News by Subject Social & Behavior

The adoption of children is a fundamental method of building families. However, adoptees may face subsequent adaptive challenges associated with family stress at the time of birth and during the adoption process.

A first-of-its-kind clinical trial involving more than 600 children in Kenya and Tanzania, in which community members were trained to deliver mental health treatment, showed improvement in participants' trauma-related symptoms up to a year after receiving therapy.

Rutgers researchers have found that a Texas strategy to reduce anti-psychotic medication for children can serve as a model for other state Medicaid programs.

A child's temperament is affected by the early stages of their life. Researchers from the University of Warwick, the University of Tennessee, University of Southampton and Kings College London have found children who were born very preterm (under 32 weeks gestation) or very low birthweight (under 1500g) had similar temperamental difficulties in controlling their impulses, to children who experienced institutional deprivation.

Increased equality has a positive effect on mothers and fathers. Thanks to greater freedom to strike an individual balance between caring for children and working in paid employment, mothers and fathers today are happier with their lives than parents were 20 or 30 years ago, a study by sociologists at the University of Zurich has shown.

New research: Spend more on transitional housing and teens in foster care are less likely to be homeless, jailed.

Same-sex male couples are losing out on paid parental leave when compared to both same-sex female and different-sex couples, according to new research.

It's a comment we often hear in response to stories of child neglect: that parenting should require a licence. Researcher Dr Frank Ainsworth from James Cook University in Australia says that while the suggestion is based on concern for children, it is fraught with problems.

Research shows that more support is needed for foster carers looking after LGBTQ young people. Findings from the first ever study of LGBTQ young people in care in England found good examples of foster carers being available and sensitive, and offering acceptance and membership of their family. But there was also evidence of foster carers struggling to meeting the needs of LGBTQ young people due to a lack of knowledge, skills and support, ambivalence, discomfort, homophobia or transphobia.

A research letter analyzed federally mandated data on children in foster care in the United States to examine how many children entered foster care because of parental drug use during the 2000 to 2017 fiscal years. There were nearly 5 million foster care entries during this period, of which nearly 1.2 million (about 23%) were home removals because of parental drug use.