The role of emotional resilience, childhood parentification, and attachment style on antisocial behaviour in adulthood: a comparison of an offender and normative population

Purpose: Despite a robust link between poor caregiver attachment and antisociality, few studies have examined the influence of parentification and emotional resilience on delinquency in later life, in groups at differing risk for antisocial conduct. Methodology: This pilot study compared the influence of parentification, attachment style (avoidant or anxious) and emotional resilience on adulthood antisocial behaviour in an offender and normative sample. Of the 137 participants in this study, 66 were supervised by the National Probation Service (age M = 36.90, SD = 13.91), and 71 were recruited from community-dwelling and student populations (age M = 31.83, SD = 13.25). Findings: In partial support of the predictions, participants in the offender group reported significantly greater levels of attachment anxiety compared to the normative group. However, emotional resilience was positively associated with antisociality in the normative sample. Research implications: This small-scale investigation indicates value in exploring these specific variables in a larger, matched samples study, to enable clearer comparisons to be made between offender and normative groups. Practical implications: The preliminary findings suggest that attachment anxiety is associated with antisociality in offender populations, which indicate a therapeutic focus on attachment anxiety as part of correctional care and offender rehabilitation. Originality: This study is novel in its aim to examine the influence of childhood parentification, attachment deficits and emotional resilience on adulthood antisociality in participants from a high-risk offender sample and non-high-risk normative sample

Great Aunt Edna's vase: metaphor use in working with heritage language families

This article explores the use of a particular metaphor—Great Aunt Edna’s Vase—as a means to facilitating multilingual families in contextualizing and engaging with complex emotional connections as linked to language, identity, and belonging. Building from the premise that language is linked to the construction of identity, but that individual family members will have different views and opinions on the heritage language within this context, this article highlights the use of metaphors in family work, before introducing the metaphor of Great Aunt Edna’s Vase and situating it in relevant literature around language, heritage, and identity. The concepts introduced add to the existing body of literature in addressing the growing need for work specifically aimed at multilingual families, in a globally ever-more-diverse society, highlighting the links between language and well-being, and making a contribution to the global knowledge necessary for practitioners and families to explore these links successfully