This symposium brings together European experts on the micro-macro-links between “generations” in families and societies and assess the interdependencies between social policies and family structures from different perspectives. The papers will focus on the links between demographic changes, different legislations and policies, social exclusion and childlessness and intergenerational solidarity and support in Europe.

There are numerous assumptions about how demographic changes at the macro level have changed individuals’ family structures at the micro level. Bridging the two levels is, however, less straightforward than what it might seem. In this presentation, I will highlight some of the challenges by focusing on the following two concepts: “the parent support ratio” and “the sandwich generation”. These are interrelated terms, but linked to different levels. The first is a constructed macro-level indicator, and is defined by the number of individuals 80 (or 85) and older (assumingly parents in need of care) per 100 persons aged 50-64 (assumingly these parents’ children). The second, on the other hand, is supposed to illustrate family reality on a micro level. Although the “sandwich generation” over the years has been used for different generational positions in the family, it was originally coined to describe the experience of 45-65 year olds in four generational family structures (Miller 1981) – a situation several scholars have stressed is becoming increasingly common in ageing societies. To illustrate my argument about difficulties in moving from considerations of population ageing on a macro level to implications for family structures on a micro level, I will use population statistics and survey data (GGS) from selected European countries.

A social psychological approach to interdependent or “linked” lives (Elder, 1994) dominates the literature. The starting point of this paper is that interdependence is not only social-psychological, but is also structured on a macro-level. Focusing on national policies, I distinguish the ways in which legislation mandates generational interdependence (e.g., legal obligations to provide financial support), blocks generational interdependence (e.g., grandparents not granted the right to raise grandchildren when parents cannot provide adequate care; migration laws not granting temporary visits to enable the provision of care), explicitly shapes intergenerational interdependence (e.g., daddy quota), and implicitly shapes intergenerational interdependence (e.g., grandparental care in Southern Europe in the absence of publicly funded parental support). I pay specific attention to childless men and women, questioning the primacy assigned to kinship ties in the health care and long-term support policies. Gender receives consistent consideration throughout the paper.

Family members help each other in case of need but also due to love and concern for each other. Thus, the family is a safety net, especially in times of crises. We know that most transfers flow between parents and their adult children and functional solidarity is a crucial dimension of intergenerational relations. Until now, however, little attendance has been given to exchange patterns between economically deprived family members within different policy contexts. We thus assess how transfers between older parents and their adult children are linked to social exclusion across Europe on the micro and the macro level; i.e. do socially excluded give less and receive more money and practical help, and do different policy regimes play a role? Using the new exclusion items from the fifth wave of SHARE, we focus the effects of deprivation on exchange patterns between older parents and their adult children in a comparative analysis. We distinguish between different kinds and flows of assistance (financial, time, given and received), and consider the possible impacts of state contexts on the links between solidarity and exclusion. Multilevel models indicate that materially deprived respondents indeed give less but need more help from their adult children and thus lose their normal role as providers. Moreover, social policies matter: In countries with higher social inequality and more poverty fewer transfers of time and money are given and received between generations. Poor families in countries with high social exclusion are thus especially vulnerable.

Childlessness in later life is a topic that has been attracting increased levels of attention from researchers and policy makers. Yet a number of misconceptions about childlessness among the elderly remain, such as the claim that elderly childless people are mainly on the receiving end of intergenerational exchanges, or that they are a homogeneous group. Contrary to these assumptions, we find that elderly childless people give as well as receive, and that parental status is a continuum, ranging from full childlessness across several intermediary conditions to full current natural parenthood. In a study of the elderly population across 11 European countries, we show that non-parents make significant contributions to their social networks of family and friends through financial and time transfers, and that the latter in particular differ little from those of natural parents. The same applies to their participation in charitable and voluntary work. Different parental statuses are significantly associated with the various dimensions of giving and receiving. Social parents (i.e., people who have no natural children, but who have adopted, foster, or stepchildren) are shown to be much more similar to natural parents than to non-parents. Family recomposition thus does not seem to inhibit intergenerational exchanges, as long as social parents have sufficient contact with their non-natural social children. On the other hand, parents who have lost contact with their children – natural or otherwise – are likely to require more formal care in later life.

The multicultural approach highlights the need to adapt social services for the general population to different cultural groups and minorities. The need for cultural adaptation is particularly important in Arab society in Israel, which is in a process of social and cultural transition. However, Arab social workers are not trained to provide culturally appropriate responses in this context. Rather, they usually act as representatives of the state in a context of political conflict, and this situation leads to cultural insensitivity on two levels. The article describes and examines the experience of social workers working with men in Arab society, and discusses the conflict inherent in their role as therapists on the one hand and as representatives of the Israeli establishment on the other. The study was based on in-depth interviews with 15 Arab social workers treating Arab fathers at parent-child centers in Israel. The findings indicate that the therapeutic encounter reflects the characteristics of their culture, and reflect the cultural and gender-based tensions that the social workers experience in the encounter with their clients. The findings further indicate that the social workers need to be aware of the social attitude of the fathers, and need to recognize the similarities and differences between their own cultural perspectives and the fathers' perspectives. The article contributes to the literature by focusing on the challenges inherent in the therapeutic encounter between Arab social workers and their clients, and highlights the complexity of their situation. Finally, it points to the lack of adequate academic preparation for Arab social workers in Israeli universities, as well as to the lack of support for those social workers and the challenges they face in their work.

Key words: culturally sensitive therapy, Arab society in Israel, therapeutic work with fathers, parent-child centers, social work

Unpaid household labor and the provision of care within families present an important determinant for individual and collective welfare. However, the increase of dual-earner couples and demographic shifts challenge traditional, mostly gendered arrangements of paid and unpaid labor within the household. Households are thus increasingly confronted with the decision whether to produce these ‘commodities’ by themselves or to buy services on the market. While economic explanations emphasize the relevance of time and labor costs for such outsourcing decisions, from a sociological viewpoint domestic work is deeply embedded in a normative and moral framework about family and gender which defines the very boundary between the market and the private household (Geissler, 2006; Lutz 2008).

Against this background the paper analyzes the demand for domestic services and child care in Germany and the UK during the past two decades. The central hypothesis states that the cultural framing of domestic work as “labor of love”, which plays a key role in the social construction of family life and gender identity, presents a crucial determinant whether domestic services are accepted as a substitute for own carework. The empirical analysis is based on a comparison of the UK, and East and West Germany using the German Socio-economic Panel (waves 1992-2012) and the British Household Survey (waves 1992-2008). The results indicate that in West Germany and the UK the actual demand for paid household services laggs behind „objective” needs supporting the idea that cultural and institutional framings are crucial for explaining patterns of demand.

This symposium focuses on value development from early adolescence to adulthood and on the vertical transmission of values between adults and younger generations. Viewed as desirable abstract goals that apply across situations, values are used to characterize individuals and societies, and to explain the motivational bases of attitudes and behaviors (Schwartz, 2005). Theories of developmental aging suggest that patterns of value priorities and of value influences between adults and children change across the life cycle. In particular, research is consistent in showing that children become very sensitive to parental value messages in adolescence, more than at any earlier time during childhood. One controversy in the literature instead concerns the degree of parents’ influence on children’s values from the period of young adulthood, during which the parent-child relationship becomes less asymmetric and children are faced with further sources of influence (Barni et al., 2013; Roest et al., 2009).

As a whole, the three studies of this symposium provide a developmental and context-sensitive picture of socialization and transmission of values. They showed the unstable nature of early adolescents’ value priorities and analyzed the transmission processes between, on the one hand, teachers and adolescent students and, on the other hand, ageing parents and adult children in conditions of rapid and deep sociocultural change (i.e., migration context).

Adolescence is the formative period of values. Nevertheless, longitudinal research on adolescents’ value priorities is scarce. The present study aims to fill this gap in the literature by examining value change from early to middle adolescence. 329 Estonian adolescents were asked to fill out a 21-item version of the Portrait Values Questionnaire in three consecutive years: in the beginning of 7th, 8th, and 9th grade (aged 13, 14 and 15 respectively). The results showed that adolescents’ value hierarchy differs considerably from that of adults (see Bardi, Lee, Hoffmann-Towfigh, & Soutar, 2009), but differences seem to decrease as adolescents grow older. In 7th and 8th grade adolescents considered hedonism – value type that is on 8th place in the pan-cultural value hierarchy – the most important. By the start of 9th grade, however, hedonism had become less important and ranked as the second most important value type. Benevolence – value type that is on the top of adults’ value hierarchy – increased significantly in importance over the years and moved from being on the third place to the first place. Compared with 8th grade, the importance of self-direction and security had also increased by the start of 9th grade. Similarly to adults, adolescents considered power the least important in all three years. Furthermore, during all three assessments boys considered power more important than girls. Girls, in turn, rated stimulation and benevolence higher than boys. The results of the longitudinal study highlight the unstable nature of early adolescents’ value priorities.

In Western countries adolescents spend a lot of time at school, daily in contact with their teachers and classmates. Although models of socialization at school are not well developed, researchers consistently consider the school as a significant social context providing adolescents with experiences of plurality, consistent or discrepant with respect to what they have learned within their family. The school provides social interactions that represent a level of stimulation and negotiation that may not be available from parents at home, and teachers hold a key position in determining the activities and discussions in the classroom (Kiousis & McDevitt, 2008; Wentzel & Looney, 2007).

Relying on Schwartz’s Value Theory (1992), this study aims at analyzing teachers’ socialization values (i.e., the values they would like their students to endorse) and their teaching styles (authoritarian vs. authoritative), as well as their students’ personal values. It involved 122 high school teachers and 677 students (41.6% males; aged between 14-18), selected from 39 classes of 15 different high schools in Italy. In particular, we tested a mediation model with teaching style as a single mediator between teachers’ socialization values and students’ personal values.

Data analysis is still in progress, and results will be discussed in relation to teacher-student relationship and socialization processes. Indications to implement values education in the school will be also provided.

Most studies on intergenerational value transmission in migrant families have focused on adolescents, whereas not much is known about value similarities and differences between adult children and their ageing parents in the acculturation context. Earlier research has shown that adult children and their parents become in general closer in their value orientations as they share similar life situations and roles as adults; however, intergenerational gaps in value orientations might increase due to intergenerational differences in status or educational attainment, and this might be especially pronounced between first and second generation in migrant families.

The present study focusses on a sample of n = 65 couples of Luxembourgish and n = 66 couples of Portuguese adult children and their parents, all living in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Portuguese adult children were born resp. had grown up in Luxembourg. General value orientations, perceived value similarity and the motivation to transmit or take over parental values were assessed by use of a standardized questionnaire. Our data structure allowed taking into account both perspectives of adult children and their ageing parents.

First analyses show similarities between Luxembourgish and Portuguese families with regard to intergenerational value congruence; however, results suggest different mechanisms in Portuguese migrant compared to Luxembourgish families with a more prominent role of motivational processes in the transmission of values in the acculturation context. Gender, age and socio-demographic factors will be taken into account.

Results will be discussed within an integrative framework on intergenerational relations in the light of migration and ageing.

In recent years family arrangements have pluralised and the traditional bourgeois family model has lost much of its former force. At the same time, normative images of fatherhood and motherhood have started to shift, too.

With regards to men, the changing societal norms become especially evident in the clash between traditional bourgeois understandings of masculinity and new imaginaries of fatherhood. On the one hand, gainful employment is still a key constituent of men's identities and of how men care for their families. One the other hand, a growing number of men reject the traditional bourgeois family model and strive to have more time to care in their families.

With regards to women, we find a parallel trend from a different starting point. While men try to reconcile occupation with family, women seek to reconcile family with occupation. For many women, being a mother and caring for family members are still key constituents of their identity. However, growing numbers of women do not want to give up their gainful employment when they become mothers and strive to continue their careers.

In their attempts to combine occupational and family life in new ways, women and men are confronted with institutional constraints of the labour market. New forms of parenthood are often difficult to reconcile with dominant occupational cultures. Additionally, people mostly don't see difficulties with reconciling occupational and family life as a structural problem. Adopting a neoliberal logic, they assume that it is the responsibility of the individual family to make their preferred family arrangement work.

Taking this social diagnosis as a starting point, our symposium analyses the everyday practices of mothers and fathers in a postindustrial, capitalist work environment that often clashes with the needs of families.

In our research project "Anticipated parenthood and vocational pathways" we explored the question, how relevant is gainful employment for the identities of women (and men) all aged around 30 and to what extent does its meaning change with the anticipation of motherhood (resp. fatherhood). Our analyses clearly show that the women we interviewed have a strong conflict between a high ideal of motherhood on the one hand and a professional orientation in a lifelong perspective on the other. A difficulty seems to be to formulate self-consciously the right to employment during motherhood. Presenting first results, I will show how difficult it is for women to develop new female identity forms in which motherhood is not the only feature. We will discuss the question what the persistence of traditional gender stereotypes causes and why women in Switzerland seems so little adventurous finding new forms of sharing care work.

Based on decades of feminist and masculinities scholarship it is increasingly clear how hegemonic masculinities are underpinned by a carefree gender ideology and related social practices which write out nurturing and primary caring relationality from the script of masculinity. Many ongoing economic, political and cultural inequalities experienced by women are facilitated by persistent inequalities in affective relations (Lynch et al., 2009). Numerous constraints shape both the affective inequalities experienced by men whilst supporting male domination in society overall. How can the hegemony of carefree masculinities be challenged? How are men positioned within relations of (un)caring? How do men negotiate nurturing masculinities within the context of the hegemony of carefree masculinities? This presentation addresses some of these challenges based on the author’s own research as well as other contemporary studies (Hanlon, 2009, Hanlon and Lynch, 2011, Hanlon, 2012).

Based on our research project "Anticipated parenthood and vocational pathways" my presentation explores the meanings that 30 years old men in different occupational fields attribute to fatherhood and gainful employment. My analysis focuses on how the interviewees reconcile the conflicting demands of being an engaged father and the main provider of the family at the same time. The question which will be examined is, which strategies do fathers adopt in these contexts? Why are some attempts at reconciling work and family sucessful while others fail? How do gender norms matter in this respect and how are they connected to contemporary societal structures?

The commencement of school attendance is an important developmental milestone, which is sometimes accompanied by fear in the child. This, of course, is related to what can parents and teachers do at this time for the benefit of the child, to enable the child to develop in a truly harmonious way in the world that surrounds him, to develop appropriately to his/her age, maturity, mental capacity, and capabilities. I believe that to teach a child to be inquisitive, to discover new knowledge with joy, to gradually "take control" of the surrounding world is a long process and the long-term task of educators.

We present here the outputs of data acquisition in children before their entry to the first grade. We collected data in three moments of the transition – before the entry, in September at the beginning of the first school year and in November. To discover the resilient characteristics of the personality of the child, we used the questionnaire DECA (Devereux Early Childhood Assessment), focuses on the resilient characteristics of the child: Initiative, Self-regulation, Attachment/Relationships and Behavioral Concerns. The questionnaire was filled out by parents. We asked parents also three questions about expectations and worries, children express about entering first grade of school. Questioning parents was a pragmatic choice because parents have the ability to perceive various manifestations of expectations about the first class in the context of everyday life. Statements from children during direct interviews may be affected situationally. We chose to interview children after entering the school, where children can talk about direct experience (T2 and T3 of the research). The research sample consists of 111 children aged 4-7 years. According to the parents, children on average do not express worries concerns about starting school. Of the total sample only 2 children express strong worries about entering the school, which we consider a very favorable outcome. Any concerns are related to the demands of the curriculum, next is the fear that the child will not find friends and least concern expressed children in relation to the new teacher.

Objective: Drawing upon Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) and Reactance theory (Brehm, 1966) and inspired from the vignette-based study in the school domain developed by Van Petegem, et al. (2015), the present study aimed to examine the association between parental controlling (as opposed to autonomy-supportive) communication style about alcohol-related rules and adolescents’ motivation to change alcohol use. Thereby, we tested for the intervening role of experienced need frustration (i.e., autonomy and relatedness), coping responses (i.e., oppositional defiance and submission) in this association. Method: One hundred thirty-four Swiss adolescents (53% women, Mage = 17.46 years) were offered a vignette describing a parental reaction to an adolescent alcohol use episode. They were randomly assigned to a controlling or an autonomy-supportive condition. Then, we assessed their experienced need frustration, their coping responses, and their motivation to change. Results: Path analyses indicate that a controlling communication style related to autonomy and relatedness frustration, which predicted more submission and more oppositional defiance, respectively. In turn, oppositional defiance was negatively associated with the intent to change alcohol use patterns (i.e., moderation and abstention), whereas submission related positively to change motivation. Adolescents’ trait reactance proneness related to more relatedness frustration and more oppositional defiance. Conclusions: These results suggest that parental communication style plays an important role in adolescent’ intention to change alcohol use patterns.

Many students do not seem interested in learning and therefore make no effort. Some factors such as interest, effort, goals, progress, sense of self-worth, autonomy, cost, expectations and commitment shape the class, teacher and family motivational climates in which students learn, and they are built in interactions with the contexts in which they develop. This study develops and validates the Family Motivational Climate Questionnaires for Parents and Adolescents (FMC-P and FMC-A, which consider the aforementioned motivations factors. Both comprise four indicators: communication, parents as models, activity structure and relationship with teachers. 800 families (adolescents in middle and high school and their parents) from Madrid and Santiago de Cuba completed the questionnaires along with other measures for validation purposes. Reliability and factorial analyses were performed. Results support the expected reliability and structure of the questionnaires. The FMC-A predicted the degree in which parents attributed changes in different motivational variables (interest, effort, expectations of success and satisfaction) to themselves. Additionally, communication and relationship with teachers had more influence on the FMC for parents than for adolescents. Cultural differences emerged in all factors between Cuban and Spanish families, particularly in school-family relationship and opportunity of autonomy offered to adolescents. The questionnaires have been cross-culturally validated in two countries showing good reliability and predictive power. They provide clues for the development of a psychoeducational intervention and can be used to identify areas of the FMC that may need some improvement to foster adolescents’ learning motivation.

With the growth in the service economy, 24-hour operations and communication technologies, many parents today work nonstandard hours during evenings, nights and weekends. Although various studies have found a linkage between parental nonstandard working time and negative outcomes for families and children, researchers agree that there is considerable diversity in the circumstances of families in which parents work nonstandard hours, including different degrees of predictability and autonomy over working time as well as in work conditions. The connection between parental working time and children’s wellbeing may also be affected by the wider socio-cultural context, such as work and family policies, availability of childcare arrangements, and cultural norms. This workshop aims to facilitate a scholarly exchange of research on the challenges stemming from various aspects of nonstandard working time to the wellbeing of family and children across different countries. The four papers approach nonstandard working time and families using diverse methodologies and from the perspectives of different family members.

Wen-Jui Han presents findings on the effects of parental working time patterns and wellbeing based on a sample of Chinese children. China, which is in the process of moving from being a primarily agrarian to an increasingly urban and market-oriented society, presents one of the most dramatic examples of a rapid socioeconomic transition in recent human history. Han found that children whose fathers worked nonstandard hours (particularly at night or on rotating shifts) had more behavioural, social and attention problems and poorer academic performance, when rated by their teachers.

Jianghong Li’s paper examines the association between both parents working nonstandard schedules and the social and emotional wellbeing of their children in the Australian context, using data from the Raine Study, with special focus on adolescents aged 16-17 years. The paper takes into account variations in family socioeconomic status and demographic characteristics, and investigates the possible moderating role they play in the link between nonstandard work schedules and child outcomes.

Sabine Andresen brings a new element to the debate on working time: poverty and living in disadvantaged conditions. She presents the results of a qualitative study of German families living under precarious conditions. Nonstandard work schedules are accompanied by insecure, temporary jobs and periods of unemployment. These families, who are often the object of demoralizing comments, struggle with bureaucratic obstacles, including constantly changing contact persons and the barely penetrable jungle of information on the public support system.

Eija Sevon and her colleagues approach the 24-h society from the point of view of young children who, on account of both parents’ nonstandard hours, attend day and night care. Finland is among the few countries in the world that offer public early child education outside normal business hours. They used a mobile diary method to compare children in regular day care with those in day and night care. They found that parental working patterns shape the daily lives of children by affecting daily routines, schedules and relationships with adults and peers, in both positive and negative ways

Discussant: Academy researcher ,

Demographic and societal trends, coupling with globalization, in recent decades around the world have changed the forms of parental employment and thus the way we care for our children. Research using data from developed countries such as United States have shown that parents working at hours that are early morning, evenings, nights, or rotating shifts may have compromised children’s well-being to certain degree. China presents one of the most dramatic examples of rapid socioeconomic transition in recent human history. This paper builds upon and extends beyond the existing literature to examine, as the first, this issue using a sample of children who were first graders in Spring 2014 in Shanghai, China. Approximately a quarter of the mothers and one-third of the fathers in our sample worked at nonstandard hours regularly. Using propensity score matching analysis, results indicate that children whose fathers working at nonstandard hours particularly at night or rotating shifts, had significantly worse behavioral problems in areas of internalizing, social problems, and attention; these children also had significantly worse academic performance rated by their teachers. As China is moving from being a primarily agrarian society with a planned economy to one that is increasingly urban and market-oriented enterprises, the tremendous economic and demographic shifts that may impact family and child well-being in an immense manner are due for a more in-depth understanding, for the benefit of well-being of the world.

This study aims to examine the link between working nonstandard schedules (evenings, nights, weekends, irregular or rotating on-call schedules) in both parents and the social and emotional wellbeing of their adolescent children. The study is based on data from the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study, with a focus on adolescents of 16/17 years. Multivariate linear and non-linear models are used to estimate the effect of parents’ nonstandard hours on the social and emotional wellbeing (mental health and behaviour) of adolescents. Reports from both parents and adolescents on the Child Behavioural Check List (CBCL) developed by Achenbach were used to measure the social and emotional wellbeing of adolescents. Based on the CBCL, three outcome variables are examined: total behavioural problems, internalising problems, and externalising behaviours. In all analyses family socioeconomic and demographic characteristics are adjusted, including family income, family structure, mother’s and father’s education, their occupational status, the number of siblings and the gender of the adolescent. Preliminary results so far have shown that in dependent of family socioeconomic status, parents’ nonstandard schedules are associated with an increased risk of behavioural problems in adolescents. Further analysis will examine possible interactions between parental nonstandard work schedules and child gender, family income, parents’ education, and family structure

Nonstandard working time has in earlier studies linked to precarious work conditions in terms of low salary, atypical work and insecurity. In this paper I present results of a qualitative study of disadvantaged families living in poverty in Germany. I focus on personal perspectives and experiences of mothers and fathers as experts. Up to now, political debates and practical recommendations have hardly ever taken the experiences and perceptions of the families into account, even though they are the only true experts on their situation. The study explores whether public support measures in Germany actually reach socially disadvantaged families in the intended way by focusing particularly on the conditions for success and failure revealed in the interaction processes between deprived families and professionals. To understand why support measures fail, we conducted qualitative interviews with professionals and deprived families. Parents outline their struggles with bureaucratic obstacles, constantly changing contact persons, and the barely penetrable jungle of information on the public support system. The results create an awareness for the host of problems that deprived families often have to handle simultaneously. When sickness, unemployment, lack of appreciation, and constant repetition of telling one’s life story accumulate, families feel tired and powerless. Very important is the issue of time as a question of participating in labor market and a value of being a “good” parent.

For parents working nonstandard schedules, it is difficult to find high quality childcare. Public day and night care, providing childcare and early childhood education for families working nonstandard hours, is a Finnish innovation. Although the need for childcare during nonstandard hours has increased internationally, research is lacking on the availability and quality of such childcare. In particular, little research exists on flexible childcare from the standpoint of young children’s daily lives and wellbeing. This study, as part of the larger Families 24/7 study, explores the daily rhythms of emotional wellbeing among young children in daycare. A specific aim was to compare children who attend daycare during regular daytime hours with children who, owing to parent’s nonstandard work schedules, attend daycare outside office hours. Participants were 32 children, aged 4 to 7, and their care providers. Parents and day care center personnel evaluated children’s moods three times per day for one week with a mobile diary application. The results showed not only differences in daily rhythms between the two groups of children, but also gender differences. The children in day and night care, with highly individual care times, had more individual and irregular mood rhythms. The 24-h society and parental nonstandard working hours affect children individually: for some the effects may be beneficial but for others it may be upsetting and a burden.

Dyadic coping is the way partners cope together against stress and support each other in times of difficulty. Research on dyadic coping has mainly focused on the individual and relational consequences of it and showed that positive dyadic coping responses significantly contribute to partner’s relationship functioning and stability. Research on the specific components of the dyadic coping process and on its correlates, however, has been relatively scarce. One aspect that has only been recently investigated by the dyadic coping research refers to the stress communication component of the process. To what extent the way the partner communicates his/her stress may facilitate or obstacle positive dyadic coping responses by the other partner? To what extent the other’s sensitivity and responsiveness to the partners’ communication of stress does promote positive outcomes of the dyadic coping process? Moreover, several individual and relational processes related to partners’ coping can promote or hinder the dyadic coping process. In particular, individual emotion regulation strategies (e. g., down regulation of negative emotions, emotional intelligence) were found to be associated with positive relationship outcomes as well as with more positivity and less negativity in couples’ interactions. How is individual emotion regulation associated with dyadic coping and ultimately with partners’ relationship satisfaction? Capitalization is a relational process similar to dyadic coping in several respects, but involving partners’ communication about and responses to positive events. How are dyadic coping and capitalization associated? The present symposium will delve into these issues with the aim of adding new knowledge on the dyadic coping process and deriving implication for preventive interventions designed to help couples cope together more effectively.

Dyadic coping - the way couples support each other in times of stress - has emerged as a strong predictor of long-term relationship functioning and stability. The theory of dyadic coping suggests that for providing adequate support, one would need an understanding of the stress-related emotions of the partner. However, research examining the importance of the understanding of the partner's emotions (e.g., being clear about the partner's emotions) on dyadic coping is rare. This study aims to address this gap by investigating the long-term influence of clarity of other people's feelings on dyadic coping. In a sample of 368 couples, clarity of other people's feelings and dyadic coping were measured annually over 3 years. Results suggest that clarity of other people's feelings predicts change in supportive dyadic coping (self and partner evaluation), especially in men. These findings suggest that individual emotional abilities, such as the emotional understanding of others, contribute to adequate dyadic coping.

Romantic couples usually try to provide support when one partner is stressed, but to what extent do couples differ in their sensitivity and responsiveness to the partners’ needs? Promptly reacting might be crucial in explaining differences in relationship outcomes. The central aim of this observational study was to disentangle the temporal dynamics of couple support conversations. The study was conducted with 132 couples of which one of the partners was experimentally stressed. After the stressful experience, couples were secretly videotaped during their reunion. Multilevel analyses were conducted with the intensive longitudinal observational data of the couple conversations. Preliminary results suggest that there is variety in how sensitive and responsive partners react to stress expression, which might also be associated with relationship outcomes. This line of research adds new knowledge on the importance of sensitivity and adequate reactions to the partners’ needs during periods of stress.

Emotion regulation has been related to more positivity and less negativity in couple relationships. Emotion regulation abilities (e. g., down regulation of negative emotions, emotional intelligence) have been associated with positive relationship outcomes (such as relationship satisfaction and constructive communication). The aim of the present research was to investigate the association between husbands and wives’ cognitive conscious emotion regulation strategies, dyadic coping behaviors and marital satisfaction. Using a sample of 295 couples from Romania (590 individuals), we found that adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies (putting into perspective, positive refocusing, positive reappraisal and planning refocusing) have been related to positive dyadic coping (supportive, common and delegated coping in couples), which in turn increased both partners’ marital satisfaction. Analyses using actor partner interdependence modeling indicated that dyadic coping mediated the link between spouses’ cognitive emotion regulation and their own marital satisfaction. These findings support the importance of addressing both cognitive coping strategies and dyadic coping in prevention and intervention in couple and family.

Dyadic coping and capitalization processes, although different in several aspects, share conceptual similarities, but they have been rarely studied together and, there is little research on the interplay between these two processes. The aim of the present study is to analyze whether and how partners’ perceptions of the other’s dyadic coping and capitalization responses are correlated. One hundred seventy-five (Mean relationship duration = 18 years) completed two self-report questionnaires (six-months interval) containing scales designed to measure the perception of partner’s capitalization responses, dyadic coping, and relational well-being. Results showed that partners’ dyadic coping and capitalization responses associated so that the more a partner is perceived as positive and supportive during stressful situations the more he/she is also perceived as responsive to the partner’s communication of positive events. Gender differences and implications for intervention are discussed.

A growing public and political interest in the contributions of families to the (economical) development of a society could be observed in recent decades. Parenting and parenthood thus has become a focus of political attention as well as public scrutiny. Recent social policy analyses see the advent of ‘politics of parenting’ and identify a ‘politicization of parenthood’. And as a matter of fact, profound changes has taken place in many European welfare states e.g. with regard to parenting support services, family support services, childcare systems or child protection systems. Taken together these changes seem to lead to contradictional developments: At the one hand side, many policies could be understood as a shift from private to public responsibilities in child rearing and education. They pursue the goal to support parents in the upbringing of children, shall allow more gender equality and a better reconciliation of work and family life and finally should create more equal opportunities for children in society without regard for their family backgrounds. On the other hand – and often at the same time – parents are made more and more responsible for the educational and economical success or ‘failure’ of their children, perceive more societal control of their parenting practices and are e.g. targeted by parenting programs. This is likely to be especially relevant for specific groups of parents: mothers, migrant parents as well as parents from lower educational and economical backgrounds.

These ongoing changes in the public understanding and the politics of parenting influences both, gender and generational relations within the family. Among others, social work services are to be found at the core of these policies: Social work institutions and social workers need to deal with the (new) public demands and policies and implement them into local programmes. But the other way around, they also shape current understandings of parenting, generational relations and gender relations e.g. through providing images and ideas of a good family life, good parenting, good motherhood or fatherhood. The discussion of the interaction of new policy frameworks and social work practices in the context of parenting as well as their their implications for gender and generational relations will be the core issue of the symposia.

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Since the implementation of a general state-regulated youth welfare system in the early 20th century as part of the German welfare system there is a very specific interrelation between the family and the youth welfare system. On the one hand there are periods of deep distrust to the moral and educational ability of (especially proletarian) parents for bringing up their children in an appropriate manner. On the other hand, in times of societal crises the family is addressed and pushed as salutatory for society and as the central institution for caring and educating. In this paper different stages of interrelation between the family, social work and the welfare state are reconstructed. First, it will be shown that the family always has been an object of political discussion and regulation and second, that actually there is an interesting mix of distrusting the family as well as addressing the family as most important for the education, care and upbringing of children. A new negotiation of shared duties of parents/the family, the state and its institution – the youth welfare system – can be seen at the moment.

Social workers' interventions in support of children and their families have often proved a minefield of sort, filled up with conflicting demands, expectations and tasks. This paper sets the resulting debate in the context of both social policy orientations and social work cultures. It argues that partnerships between families and practitioners have to be understood as the result of a complex set of factors. Data from a qualitative study of social work professional cultures suggest that among practitioners, policy orientations intertwine with different styles of conceiving social work; accordingly, professional cultures play an important part in connecting, or failing to connect, child protection and family support.

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