Maryah Stella Fram

Child Experience of Food Insecurity Is Associated with Child Diet and Physical Activity

BACKGROUND Food insecurity is associated with deficits in child development and health, but little is known about how childrens specific food-insecurity experiences play out through nutritional and non-nutritional pathways that may compromise well-being. OBJECTIVE This study used child self-reports of food insecurity to examine the types of food-insecurity experiences that were most prevalent and the relations between child food insecurity (CFI), child diet, and child physical activity (PA). METHODS A total of 3605 fourth- and fifth-grade children whose schools participated in the Network for a Healthy California-Childrens PowerPlay! campaign completed 24-h diary-assisted recalls and surveys including items from the Child Food Security Assessment and questions about PA. Data were analyzed by using regression and logistic regression models. RESULTS CFI was present in 60% of the children and included experiences of cognitive, emotional, and physical awareness of food insecurity. Greater levels of CFI were associated with higher consumption of energy, fat, sugar, and fiber and a diet lower in vegetables. For instance, a child at the highest level of CFI, on average, consumed ∼494 kJ/d (118 kcal), 8 g/d of sugar, and 4 g/d of fat more than a food-secure child. Higher CFI was associated with a marginally significant difference (P = 0.06) in minutes of PA (17 min/d less for children at the highest level of CFI vs. those who were food secure) and with significantly greater perceived barriers to PA. CONCLUSIONS CFI is a troublingly frequent, multidomain experience that influences childrens well-being through both nutritional (dietary) and non-nutritional (e.g., PA) pathways. CFI may lead to poor-quality diet and less PA and their developmental consequences. Practitioners should consider CFI when assessing child health and well-being and can do so by asking children directly about their CFI experiences.

Development and Validation of a Child Report Assessment of Child Food Insecurity and Comparison to Parent Report Assessment

Child food insecurity (CFI) is typically assessed using parental report of child experiences, which works well for assessing food insecurity but may be inadequate for assessing childrens experiences of the household food environment. This study used mixed methods to develop and validate a child report assessment of CFI, comparing the accuracy of child versus parent report. Children reported their food insecurity with high accuracy in 4 of 6 domains; parent reports were inaccurate, missing nearly half of the children experiencing hunger. Parent report may accurately reflect household food insecurity, but child report should be used to assess childrens food-related needs.

Early Care and Prekindergarten Care as Influences on School Readiness

Child care is increasingly viewed as an opportunity to enhance children’s development and school readiness, with prekindergarten programs and early intervention programs targeting children at different moments of development. Results of existing research are mixed, and although many children experience different child care arrangements at different ages, little is known about the joint influence of early and later child care experiences. Using Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort data, the authors estimate a series of regression models, examining the unique and additive contributions of initial child care experiences and prekindergarten experiences on children’s school readiness. The authors find that early use of nonparental care is associated with negative sociobehavioral outcomes; prekindergarten center-based and Head Start care add to this negative association. Early participation in center-based care is associated with enhanced reading and math scores; those relationships are fully mediated by prekindergarten center-based care participation. Implications for policy, practice, and research are discussed.

Liberal and Conservative in Social Work Education: Exploring Student Experiences

Claims of ‘liberal bias’ in higher education raise unique concerns for social work education in the United States. In a time of increasing conservatism in mainstream America, students who identify as political or social conservatives may find themselves particularly challenged by the perspectives, values and ideas they encounter in the social work classroom. This paper explores student perceptions of a ‘liberal’/‘conservative’ conflict in the social and educational environment of their MSW program. Drawing on Bourdieus concepts of ‘habitus’ and the social ‘field’ as a framework for interpreting student interview data, we discuss perceptions of ‘liberal bias’ at the nexus of individual experience, educational processes, and broader socio‐political climate.

U.S. Households With Children Are Exposed to Nonpersistent and Persistent Food Insecurity

The objective of this study was to quantify and describe the extent to which children are exposed to food insecurity across middle childhood in the United States. Specifically, we aimed to longitudinally identify (1) the prevalence of nonpersistent and persistent food insecurity in households with children between kindergarten and eighth grade and (2) possible disparities in the prevalence of nonpersistent and persistent food insecurity in households with children between kindergarten and eighth grade. Data were obtained from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten data set. We found that many households with children in the United States experience nonpersistent and persistent food insecurity and considerable disparities exist between population groups.

Positive Parenting Practices Associated with Subsequent Childhood Weight Change

We aimed to identify positive parenting practices that set children on differential weight-trajectories. Parenting practices studied were cognitively stimulating activities, limit-setting, disciplinary practices, and parent warmth. Data from two U.S. national longitudinal data sets and linear and logistic regression were used to examine association of initial parenting practices with subsequent change in body mass index (BMI) Z-score and being overweight, stratified by income and gender. Lower change in BMI Z-score and lower likelihood of being or becoming overweight occurred among girls if parents engaged in cognitively stimulating activities or set bedtime; among low-income girls if parents helped with art and set bedtime; among high-income girls if they participated in dance or music, parents talked about nature or visited a museum or library, or parents had rules about number of hours for watching television; among low-income boys if they participated in dance or parents built something with them or set bedtime; and among high-income boys if they participated in dance or music. Greater expression of warmth was associated with lower change in BMI Z-score. Parenting practices facilitating cognitive stimulation, setting limits, and expressing warmth are associated with lower likelihood of being or becoming overweight and can be promoted by healthcare professionals.

Chicks Aren’t Chickens Women, Poverty, and Marriage in an Orthodoxy of Conservatism

This article describes the marital and domestic violence experiences of poor women in South Carolina in the context of an orthodoxy of conservatism. Drawing on Bourdieu’s scholarship, the authors present a conceptual framework that is based on the concepts of habitus, orthodoxy, and heterodoxy. The interpretation of the qualitative and quantitative data connects the observed behavioral phenomena with the structural, cultural, and political factors that sustain them. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of the findings and the debate on marriage promotion

Severity of household food insecurity and lifetime racial discrimination among African-American households in South Carolina

ABSTRACT Objectives: In 2014, 30% of African-American households with children had low or very low food security, a rate double that of white households with children. A household has low food security if its members experience food shortages and reductions in food quality attributable to a lack of household resources or access and very low food security if its members also experience reductions in food intake and disrupted eating patterns. Households that are either low or very low food secure are known collectively as food insecure. We examined the association between the severity of household food insecurity and reports of lifetime racial discrimination among a sample of food-insecure African-American households in South Carolina. Design: Data were collected from 154 African-American respondents. Food insecurity was measured using the US Department of Agriculture’s Household Food Security Survey Module. Lifetime racial discrimination was measured using the Perceived Ethnic Discrimination Questionnaire-Community Version (PEDQ-CV). We used logistic regression to test the association between severity of food insecurity (low vs. very low food secure), PEDQ-CV score and PEDQ-CV subscales. All models were adjusted for demographic and socioeconomic variables. Results: A one-unit increase in the frequency of lifetime racial discrimination was associated with a 5% increase in the odds of being very low food secure (odds ratio (OR) 1.05, P < .05). More reports of discrimination that were stigmatizing or devaluing (OR 1.16, P < .05), took place at a workplace or school (OR 1.15, P < .05) or were threatening or aggressive (OR 1.39, P < .05) increased the odds of being very low food secure. More reports of racial discrimination that were excluding or rejecting did not significantly increase the odds of being very low food secure (OR 1.07, P > .05). Conclusions: Severity of household food insecurity is associated with lifetime racial discrimination among African-American households in South Carolina.

Backpack Programs and the Crisis Narrative of Child Hunger—A Critical Review of the Rationale, Targeting, and Potential Benefits and Harms of an Expanding but Untested Model of Practice

In recent years, school-based food backpack programs (BPPs) have come into national prominence as a response to a perceived crisis of child hunger in America. Distributing bags of free food directly to schoolchildren for their own personal consumption each weekend, BPPs bring together private donors, faith communities, and public schools around an intuitively appealing project: children are hungry, and so we give them food. Perhaps because of their intuitive appeal, BPPs have expanded rapidly, without rigorous evaluation to determine their impacts on children, families, and schools. This Perspective aims to open up thinking about BPPs, first articulating the implicit conceptual model that undergirds BPPs, drawing on documentation offered by major program providers and on our own experience working with several schools implementing BPPs, to provide a window into what BPPs do and how and why they do it. We focus in particular on how the crisis narrative of child hunger has shaped the BPP model and on the related interplay between public sympathy and the neoliberal climate in which structural solutions to family poverty are eschewed. We then assess the BPP model in light of existing knowledge, concluding that BPPs fit poorly with the needs of the majority of children living in food-insecure households in the United States and consequently put children at risk of negative consequences associated with worry, shame, stigma, and disruptions to family functioning. Finally, we provide recommendations for practice and research, emphasizing the importance of 1) responding to childrens actual needs throughout program implementation, 2) avoiding unnecessary risks by effective targeting of services to only those children who need them, and 3) rigorously evaluating program outcomes and unintended consequences to determine whether, even for the small number of US children who experience hunger, the benefits of the BPP model outweigh its psychosocial costs.

Early childhood education and care content for the social work curriculum.

Social workers are poised to play an important role in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings; however, they need the knowledge and skills necessary to make a meaningful contribution. This article presents learning activities that infuse ECEC content, centered on the following four areas for social work education: (1) history of the profession, (2) observation of current practice, (3) culturally competent service delivery, and (4) advocacy to enhance social justice. Through this infusion of content, social work educators can better prepare their students for the growing field of ECEC practice and for social work practice more broadly.