Low-income Girls Often Feel Unprepared For Puberty

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Guest Contribution

“Low-income girls often feel unprepared for puberty,” by Marni Sommer, Columbia University and Ann Herbert, Johns Hopkins University

My colleagues and I have conducted research focused on understanding and addressing the gap in menstrual support in countries around the world for over a decade.

Sometimes the problem is that girls don’t have access to toilets or clean water. But sometimes it’s that girls haven’t been given a lot of information about menstruation. Girls we’ve spoken to in Tanzania, Ghana, Ethiopia, Pakistan and Cambodia have described the fear and shame they experienced with their first periods. Some said they feared they were dying or had a terrible disease.

In response, we worked to develop puberty books for girls – and boys – ages 10 to 14 in many countries to help them understand what is happening to their bodies. We have helped distribute over one million books since 2010.

As these books gained attention, we received requests to develop a puberty book for low-income girls in the U.S. I hesitated. I assumed that girls in the U.S. likely felt adequately supported and informed.

But I heard so many requests that my colleague Ann Herbert and I along with students at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health decided to review the research to find out whether low-income girls in the U.S. really feel prepared for puberty.

What we learned was eye-opening. Across the research we reviewed, many girls reported negative experiences of and lack of preparation for puberty, and of menstruation in particular.

How Did We Find This Out?

We examined qualitative research (research designed to explore a population’s experiences, behaviours and perspectives) on the pubertal experiences of low-income girls growing up in the U.S. from 2000 through 2014, focusing on studies that had been conducted with girls who went through a normal (not uncommonly early or delayed) pubertal experience.

This lets us capture girls’ actual experiences and stories as they told them, rather than the numbers or statistics that may reflect pubertal change but not the rich details of their thoughts and perspectives.

We ultimately included 20 qualitative research articles for deeper analysis. Given the decades of attention that adolescent girls’ sexuality and related topics have received in research, advocacy and public health, the relatively small amount of literature on puberty was surprising to us. This means there are gaps in what we know about low-income girls growing up in the U.S. today.

Most of the articles that we found focused on samples of low-income urban girls in the northeast U.S. Studies of African-American and Hispanic girls tended to focus on sexuality and sexual behaviour. For studies conducted with Caucasian girls, the onset of menstruation was usually the focus.

These differences in focus shape and limit our understanding of the broad spectrum of low-income girls’ pubertal experiences today.

puberty

What Did We Find?

Many girls reported feeling scared, traumatized and embarrassed at the arrival of their first period, along with feeling dirty and “gross.” This is similar to findings from low-income countries.

In general, the more negative descriptions were associated with their feeling underprepared, not knowing what would happen with their first menstruation, or feeling they did not know enough about how to practically manage the blood flow and related discomfort that can arise with menstruation. There were also some neutral or ambivalent responses, although this included one girl suggesting she felt “scared and relieved.”

Some of the studies that assessed girls’ level of understanding of menstruation found that they did not always understand what was happening with their bodies. Across many of the studies, girls reported feeling that they had not received enough information or support to cope with menstruation or feeling like the information they did receive was too little and too late. For instance, one girl reported believing she might be raped and get pregnant after she was told by her mother that “now [having started menstruating] she could have babies.”

More positively, girls reported feeling that the messages they received about menstruation made them feel like they were growing up.

Puberty: Becoming A Woman

Most of the studies were not designed to systematically capture girls’ level of puberty and menstrual knowledge. This limits the conclusions that can be drawn from the studies about what girls do and don’t know about these topics.

There was much less written about breast development, with only some of the studies describing girls’ experiences. However, for those who did mention how they felt about their breast development, their comments were generally more positive than about menstruation. However, some girls reported wearing baggy clothing and avoiding activities such as running that would make their breast development more obvious.

Across sampling categories (Caucasian, Hispanic, Arab, African-American), they reported receiving messages about “becoming a woman” and the sense that they were becoming part of a female club whose members were able to share experiences. For some of them, these messages felt like a rite of passage. But for girls who perceived menstrual onset to be linked to rules that restricted their behaviour, such as no longer being allowed to play freely with their male friends, the experience was more negative.

They described being told to dress more “girly” or “not being able to swim or do anything again.”

Factors Influencing Girls’ Pubertal Experiences

Starting menstruation at an earlier age was associated with more negative experiences. Celebrating the arrival of menstruation, particularly when gifts were received, was described by some girls as a more positive experience. However, other girls reported feeling that their mothers’ enthusiastic reactions were exaggerated and embarrassing. They reported mothers as their primary sources of information, but mothers in return reported feeling inadequately prepared to speak with their daughters, and uncomfortable with this role.

In contrast, the onset of puberty and menstruation appears to create a distancing between many girls and their fathers.

Peers were found to be helpful sources of support and information. But they can also convey misinformation about the body changes happening to them. And male peers were sometimes reported to be sources of bullying and teasing that could increase girls’ discomfort with menstruation.

Why Does Any Of This Matter?

For one, puberty is a critical period of development that lays the foundation for future sexual and reproductive health.

Just as girls (and boys) need to understand how their lungs and breathing work the importance of not smoking tobacco, or how their food is digested in their bodies and the importance of good nutrition, they need to understand how their reproductive processes are developing and functioning.

Two, a key step in building girls’ (or boys’) confidence and self-esteem about their changing bodies is helping them feel supported and prepared as new, and often, confusing changes happen emotionally and physically inside of them.

All girls growing up in the U.S. today should be encouraged, informed and confident about their changing bodies, developing sexuality and future reproductive health. There is an urgent need for new research that focuses on the diversity of low-income girls’ experiences of puberty in the U.S. today, but also new programs that will better support both them and their parents at this critical developmental stage of life.The Conversation

Credits

Marni Sommer, Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University and Ann Herbert, PhD student, Johns Hopkins University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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How Advertising Shaped Thanksgiving As We Know It

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Guest Contribution

“How advertising shaped Thanksgiving as we know it,” by Samantha N. N. Cross, Iowa State University

I have always been intrigued by Thanksgiving – the traditions, the meal, the idea of a holiday that is simply about being thankful.

For my family, Thanksgiving is all about the food. Some foods, like turkey and mashed potatoes, may be familiar. But there are a few twists. Since I grew up in the Caribbean, I’m allowed a Caribbean dish or two. The reliability of the menu – with a little flexibility sprinkled in – seems to unite us as a family while acknowledging our different cultural backgrounds.

Chances are you and your family have similar traditions. Filipino-American families might include pancit. Russian-American families might serve a side dish of borscht. That’s what makes Thanksgiving unique. It’s a holiday embraced by people regardless of their religion or ethnicity.

Yet despite this adaptability, there’s a core part of the meal that almost everyone embraces. How did this come to be? Although few appreciate it, advertisers have shaped the meal as much as a family tradition.

A Uniquely Broad Appeal

When Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, first advocated for Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1846, she argued that it would unify the country. In our research, my colleagues and I have shown that Hale’s vision for the holiday has been largely fulfilled: Inclusivity of people and traditions has been Thanksgiving’s hallmark quality.

A reason for its broad appeal is that it lacks any association with an institutionalized religion. As one interviewee told us, “There is no other purpose than to sit down with your family and be thankful.” After interviewing a range of people – from those born in the U.S. to immigrants from countries like South Africa, Australia and China – it became obvious that the principles and rituals they embraced during the holiday were universal no matter the culture: family, food and gratitude.

But as a relatively new holiday – one not tied to a religious or patriotic tradition – a shared understanding of the celebration and the meal is crucial to ensure its long-term survival.

While there might be subtle variations, the Thanksgiving meal is the lodestone of the holiday, the magnet that brings people together. Today, familiar items constitute the meal: turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, gravy, alcohol, salad, apple pie and pumpkin pie. Many of our interviewees tended to serve some version of this list.

But why these items and not others? What makes turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie so special? My colleagues and I studied 99 years of Thanksgiving ads in Good Housekeeping magazine to find out.

Advertising: Marketing A Ritual

Starting with Thanksgiving’s early champion, Sarah Josepha Hale, the history of Thanksgiving is rooted in marketing. Marketers helped create many of the rituals and cultural myths associated with the Thanksgiving meal and legitimized and maintained them.

advertising

Aladdin Cooking Utensils advertises its double roaster in a 1920 issue of Good Housekeeping.

Initially, the Thanksgiving turkey competed with other meats, like duck, chicken and goose, for a centrepiece at the Thanksgiving table.

But by the 1920s, turkey had become the only meat advertised. Early ads would focus on how to prepare and present the perfect bird, promoting branded tools like roasters, ranges, pop-up thermometers and oven-cooking bags.

Iconic Swift’s Premium turkey ads focused on the sacredness of the meal by featuring families at prayer, and giving thanks before the meal begins. The importance of the turkey to the Thanksgiving celebration dominates, helping to perpetuate the Thanksgiving turkey tradition.

Meanwhile, early ads for the Eatmor Cranberry Company positioned their whole cranberries as a perfect complement to any and all Thanksgiving meat dishes. This brand dominated until the 1930s when another brand, Ocean Spray, entered with its canned gelatin cranberry sauce.

thanksgiving

Eatmor Cranberries – which used to be the king of Thanksgiving cranberry sauce – advertises in a November 1926 issue of Good Housekeeping.

Ads for both brands implied that cranberry sauce had been around since the first Thanksgiving dinner, which was highly unlikely. However, the brand positioning war successfully promoted cranberry sauce as the natural condiment for the Thanksgiving turkey. Ocean Spray would triumph and, to this day, promote whole cranberries and canned gelatin.

Considered by many to be the quintessential Thanksgiving dessert, pumpkin pie also wasn’t present at the first Thanksgiving meal. (The Pilgrims lacked the butter, wheat flour and sugar to make the pastry.) Nonetheless, beginning as early as 1925, a range of brands – for example, Borden’s, Snowdrift, Mrs Smith’s and Libby’s – have competed fiercely to connect pumpkin pie to the season, the holiday and the meal. It’s a rivalry that continues to this day.

The Role Of The Consumer

Not every product category or brand succeeded in becoming a core part of the Thanksgiving meal.

advertising

A Swift’s Premium Turkey ad from 1964. Wishbook

A Welch’s ad from the 1960s implies that the first Thanksgiving meal included juice made from grapes. In 1928, Diamond marketed their walnuts as an accessory to dress up Thanksgiving dishes. Despite vociferous ad campaigns, few associate Welch’s grape juice or Diamond walnuts with Thanksgiving today.

But those early 20th-century ads for turkey clearly resonated: Today, nearly 88 per cent of U.S. households have turkey on Thanksgiving, and approximately 20 per cent of the turkeys consumed in any given year are consumed at Thanksgiving. This is a testament to the enduring influence of marketing on the holiday. For brands like Butterball (formerly Swift’s Premium), Thanksgiving is big business.

Whether you’re a turkey fan or not, prefer apple pie to pumpkin pie, or enjoy canned gelatin over whole cranberry sauce, by celebrating Thanksgiving, you play a role as well. Marketers may have shaped many of the rituals of the holiday. But all Americans – from all backgrounds – certainly do their part to maintain them.

After all, brands need customers to survive.The Conversation

Credits

Samantha N. N. Cross, Associate Professor of Marketing, Iowa State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Early Indicators Of Dementia: 5 Behaviour Changes

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Guest Contribution

“Early indicators of dementia: 5 behaviour changes to look for after age 50,” by Daniella Vellone, University of Calgary

Dementia is often thought of as a memory problem, like when an elderly person asks the same questions or misplaces things. In reality, individuals with dementia will not only experience issues in other areas of cognition like learning, thinking, comprehension and judgement, but they may also experience changes in behaviour.

It’s important to understand what dementia is and how it manifests. I didn’t imagine my grandmother’s strange behaviours were an early warning sign of a far more serious condition.

She would become easily agitated if she wasn’t successful at completing tasks such as cooking or baking. She would claim to see a woman around the house even though no woman was really there. She also became distrustful of others and hid things in odd places.

These behaviours persisted for some time before she eventually received a dementia diagnosis.

Cognitive And Behavioural Impairment

When cognitive and behavioural changes interfere with an individual’s functional independence, that person is considered to have dementia. However, when cognitive and behavioural changes don’t interfere with an individual’s independence, yet still negatively affect relationships and workplace performance, they are referred to as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and mild behavioural impairment (MBI), respectively.

MCI and MBI can occur together, but in one-third of people who develop Alzheimer’s dementia, the behavioural symptoms come before cognitive decline.

Spotting these behavioural changes, which emerge in later life (ages 50 and over) and represent a persistent change from longstanding patterns, can be helpful for implementing preventive treatments before more severe symptoms arise. As a medical science PhD candidate, my research focuses on problem behaviours that arise later in life and indicate an increased risk for dementia.

Five Behavioural Signs To Look For

Illustration of five behaviour changes that may indicate risk of dementia
Spotting behavioural changes can be helpful for implementing preventive treatments before more severe symptoms arise.
(Daniella Vellone)

There are five primary behaviours we can look for in friends and family who are over the age of 50 that might warrant further attention.

1. Apathy

Apathy is a decline in interest, motivation and drive.

An apathetic person might lose interest in friends, family or activities. They may lack curiosity in topics that normally would have interested them, lose the motivation to act on their obligations or become less spontaneous and active. They may also appear to lack emotions compared to their usual selves and seem like they no longer care about anything.

2. Affective dysregulation

Affective dysregulation includes mood or anxiety symptoms. Someone who shows affective dysregulation may develop sadness or mood instability or become more anxious or worried about routine things such as events or visits.

3. Lack of impulse control

Impulse dyscontrol is the inability to delay gratification and control behaviour or impulses.

Someone who has impulse dyscontrol may become agitated, aggressive, irritable, temperamental, argumentative or easily frustrated. They may become more stubborn or rigid such that they are unwilling to see other views and are insistent on having their way. Sometimes they may develop sexually disinhibited or intrusive behaviours, exhibit repetitive behaviours or compulsions, start gambling or shoplifting, or experience difficulties regulating their consumption of substances like tobacco or alcohol.

4. Social inappropriateness

Social inappropriateness includes difficulties adhering to societal norms in interactions with others.

Someone who is socially inappropriate may lose the social judgement they previously had about what to say or how to behave. They may become less concerned about how their words or actions affect others, discuss private matters openly, talk to strangers as if familiar, say rude things or lack empathy in interactions with others.

5. Abnormal perceptions or thoughts

Abnormal perception or thought content refers to strongly held beliefs and sensory experiences.

Someone with abnormal perceptions or thoughts may become suspicious of other people’s intentions or think that others are planning to harm them or steal their belongings. They may also describe hearing voices or talking to imaginary people and/or act like they are seeing things that aren’t there.

Before considering any of these behaviours as a sign of a more serious problem, it’s important to rule out other potential causes of behavioural change such as drugs or medications, other medical conditions or infections, interpersonal conflict or stress, or a recurrence of psychiatric symptoms associated with a previous psychiatric diagnosis. If in doubt, it may be time for a doctor’s visit.

dementia

The Impact Of Dementia

Many of us know someone who has either experienced dementia or cared for someone with dementia. This isn’t surprising, given that dementia is predicted to affect one million Canadians by 2030.

While people between the ages of 20 and 40 may think that they have decades before dementia affects them, it’s important to realize that dementia isn’t an individual journey. In 2020, care partners — including family members, friends or neighbours — spent 26 hours per week assisting older Canadians living with dementia. This is equivalent to 235,000 full-time jobs or $7.3 billion annually.

These numbers are expected to triple by 2050, so it’s important to look for ways to offset these predicted trajectories by preventing or delaying the progression of dementia.

Identifying Those At Risk

While there is currently no cure for dementia, there has been progress towards developing effective treatments, which may work better earlier in the disease course.

More research is needed to understand dementia symptoms over time; for example, the online CAN-PROTECT study assesses many contributors to brain ageing.

Identifying those at risk for dementia by recognizing later-life changes in cognition, function as well and behaviour is a step towards not only preventing the consequences of those changes but also potentially preventing the disease or its progression.The Conversation

Credits

Daniella Vellone, Medical Science and Imaging PhD Candidate, University of Calgary

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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How Howard Thurman Met Gandhi And Brought Nonviolence To The Civil Rights Movement

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Guest Contribution

“How Howard Thurman met Gandhi and brought nonviolence to the civil rights movement,” by Walter E. Fluker, Boston University

Director Martin Doblmeier’s 2019 documentary, “Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story,” highlighted Thurman’s important role in the civil rights struggle as a key mentor to many leaders of the movement, including Martin Luther King Jr., among others.

I have been a scholar of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King Jr. for over 30 years and I serve as the editor of Thurman’s papers. Thurman’s influence on King Jr. was critical in shaping the civil rights struggle as a nonviolent movement. Thurman was deeply influenced by how Gandhi used nonviolence in India’s struggle for independence from British rule.

Visit To India

Born in 1899, Howard Washington Thurman was raised by his formerly enslaved grandmother. He grew up to be an ordained Baptist minister and a leading religious figure in 20th-century America.

Journey of the delegation in South Asia. Marc Korpus, CC BY

In 1936 Thurman led a four-member delegation to India, Burma (Myanmar), and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), known as the “pilgrimage of friendship.” It was during this visit that he would meet Mahatma Gandhi, who at the time was leading a nonviolent struggle for independence from British rule.

The delegation had been sponsored by the Student Christian Movement in India which wanted to explore the political connections between the oppression of blacks in the United States and the freedom struggles of the people of India.

The general secretary of the Indian Student Christian Movement, A. Ralla Ram, had argued for inviting a “Negro” delegation. He said that “since Christianity in India is the ‘oppressor’s’ religion, there would be a unique value in having representatives of another oppressed group speak on the validity and contribution of Christianity.”

Between October 1935 to April 1936, Thurman gave at least 135 lectures in over 50 cities, to a variety of audiences and important Indian leaders, including the Bengali poet and Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, who also played a key role in India’s independence movement.

Throughout the journey, the issue of segregation within the Christian church and its inability to address colour consciousness, a social and political system based upon discrimination against blacks and other nonwhite people, was raised by many of the people he met.

gandhi

Thurman and Gandhi

The delegation met with Gandhi towards the end of their tour in Bardoli, a small town in India’s western state of Gujarat.

Gandhi, an admirer of Booker T. Washington, the prominent African-American educator, was no stranger to the struggles of African Americans. He had been in correspondence with prominent black leaders before the meeting with the delegation.

As early as May 1, 1929, Gandhi had written a “Message to the American Negro” addressed to W.E.B. DuBois to be published in “The Crisis.” Founded in 1910 by DuBois, “The Crisis” was the official publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Gandhi’s message stated,

“Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is no dishonour in being slaves. There is dishonour in being slave-owners. But let us not think of honour or dishonour in connection with the past. Let us realise that the future is with those who would be truthful, pure and loving.”

Understanding The Idea Of Nonviolence

In a conversation lasting about three hours, published in The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, Gandhi engaged his guests with questions about racial segregation, lynching, African-American history, and religion. Gandhi was puzzled as to why African Americans adopted the religion of their masters, Christianity.

He reasoned that at least in religions like Islam, all were considered equal. Gandhi declared, “For the moment a slave accepts Islam he obtains equality with his master, and there are several instances of this in history.” But he did not think that was true for Christianity. Thurman asked what was the greatest obstacle to Christianity in India. Gandhi replied that Christianity as practiced and identified with Western culture and colonialism was the greatest enemy to Jesus Christ in India.

The delegation used the limited time that was left to interrogate Gandhi on matters of “ahimsa,” or nonviolence, and his perspective on the struggle of African Americans in the United States.

According to Mahadev Desai, Gandhi’s personal secretary, Thurman was fascinated with the discussion on the redemptive power of ahimsa in a life committed to the practice of nonviolent resistance.

Gandhi explained that though ahimsa is technically defined as “non-injury” or “nonviolence,” it is not a negative force, rather it is a force “more positive than electricity and more powerful than even ether.”

In its most practical terms, it is love that is “self-acting,” but even more – and when embodied by a single individual, it bears a force more powerful than hate and violence and can transform the world.

Towards the end of the meeting, Gandhi proclaimed, “It may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of nonviolence will be delivered to the world.”

Search For An American Gandhi

Indeed, Gandhi’s views would leave a deep impression on Thurman’s own interpretation of nonviolence. They would later be influential in developing Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance. It would go on to shape the thinking of a generation of civil rights activists.

In his book, “Jesus and the Disinherited,” Thurman addresses the negative forces of fear, deception and hatred as forms of violence that ensnare and entrap the oppressed. But he also counsels that through love and the willingness to nonviolently engage the adversary, the committed individual creates the possibility of community.

As he explains, the act of love as redemptive suffering is not contingent on the other’s response. Love, rather, is unsolicited and self-giving. It transcends merit and demerit. It simply loves.

A growing number of African-American leaders closely followed Gandhi’s campaigns of “satyagraha,” or what he termed as nonresistance to evil against British colonialism. Black newspapers and magazines announced the need for an “American Gandhi.”

Upon his return, some African-American leaders thought that Howard Thurman would fulfil that role. In 1942, for example, Peter Dana of the Pittsburgh Courier wrote that Thurman “was one of the few black men in the country around whom a great, conscious movement of Negroes could be built, not unlike the great Indian independence movement.”

King, Love And Nonviolence

Thurman, however, chose a less direct path as an interpreter of nonviolence and a resource for activists who were on the front lines of the struggle. As he wrote,

“It was my conviction and determination that the church would be a resource for activists – a mission fundamentally perceived. To me it was important that the individual who was in the thick of the struggle for social change would be able to find renewal and fresh courage in the spiritual resources of the church. There must be provided a place, a moment, when a person could declare, I choose.”

Indeed, leaders like Martin Luther King did choose to live out the gospel of peace, justice and love that Thurman so eloquently proclaimed in writing and the spoken word, even though it came with an exacting price.

In his last letter to Martin Luther King, dated May 13, 1966, Thurman expressed his regret for the time that had elapsed since he and King last spoke. He ended the short note with a rather foreboding quote from the American naturalist and essayist Loren Eiseley,

“Those as hunts treasure must go alone, at night, and when they find it they have to leave a little of their blood behind them.”

King, like Gandhi, fell to an assassin’s bullet.The Conversation

Credits

Walter E. Fluker, Professor of Ethical Leadership, Boston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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What Is ‘Eldest Daughter Syndrome’ And How Can We Fix It?

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Guest Contribution

“What is ‘eldest daughter syndrome’ and how can we fix it?” by Yang Hu, Lancaster University

Have you heard of “eldest daughter syndrome”? It’s the emotional burden eldest daughters tend to take on (and are encouraged to take on) in many families from a young age.

From caring for younger siblings, helping out with everyday chores, and looking after sick parents to sorting shopping orders or online deliveries, eldest daughters often shoulder a heavy but invisible burden of domestic responsibility from a young age.

What’s wrong with that? You might ask, shouldn’t the eldest children, who are supposed to be more grown-up, help out and look after their younger siblings? Aren’t girls “naturally” better at caring? These popular assumptions are so entrenched that they can make it difficult for us to see the problem.

But #EldestDaughterSyndrome is now trending on TikTok, with adolescent girls speaking out about the unfair amount of unpaid (and unappreciated) labour they do in their families, as well as discussing its adverse effects on their lives, health and wellbeing.

Of course, the “syndrome” has existed for centuries across many parts of the world. So why is it now being spoken about as such an issue?

Despite women’s rise in education and employment, they still shoulder the lion’s share of housework. Indeed, progress towards gender equality in the workplace has not translated into gender equality at home. And eldest daughter syndrome can go some way to explain why this is the case.

She Bears The Burden

Research shows that children make a notable but often overlooked contribution to domestic labour. Mirroring the gender divide among adults, girls between five and 14 years old spend 40% more time on domestic work than boys.

Following a patriarchal pecking order, the eldest daughter often bears the brunt of the burden among her siblings.

As voiced by many on TikTok, the syndrome can impair eldest daughters’ well-being and “steal” their childhood as they are rushed into assuming a disproportionate amount of adult responsibilities – also known as parentification. In doing so, it reproduces gender inequality in domestic labour from one generation to another.

Eldest Daughter Syndrome: Why It Happens

At least three behavioural theories underlie eldest daughter syndrome and they are often simultaneously at play, reinforcing one another.

First, the role modelling theory, suggests that eldest daughters often follow their mother as a role model in learning to “do” gender. Second, the sex-typing theory proposes that parents often assign different, gendered tasks to girls and boys.

Sex typing often builds on parents’ gendered understanding of domestic work as something associated with femininity. For parents who consciously strive to instil gender equality in their children, sex-typing can still occur as eldest daughters unconsciously join their mothers in gendered activities such as cooking, house cleaning and shopping.

Third, the labour substitution theory suggests that when working mothers have limited time available for domestic work, eldest daughters often act as “substitutes”. As a result, they end up spending more time on care provision and housework.

eldest daughter

Consequently, mothers’ progress towards gender equality at work can come at the cost of their eldest daughters picking up the domestic slack at a young age.

As we look further afield, the issue of eldest daughter syndrome has far-reaching implications for global gender inequality and an ongoing global care crisis.

In the Philippines, for example, many mothers migrate to the US, the Middle East and Europe to work as domestic workers.

Their work helps free their clients from domestic gender inequality to some extent through domestic outsourcing. But back in the Philippines, the women’s eldest daughters often have to step up as “surrogate” mothers and run the household.

In this process, the eldest daughter syndrome reproduces domestic gender inequality across generations and offloads such inequality from one part of the world to another.

What Can We Do?

The “cure” might seem simple – we need families to recognise the unfair burden that may have been placed on the eldest daughter and to redistribute household responsibilities more equally.

Yet, doing so is far from straightforward. It requires male family members in particular to step up their contribution to domestic work. In turn, it requires us to “undo” centuries of thinking about housework and care as something gendered and “feminine”.

To achieve that, we need to first recognise the problem of domestic labour, particularly labour performed by children and eldest daughters, which goes largely unseen, unpaid and under-valued.

In the 2023 UK Budget, the £4 billion investment in extending childcare coverage sheds some light on the sheer economic value of childcare, which, although massive, represents only a tiny fraction of the extensive range of domestic responsibilities disproportionately shouldered by women and often eldest daughters.

But we can’t change something we can’t see. This is why being more aware of eldest daughter syndrome, not only as an individual struggle but also as an issue of gender inequality, is a good start.The Conversation

Credits

Yang Hu, Professor, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Our Past: What Makes Emotional Healing So Hard?

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Guest Contribution

When I was 5 years old our family moved to Starkville, Mississippi. My dad had secured a position as a research scientist at Miss. State University was simply too good to pass up.

Starkville was a small town like many other small towns across America. Life was slow, safe and predictable. All in all, not such a bad place to live.

For the next 12 years, I was a Starkvillian. Like so many other young boys I spent most of my free time exploring the world from the comfort of a bicycle seat.

Life was full of adventures. Looking back now, it resembled a series of Norman Rockwell paintings.

But it wasn’t always so idealistic. In fact, for over 20 years after leaving that small town I hated everything to do with Starkville. I called it a nightmare existence in a God-forsaken town.

So why do you suppose I hated it?

I Focused On The Negative

Like children everywhere, my wonder years consisted of good events, bad events, and many mediocre and neutral events. Good times that made me feel good. Bad times that made me feel bad. And many events stirred little emotional reaction at all.

However, my problem was that I discounted the good events while elevating the bad ones.

The painful events in my past became like anchors – the pillars of the past. The defining moments of my life.

Certain events would happen, and rather than simply feeling the pain and moving on, I would suppress and repress those painful emotions.

Paradoxically, while I denied the feelings, I elevated the events. I would take a painful situation and make it much worse than it really was.

I Embellished My Past

How do you embellish a painful past? Intentionally exaggerate its stature and importance. Like a playwright constructing a play, I would add drama for the effect it created.

I would set the stage. Get the lighting just right. Play suspenseful music in the background. Create a prologue –

“The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent…”

Like one of those old Dragnet TV shows!

I built it up any way I could. I made it sacred.

And no matter what, I could *NOT* feel the feelings of those past events and let them go! I needed those unresolved emotions to breathe life into an otherwise dead past.

I spent way too much of my time giving CPR to a corpse of the past. Ever given CPR? It’ll wear you out! It’s hard to do it for very long; it’s just too much work.

Imagine doing it for decades.

I defined my life by those highly selective events of the past that were being kept alive ONLY by my emotional energy.

past

 

I Was Giving My Power To The Past

Thoughts and feelings are the very source of your power. Your power – your ability and willingness to act – comes about because of the constant stream of your thoughts and feelings.

Thoughts and feelings are constantly and consistently springing forth into your consciousness.

A stream of thoughts. A stream of feelings. Together they are the source of your power.

If you’re using those thoughts and feelings to hold onto the past, then you’ll have less power available to you now. Power that could be used to heal your emotions instead becomes diverted into holding the past in place.

I Built My Past Into A Frankenstein’s Monster

Out of that handful of painful events, I created a backbone. From the backbone, I grew a skeleton. Surrounding the skeleton I grew muscles and skin and internal organs. I gave it a heart. I gave it a voice.

All that growth required conscious effort on my part. I had to keep reminding myself of those painful events.

“I really was wronged.”

“I really was shamed.”

“I really was abused.”

Building them up and fleshing them out took a lot of my power. But it was worth it. I got to feel like a victim. I got to hide in my self-pity. I was entitled. Hey, I EARNED the right to engage in any errant behaviour I chose!

I earned the right to blame, to struggle, to manipulate and punish anybody I wanted. I earned my righteous arrogance because of my embellished pain of the past.

I was powerless as a result, but that’s okay. I earned the right to be weak by all the effort I was expending to try to keep the past alive.

***
I took the best of me and gave it to a past that didn’t even exist.
***

It takes constant effort to keep the past alive. You can’t just set it and forget it – like a thermostat on the wall. You have to keep remembering it. You have to keep using today’s power to reinforce the imprisonment of yesterday’s power.

We Invest In The Past

The past is over, yet so often our power remains trapped in the emotional investment we’ve made in certain painful events of that dead past.

The past is over.

But the very power we need to break free of those memories is instead being diverted into a much more sinister goal. We invest a lot of time and energy creating a Frankenstein’s monster of the past, and it’s become too big to handle.

The power you need to heal the past is instead being used to try to keep it alive. It becomes a tangled mess.

You can’t heal the past until you get more power.

You can’t get more power until you heal the past.

So what’s the answer? First, you heal a little bit, and you retrieve a little power. Then, in your empowered state, you heal a little more and get back a little more power. It happens layer by layer.

And it all begins with a willingness to change.

Credits

Author Bio
Mark Ivar Myhre, The Emotional Healing Wizard, author of the highly acclaimed – Emotional Healing Quick Start Guide – what to do right now to feel better.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com – Free Website Content

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As Canada Welcomes Historic Numbers Of Immigrants, How Can Communities Be More Welcoming?

Posted on September 18, 2023 by Guest Contribution

“As Canada welcomes historic numbers of immigrants, how can communities be more welcoming?” by Leah Hamilton, Mount Royal University; Awish Aslam, Western University; Priscila Ribeiro Prado Barros, Western University, and Victoria Esses, Western University

Canada’s population has officially surpassed 40 million people, and immigration has significantly contributed to reaching this milestone. In 2021, immigrants made up almost one-quarter of the Canadian population.

Globally, Canadians are viewed as very welcoming of immigrants. In 2019, the country placed first in Gallup’s Migration Acceptance Index. Canada has a dynamic immigration system that is celebrated as a model for other countries.

Its immigration system responds to the country’s economic needs, with immigration contributing to almost 100 per cent of Canada’s labour force growth. It is also recognized as a world leader in refugee resettlement. This includes a large private sponsorship program in which groups of Canadians can sponsor refugees.

Immigrants Face Challenges

Despite receiving international praise, Canada’s immigration system is not without criticism. Immigrants often face challenges, including barriers to finding jobs that make use of their skills and qualifications. Research also suggests immigrants face discrimination in a variety of domains, such as when accessing housing, education and health care.

Canada is in the midst of the largest intake of immigrants in its history as the government looks to rebuild the economy and labour force following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The federal government has announced plans to admit 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024, and 500,000 in 2025.

At this critical time, the success of Canada’s immigration program depends on actively welcoming immigrants and supporting their settlement and integration into communities of all sizes.

In this context, now is the time to ask: How can Canada create more welcoming communities for immigrants?

immigrants

What Makes A Community Welcoming For Immigrants?

We define a welcoming community as a joint effort by all members of a community to design and maintain a place where immigrants feel they belong. It is a place that supports immigrants’ economic, social, cultural, civic and political integration.

A welcoming community has structures and practices in place to meet the needs and promote the inclusion of immigrants in all aspects of life. It must routinely measure and evaluate these initiatives to ensure their effectiveness.

In our recent work with the Pathways to Prosperity Partnership, we identify and explain the key characteristics of welcoming communities.

To determine these characteristics, we polled 259 immigration experts from the government, the settlement sector and academia. We identified 19 key characteristics of welcoming communities and placed them in order of importance based on input from respondents.

These five characteristics were deemed most important:

  1. Access to affordable, adequate and suitable housing
  2. Employment and entrepreneurship opportunities
  3. Access to suitable health care, including mental health care
  4. Positive attitudes towards immigrants of all racial, cultural, and religious backgrounds
  5. Access to immigrant-serving agencies that meet immigrants’ needs

Characteristics that make communities welcoming do not operate alone. They interact and reinforce each other. For example, the location of affordable housing affects access to immigrant-serving agencies and employment opportunities. Likewise, employment and entrepreneurship opportunities affect whether immigrants can afford suitable housing.

It is also critical for communities to consider the barriers faced by immigrants who are racialized, women, refugees, 2SLGBTQI+, people with disabilities, youth, seniors and those who have experienced trauma.

How To Measure The Characteristics That Make A Community Welcoming

We created a set of indicators for each of the characteristics of a welcoming community. Communities can use these indicators to evaluate how well they perform on each characteristic. They can also use these indicators to determine whether strategies they implement to be more welcoming are effective.

One of the key characteristics of a welcoming community is employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. An important indicator here is the rate of employment among working-age immigrants.

Communities must make meaningful comparisons (whether across time, with other communities or with non-immigrants) in order to interpret each indicator. For example, how do immigrants’ employment rates compare to those of non-immigrants?

Communities must also make an effort to understand what accounts for the current indicator levels within their community. For example, employment opportunities for immigrants will be more readily available at times of low unemployment rates, as is currently the case.

Communities in Canada cannot be complacent about how they welcome newcomers. Policymakers at all levels of government, service providers and the general public all have an important role to play.

There are many ways people can make their communities more welcoming. One key way to start is by learning how Canada’s immigration system works.

There are also lots of opportunities to volunteer with an immigrant-serving agency near you. You can even join a formal program that matches longtime community members with newcomers.

Together we can translate positive attitudes into positive action to create and maintain fully welcoming communities. Actively engaging in actions to make communities more welcoming is critical to the success of Canada’s immigration program.The Conversation

Credits

Leah Hamilton, Professor & Chair, Department of General Management & Human Resources, Mount Royal University; Awish Aslam, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, Western University; Priscila Ribeiro Prado Barros, PhD Student, Department of Sociology, Western University, and Victoria Esses, Director, Network for Economic and Social Trends (NEST); Co-Chair, Pathways to Prosperity Partnership, Western University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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New Year Resolutions: Why Your Brain Isn’t Wired To Stick To Them

Posted on September 13, 2023 by Guest Contribution

“New year resolutions: why your brain isn’t wired to stick to them – and what to do instead,” by Pragya Agarwal, Loughborough University

New year, new resolutions. It is that time once again. A recent survey shows that almost 58% of the UK population intended to make a New Year’s resolution in 2023, which is approximately 30 million adults. More than a quarter of these resolutions will be about making more money, personal improvement and losing weight.

But will we succeed? Sadly, a survey of over 800 million activities by the app Strava, which tracks people’s physical exercise, predicts most of these resolutions will be abandoned by January 19.

One of the main reasons why promises fail before the end of January is because they are vague. They focus on immeasurable qualities such as being healthier, happier (without defining what that means) or earning more money (without coming up with an amount or plan).

Vague Goals On The Brain

Vague goals do not provide us with sufficient direction. If we do not know exactly where we are going, it is difficult to know which path to take. It is impossible to know how far we have to go to reach our destination, what barriers we will have to overcome and how to prepare for them.

We also often set ourselves unattainable goals because we want to challenge ourselves. There is an inherent paradox – dubbed the “effort paradox” – in how much our brains love the idea of effort while in reality finding it uncomfortable. We want to think that we will feel more fulfilled if we challenge ourselves to achieve a difficult goal.

Another reason for this is that we experience a disconnect from our future selves – we are biased towards the present. That means we find it difficult to imagine the kind of difficulties our future selves will face in trying to achieve these resolutions.

We think of the endpoint that we want now, in the present, but not the process or journey to get there. With such a narrow focus, it is easy to visualise this endpoint as closer than what it is when we start working towards it.

The Lazy Brain

To navigate the world, we form mental shortcuts – creating habits. When these cognitive shortcuts have been hardwired in place, our brains find it easier to act without much conscious effort or control. The longer we have had these habits, the more deeply entrenched the cognitive shortcuts behind them are.

For example, we may unthinkingly reach for the jar of biscuits when we park ourselves in front of the telly at night – it becomes a routine. Or we hit the snooze button when the alarm goes off in the morning.

Our brains are lazy and want to minimise cognitive load – meaning we repeat what we find pleasurable rather than consider many different and new options, which may be more or less pleasurable. It is simply easier to take these shortcuts that don’t offer much resistance or discomfort. That said, some people rely more on habits than others and they may find it harder to break them.

To achieve our resolutions, however, we often need to change these deep-seated habits and alter the neural pathways responsible. But as our brains resist this discomfort, we are tempted to go back to a more comfortable place. That’s a reason why we give up our resolutions. An aspect of this is known as the status quo bias. We are more likely to stay with the status quo – our existing mindsets – rather than persist with changing these habits which takes time and effort.

The more we focus on the goal rather than the incremental steps needed to achieve that goal, the more likely we are to find it difficult to change our mindsets and create the habits needed to achieve it. It becomes a vicious circle because the more we get stressed about something, the more likely we are to fall back into a place of comfort, with our cognitive shortcuts.

Back Of The Brain

When we engage in habitual behaviour, areas at the back of the brain, to do with automatic behaviour, are typically engaged. But to actively alter our neural pathways away from such activation, we need to engage several areas of the brain – including the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in highly complex cognitive tasks.

A study using neuro-imaging revealed that altering our behaviour involves coordinated cross-talk between several brain regions, including speedy communication between two specific zones within the prefrontal cortex and another nearby structure called the frontal eye field, an area involved in controlling eye movements and visual awareness.

This is hugely more cognitively taxing for our brain, and so we try to avoid it.

brain

Better Approaches

Changing habits requires being aware of the patterns of behaviour that we have learnt over the years and knowing how difficult it is to change them. And that’s impossible if you are blinded by visions of the new, perfect you. But to succeed at changing yourself, you need to know the real you.

It is also helpful to set clear, achievable goals – such as devoting an extra hour a week to your favourite hobby or banning biscuits in the evenings only, perhaps replacing them with a nice, herbal tea.

What’s more, we need to appreciate and celebrate the process of achieving our goals. Many of us are more inclined to focus on the negative aspects of the experience, leading to stress and anxiety. But bad emotions demand more attention – this is called negativity bias. The more we focus on negative things in our lives and the negative aspects about ourselves, the more we are likely we are to feel down while missing the positive things.

The more we focus on the positive aspects of ourselves, the more likely we are to be able to change our mindsets.

So if you want to change, accept yourself the way you are – and understand why. However, if you do that, you may even find you’d rather stick to the motto “New Year, same old me”. There’s nothing wrong with that.The Conversation

Credits

Pragya Agarwal, Visiting Professor of Social Inequities and Injustice, Loughborough University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Orgasm Gap And What Sex-Ed Did Not Teach You

Posted on September 11, 2023 by Guest Contribution

“The orgasm gap and what sex-ed did not teach you,” by Gonzalo R. Quintana Zunino, Concordia University and Conall Eoghan Mac Cionnaith, Concordia University

There is a clear disparity between men and women when it comes to achieving orgasm; a phenomenon scientists call the orgasm gap.

Studying orgasms is no easy task. We work as psychology of sexual behaviour researchers in the lab of Dr. James Pfaus at Concordia University and were interested to explore the “controversy” of clitoral versus vaginal orgasms.

We conducted a literature review on the current state of the evidence and different perspectives on how this phenomenon occurs in women. Particularly, the nature of a woman’s orgasm has been a source of scientific, political and cultural debate for over a century. Although science has an idea of what orgasms are, we are still quite uncertain as to how they occur.

We Don’t Always Have One

Orgasms are one of the few phenomena that occur as a result of a highly complex interaction of several physiological and psychological systems all at once. While there may be evolutionary reasons why men are more likely to orgasm during sex, we shouldn’t doom ourselves to this idea. Indeed, part of the problem lies in what happens in the bedroom.

We all have different preferences when it comes to what we like in bed. But one commonality we share is that we know when we orgasm and when we do not. We don’t always orgasm every time we have sex, and that can be just fine, because we may have sex for many different reasons. However, studies repeatedly show that women reach climax less often than men do during sexual encounters together.

For example, a national survey conducted in the United States showed that women reported one orgasm for every three from men. Heterosexual males said they achieved orgasm usually or always during sexual intimacy, 95 per cent of the time.

The gap appears to become narrower among homosexual and bisexual people, where 89 per cent of gay males, 88 per cent of bisexual males, 86 per cent of lesbian women, and 66 per cent of bisexual women orgasm during sexual interactions.

Orgasm Gap

When we take a closer look at what might explain the orgasm gap, we can see the type of relationship we have with our partner matters. If you are in an established committed relationship, the gap tends to close, but it widens during casual sex.

That is, women in a committed relationship report reaching an orgasm as often as 86 per cent of the time, whereas women in casual sex encounters report they orgasm only 39 per cent of the time. Furthermore, heterosexual women achieve orgasm easily and regularly through masturbation.

Likewise, the more knowledge about the female genitalia (especially about the clitoris) the partner has, the higher the likelihood is for women to orgasm more frequently. Finally, and most importantly, the respondents reported the most reliable practice to achieve an orgasm for women is oral sex.

We don’t know why this gap occurs in casual sex versus sex in a committed relationship, but part of it might be how we communicate what we want sexually, what we expect sexually and our attitudes toward sexual pleasure.

orgasm

What Sex-Ed Did Not Teach You About Orgasm

Formal education teaches us a vast amount of relevant topics in school, yet sexual education has been and is still a matter of (moral) debate. For many of us, sexual education covered reproductive biology and how not to get pregnant or contract sexually transmitted infections.

Sex-ed has been focused on preventing kids from having sex. “Always use condoms” was sometimes the most progressive sex-ed message. Education is now progressing into teaching what sex is about and how to engage in ethical and respectful sex, but that is still not the whole picture. How about pleasure or how to have fun and explore what we like, how to communicate with our partners and many other crucial aspects of intimate life?

The key to the ultimate goal of enjoying ourselves is to know what you and your partner want and how to satisfy each other. Consequently, incomplete and biased sex education fails both men and women, omitting the fact sex is not only for reproduction but also for enjoyment.

Maybe the first thing we should learn about sex is that it is one of the favourite pastimes of adults. Preventing it from happening will only increase the likelihood of future generations engaging in it more, only with less knowledge about to how get the most out of it.

Some Advice For Sexual Partners

Our first reaction to the orgasm gap may be to point fingers and find someone to blame: Cultural attitudes, religion, society, the educational system, your ex. Certainly, anyone would agree that the gap is a multifactorial phenomenon.

Statistics do not count when it comes to your own intimacy. In bed, it’s you and your partner(s), and that is what matters. We cannot create nor do we trigger orgasms in our partners. We can only help to make them easier, more fun and more enjoyable for them.

Even if you may have a good idea of what your partner may want in bed, what people like varies a great deal. Thus, understanding what a partner wants, how, when, where, or for how long, requires openness, trust and, most importantly, communication.

These key ingredients may be what’s missing in both casual and long-term encounters. We could all be more open and humble, and acknowledge that with a good attitude and a good teacher, everyone gets better at it.

Your sexual prowess and ability to satisfy grows with practice; it goes without saying that our sexual lives should improve beyond previous negative experiences.

There may be very few things in this world that perhaps all people in this world enjoy, and orgasms are among them. But the enjoyment of sex is not the race to climb to the top of the mountain. Instead, it is the enjoyment of getting there.

So what can you do? Talk, be confident and pay attention to your partner.

Satisfaction means very different things for different people. What really matters is what you and your partner(s) want. Shattering the climax glass ceiling is a team effort. Sex is fun — and everyone has something to learn about it.The Conversation

Credits

Gonzalo R. Quintana Zunino, PhDc Behavioral Neuroscience and Public Scholar, Concordia University and Conall Eoghan Mac Cionnaith, Ph.D Candidate, Concordia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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First Nations Kids Make Up About 20% Of Missing Children

Posted on August 30, 2023 by Guest Contribution

“First Nations kids make up about 20% of missing children, but get a fraction of the media coverage,” by Silke Meyer, Monash University; Eugene Hyman, Santa Clara University; Samantha Wild, Indigenous Knowledge, and Wynetta Dewis, Indigenous Knowledge

In Australia, on average, 48 young people under the age of 18 go missing every day.

While First Nations young people make up less than 6% of the Australian population under the age of 18, they comprise around 20% of missing children.

In reality, this rate is likely higher, with information on cultural identity often missing in national missing persons data.

Despite this over-representation in missing person cases, these cases rarely make national, let alone international, headlines.

News coverage of police and community coming together to solve the disappearances and deaths of white children, however, frequently make the front pages and capture the nation. We have been reminded of this again in recent weeks.

missing

The Silence On Missing First Nations Children

The disappearance of William Tyrrell garnered national attention in 2014 and is dominating the news once again at the moment.

The recent disappearance of Cleo Smith in Western Australia also dominated news coverage for weeks. Cleo was found alive after 18 days of dedicated police work and media coverage, the offering of a $1 million reward and over a thousand community calls to Crime Stoppers. These are ideal responses to missing children reports.

Eight years earlier, 10-month-old First Nations boy Charles Mullaley was abducted and killed in Western Australia. He is affectionately known as “Baby Charlie”. His abduction and his family’s journey for justice have received very little police commitment. The family is still waiting for the government’s commitment to a public inquest.

The Bowraville murders of three First Nations children received the same lack of urgency in media coverage and police response. The Bowraville case has remained unsolved since 1991.

This raises the question, has anything changed in the last 30 years?

It should not be the responsibility of a grieving family to seek justice and answers when law enforcement fails. It is a community and government responsibility to award the same attention, empathy and mobilisation of resources to bring home all missing children, or at the very least bring closure to their families, regardless of their cultural identity.

First Nations children are also over-represented in assault and homicide cases in Australia, along with suicides. Yet, these also rarely make headlines or generate public outcry.

Missing Women Also Receive Little Attention

Like children, First Nations women are far more likely to experience violence-related injuries and deaths than non-Indigenous women.

First Nations women are also over-represented in missing persons statistics, yet their disappearances receive little media attention compared to the disappearances and deaths of white women. This discrepancy was coined the “missing white woman syndrome” by American journalist Gwen Ifill in 2004.

This phenomenon has repeatedly been raised as an issue requiring national attention in Australia, Canada, and the United States.

A Bigger Social Problem At Hand

All of this points to a persistent, broader societal problem of who is perceived to be an ideal victim.

Police, media and community responses frequently reinforce negative stereotypes of First Nations peoples.

For example, the media occasionally cover community unrest arising from a lack of justice for missing or killed First Nations children. This further fuels negative stereotypes of Indigenous people as unruly. However, there remains a lack of coverage about the missing children themselves, which would provide context for why community unrest happens to begin with.

The stereotypical representation of First Nations people as the “ideal offender”, rather than the “ideal victim”, also creates a lack of empathy for victims of violence. This is particularly true for those with complex issues, including mental health problems, being intoxicated at the time of police contact, or being known to authorities for past police or child protection contact.

As a result, their experiences are “othered” and their credibility as a victim or family worthy of empathy and support is diminished.

Their interactions with police are frequently met with disbelief or blame for causing the situation, such as when seeking help for family violence and other welfare concerns.

This means their calls for help to police are at times dismissed, as was experienced first-hand by Baby Charlie’s family when WA police did not assist with ensuring his safety. Advocates have raised other examples of missing First Nations children being dismissed by police or police refusing to intervene

Instead, First Nations communities often have to be the ones to call for justice, as has been done with this petition calling for an inquest and investigation into Baby Charlie’s death.

What Needs To Happen?

It is time for an independent national inquiry similar to the one launched into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.

It is time for Australia to treat the disappearances and deaths of First Nations children (and adults) with the same priority and urgency we see for cases involving white children.

The first step towards greater equality and humanity in the treatment of First Nations deaths and disappearances – by the media, police and general public – is to address our subconscious and actual biases around who is an ideal victim worthy of our attention.

We need to stop othering the experiences of First Nations people and families. Only then will we ensure that Black lives matter – not just the lives of those who manage to present well during times of crises.The Conversation

Credits

Silke Meyer, Associate Professor in Criminology; Deputy Director Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, Monash University; Eugene Hyman, Adjunct professor, Santa Clara University; Samantha Wild, Director for consultancy business Awakening – Cultural Ways, Indigenous Knowledge, and Wynetta Dewis, CEO at Queensland Indigenous Family Violence Legal Service, Indigenous Knowledge

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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