Growing Up Unequal: Family Complexity, Child Maltreatment and Child Well-Being

A special issue of Children (ISSN 2227-9067). This special issue belongs to the section "Global and Public Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 5 January 2025 | Viewed by 1192

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Social Work, University of South Carolina, 1512 Pendleton St Hamilton College, Columbia, SC 29208, USA
Interests: child maltreatment; foster care; kinship care; grandparents raising grandchildren

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Social Work, Sapir Academic College, Sderot 7956000, Israel
Interests: child abuse and neglect; CPS; decision making; foster care; out-of-home care

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Families change constantly and contemporary family structures are more complex and diverse than those from a decade or even longer ago in any country. Family complexity refers to a variety of family structures (e.g., shared-custody families, same-sex families, families with nonresidential and co-residential partnerships, grandparent-headed families) and sibling compositions (e.g., half or stepsiblings). With rapid changes occurring in family structures globally, there is a pressing need for additional research to examine child maltreatment and/or child well-being within these complex structures. Developing a more in-depth knowledge base of child maltreatment and child well-being in diverse family structures would empower us to better integrate family complexity into the improvement of child well-being through services and policies. We invite you to submit manuscripts that address family complexity and child maltreatment/child well-being that also address the implications for practices and policies. We enthusiastically invite a variety of research from different countries and diverse populations, and welcome submissions employing various research methodologies, including qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods, and systematic/scoping reviews. By encompassing diverse approaches, we seek to gather a comprehensive array of perspectives on this important topic.

Dr. Yanfeng Xu
Dr. Merav Jedwab
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Children is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • child maltreatment/child well-being in different types of complex family structures, particularly among racial/ethnic minorities
  • family dynamics/relationships and child maltreatment/child well-being in different types of complex family structures
  • interventions/policies to reduce child maltreatment in different types of complex family structures
  • interventions/policies to improve child well-being in different types of complex family structures
  • disparities in child maltreatment/child well-being among different types of complex family structures

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

13 pages, 515 KiB  
Article
Exploring Gender Moderation: The Impact of Neighborhood Factors on Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms
by Fei Pei
Children 2024, 11(4), 389; https://doi.org/10.3390/children11040389 - 25 Mar 2024
Viewed by 515
Abstract
Limited previous studies investigated the influences of various types of neighborhood factors on adolescent behavior problems. Meanwhile, although previous theoretical frameworks suggested that gender played a significant role in terms of neighborhood impacts on adolescent behavioral problems, few studies investigated the gender differences [...] Read more.
Limited previous studies investigated the influences of various types of neighborhood factors on adolescent behavior problems. Meanwhile, although previous theoretical frameworks suggested that gender played a significant role in terms of neighborhood impacts on adolescent behavioral problems, few studies investigated the gender differences in such neighborhood influences. Using the year 9 and year 15 data of the national dataset Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS, overly sampled participants from low-income families), this study examined how the neighborhood structural and process factors can affect adolescent behavioral problems (internalizing and externalizing symptoms) and whether gender worked as a significant moderator for such relationships in the U.S. Structural equation models and multigroup SEM were estimated (N = 3411). Findings suggested that residential instability was associated with increased levels of internalizing symptoms among adolescents at age 15, whereas neighborhood social cohesion was linked to reduced levels of externalizing symptoms throughout adolescence. Furthermore, the moderating effects of gender were found for the association between residential instability and internalizing symptoms. Implications of such findings are further discussed. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop