Parental Burnout Around the Globe: a 42-Country Study

High levels of stress in the parenting domain can lead to parental burnout, a condition that has severe consequences for both parents and children. It is not yet clear, however, whether parental burnout varies by culture, and if so, why it might do so. In this study, we examined the prevalence of parental burnout in 42 countries (17,409 parents; 71% mothers; M_{age} = 39.20) and showed that the prevalence of parental burnout varies dramatically across countries. Analyses of cultural values revealed that individualistic cultures, in particular, displayed a noticeably higher prevalence and mean level of parental burnout. Indeed, individualism plays a larger role in parental burnout than either economic inequalities across countries, or any other individual and family characteristic examined so far, including the number and age of children and the number of hours spent with them. These results suggest that cultural values in Western countries may put parents under heightened levels of stress

Parenting Culture(s): Ideal-Parent Beliefs Across 37 Countries

What is it to be “an ideal parent”? Does the answer differ across countries and social classes? To answer these questions in a way that minimizes bias and ethnocentrism, we used open-ended questions to explore ideal-parent beliefs among 8,357 mothers and 3,517 fathers from 37 countries. Leximancer Semantic Network Analysis was utilized to first determine parenting culture zones (i.e., countries with shared ideal-parent beliefs) and then extract the predominant themes and concepts in each culture zone. The results yielded specific types of ideal-parent beliefs in five parenting culture zones: being “responsible and children/family-focused” for Asian parents, being “responsible and proper demeanor-focused” for African parents, and being “loving and responsible” for Hispanic-Italian parents. Although the most important themes and concepts were the same in the final two zones—being “loving and patient,” there were subtle differences: English-speaking, European Union, and Russian parents emphasized “being caring,” while French-speaking parents valued “listening” or being “present.” Ideal-parent beliefs also differed by education levels within culture zones, but no general pattern was discerned across culture zones. These findings suggest that the country in which parents were born cannot fully explain their differences in ideal-parent beliefs and that differences arising from social class or education level cannot be dismissed. Future research should consider how these differences affect the validity of the measurements in question and how they can be incorporated into parenting intervention research within and across cultures

Parenting Culture(s): Ideal-Parent Beliefs Across 37 Countries

What is it to be “an ideal parent”? Does the answer differ across countries and social classes? To answer these questions in a way that minimizes bias and ethnocentrism, we used open-ended questions to explore ideal-parent beliefs among 8,357 mothers and 3,517 fathers from 37 countries. Leximancer Semantic Network Analysis was utilized to first determine parenting culture zones (i.e., countries with shared ideal-parent beliefs) and then extract the predominant themes and concepts in each culture zone. The results yielded specific types of ideal-parent beliefs in five parenting culture zones: being “responsible and children/family-focused” for Asian parents, being “responsible and proper demeanor-focused” for African parents, and being “loving and responsible” for Hispanic-Italian parents. Although the most important themes and concepts were the same in the final two zones—being “loving and patient,” there were subtle differences: English-speaking, European Union, and Russian parents emphasized “being caring,” while French-speaking parents valued “listening” or being “present.” Ideal-parent beliefs also differed by education levels within culture zones, but no general pattern was discerned across culture zones. These findings suggest that the country in which parents were born cannot fully explain their differences in ideal-parent beliefs and that differences arising from social class or education level cannot be dismissed. Future research should consider how these differences affect the validity of the measurements in question and how they can be incorporated into parenting intervention research within and across cultures

Extended Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Solving Gas-Liquid Compressible Flows with Phase Transition

The sharp-interface resolution of compressible gas-liquid flows is made particularly difficult by the coupling between the hydrodynamics and the thermodynamics, the stiff equation of state in the liquid phase, the need to represent important discontinuities in the fluid properties, and the modeling of complex interfacial phenomena. In this work, a high-order discontinuous Galerkin method with a level-set interface tracking method is used to handle the moving sharp interface. It is combined with multiphase Riemann solvers to impose the physical jump compatibility relations, with the possibility of modeling phase transition effects. The proposed approach is then tested on some verification test cases showing its potential for future applications

Stabilization of Solutions of Feather Keratins by Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate

Feather keratins were extracted from chicken feathers with aqueous solutions of urea and 2-mercaptoethanol. After filtration of the insoluble residue, a feather keratin solution was obtained. Removal of 2-mercaptoethanol and urea by dialysis resulted in aggregation of the keratin polypeptide chains and oxidation of the cysteine residues to afford a gel. The addition of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) to the keratin solution prior to dialysis prevented extensive aggregation of the keratin chains. The effect of the addition of various quantities of SDS on the rate of aggregation of the polypeptide chains and the rate of oxidation of cysteine residues during dialysis was studied. With size exclusion chromatography, it was found that lower initial SDS/keratin ratios (0.125–0.5 g SDS/g keratin) resulted in larger SDS–keratin complexes. This indicates that more intermolecular cross-links had formed. Higher SDS/keratin ratios (1–2 g SDS/g keratin) resulted in small SDS–keratin complexes, comparable in size to the keratin monomer. High amounts of SDS seemed to prevent the oxidation reaction between different keratin chains, resulting in more intramolecular disulfide bond formation