Coping with work and family: How do dual‐earners interact?

Juggling the demands of both work and family has become increasingly difficult, especially for dual‐earner households; nevertheless, families have developed strategies to deal with work‐family challenges. This paper uses couple level analyses (APIM models) with 100 dual‐earner couples to provide insight about partners' mutual influence on the use of work‐family coping strategies. The results show that women's use of coping strategies is more associated with work‐family conflict and work‐family enrichment than men's coping. In addition, using partner coping, having a positive attitude towards multiple roles, using planning and management skills and avoiding having to cut back on professional responsibilities is associated with better outcomes (more enrichment and less conflict). Surprisingly, the use of childcare facilities is associated with women's conflict and partner effects were only found concerning the use of management and planning skills. These skills, however, have distinct effects for men and women's outcomes: their use by men reduces their own conflict but increases their wives', while their use by women decreases their own conflict and increases their own and their partner's enrichment. These results point to the fact that gender roles continue to be a hallmark of work‐family issues. Our design and results point out the need for new interventions that take couple interdependences into account.     

Reporting spiritual needs of older adults living in Bavarian residential and nursing homes

We intended to study unaddressed psychosocial and spiritual needs among older people (of at least 65 years of age) living in nine residential/nursing homes in Bavaria in Southern Germany. We conducted an anonymous cross-sectional study with standardised questionnaires (i.e., Spiritual Needs Questionnaire, Brief Multidimensional Life Satisfaction Scale, Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation, etc.). Religious needs were predicted best by residents’ religious trust. Existential needs and inner peace needs correlated moderately with grief, and were predicted best by family/social support needs. All members of an interdisciplinary team should be trained in the specific competence of recognising older people's unmet spiritual needs. When these needs are recognised, caregivers and relatives have the chance to react.     

Pragmatic Contextualism

Contextualism in epistemology has traditionally been understood as the view that “know” functions semantically like an indexical term, encoding different contents in contexts with different epistemic standards. But the indexical hypothesis about “know” faces a range of objections. This article explores an alternative version of contextualism on which “know” is a semantically stable term, and the truth‐conditional variability in knowledge claims is a matter of pragmatic enrichment. The central idea is that in contexts with stringent epistemic standards, knowledge claims are narrowed: “know” is used in such contexts to make assertions about particularly demanding types of knowledge. The resulting picture captures all of the intuitive data that motivate contextualism while sidestepping the controversial linguistic thesis at its heart. After developing the view, the article shows in detail how it avoids one influential linguistic objection to traditional contextualism concerning indirect speech reports, and then answers an objection concerning the unavailability of certain types of clarification speeches.     

‘Infinity Means it Goes on Forever’: Siblings' Informal Teaching of Mathematics

Sibling‐directed teaching of mathematical topics during naturalistic home interactions was investigated in 39 middle‐class sibling dyads at two time points. At time 1 (T1), siblings were 2 and 4 years of age, and at time 2 (T2), siblings were 4 and 6 years of age. Intentional sequences of sibling‐directed mathematical teaching were coded for (i) topics (e.g., number), (ii) contexts (e.g., play with materials/toys), and (iii) type of knowledge (conceptual and procedural). Siblings engaged in teaching number, geometry, and measurement at T1 and demonstrated preliminary evidence of teaching of grouping, relations, and operations at T2. Regarding context, at T1, mathematical teaching occurred most frequently during play with materials/toys, while at T2, games with rules were prominent. Teaching of conceptual or procedural knowledge varied over time and by topic and context. Findings are discussed in light of recent work on understanding children's mathematical knowledge as it develops in the informal family context. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Family incivility and counterproductive work behavior: A moderated mediation model of self-esteem and emotional regulation

Drawing from the work–home resources model, we examined the relations of family incivility, counterproductive work behaviors (CWB), state self-esteem, and emotional regulation. Results from three-wave lagged data (N = 284) indicated that family incivility was positively correlated with counterproductive work behaviors, and this relationship was mediated by state self-esteem. In addition, emotional regulation mitigated the relationship between family incivility and state self-esteem. The findings suggested that family incivility, as an emotional contextual demand in the home domain, is related to negative outcome (deviant behavior) in the work context (i.e., CWB) through the depletion of the personal resource—state self-esteem, while emotional regulation is a key resource that mitigates this relationship. This paper discusses the implications of these findings with respect to applications and developments of the work–home resources model.     

Babbling development as seen in canonical babbling ratios: A naturalistic evaluation of all-day recordings

Canonical babbling (CB) is critical in forming foundations for speech. Research has shown that the emergence of CB precedes first words, predicts language outcomes, and is delayed in infants with several communicative disorders. We seek a naturalistic portrayal of CB development, using all-day home recordings to evaluate the influences of age, language, and social circumstances on infant CB production. Thus we address the nature of very early language foundations and how they can be modulated. This is the first study to evaluate possible interactions of language and social circumstance in the development of babbling. We examined the effects of age (6 and 11 months), language/culture (English and Chinese), and social circumstances (during infant-directed speech [IDS], during infant overhearing of adult-directed speech [ADS], or when infants were alone) on canonical babbling ratios (CBR = canonical syllables/total syllables). The results showed a three-way interaction of infant age by infant language/culture by social circumstance. The complexity of the results forces us to recognize that a variety of factors can interact in the development of foundations for language, and that both the infant vocal response to the language/culture environment and the language/culture environment of the infant may change across age.     

Contagious flexibility? A study on whether schedule flexibility facilitates work‐life enrichment

Schedule flexibility defines an important generating resource for work-life enrichment; however, our knowledge about how such spillovers take place is limited. This multiple case study examines how workers from different working time contexts with varying levels of schedule flexibility experience work-life interplay. Given the adopted explorative design, it is important to interpret the findings in a tentative light. Nonetheless, the study offers important insight into work-life enrichment that may guide future research in this field. The findings indicate that schedule flexibility may act as a boundary-spanning resource owing to the agency potential it offers workers. Thus, it seemed that flexible schedule opportunities enabled workers to engage more fully in personal life activities, which in turn had a positive influence on their work involvement through positive affect. Such positive role engagements appeared, however, to be greatly determined by workers' boundary management and by time conditions of work and family. In conclusion, the major findings and limitation of the study are discussed against existing research and theory.     

Indications of Resilience Factors in Families Who have Lost a Home in a Shack Fire

The aim of this study was to explore the presence of resilience factors in families living in an informal settlement on the outskirts of a rural town that have lost their homes in a shack fire. A mixed methods research design was utilised. Qualitative data were obtained through responses to an open‐ended question, and quantitative data were obtained through the completion of questionnaires by an adult representative of each of the 38 African families that were identified through convenience sampling. To identify resilience factors, content analyses (on the qualitative data) were performed and Spearman correlations (for the quantitative data) were calculated. The results show that supportive communication, a sense of being in control and having internal strengths and dependability, while working together as a family, are vital to the resilience of the families that took part in this study. Furthermore, material support from the municipality and extended family, shelter provided by members of the extended family, and financial support from the extended family were also indicated as essential in overcoming the crisis and being resilient. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.