chinois-français, anglais-français, chinois-anglais-français) remonte à des extensions sémantiques : Les catégories sémantiques des lemmes n’étant pas les mêmes, les apprenants auraient tendance à construire certains lemmes de L3 (le français dans ce cas) en se balançant entre ceux de L1 et de L2. Ainsi, il faut considérer davantage les influences des langues non-cibles, notamment l’interférence de L2 dans l’enseignement/apprentissage de L3. Mots-clés : Extension sémantique, habileté, influence translinguistique, lemme, source de transfert ABSTRACT. Semantic extension, a typical interlingual error in French-language production (L3) of Chinese students (their L2 is English), does it present the cross-linguistic influence of two languages: Chinese (mother tongue) and English? This is the research question, realized by a survey conducted among 137 students of French in four Chinese universities, in order to discover multilingual learners’ mental processing mechanism. With quantitative (T test) and qualitative analysis of written productions, using the transfer theories (Swan, 1997; Jiang, 2000; Wei, 2009) and prototype theory, the research discovers that the interference of multilingual lemmas (Chinese-French, English-French, Chinese-English-French) accounts for semantic extensions: the learners tend to construct some lemmas of L3 (French in the case) by swaying between lemmas of L1 and L2. Thus, it needs to consider further the influences from non-target languages, particularly the interference of L2 in teaching/learning of L3. Keywords: cross-linguistic influence, lemma, semantic extension, skill, source of transfer