School bells are ringing, but can parents attend? Responses from employed parents of children with SEND

This study’s purpose is to examine the work-family conflict of employed parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and those parents’ engagement in the schooling of their children. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, 206 parents from the United Kingdom completed a questionnaire about their school engagement and their work-family strain. Response data were examined employing descriptive and correlation analyses, as well as hierarchical moderated regression. Findings reveal that the higher the parents’ work-family conflict, the lower their school engagement. Moreover, the age of children with SEND moderates the relationship between employed parents’ work-family conflict and engagement in their children’s schooling. Specifically, for parents with younger children, the negative impact of work-family conflict on parental school engagement is not as prevalent as it is for those with older-aged children. Drawing on Hobfoll's conservation of resources theory, we explore parents' dilemma when they determine where to expend their limited reservoir of resources. Because children with SEND benefit in multiple ways when their parents are engaged in their schooling, we provide recommendations regarding how schools and organizations can operate to promote parental school engagement

Gene network analysis of interstitial macrophages after treatment with induced pluripotent stem cells secretome (iPSC-cm) in the bleomycin injured rat lung

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a complex disease involving various cell types. Macrophages are essential in maintenance of physiological homeostasis, wound repair and fibrosis in the lung. Macrophages play a crucial role in repair and remodeling by altering their phenotype and secretory pattern in response to injury. The secretome of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC-cm) attenuates injury and fibrosis in bleomycin injured rat lungs. In the current study, we evaluate the effect of iPSC-cm on gene expression and phenotype of interstitial macrophage in bleomycin injured rat lungs in vivo. iPSC-cm was intratracheally instilled 7 days after bleomycin induced lung injury and assessed 7 days later and single cell isolation was performed. Macrophages were FACS sorted and microarray analysis was performed. We characterized changes in the rat lung interstitial macrophages using transcriptional profiling. iPSC-cm reduced the total collagen content of the lung and reduced different macrophage populations. Gene set enrichment analysis revealed involvement of three essential pathways (a) immune modulation, (b) branching morphogenesis and (c) canonical Wnt signaling. This study demonstrates that iPSC-cm reduces fibrosis in bleomycin injured rat lung by partially altering the macrophages and regulating their gene expression

Family Structure and the Nature of Couple Relationships: Relationship Distress, Separation, Divorce, and Repartnering

The goal of this chapter is to review the current state of theoretical and empirical knowledge on the quality of the couple relationship and the family structure as determinants of parenting behavior. Ample evidence has accumulated over the past few decades that the functioning of the interparental relationship is pivotal for positive and supportive parenting. Supporting the spillover theory, relationship distress among parenting couples may increase child maladjustment, both directly and indirectly, by disrupted child-rearing and less optimal coparenting. In separated or divorced families, coparenting is a key concept to explain why some couples succeed in compartmentalizing their parenting from their spousal role. As such, cooperative coparenting has been firmly established as a central protective factor buffering the impact of parental separation on children. Based on the reviewed data among stepfamilies, it can be tentatively concluded that a cohabiting stepparent may become a significant new caregiver for the child, but only on condition of good stepparent–child relationship quality, which has emerged as crucially important for children’s adjustment in the new family environment. This chapter posits that the interparental relationship can be regarded as the key relation which is responsible for family functioning across different family types (nuclear, divorced, and stepfamilies). As a practical implication, it might, therefore, be wise to strengthen this core relationship as a potential leverage point to positively affect parents’ individual parenting and their joint coparental alliance