Wellbeing of gay fathers with children born through surrogacy: a comparison with lesbian-mother families and heterosexual IVF parent families.

STUDY QUESTION: Are there differences in levels of parental wellbeing (parental stress, psychological adjustment and partner relationship satisfaction) between gay-father families with infants born through surrogacy, lesbian-mother families with infants born through donor insemination, and heterosexual-parent families with infants born through IVF? SUMMARY ANSWER: There were no differences in parental wellbeing. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: The only other study of parental wellbeing in gay-father families formed through surrogacy (mean age children: 4 years old) found no difference in couple relationship satisfaction between these families and lesbian-mother families formed through donor insemination and heterosexual-parent families formed without assisted reproductive technologies. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION: This cross-sectional study is part of an international research project involving 38 gay-father families, 61 lesbian-mother families and 41 heterosexual-parent families with 4-month-olds. In each country (the UK, the Netherlands and France), participants were recruited through several sources, such as specialist lawyers with expertise in surrogacy (for the recruitment of gay fathers), lesbian and gay parenting support groups, fertility clinics (for the recruitment of lesbian and heterosexual parents), and/or online forums and magazines. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS: During a home visit when their infants were between 3.5 and 4.5 months old, participants completed standardized measures of parental stress, parental psychological adjustment (anxiety and depression) and partner relationship satisfaction. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE: All parents reported relatively low levels of parental stress, anxiety and depression, and were all relatively satisfied with their intimate relationships. After controlling for caregiver role (primary or secondary caregiver role), there were no significant family type differences in parental stress, P = 0.949, depression, P = 0.089, anxiety, P = 0.117, or relationship satisfaction, P = 0.354. LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION: The findings cannot be generalized to all first-time ART parents with infants because only families from relatively privileged backgrounds participated. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS: Our findings may have implications for the development of policy and legislation in relation to these new family forms, as well as the regulation of surrogacy in the Netherlands and France. In addition, our findings might encourage professional organizations of obstetricians and gynecologists in these countries to recommend that requests for assisted reproduction should be considered regardless of the applicants' sexual orientation. STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S): This research was supported, under the auspices of the Open Research Area (Application BO 3973/1-1; Principal Investigator, Michael E Lamb), by grants from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC; Grant ES/K006150/1; Principal Investigator, Michael E. Lamb), The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO; Grant NWO 464-11-001, Principal Investigator, Henny W.M. Bos) and the French Agence Nationale de Recherche (ANR; Grant ANR-12-ORAR-00005-01, Principal Investigator, Olivier Vecho) whose support is gratefully acknowledged. There were no competing interests.

Repetition of contaminating question types when children and youths with intellectual disabilities are interviewed.

BACKGROUND: The present study examined the effects of repeating questions in interviews investigating the possible sexual abuse of children and youths who had a variety of intellectual disabilities. We predicted that the repetition of option-posing and suggestive questions would lead the suspected victims to change their responses, making it difficult to understand what actually happened. Inconsistency can be a key factor when assessing the reliability of witnesses. MATERIALS: Case files and transcripts of investigative interviews with 33 children and youths who had a variety of intellectual disabilities were obtained from prosecutors in Sweden. The interviews involved 25 females and 9 males whose chronological ages were between 5.4 and 23.7 years when interviewed (M = 13.2 years). RESULTS: Six per cent of the questions were repeated at least once. The repetition of focused questions raised doubts about the reports because the interviewees changed their answers 40% of the time. CONCLUSIONS: Regardless of the witnesses' abilities, it is important to obtain reports that are as accurate and complete as possible in investigative interviews. Because this was a field study, we did not know which responses were accurate, but repetitions of potentially contaminating questions frequently led the interviewees to contradict their earlier answers. This means that the interviewers' behaviour diminished the usefulness of the witnesses' testimony.

Male roles in families "at risk": the ecology of child maltreatment.

Research on child development has increasingly emphasized the complexity of developmental processes, and this reconceptualization is reflected in recent research on the effects of child maltreatment as well. The articles in this special issue illustrate the value of studying maltreatment in the context of children's relationships, not only with their biological mothers, but with biological fathers and father figures as well. Ambiguities remain, however, suggesting that we need to know much more about the quality and longevity of the relationships between these men and both their partners and surrogate children to understand their roles and impact more fully.

Use of a structured investigative protocol enhances young children's responses to free-recall prompts in the course of forensic interviews.

One hundred alleged victims of child sexual abuse (ages 4-12 years; M = 8.1 years) were interviewed by police investigators about their alleged experiences. Half of the children were interviewed using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's structured interview protocol, whereas the other children--matched with respect to their age, relationship with the alleged perpetrator, and seriousness of the alleged offenses--were interviewed using standard interview practices. Protocol-guided interviews elicited more information using open-ended prompts and less information using option-posing and suggestive questions than did standard interviews; there were no age differences in the amount of information provided in response to open-ended invitations. In 89% of the protocol interviews, children made their preliminary allegations in response to open-ended prompts, compared with 36% in the standard interviews.

The relationship between within-interview contradictions and eliciting interviewer utterances.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether interview practices associated with inaccurate reporting in laboratory analog contexts were also associated with inaccurate information in actual forensic contexts. METHOD: The forensic interview of a 5-year-old girl, an alleged victim of sexual abuse, was analyzed to explore interview practices associated with the retrieval of contradictory information. Content analyses of the child's responses focused on: (1) new informative details about the reported incidents; (2) contradictory details; (3) "central" and "peripheral" details; and (4) the types of utterances used to elicit each detail. RESULTS: The results illustrate how risky option-posing and suggestive utterances can be, as most (90%) contradicting details were elicited using option-posing and suggestive utterances and almost all (98%) of the contradicted and contradicting details were central, containing crucial information concerning the investigated allegation. No contradictory details were elicited in response to open-ended invitations. CONCLUSION: The findings demonstrate that poor interviewing practices can be associated with high levels of internal contradiction and should be avoided by forensic interviewers. To avoid contaminating children's reports and increase the likely accuracy of the information retrieved, moreover, interviewers should elicit as much information as possible using open-ended utterances, which tap free-recall memory.

The Memorandum of Good Practice: theory versus application.

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to evaluate the quality of investigative interviews in England and Wales since implementation of the Memorandum of Good Practice (MOGP), which specified how forensic interviews of alleged child abuse victims should be conducted. METHOD: Transcripts of 119 videotaped interviews of alleged victims between the ages of 4 and 13 years were obtained from 13 collaborating police forces. Trained raters then classified the types of prompts used by the investigators to elicit substantive information from the children, and tabulated the number of forensically relevant details provided by the children in each response. RESULTS: Like their counterparts in the United States, Israel, and Sweden, forensic interviewers in England and Wales relied heavily on option-posing prompts, seldom using open-ended utterances to elicit information from the children. Nearly 40% of the information obtained was elicited using option-posing and suggestive prompts, which are known to elicit less reliable information than open-ended prompts do. CONCLUSION: Despite the clarity and specificity of the MOGP, its implementation appears to have had less effect on the practices of forensic interviewers in the field than was hoped. Further work should focus on ways of training interviewers to implement the superior practices endorsed by the MOGP and similar professional guidelines.

A longitudinal examination of the associations between mothers' and sons' attributions and their aggression.

This study tested an integrative, multipathway model designed to explain bidirectional effects of the attributions and coercive behaviors of mothers and sons in the context of a longitudinal study. Subjects were 246 mothers and sons who were 7-9 years of age. Mothers' and sons' attributions about one another's intent were significantly related to the aggressiveness of the behavior that each of them directed toward the other. Boys' earlier aggression did not significantly predict the mothers' subsequent attributions, whereas mothers' negative behavior indeed predicted subsequent negative attributions on the part of the boys. Even after considering children's earlier negative behavior, children's negative attributions about their mothers helped explain the aggressiveness of their subsequent behavior. The same was not true for mothers whose earlier attributions indirectly influenced their subsequent aggressive behavior.

Agonist-promoted trafficking of human bradykinin receptors: arrestin- and dynamin-independent sequestration of the B2 receptor and bradykinin in HEK293 cells.

In this study, we analysed the agonist-promoted trafficking of human B(2) (B(2)R) and B(1) (B(1)R) bradykinin (BK) receptors using wild-type and green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged receptors in HEK293 cells. B(2)R was sequestered to a major extent upon exposure to BK, as determined by the loss of cell-surface B(2)R using radioligand binding and by imaging of B(2)R-GFP using laser-scanning confocal fluorescence microscopy. Concurrent BK sequestration was revealed by the appearance of acid-resistant specific BK receptor binding. The same techniques showed that B(1)R was sequestered to a considerably lesser extent upon binding of des-Arg(10)-kallidin. B(2)R sequestration was rapid (half-life approximately 5 min) and reached a steady-state level that was significantly lower than that of BK sequestration. B(2)R sequestration was minimally inhibited by K44A dynamin (22.4+/-3.7%), and was insensitive to arrestin-(319-418), which are dominant-negative mutants of dynamin I and beta-arrestin respectively. Furthermore, the B(2)R-mediated sequestration of BK was completely insensitive to both mutants, as was the association of BK with a caveolae-enriched fraction of the cells. On the other hand, agonist-promoted sequestration of the beta(2)-adrenergic receptor was dramatically inhibited by K44A dynamin (81.2+/-16.3%) and by arrestin-(319-418) (36.9+/-4.4%). Our results show that B(2)R is sequestered to a significantly greater extent than is B(1)R upon agonist treatment in HEK293 cells. Furthermore, B(2)R appears to be recycled in the process of sequestering BK, and this process occurs in a dynamin- and beta-arrestin-independent manner and, at least in part, involves caveolae.

The human B1 bradykinin receptor exhibits high ligand-independent, constitutive activity. Roles of residues in the fourth intracellular and third transmembrane domains.

The B1 bradykinin (BK) receptor (B1R) is a seven-transmembrane domain, G protein-coupled receptor that is induced by injury and important in inflammation and nociception. Here, we show that the human B1R exhibits a high level of ligand-independent, constitutive activity. Constitutive activity was identified by the increase in basal cellular phosphoinositide hydrolysis as a function of the density of the receptors in transiently transfected HEK293 cells. Several B1R peptide antagonists were neutral antagonists or very weakly efficacious inverse agonists. Constitutive B1R activity was further increased by alanine mutation of Asn(121) in the third transmembrane domain of the receptor (B1A(121)). This mutant resembled the agonist-preferred receptor state since it also exhibited increased agonist affinity and decreased agonist responsiveness. A dramatic loss of constitutive activity occurred when the fourth intracellular C-terminal domain (IC-IV) of the human B2 BK receptor subtype (B2R), which exhibits minimal constitutive activity, was substituted in either B1R or B1A(121) to make B1(B2ICIV) and B1(B2ICIV)A(121), respectively. Activity was partially recovered by subsequent alanine mutation of a cluster of two serines and two threonines in IC-IV of either B1(B2ICIV) or B1(B2ICIV)A(121), a cluster that is important for B2R desensitization. The ligand-independent, constitutive activity of B1R therefore depends on epitopes in both transmembrane and intracellular domains. We propose that the activity is primarily due to the lack of critical epitopes in IC-IV that regulate such activity.

The effect of being a victim or witness of family violence on the retrieval of autobiographical memories.

OBJECTIVE: This study was designed to determine whether greater reliance on general memory retrieval in children was related to depression, and whether family violence affected the specificity of children's memory retrieval. METHOD: We compared children who had experienced some form of family violence with children who had never experienced any form of family violence, based on their responses to questions concerning child-parent and interparental disagreements. RESULTS: As expected, there was a positive correlation between the extent of "generic-categoric" memory retrieval and depression level. There was no evidence, however, that autobiographical memory was affected by family violence. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first to report significant associations between depression and autobiographical memory style in children. The results suggest that the effect of family violence on children's memory retrieval may be mediated by depression.

Weaning and the nature of early childhood interactions among bofi foragers in central Africa.

Western scholarly literature suggests that (1) weaning is initiated by mothers; (2) weaning takes place within a few days once mothers decide to stop nursing; (3) mothers employ specific techniques to terminate nursing; (4) semi-solid foods (gruels and mashed foods) are essential when weaning; (5) weaning is traumatic for children (it leads to temper tantrums, aggression, etc.); (6) developmental stages in relationships with mothers and others can be demarcated by weaning; and (7) weaning is a process that involves mothers and children exclusively, with weaned children moving from close relationships with their mothers to strengthened relationships with other children. In many respects, these presumptions are consistent with contemporary Euroamerican practices: nursing stops early (usually before six months) relative to other cultures and takes place over a few days or weeks with the help of bottles and baby foods. Because bottles are available, weaning seldom appears traumatic, but it is seen as an important step in the establishment of independence between mothers and infants. By contrast, weaning from the bottle is often perceived as traumatic. Despite considerable academic and popular interest, weaning has seldom been studied systematically, especially in small-scale cultures. Qualitative and quantitative data from a study of Bofi foragers in Central Africa are used here to evaluate the cross-cultural applicability of the assumptions summarized above.

Accuracy of investigators' verbatim notes of their forensic interviews with alleged child abuse victims.

Verbatim contemporaneous accounts of 20 investigative interviews were compared with audiotaped recordings thereof. More than half (57%) of the interviewers' utterances along with 25% of the incident-relevant details provided by the children were not reported in the "verbatim" notes. The structure of the interviews was also represented inaccurately in these accounts. Fewer than half (44%) of the details provided by the children were attributed to the correct eliciting utterance type. Investigators systematically misattributed details to more open rather than more focused prompts. These results underscore the superiority of electronic recording when the content and structure of investigative interviews must be preserved.

Investigative interviews of child witnesses in Sweden.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the structure and informativeness of interviews with 4- to 13-year-old alleged victims of sexual abuse in Sweden. METHOD: Seventy-two alleged victims of sexual abuse were interviewed by six experienced officers from one police district in Sweden. Our evaluation focused on the structure of the interviews, the distribution and timing of the investigators' utterance types, and the quantity and quality of the information provided by the children. RESULTS: Content analysis revealed that the interviewers relied primarily on option-posing and suggestive questions--together, these comprised 53% of their utterances--when interviewing the alleged victims. As a result, most of the details (57%) obtained from the children were elicited by option-posing and suggestive utterances. Only 6% of the interviewers' utterances were open-ended invitations, and these elicited only 8% of the information obtained. CONCLUSION: The reliance on option-posing and suggestive prompts may have reduced the accuracy of the information obtained, thereby interfering with the investigations, and reducing the forensic admissibility of the children's statements. This suggests a continuing need in Sweden, as in other countries, for interview practices that enhance the quality of information provided by young victims.

Assessing the value of structured protocols for forensic interviews of alleged child abuse victims.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effectiveness of a structured interview protocol (NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol) operationalizing universally recommended guidelines for forensic interviews. METHOD: The NICHD Investigative Protocol was designed to maximize the amount of information obtained using recall memory probes, which are likely to elicit more accurate information than recognition memory probes. Forensic investigators were trained to use the NICHD protocol while conducting feedback-monitored simulation interviews. The utility of the protocol was then evaluated by comparing 55 protocol interviews with 50 prior interviews by the same investigators, matched with respect to characteristics likely to affect the richness of the children's accounts. The comparison was based on an analysis of the investigators' utterance types, distribution, and timing, as well as quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the information produced. RESULTS: As predicted, protocol interviews contained more open-ended prompts overall as well as before the first option-posing utterance than non-protocol interviews did. More details were obtained using open-ended invitations and fewer were obtained using focused questions in protocol interviews than in non-protocol interviews, although the total number of details elicited did not differ significantly. In both conditions, older children provided more details than younger children did. CONCLUSION: The findings confirmed that implementation of professionally recommended practices affected the behavior of interviewers in both the pre-substantive and substantive phases of their interviews and enhanced the quality (i.e., likely accuracy) of information elicited from alleged victims.

Fatherhood in the twenty-first century.

The twentieth century has been characterized by four important social trends that have fundamentally changed the social cultural context in which children develop: women's increased labor force participation, increased absence of nonresidential fathers in the lives of their children, increased involvement of fathers in intact families, and increased cultural diversity in the U.S.. In this essay, we discuss how these trends are changing the nature of father involvement and family life, and in turn affecting children's and fathers' developmental trajectories. We end with an eye toward the twenty-first century by examining how the children of today will construct their expectations about the roles of fathers and mothers as they become the parents of tomorrow. This life-span approach to fatherhood considers the broader sociohistorical context in which fatherhood develops, and emphasizes the urgent need to consider mothers, fathers, and family structure in future research as we seek to understand and model the effects of parenting on children's development.

Shared caregiving: comparisons between home and child-care settings.

The experiences of 84 German toddlers (12-24 months old) who were either enrolled or not enrolled in child care were described with observational checklists from the time they woke up until they went to bed. The total amount of care experienced over the course of a weekday by 35 pairs of toddlers (1 member of each pair in child care, 1 member not) did not differ according to whether the toddlers spent time in child care. Although the child-care toddlers received lower levels of care from care providers in the centers, their mothers engaged them in more social interactions during nonworking hours than did the mothers of home-only toddlers, which suggests that families using child care provided different patterns of care than families not using child care. Child-care toddlers experienced high levels of emotional support at home, although they experienced less prompt responses to their distress signals. Mothers' ages were unrelated to the amounts of time toddlers spent with them, but older mothers initiated more proximity.

Amphetamine-induced loss of human dopamine transporter activity: an internalization-dependent and cocaine-sensitive mechanism.

The dopamine transporter (DAT) is a target of amphetamine (AMPH) and cocaine. These psychostimulants attenuate DAT clearance efficiency, thereby increasing synaptic dopamine (DA) levels. Re-uptake rate is determined by the number of functional transporters at the cell surface as well as by their turnover rate. Here, we present evidence that DAT substrates, including AMPH and DA, cause internalization of human DAT, thereby reducing transport capacity. Acute treatment with AMPH reduced the maximal rate of [(3)H]DA uptake, decreased AMPH-induced currents, and significantly redistributed the immunofluorescence of an epitope-tagged DAT from the plasma membrane to the cytosol in human embryonic kidney 293 cells. Conversely, DAT inhibitors, such as cocaine, mazindol, and nomifensine, when administered with AMPH, blocked the reduction in [(3)H]DA uptake and the redistribution of DAT immunofluorescence to the cytosol. The reductions of [(3)H]DA uptake and AMPH-induced DAT internalization also were inhibited by coexpression of a dominant negative mutant of dynamin I (K44A), indicating that endocytosis modulates transport capacity, likely through a clathrin-mediated pathway. With this mechanism of regulation, acute application of AMPH would reduce DA uptake not only by direct competition for uptake, but also by reducing the available cell-surface DAT. Moreover, AMPH-induced internalization might diminish the amount of DAT available for DA efflux, thereby modulating the cytotoxic effects of elevated extracellular DA.

Enhancing children's narratives in investigative interviews.

OBJECTIVE: To illustrate the amount of detail that can be elicited from alleged abuse victims using open-ended prompts by closely examining forensic interviews of a 5-year-old and a 15-year-old. METHOD: Interview prompts in the substantive sections of two forensic interviews were characterized as invitations, cued invitations. directive or option-posing, and the number of details they each elicited was tabulated. RESULTS: In both interviews, open-ended prompts predominated and were distributed throughout the substantive phases of the interviews. Most of the information obtained was elicited using open-ended prompts, which remained equivalently effective throughout the interviews. Reconstruction of the children's accounts illustrated how successive prompts continued to elicit information. CONCLUSION: Well-framed open-ended prompts, including those that use details provided by the child as cues, elicit narrative accounts from children of all ages. Because such information is more likely to be accurate, investigators are urged to rely more extensively on open-ended prompts.

Effects of age and delay on the amount of information provided by alleged sex abuse victims in investigative interviews.

A total of 145 children of 4 to 5, 6 to 7, 8 to 9, and 10 to 12 years of age were interviewed within 3 days, 1 month, 1 to 3 months, or 5 to 14 months after allegedly experiencing a single incident of sexual abuse. The proportion of substantive investigative utterances eliciting new details from the children increased with age and decreased after delays of more than 1 month. Age (but not delay) was also associated with the length and richness of informative responses to individual investigative utterances of all types. Children were more likely to provide new details in response to option-posing and suggestive prompts. As in previous field studies, interviewers employed few open-ended prompts, and thus only 5% of the information obtained was elicited using free-recall prompts.

Assessing the accuracy of a child's account of sexual abuse: a case study.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of the case study reported in this paper was to examine the accuracy of one child's account of a sexually abusive incident. The availability of an audio recording of the last in a series of abusive incidents enabled us to assess accuracy in greater detail than has hitherto been possible in forensic contexts. METHODS: Information given by the victim during an investigative interview was compared with an audio-taped record of the incident. Content analyses of the interview involved quantitative and qualitative analyses of the victim's account, and a qualitative analysis of the eliciting utterances. A CBCA analysis was performed on the victim's account to assess its purported credibility. RESULTS: Over 50% of the informative details reported by the victim were corroborated by the audio-recorded account (of which 98% were central, i.e., allegation related and 64% were confirmed by more than one source (audio-recording, suspect, witness). A total of 10 CBCA criteria were present in the victim's free-narrative account of the last abusive incident. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings confirm that children can indeed provide remarkably detailed and accurate accounts of their experiences.