In this article our aim is to reveal an apparently paradoxical situation for normative sex/ gender patterns in relation to upbringing.The discussion focuses on to what extend women discharging from the cultural mandate of motherhood, and men meeting as fathers the process of day-to-day care, would raise the appearance of new models who travel with greater freedom and autonomy, beyond gender roles forced limits.In the first part, a review of specialized literature has provided us with the conceptual developments around women without offspring and/or free from it, as well as the construction of paternity by men who assume and claim their children's care and nurturance.In the second part, we show the results of our field work performed through in-depth interviews revealing the experiences of women and men from their standpoint as subjects declining motherhood and vindicating fatherhood respectively.
The issue of violence against children has received a lot of attention in all regions of the world as children are exposed to excessive violence in almost every aspect of their lives. Many efforts have been made and still are being made to confront this serious problem. It is noticeable through some observations, some statistics, and the results of some research studies that the rates of violence directed at a child with a disability are higher than the rates of violence directed at a non-disabled child. Perhaps this may be due to several reasons which will be explained in the current paper. This paper aims to shed some light on the problem of child violence directed at the child with a disability, in terms of definition, types, statistics, and factors leading. The paper also aims to clarify the role of the social work profession in facing or confronting this problem. Perhaps clarifying this provides social workers who are working in the field of disability a guide to help them know the professional roles required of them and to perform or exercise these roles. At the end of the working paper, a number of proposals and recommendations were presented that could be used in improving the process of effective confrontation of the problem of violence against children in general and violence against children with disabilities in particular.
BACKGROUND: Compassion is central to neonatal end-of-life care, ensuring comfort and dignity for neonates with life-limiting conditions and their families. However, the emotional and ethical challenges faced by neonatal palliative care nurses, particularly in culturally diverse settings, remain underexplored, limiting the development of effective support mechanisms. AIM: This study aims to explore the lived experiences of neonatal palliative care nurses in Egypt, focusing on how they cultivate and sustain compassion in end-of-life care. It examines the role of compassion in shaping caregiving practices, ethical decision-making, and coping with emotional distress. Additionally, it investigates the cultural and institutional facilitators and barriers that influence compassionate care delivery, generating evidence-based recommendations for nursing education, practice, and policy. METHODS: A qualitative phenomenological study guided by Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was conducted. Forty nurses from four neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) in Egypt completed semi-structured interviews and reflective journaling. Data were analyzed using a two-phase approach, incorporating Lazarus and Folkman's Transactional Model of Stress and Coping to contextualize findings within broader emotional regulation and resilience frameworks. RESULTS: Analysis yielded seven themes. Nurses reported developing deep emotional bonds with neonates and families, which enhanced care quality but also intensified personal grief and ethical dilemmas. Compassion emerged as a key mechanism for facilitating empathetic communication and holistic care, yet sustaining it was hindered by compassion fatigue, high workloads, insufficient training, and cultural expectations complicating end-of-life decision-making. CONCLUSION: Compassion is crucial in mitigating neonatal palliative care nurses' emotional and ethical burdens. To sustain compassionate care, robust institutional support, culturally responsive training, and interdisciplinary collaboration are essential. These findings inform nursing education, policy, and practice, emphasizing strategies to enhance nurse well-being and improve care quality in diverse healthcare settings. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Strengthening institutional policies, integrating resilience training, and developing culturally sensitive communication strategies are critical to ensuring sustainable, compassionate care in neonatal palliative settings.
OBJECTIVE: To map the barriers identified by healthcare professionals to the prevention of violence against children. METHOD: This scoping review was conducted in accordance with the JBI methodology for scoping reviews. The search was conducted using the MedLine, CINAHL, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, ERIC, Cochrane, MedicLatina, Scopus, Web of Science, RCAAP, and MedNar databases. RESULTS: A total of 1,674 publications were identified, with 45 studies included in the review. Barriers were most frequently reported in relation to the identification and reporting of violence against children. Recurrent challenges included deficits in knowledge and training, professional insecurity, excessive workload, and limited time availability. Cultural, social, and organizational factors also emerged as significant cross-cutting obstacles. CONCLUSION: The need for targeted training, improved working conditions, and strengthened inter-institutional collaboration is highlighted as a priority area identified in the literature to address the complex and interconnected barriers faced by healthcare professionals in the prevention and combat of violence against children.
Joana Rodrigues, Silvia Luz, Susana Margarida Rodrigues Custódio et al.
OBJECTIVE: to understand the perception of teachers and health professionals regarding the use of the Play Nicely Program for parents/caregivers in the prevention of violence against children. METHOD: a descriptive and exploratory qualitative study was conducted through three focus groups with twenty primary school teachers and primary health care professionals who implemented the Program for parents/caregivers in 2022. The data analysis was guided by French discourse analysis, interpreted through the lens of Urie Bronfenbrenner's theory. RESULTS: three categories emerged from the participants' perceptions: innovation and utility; theory applicability in practice; reinterpreting attitudes of austerity and impatience towards children; disciplining rather than punishing children: dilemmas and challenges. The testimonies highlighted that the Program is innovative, easily accessible, clear in language, and easy to apply in practice for parents/caregivers. CONCLUSION: the use of the Program added knowledge and fostered positive attitudes toward the development of the bioecological system in addressing and preventing violence against children.
Janaína Recanello Begui, Andressa Larissa Dias Müller de Souza, Naiara Barros Polita et al.
Drawing on fieldwork among Catholic mothers in Kerala, this paper critically reconstitutes the notion of maternal care labour to encompass spiritual acts of prayer. The physical and emotional care labour that mothers perform for their children have been researched. This paper brings together thinking on care labour with ideas of self-formation and piety à la Foucault (1982, 1997) and Mahmood (2005). Individual and communal prayer is integral to the disciplining and self-formation of women as Catholic mothers, and in a patriarchal set up, may be their primary recourse in the absence of other capacities for effective action. A Catholic mother’s love towards a child is mediated through God and sustained through constant prayer. Maternal prayer, even for adult children has more recently been invoked by the church as critical to the maintenance of community in a changing social and political environment. The paper argues that prayer must be taken seriously, and analytically included as an essential component of maternal care labour. Though typically described as formulaic and repetitive, the paper shows how for Catholic mothers, continuous, everyday prayer is not mere routine but both affective and effective, and considered more beneficial and instrumental than this-worldly acts of concern such as providing food or physical care.
Violence against children in Indonesia remains a crucial issue that requires a data-driven approach for more targeted interventions. This study aims to cluster provinces in Indonesia based on the number of cases of violence and the types of violence committed, namely physical, psychological, and sexual violence. The method used in this study is the K-Means Clustering algorithm, an unsupervised learning technique in data mining that is able to find hidden patterns in large data sets. Data was obtained from the Ministry of Women's Empowerment and Child Protection's Gender and Child Information System (SIGA), which covers 38 provinces. The clustering results produced three main groups: a cluster with high levels of violence consisting of the provinces of North Sumatra, DKI Jakarta, West Java, Central Java, and East Java; a cluster with moderate levels of violence consisting of 16 provinces; and a cluster with low levels of violence covering 17 provinces. These findings are expected to form the basis for the development of evidence-based child protection policies geographically and thematically.
Abstract There is a growing body of literature about kinship care in the Western world; however, much of it focuses on grandparent care. A lesser known aspect of kinship care is the care of children by nonrelatives known to the child or their family. What little research exists about this group suggests that such placements are less stable than familial kinship care. This article reports a research study in Victoria, Australia, that explored nonfamilial kinship care through analysis of administrative data, interviews with young people and carers, and focus groups with kinship care support workers. It emerged that current administrative databases are not yet able to reliably identify the carer relationship, and thus the extent of such care arrangements cannot accurately be determined. Interviews and focus groups revealed that nonfamilial kinship care is diverse and qualitatively different from familial kinship care, bearing some similarities to foster care yet managed very differently. It is suggested that policymakers need to pay more attention to conceptualizing nonfamilial kinship care within kinship care policy frameworks and that greater attention is needed to the individual support needs of children in such placements and their carers.
The case of sexual violence against children from the perspective of international law highlights the importance of protecting children from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. The purpose of this paper is to understand the forms of international law rules regarding cases of sexual violence against children and how international law prosecutes the perpetrators. The discussion of cases of sexual violence against children shows that these cases have serious and widespread impacts, with nearly 1.7 billion children worldwide experiencing violence. To address this issue, it is necessary to strengthen the legal framework that considers all behaviors related to Child Sexual Abuse and Male Sexual Abuse (CSAM) as criminal acts. Increasing resources in law enforcement, cooperation with the private sector, education, and relevant research are also important to increase our awareness of sexual violence. The conclusion that can be drawn is that children are indeed a new generation that will continue the continuity of nations and states, so it is only fair for us and law enforcement to ensure that all human rights of children are fulfilled.
High-quality mother-child interactions during the first 2,000 days, from conception to age 5 years, are considered crucial for preventing obesity development during early life stages. However, mother-child dyads interact within and are influenced by broader socio-ecological contexts involved in shaping child development outcomes, including nutrition. Hence, the coexistence of both undernutrition and obesity has been noted in inequitable social conditions, with drivers of undernutrition and overnutrition in children sharing common elements, such as poverty and food insecurity. To date, a holistic life-course approach to childhood obesity prevention that includes an equitable developmental perspective has not emerged. The World Health Organization (WHO) Nurturing Care Framework provides the foundation for reframing the narrative to understand childhood obesity through the lens of an equitable nurturing care approach to child development from a life-course perspective. In this perspective, we outline our rationale for reframing the childhood narrative by integrating an equitable nurturing care approach to childhood obesity prevention. Four key elements of reframing the narrative include: (a) extending the focus from the current 1,000 to 2,000 days (conception to 5 years); (b) highlighting the importance of nurturing mutually responsive child-caregiver connections to age 5; (c) recognition of racism and related stressors, not solely race/ethnicity, as part of adverse child experiences and social determinants of obesity; and (d) addressing equity by codesigning interventions with socially marginalized families and communities. An equitable, asset-based engagement of families and communities could drive the transformation of policies, systems and social conditions to prevent childhood obesity.
Helen Skouteris, Heidi J. Bergmeier, Scott D. Berns et al.
