Shaping Children

Winner of an Honorable Mention in the Clinical Medicine category of the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Awards given by the Association of American Publishers At a time when medical technologies make it ever easier to enhance our minds and bodies, a debate has arisen about whether such efforts promote a process of "normalization," which makes it ever harder to tolerate the natural anatomical differences among us. The debate becomes especially complicated when it addresses the surgical alteration, or "shaping," of children. This volume explores the ethical and social issues raised by the recent proliferation of surgeries designed to make children born with physical differences look more normal. Using three cases—surgeries to eliminate craniofacial abnormalities such as cleft lip and palate, surgeries to correct ambiguous genitalia, and surgeries to lengthen the limbs of children born with dwarfism—the contributors consider the tensions parents experience when making such life-altering decisions on behalf of or with their children. The essays in this volume offer in-depth examinations of the significance and limits of surgical alteration through personal narratives, theoretical reflections, and concrete suggestions about how to improve the decision-making process. Written from the perspectives of affected children and their parents, health care providers, and leading scholars in philosophy, sociology, history, law, and medicine, this collection provides an integrated and comprehensive foundation from which to consider a complex and controversial issue. It takes the reader on a journey from reflections on the particulars of current medical practices to reflections on one of the deepest and most complex of human desires: the desire for normality. Contributors Priscilla Alderson, Adrienne Asch, Cassandra Aspinall, Alice Domurat Dreger, James C. Edwards, Todd C. Edwards, Ellen K. Feder, Arthur W. Frank, Lisa Abelow Hedley, Eva Fedder Kittay, Hilde Lindemann, Jeffery L. Marsh, Paul Steven Miller, Sherri G. Morris, Wendy E. Mouradian, Donald L. Patrick, Nichola Rumsey, Emily Sullivan Sanford, Tari D. Topolski

This text is an authoritative analysis of current services for children and young people in the UK. Drawing upon European-wide data, this innovative book critiques the policies that have shaped today’s services, argues that the current system is insufficiently joined-up and outlines a radical new model of co-located services for the integrated delivery of children’s care. Shaping Children’s Services: examines key indicators of children’s development; provides a breakdown of the economics of caring for children; explores the way government initiatives such as Sure Start, Extended Schools, Total Place and the Kennedy review of children’s health have shaped current policies; charts the key twentieth-century developments of child welfare across health, education and social care and looks at the inter-relationships between health, social care, police, education and the voluntary sector; presents both good and failing examples of children’s services. Offering a thoughtful and provocative challenge on how the present system can be better configured to meet the needs of children and young people, this book is an essential read for all those involved in working with children from a range of fields, including health, education, social care, juvenile justice and voluntary sector services.

This publication calls all urban stakeholders to invest in child-responsive urban planning, recognizing that cities are not only drivers of prosperity, but also of inequity. Through 10 Children’s Rights and Urban Planning principles, the handbook presents concepts, evidence, tools and promising practices to create thriving and equitable cities where children live in healthy, safe, inclusive, green and prosperous communities. By focusing on children, it provides guidance on the central role that urban planning should play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, from a global perspective to a local context.

The lessons shared in "Shaping Your Child's Behaviours" are based on two Psychologists experiences with handling children's difficult behaviours. The book presents a systematic approach to controlling children's behaviours. Positive disciplining methods that show parents how to give attention when the child is well behaved, and how to withdraw attention in the event of misbehaviours, are described in detail. This concise book also provides advice on handling some difficult scenarios such as stealing, selfishness and refusing to do homework.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

When bioethicists debate the use of technologies like surgery and pharmacology to shape our selves, they are, ultimately, debating what it means for human beings to flourish. They are debating what makes animals like us truly happy, and whether the technologies at issue will bring us closer to or farther from such happiness. The positions that participants adopt in debates regarding such ancient and fundamental questions are often polarized, and cannot help but be deeply personal. It is no wonder that the debates are sometimes acrimonious. How, then, should critics of and enthusiasts about technological self-transformation move forward? Based on his experience at the oldest free-standing bioethics research institute in the world, Erik Parens proposes a habit of thinking, which he calls "binocular." As our brains integrate slightly different information from our two eyes to achieve depth of visual perception, we need to try to integrate greatly different insights on the two sides of the debates about technologically shaping our selves-if depth of intellectual understanding is what we are after. Binocular thinking lets us benefit from the insights that are visible from the stance of the enthusiast, who emphasizes that using technology to creatively transform our selves will make us happier, and to benefit from the insights that are visible from the stance of the critic, who emphasizes that learning to let our selves be will make us happier. Parens observes that in debates as personal as these, we all-critics and enthusiasts alike-give reasons that we are partial to. In the throes of our passion to make our case, we exaggerate our insights and all-too-often fall into the conceptual traps that language sets for us. Foolishly, we make conceptual choices that no one who truly wanted understanding would accept: Are technologies value-free or value-laden? Are human beings by nature creators or creatures? Is disability a medical or a social phenomenon? Indeed, are we free or determined? Parens explains how participating in these debates for two decades helped him articulate the binocular habit of thinking that is better at benefiting from the insights in both poles of those binaries than was the habit of thinking he originally brought to the debates. Finally, Parens celebrates that bioethics doesn't aspire only to deeper thinking, but also to better acting. He embraces not only the intellectual aspiration to think deeply about meaning questions that don't admit of final answers, but also the ethical demand to give clear answers to practical questions. To show how to respect both that aspiration and that demand, the book culminates in the description of a process of truly informed consent, in the context of one specific form of using technology to shape our selves: families making decisions about appearance normalizing surgeries for children with atypical bodies.

How effective is the Indian polity in making laws and policies to address changing ground realities? How do its gears work? Which stakeholder groups are more successful in bringing about policy change, through what methods, and in what contexts? Seeking to answer these questions, Shaping Policy in India takes a close look at nine landmark Indian laws and legislative attempts to reveal the sociopolitical process of policy formulation in the world’s largest democracy. Offering in-depth accounts of the evolution of these nine major legislations, this book interrogates the suitability of existing political theories to explain the policy development process in an emerging economy like India. It covers recent events in the 1999–2014 period that have underlined the role of non-government players in law-making in India, as well as long-standing movements like right to information, right to education, and food security. Case studies have been used to assess the complexity against the relief of existing political theories, invariably developed in the West and to identify gaps in current political theory in understanding the nature of issue-based political movements, advocacy, and activism. The book then takes a few initial steps towards suggesting a paradigm based on complexity theory that may better serve to illuminate this critical part of the political process.

Shaping the Future of Child and Adolescent Mental Health: Towards Technological Advances and Service Innovations coincides with the 25th International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions (IACAPAP) Congress in Dubai from December 5–9, 2022. There are three overarching themes of this book. Firstly, the impact of the Internet and digital technologies on the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents, including computerized therapies, and the fundamental role of technologies to advance knowledge in the field. Secondly, a theme on harnessing the expansion of knowledge on psychiatric disorders and their treatment for children and adolescents, exemplified by chapters on different kinds of adversity in child and adolescent mental health and a chapter on precision therapeutics. Given the location of the IACAPAP Congress, the third theme focuses on aspects of child and adolescent mental health in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. Chapters provide insights into a broad range of contemporary technology- and service innovation–related topics in child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health. These include growing up in the digital age, cyberbullying, clinical applications of big data and machine learning, computerized cognitive behavioral therapy, technology- enhanced learning, lessons from COVID-19, new understanding of the consequences of psychological trauma, autoimmune encephalitis, and precision therapeutics in depression. Acknowledging the global challenge of child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health, readers will find an emphasis on contextual challenges in the field, including innovations for scaling up of mental health intervention in low- and middle-income countries, and research and training in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. Emphasizes digital influences and applications in child and adolescent mental health research, psychiatric treatments, and training Highlights children and adolescents in adversity including COVID-19 and psychological trauma Appraises new approaches to understanding selected psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents Addresses the research in child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health across the Eastern Mediterranean Region and training in the Gulf Region