Future of Children
SCOPUS (1994-2021)
1550-1558
1054-8289
Mỹ
Cơ quản chủ quản: Center for the Future of Children
Lĩnh vực:
Sociology and Political ScienceHealth (social science)Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Các bài báo tiêu biểu
The Consequences of Childhood Overweight and Obesity
Researchers are only gradually becoming aware of the gravity of the risk that overweight and obesity pose for children's health. In this article Stephen Daniels documents the heavy toll that the obesity epidemic is taking on the health of the nation's children. He discusses both the immediate risks associated with childhood obesity and the longer-term risk that obese children and adolescents will become obese adults and suffer other health problems as a result. Daniels notes that many obesity-related health conditions once thought applicable only to adults are now being seen in children and with increasing frequency. Examples include high blood pressure, early symptoms of hardening of the arteries, type 2 diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, polycystic ovary disorder, and disordered breathing during sleep. He systematically surveys the body's systems, showing how obesity in adulthood can damage each and how childhood obesity exacerbates the damage. He explains that obesity can harm the cardiovascular system and that being overweight during childhood can accelerate the development of heart disease. The processes that lead to a heart attack or stroke start in childhood and often take decades to progress to the point of overt disease. Obesity in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood may accelerate these processes. Daniels shows how much the same generalization applies to other obesity-related disorders—metabolic, digestive, respiratory, skeletal, and psychosocial—that are appearing in children either for the first time or with greater severity or prevalence. Daniels notes that the possibility has even been raised that the increasing prevalence and severity of childhood obesity may reverse the modern era's steady increase in life expectancy, with today's youth on average living less healthy and ultimately shorter lives than their parents—the first such reversal in lifespan in modern history. Such a possibility, he concludes, makes obesity in children an issue of utmost public health concern.
Tập 16 Số 1 - Trang 47-67 - 2006
Civic Engagement and the Transition to AdulthoodConstance Flanagan and Peter Levine survey research on civic engagement among U.S. adolescents and young adults. Civic engagement, they say, is important both for the functioning of democracies and for the growth and maturation it encourages in young adults, but opportunities for civic engagement are not evenly distributed by social class or race and ethnicity. Today's young adults, note the authors, are less likely than those in earlier generations to exhibit many important characteristics of citizenship, raising the question of whether these differences represent a decline or simply a delay in traditional adult patterns of civic engagement. Flanagan and Levine also briefly discuss the civic and political lives of immigrant youth in the United States, noting that because these youth make up a significant share of the current generation of young adults, their civic engagement is an important barometer of the future of democracy. The authors next survey differences in civic participation for youth from different social, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. They explore two sets of factors that contribute to a lower rate of civic engagement among low-income and minority young adults. The first is cumulative disadvantage—unequal opportunities and influences before adulthood, especially parental education. The second is different institutional opportunities for civic engagement among college and non-college youth during the young-adult years. Flanagan and Levine survey various settings where young adults spend time—schools and colleges, community organizations, faith-based institutions, community organizing and activism projects, and military and other voluntary service programs—and examine the opportunities for civic engagement that each affords. As the transition to adulthood has lengthened, say the authors, colleges have become perhaps the central institution for civic incorporation of younger generations. But no comparable institution exists for young adults who do not attend college. Opportunities for sustained civic engagement by year-long programs such as City Year could provide an alternative opportunity for civic engagement for young adults from disadvantaged families, allowing them to stay connected to mainstream opportunities and to adults who could mentor and guide their way.
Tập 20 Số 1 - Trang 159-179 - 2010
The Prevention of Childhood Sexual Abuse
David Finkelhor examines initiatives to prevent child sexual abuse, which have focused on two primary strategies—offender management and school-based educational programs. Recent major offender managment initiatives have included registering sex offenders, notifying communities about their presence, conducting background employment checks, controlling where offenders can live, and imposing longer prison sentences. Although these initiatives win approval from both the public and policy makers, little evidence exists that they are effective in preventing sexual abuse. Moreover, these initiatives, cautions Finkelhor, are based on an overly stereotyped characterization of sexual abusers as pedophiles, guileful strangers who prey on children in public and other easy-access environments and who are at high risk to re-offend once caught. In reality the population is much more diverse. Most sexual abusers are not strangers or pedophiles; many (about a third) are themselves juveniles. Many have relatively low risks for re-offending once caught. Perhaps the most serious shortcoming to offender management as a prevention strategy, Finkelhor argues, is that only a small percentage of new offenders have a prior sex offense record that would have involved them in the management system. He recommends using law enforcement resources to catch more undetected offenders and concentrating intensive management efforts on those at highest risk to re-offend.
Finkelhor explains that school-based educational programs teach children such skills as how to identify dangerous situations, refuse an abuser’s approach, break off an interaction, and summon help. The programs also aim to promote disclosure, reduce self-blame, and mobilize bystanders. Considerable evaluation research exists about these programs, suggesting that they achieve certain of their goals. Research shows, for example, that young people can and do acquire the concepts. The programs may promote disclosure and help children not to blame themselves. But studies are inconclusive about whether education programs reduce victimization. Finkelhor urges further research and development of this approach, in particular efforts to integrate it into comprehensive health and safety promotion curricula.
Finkelhor also points to evidence that supports counseling strategies both for offenders, particularly juveniles, to reduce re-offending, and for victims, to prevent negative mental health and life course outcomes associated with abuse.
Tập 19 Số 2 - Trang 169-194 - 2009
The Role of Home-Visiting Programs in Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect
Kimberly Howard and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn examine home visiting, an increasingly popular method for delivering services for families, as a strategy for preventing child abuse and neglect. They focus on early interventions because infants are at greater risk for child abuse and neglect than are older children.
In their article, Howard and Brooks-Gunn take a close look at evaluations of nine home-visiting programs: the Nurse-Family Partnership, Hawaii Healthy Start, Healthy Families America, the Comprehensive Child Development Program, Early Head Start, the Infant Health and Development Program, the Early Start Program in New Zealand, a demonstration program in Queensland, Australia, and a program for depressed mothers of infants in the Netherlands. They examine outcomes related to parenting and child well-being, including abuse and neglect.
Howard and Brooks-Gunn conclude that, overall, researchers have found little evidence that home-visiting programs directly prevent child abuse and neglect. But home visits can impart positive benefits to families by way of influencing maternal parenting practices, the quality of the child’s home environment, and children’s development. And improved parenting skills, say the authors, would likely be associated with improved child well-being and corresponding decreases in maltreatment over time. Howard and Brooks-Gunn also report that the programs have their greatest benefits for low-income, first-time adolescent mothers.
Theorists and policy makers alike believe strongly that home visiting can be a beneficial and cost-effective strategy for providing services to families and children. If home-visiting programs are to have their maximum impact, service providers must follow carefully the guidelines mandated by the respective programs, use professional staff whose credentials are consistent with program goals, intervene prenatally with at-risk populations, and carry out the programs with fidelity to their theoretical models.
Tập 19 Số 2 - Trang 119-146 - 2009
Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect with Parent Training: Evidence and Opportunities
Researchers have identified four common co-occurring parental risk factors—substance abuse, mental illness, domestic violence, and child conduct problems—that lead to child maltreatment. The extent to which maltreatment prevention programs must directly address these risk factors to improve responsiveness to parenting programs or can directly focus on improving parenting skills, says Richard Barth, remains uncertain.
Barth begins by describing how each of the four parental issues is related to child maltreatment. He then examines a variety of parent education interventions aimed at preventing child abuse. He cautions that many of the interventions have not been carefully evaluated and those that have been have shown little effect on child maltreatment or its risk factors.
Although some argue that parent education cannot succeed unless family problems are also addressed, much evidence suggests that first helping parents to be more effective with their children can address mental health needs and improve the chances of substance abuse recovery. Barth recommends increased public support for research trials to compare the effectiveness of programs focused on parenting education and those aiming to reduce related risk factors.
Child welfare services and evidence-based parent training, says Barth, are in a period of transformation. Evidence-based methods are rapidly emerging from a development phase that has primarily involved local and highly controlled studies into more national implementation and greater engagement with the child welfare system. The next step is effectiveness trials.
Citing the importance and success of multifaceted campaigns in public health policy, Barth discusses a multifaceted parenting campaign that has demonstrated substantial promise in several large trials. The goal of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program is to help parents deal with the full gamut of children’s health and behavioral issues. The campaign includes five levels of intervention, each featuring a different means of delivery and intensity of service. More broadly, Barth suggests that the evidence-based Triple P approach offers a general framework that could be used to guide the future evolution of parenting programs.
Tập 19 Số 2 - Trang 95-118 - 2009