MANY mothers with a history of serious drug use are still capable of caring for their children, given the right support, a new study has found. But most mothers in the state's methadone programs were not getting the services they needed.

The study found a child was more at risk of abuse or neglect because of a mother's mental health problems and social isolation than from the drug problem itself. ''You can't say all drug-using parents are abusive; some are quite together,'' said the co-author of the study, Stephanie Taplin, a visiting fellow at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre.

Dr Taplin interviewed 171 mothers who attended methadone programs in Sydney over three years. Nearly all had been heroin users, and 37 were still using the drug. Many were caring for children but a third had at least one child under 16 removed by Community Services; about half had been given up at birth.

Dr Taplin found mothers, regardless of the severity of their drug problem, were less likely to have children removed if they were in daily contact with their own mothers, were not on medication for mental health problems such as depression and had fewer children. ...

The women, average age 37, came from deeply disadvantaged backgrounds, the study found. Two-thirds had experienced physical or sexual abuse, and more than a third an ''upsetting sexual experience with a relative or person in authority''. On average the abuse had occurred at age 10.

Labels: children, grandparents, mental health, motherhood, parenting, sexual assault

VOTE

When your grandma has had one of the best and long-lived marriages of all time, it’s a little hard to not want to turn to her for marriage advice as you plan your very first wedding. For Tayla Lynn, one third of the hot girl trio Stealing Angels, her situation was no different … other than the fact that “Grandma” is country music legend Loretta Lynn.

The younger Lynn recently went to Memaw’s ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tenn. for a visit and decided to ask her for words of wisdom as she plans her wedding, which is set to take place in Italy in the springtime.

“I went up there and she said, ‘Honey, you’re getting old … I’m worried about you having babies,’” Lynn tells Taste of Country, laughing as she recalls the conversation with her iconic grandmother. “I said, ‘Every time I come up here, you want to talk about music or something, and now you’re worried about me having babies?’ She had five cats running around her when she said it. I said, ‘Thank you, Memaw.’ I think she thinks I’m running out of time to have babies [laughs]. I told her I would just freeze some eggs!”

Labels: children, culture, grandparents, Marriage, Tennessee

VOTE

"You promised me that you would get married when you are 30 years old. You should keep your words," said Fang Yun's father on the phone.

Fang Yun is a designer working in an interior decoration company in Beijing. Fang Yun is his screen name, meaning "living as free as the clouds and at the same time with some discipline." ...

Fang resigned from a job in his hometown in Hubei and came to Beijing in 2008 only because he could not stand his parents pressure to get married. However, this only exacerbated the situation and made the old couple angrier. "Nothing but getting married and having a baby is the greatest filial piety," reprimanded his father on the phone. ...

Fang plans to get married next year and fulfill the desires of his parents. He hopes that he will meet his future wife through parents' introduction and finish his wedding in his hometown. After that, he can live a life just like his parents wish.

Labels: "emerging adulthood", China, grandparents, Marriage, men, parenting

VOTE

...In fact, the fight for marriage equality works in tandem with the movement to strengthen the black family. Achieving marriage equality will actually help save the black family.

First, laws that prohibit same-sex marriage disproportionately harm black same-sex couples. According to the last Census, twice as many black same-sex couples are raising children as white same-sex couples. Black same-sex couples are also much more likely to be struggling economically. Achieving marriage equality will grant important benefits to these couples that will allow them to take care of and provide for their children and themselves.

But marriage equality helps the black community in a much broader way. Marriage equality is not just about relationship recognition. It's about family recognition, and the black community benefits from laws and policies that recognize the diversity of how families look, and demand equality for all families. ...

Likewise, marriage equality is not just about DOMA. It's not just about Prop 8. The fight for marriage equality is about fighting for equal recognition of all families. It's about combating the assumption that someone else can tell us what our families should look like. And in the black community, that assumption is dangerous, because black families are becoming increasingly nontraditional. Black families are more likely to be headed by single mothers. However, many of those mothers live with another person who helps raise the children, regardless of whether they are biologically or legally recognized as a parent. Black families are also more likely to consist of multi-generational households [pdf]. And the same policies that allow a same-sex couple to parent their children with access to all benefits they would otherwise receive grant those same benefits to aunts and uncles to raise their nieces and nephews and grandparents to raise their grandchildren. They are the same policies that allow a boyfriend to take time off work to care for his girlfriend's sick child even when there is no biological relationship. The principle that all families look different and all must be respected lies at the foundation of the struggle to strengthen the black family.

Labels: beyond marriage, children, cohabitation, culture, extended family, family structure, gay marriage, gay parenting, grandparents, Marriage, parenting, race, single parenting, unmarried parents

VOTE

SALEM, VA. The Rev. Kenneth Dupin, who leads a small Methodist church here, has a vision: As America grows older, its aging adults could avoid a jarring move to the nursing home by living in small, specially equipped, temporary shelters close to relatives.

So he invented the MEDcottage, a portable high-tech dwelling that could be trucked to a family's back yard and used to shelter a loved one in need of special care.

Skeptics, however, have a different name for Dupin's product: the granny pod.

Protective of zoning laws, some local officials warn that Dupin's dwellings -- which have been authorized by Virginia's state government -- will spring up in subdivisions all over the state, creating not-in-my-back-yard tensions with neighbors and perhaps being misused. ...

The enterprise has received backing from the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, a collaborative effort between the university and 140 companies to develop commercial technologies. The university is helping with high-tech applications, such as computer technology to create a "virtual companion" -- named Sydney, after Dupin's granddaughter -- who would appear on a screen and remind the occupant to take medications.

Labels: culture, grandparents, Virginia

VOTE

The extended family is making something of a comeback, thanks to delayed marriage, immigration, and recession-induced job losses and foreclosures that have forced people to double-up under one roof, an analysis of census figures has found.

“The Waltons are back,” said Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center, which conducted the analysis.

Multigenerational families, which accounted for 25 percent of the population in 1940 but only 12 percent by 1980, inched up to 16 percent in 2008, according to the analysis.

The analysis also found that the proportion of people 65 and older who live alone, which had been rising steeply for nearly a century — from 6 percent in 1900 to 29 percent in 1990 — declined slightly, to 27 percent.

At the same time, the share of older people living in multigenerational families, which plummeted to 17 percent in 1980 from 57 percent in 1900, rose to 20 percent. ...

The shift appears to have been accelerated by the recession. In 2008, at the beginning of the recession and the latest year for which figures are available, 2.6 million more Americans lived in a multigenerational household than did the year before.

Labels: culture, economics, extended family, grandparents, race

VOTE