Conceptualizing multi-ethnic societies

We examine the process of linguistic adaptation among children of immigrants and the extent to which distinct language types exist between foreign monolingualism and a full transition to English. While complete linguistic assimilation remains the normative outcome and is widely perceived as desirable, we examine alternative theories holding that selective rather than full acculturation is a preferable alternative for immigrant children and their families. For this purpose we contrast effects of fluent bilingualism, indicative of selective acculturation, with other types of linguistic adaptation on various measures of family conflict, solidarity and personality. The data come from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study [CILS], which have been used in several previous studies of the second generation. We use this data-set to test new hypotheses on the interactive effects of parental and children's knowledge of English on family relations and personality outcomes and to examine the effects of gender differences throughout the process. We find that a plurality of second generation linguistic adaptation types exists in reality and that, among them, fluent bilingualism is consistently preferable. Theoretical and policy implications of these and other results are discussed.     

Genetic and phenotypic effects of phonological short-term memory and grammatical morphology in specific language impairment

Deficits in phonological short-term memory and aspects of verb grammar morphology have been proposed as phenotypic markers of specific language impairment (SLI) with the suggestion that these traits are likely to be under different genetic influences. This investigation in 300 first-degree relatives of 93 probands with SLI examined familial aggregation and genetic linkage of two measures thought to index these two traits, non-word repetition and tense marking. In particular, the involvement of chromosomes 16q and 19q was examined as previous studies found these two regions to be related to SLI. Results showed a strong association between relatives' and probands' scores on non-word repetition. In contrast, no association was found for tense marking when examined as a continuous measure. However, significant familial aggregation was found when tense marking was treated as a binary measure with a cut-off point of −1.5 SD, suggestive of the possibility that qualitative distinctions in the trait may be familial while quantitative variability may be more a consequence of non-familial factors. Linkage analyses supported previous findings of the SLI Consortium of linkage to chromosome 16q for phonological short-term memory and to chromosome 19q for expressive language. In addition, we report new findings that relate to the past tense phenotype. For the continuous measure, linkage was found on both chromosomes, but evidence was stronger on chromosome 19. For the binary measure, linkage was observed on chromosome 19 but not on chromosome 16.     

Change in Self-Reported Health Status among Immigrants in the United States: Associations with Measures of Acculturation

Although acculturation may have positive effects for immigrants, including better socioeconomic profiles and increased occupational opportunities, their health profiles deteriorate with longer duration in the U.S. Prior research indicates that increasing acculturation is associated with some poorer health outcomes among immigrants in the U.S. However, most of these studies have used length of stay or English language proficiency as proxies for acculturation, and have mainly examined self-reported “current” health outcomes. This study advances knowledge on associations between acculturation and health among immigrants by explicitly examining self-reported “change” in health since immigration, in relation to acculturation-related variables. We use data from the New Immigrant Survey (NIS; 2003-2004), a cross-sectional study of legal immigrants to the U.S. In addition to testing more conventionally examined proxies of acculturation (length of stay and English proficiency), we also examine English language use and self-reported change in diet. Multivariable logistic regression analyses on 5,982 participants generally supported previous literature indicating a deleterious impact of acculturation, with increasing duration of stay and greater self-reported change in diet being associated with a poorer change in health since moving to the U.S. Although English language proficiency and use were associated with greater odds of reporting a worse change in health when examined individually, they were non-significant in multivariable models including all acculturation measures. Findings from this study suggest that when taking into account multiple measures of acculturation, language may not necessarily indicate unhealthy assimilation and dietary change may be a pathway leading to declines in immigrant health. Increasing duration in the U.S. may also reflect the adoption of unhealthy behaviors, as well as greater exposure to harmful sources of psychosocial stress including racial and anti-immigrant discrimination. Our study suggests that multiple indicators of acculturation may be useful in examining the effect of acculturation on changes in health among immigrants.     

Factors affecting the variability of the central mechanisms for maintaining bilingualism

The article discusses the probable role of many factors that determine the individual variety of the neurophysiological mechanisms that provide the opportunity to learn and use fluently two or more languages. The formation of the speech function is affected by both the general factors for bilinguals and monolinguals, as well as by the specific characteristic of bilingualism. General factors include genetic and environmental impacts explaining the diversity of individual options for the development of the morphofunctional organization of the speech function. Bilinguals, obviously, have an even wider variation of the central maintenance of speech ability, due to the combination of different conditions that influence the language environment, which include the age of second language acquisition, the language proficiency, the linguistic similarity of the languages, the method of their acquisition, intensity of use, and the area where each language is used. The influence of these factors can be mediated in different ways by the individual characteristics of the bilingual??s brain. Being exposed to two languages from the first days of life, the child uses for the development of speech skills the unique features of the brain that exist only at the initial stages of postnatal ontogenesis. At an older age, mastering a second language requires much more effort, when, in the course of maturation, the brain acquires new additional possibilities but permanently loses that special ??bonus?? that nature gives to a small child only in the first months of life. Large individual variability patterns of activation of the cortex during verbal activity in older bilinguals, compared with the younger ones, allows us to assume that the brain of the older bilingual mastering a new language is forced to manipulate a large number of backup mechanisms, and this is reflected in an increase in the variation of the cerebral processes responsible for speech functions. In addition, there is a serious reason to believe that learning a second language contributes to the expansion of the functional capabilities of the brain and creates the basis for successful cognitive activity.     

The influence of acculturation on breast-feeding initiation and duration in low-income women in the US

While the 'immigrant health paradox' posits better health behaviours and outcomes for immigrants upon arrival to the US, research suggests that this advantage may deteriorate over time. This study analysed the relationship of acculturation and breast-feeding initiation and duration among a sample of predominantly Latina, low-income women in the US. The four measures of acculturation included: mother's nativity (foreign born vs US born), mother's parents' nativity (foreign born vs US born), years of US residence (<8 years vs > or =8 years) and a dichotomous measure of language acculturation adapted from three items on Marin's acculturation scale (preferred language spoken at home, reading language and writing language) as exclusive use of native language versus non-exclusive use (mixed or English only) (Marin et al., 1987; Marin & Gamba, 1996). Final multivariable models showed that mothers who exclusively used their native language were more likely to initiate breast-feeding as well as breast-feed for longer duration compared with mothers with non-exclusive use, whereas years of US residence and mother's nativity were not significantly associated with breast-feeding initiation or duration. Mother's parents' nativity also emerged as a significant predictor of breast-feeding duration, both within final models for immigrants and across study participants. Programmes providing nutrition education to low-income women may wish to consider the role of language as an important determinant of breast-feeding. The role of mother's parents' nativity on breast-feeding practices deserves exploration in future studies, as the cultural practices taught by family members born outside the US may exert strong pressure within immigrant families now living in the US.     

PARENTAL LOVE PILLS: SOME ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

It may soon be possible to develop pills that allow parents to induce in themselves more loving behaviour, attitudes and emotions towards their children. In this paper, I consider whether pharmacologically induced parental love can satisfy reasonable conditions of authenticity; why anyone would be interested in taking such parental love pills at all, and whether inducing parental love pharmacologically promotes narcissism or results in self‐instrumentalization. I also examine how the availability of such pills may affect the duty to love a child.     

Family Type and Investment in Education: A Comparison of Genetic and Stepparent Families

Data from the U.S. National Education Longitudinal Survey were examined to investigate postsecondary educational investment in two-parent families. Consistent with hypotheses derived from the logic of inclusive fitness theory, contrasting children with two genetic parents with children from stepparent households on a multivariate composite of investment indicators revealed that stepchildren receive significantly less parental support for pursuit of higher education. Univariate tests on the three measures comprising the multivariate composite indicated that relative to children with two genetic parents, stepchildren have parents who (1) delay the start of savings accounts for postsecondary education, (2) put aside less money for subsidizing the costs of higher education, and (3) expect to allocate fewer economic resources to support the first year of postsecondary schooling. Statistical control of child ability, resource availability, and number of family members sharing in parental resources was accomplished in a second multivariate analysis by using child achievement, familial socioeconomic status, and number of financial dependents in each family as covariates. Statistically equating genetic and stepparent families on these measures reduced, but did not eliminate, the investment differences.     

The effect of egg mass on the growth and survival of blackbirds: a field experiment

A number of studies on birds have shown a positive correlation between egg mass and the growth (or survival) of chicks. However, a correlation based on non-experimental data does not demonstrate that egg mass affects growth, because it could be confounded by parental or territory quality. One way to see if pre-hatching attributes affect growth or survival is to swap hatchlings between nests, so that parental or territory quality do not confound correlations. I conducted such a fostering experiment on the blackbird, Turdus merula . Apart from very light eggs, that did not hatch, egg mass did not affect hatching success. Heavier eggs produced both heavier and larger nestlings. Nestlings raised by their own parents showed a positive correlation between hatchling mass and mass and size both early (day-4) and late (day-8) in the nestling period. The mass and size of fostered nestlings correlated with the mean mass of their natural parents' hatchlings, with higher coefficients early rather than late in the nestling period. By contrast, early in the nestling period there were no significant correlations of nestling mass or size and mean hatchling mass of the foster parents, but there were significant correlations late in the nestling period. Thus pre-hatching attributes of the egg do affect nestling size but environmental effects, including parental or territory quality, have an affect late in the nestling period. Direct manipulations of components of egg mass are required before one can conclude that egg mass affects growth, rather than some correlated pre-hatching attribute. There was no clear effect of egg mass on the probability that a hatching bird would survive until two weeks after fledging (shortly before nutritional independence), despite the fact that nestling mass does correlate with fledgling survival. I suggest that egg mass affects the 'size' component of mass and that juvenile survival depends on the 'condition' component of mass.     

Differential parental investment in families with both adopted and genetic children

Stepchildren are abused, neglected and murdered at higher rates than those who live with two genetically related parents. Daly and Wilson used kin selection theory to explain this finding and labeled the phenomenon “discriminative parental solicitude.” I examined discriminative parental solicitude in American households composed of both genetic and unrelated adopted children. In these families, kin selection predicts parents should favor their genetic children over adoptees. Rather than looking at cases of abuse, neglect, homicide and other antisocial behavior, I focused on the positive investments parents made in their children as well as the outcomes of each child. The results show that parents invested more in adopted children than in genetically related ones, especially in educational and personal areas. At the same time, adoptees experienced more negative outcomes. They were more likely to have been arrested, to have been on public assistance and to require treatment for drug, alcohol or mental health issues. They also completed fewer years of schooling and were more likely to divorce. In adoptive families, it appears that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Parents invest more in adoptees not because they favor them, but because they are more likely than genetic children to need the help. I conclude that discriminative parental solicitude differs in adoptive and step households because adoptive families generally result from prolonged parenting effort, not mating effort like stepfamilies.     

REVISITING CHILD‐BASED OBJECTIONS TO COMMERCIAL SURROGACY

Many critics of commercial surrogate motherhood argue that it violates the rights of children. In this paper, I respond to several versions of this objection. The most common version claims that surrogacy involves child‐selling. I argue that while proponents of surrogacy have generally failed to provide an adequate response to this objection, it can be overcome. After showing that the two most prominent arguments for the child‐selling objection fail, I explain how the commissioning couple can acquire parental rights by paying the surrogate only for her reproductive labor. My explanation appeals to the idea that parental rights are acquired by those who have claims over the reproductive labor that produces the child, not necessarily by those who actually perform the labor. This account clarifies how commercial surrogacy differs from commercial adoption. In the final section of the paper, I consider and reject three further child‐based objections to commercial surrogacy: that it establishes a market in children's attributes, that it requires courts to stray from the best interests standard in determining custodial rights, and that it requires the surrogate to neglect her parental responsibilities. Since each of these objections fails, children's rights probably do not pose an obstacle to the acceptability of commercial surrogacy arrangements.     

Selecting potential children and unconditional parental love

For now, the best way to select a child's genes is to select a potential child who has those genes, using genetic testing and either selective abortion, sperm and egg donors, or selecting embryos for implantation. Some people even wish to select against genes that are only mildly undesirable, or to select for superior genes. I call this selection drift – the standard for acceptable children is creeping upwards. The President's Council on Bioethics and others have raised the parental love objection : Just as we should love existing children unconditionally, so we should unconditionally accept whatever child we get in the natural course of things. If we set conditions on which child we get, we are setting conditions on our love for whatever child we get. Although this objection was prompted by selection drift, it also seems to cover selecting against genes for severe impairments.
I argue that selection drift is not inconsistent with the ideal of unconditional parental love and, moreover, that the latter actually implies that we should practise selection drift – in other words, we should try to select potential children with the best genetic endowments. My endowment argument for the second claim works from an analogy between arranging an endowment prior to conception to fund a future child's education, and arranging a genetic endowment by selecting a potential child who already has it, where in both cases the child would not have existed without the endowment. I conclude with some programmatic remarks about the nonidentity problem.     

A sufficiency threshold is not a harm principle: A better alternative to best interests for overriding parental decisions

Douglas Diekema influentially argues that interference with parental decisions is not in fact guided by the child’s best interests, but rather by a more permissive standard, which he calls the harm principle. This article first seeks to clarify this alternative position and defend it against certain existing criticisms, before offering a new criticism and alternative. This ‘harm principle’ has been criticized for (i) lack of adequate moral grounding, and (ii) being as indeterminate as the best interest standard that it seeks to replace. I argue that these are not serious problems. I take Diekema’s negative point to be right—our actual standard for intervention is not literally the best interests of the child—but I disagree with his proposed replacement. First, Diekema’s proposed harm threshold should be more carefully distinguished from Mill’s harm principle. Second, there is no reason to assume that the standard for permissible intervention coincides with the threshold for harm (or serious harm). Thus, I propose that the best alternative to the best interests standard is not a harm principle, but rather a sufficiency threshold between adequate (or ‘good enough’) and inadequate (or ‘substandard’) parenting.     

Bilingualism,Language Disorders and Intercultural Families in Contemporary Italy

This study aims to show how language disorders in children affect language transmission and the mixedness experience in intercultural families. To this end, it adopts a qualitative method of study based on the administration of ad hoc interviews to intercultural couples who consulted our Child Neuropsychiatry Service because of language disorders in their children. One of the main consequences, when the child of an intercultural couple presents a language disorder and a diagnostic process has to be initiated, may be interruption of the transmission of the second language, especially if it is the mother’s language. The decision to do this, which may be taken on the advice of teachers and health professionals, but also because the parents themselves often attribute their child’s language disorder to his bilingual condition, affects not only the relationship between the mother and her child, but also processes in the construction of parenthood and in the structuring of the child’s personality and the plurality of his affiliations. A clear understanding of how the dialectic between the categories of “alien” and “familiar” is managed in these contemporary families, which have to reckon with the condition of otherness, is crucial for psychiatrists and psychotherapists working in settings in which cultural difference is an issue to consider.     

Psychological Characteristics of the Development of Written Language in Mentally Retarded School Children

The problem of the development of language in the mentally retarded child is one of the most important in special psychology and is of major theoretical and practical significance. How far we go in studying this problem will in large measure determine not only the structure of lessons in a native language in a remedial school but also how the process of instruction and education of backward children in general is organized.     

What happens to offspring when parents are inbred,old or had a poor start in life? Evidence for sex‐specific parental effects

Parental effects on offspring performance have been attributed to many factors such as parental age, size and condition. However, we know little about how these different parental characteristics interact to determine parental effects, or the extent to which their effect on offspring depends on either the sex of the parent or that of the offspring. Here we experimentally tested for effects of variation in parents’ early diet and inbreeding levels, as well as effects of parental age, and for potential interactive effects of these three factors on key aspects of offspring development in the mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki). Older mothers produced offspring that were significantly smaller at birth. This negative effect of maternal age on offspring size was still evident at maturation as older mothers had smaller daughters, but not smaller sons. The daughters of older mothers did, however, reach maturity sooner. Paternal age did not affect offspring body size, but it had a complex effect on their sons’ relative genital size. When initially raised on a food‐restricted diet, older fathers sired sons with relatively smaller genitalia, but when fathers were initially raised on a control diet their sons had relatively larger genitalia. The inbreeding status of mothers and fathers had no significant effects on any of the measured offspring traits. Our results indicate that the manifestation of parental effects can be complex. It can vary with both parent and offspring sex; can change over an offspring's life; and is sometimes evident as an interaction between different parental traits. Understanding this complexity will be important to predict the role of parental effects in adaptation.     

The goals of direct paternal care among a South Amerindian population

Human males are remarkable among mammals in the level of investment they provide to their wives and children. However, there has been debate as to the degree to which men actually invest and through which fitness pathways the benefits of familial investment are realized. Much of the previous research exploring these issues has focused on men's roles as providers, but few have explored correlates of men's direct parental care. Although this is reasonable given men's parental emphasis on provisioning, the providing of direct care is more straightforward with a clear provider and recipient and little ambiguity as to the care‐giver's intent. Here, we explore contextual correlates of men's direct care among the Tsimane of Bolivia to determine the extent to which such care is patterned to enhance its effectiveness in increasing child wellbeing and the efficient functioning of the family. We also explore whether Tsimane fathers provide care in ways that enhance the positive effect it has on the wife's perception of the care provider. Overall, we find that Tsimane men appear responsive to the needs of children and the family, but show that there is little evidence that men respond to factors expected to increase the impact that men's care has on their reputations with their wives. Am J Phys Anthropol 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

The moral complexity of sperm donation

Sperm donation is a widely accepted and increasingly common practice. In the standard case, a sperm donor sells sperm to an agency, waives his parental rights, and is absolved of parental responsibility. We tend to assume that this involves no problematic abandonment of parental responsibility. If we regard the donor as having parental responsibilities at all, we may think that his parental responsibilities are transferred to the sperm recipients. But, if a man creates a child accidentally, via contraception failure, we tend to assume that the man does indeed have parental responsibilities. Assessing these contrasting conclusions requires a theory of parental responsibility. I analyse prevalent theories of what makes someone parentally responsible and show that none of these theories can withstand scrutiny. I propose a new theory of parental responsibility, which, I argue, is more plausible than the alternatives. My theory of parental responsibility is based on our ownership and control over hazardous materials, namely, our gametes. I show that neither my theory, nor the theories I reject, can support our contrasting intuitions. I conclude that sperm donors are fathers, with parental responsibility. I argue that the alternative conclusion, that neither sperm donors nor accidental fathers are parentally responsible for their resulting offspring, is less plausible. I then consider whether parental responsibility can be transferred and argue that it is far from clear that it can. Finally, I address objections and consider some practical implications of these views.     

Why menopause?

Summary George Williams proposed in 1957 that menopause evolved because, late in life, women have more to gain from child care than from continued fertility. I develop here a quantitative model of this idea in order to determine whether the proposed benefit is in fact larger than the cost. To make this work possible, I introduce an age-structured theory of kin selection that allows for a time delay between an act of altruism and the benefit it provides. Using this theory, I show that in age-structured populations, conventional inclusive fitness calculations are justified for effects on fertility only when either the population is stationary or there is no delay between cost and benefit. For effects on mortality, conventional calculations also require that donor and recipient be affected at the same age. I then introduce two versions of Williams' idea. Model I assumes that menopause is maintained because it reduces the risk of mortality during childbirth, thus increasing the provision of parental care. The analysis demonstrates that this model is incapable of accounting for menopause. Model II assumes that menopause facilitates parental care by reducing the time during which a woman is partially incapacitated by the demands of pregnancy and infant care. This model could not be rejected. However, a definitive test will require parameter estimates that are not yet available.     

Allele-specific replication of 15q11-q13 loci: a diagnostic test for detection of uniparental disomy.

Allele-specific replication differences have been observed in imprinted chromosomal regions. We have exploited this characteristic of an imprinted region by using FISH at D15S9 and SNRPN (small nuclear ribonucleo protein N) on interphase nuclei to distinguish between Angelman and Prader-Willi syndrome patient samples with uniparental disomy of chromosome 15q11-q13 (n = 11) from those with biparental inheritance (n = 13). The familial recurrence risks are low when the child has de novo uniparental disomy and may be as high as 50% when the child has biparental inheritance. The frequency of interphase cells with asynchronous replication was significantly lower in patients with uniparental disomy than in patients with biparental inheritance. Within the sample population of patients with biparental inheritance, those with altered methylation and presumably imprinting center mutations could not be distinguished from those with no currently detectable mutation. This test is cost effective because it is performed on interphase cells from the same hybridized cytological preparation in which a deletion is excluded, and additional specimens are not required to determine the parental origin of chromosome 15.     

Changing Ethnobotanical Knowledge of the Roviana People,Solomon Islands: Quantitative Approaches to its Correlation with Modernization

This study examines the acculturation of ethnobotanical knowledge in association with modernization by analyzing similarities and differences within a language group, the Roviana people of the Solomon Islands. Cultural consensus analysis and evaluation of either village-level or individual-level modernity were performed for seven villages. In one modernized and one less modernized village, detailed socioeconomic data at the individual level were collected. Intervillage variation of knowledge correlated with modernity only when the villages were referenced to the less modernized villages, while there was no correlation when the most modernized village was used as the base knowledge. An informant’s knowledge in the less modernized village was affected by socioeconomic factors, but this was not observed in the modernized village. From these results, I suggest that modern knowledge is easily integrated into the ethnobotanical knowledge system but is not directly related to the loss of indigenous botanical knowledge.